Gradient Color Setting

1st day of Christmas from my room´s point of view at my parent´s house in Oslo. Couldn´t have done the photoshopping better myself. Thumbs up for the sky.

VV On Ski

Yet another famous person "enjoying" the obviously popular device; skis. This is Mr. Walter Gropius, practising his down hill V-style in a rather sophisticated look. He has carefully chosen, 50% of the garments from the work-outfit-closet, and 50% from the closet of leisure activites. From the modern point of view of old school traditions, a fascinating idea worth copying. Based on the terrified look on his face and the far from professional way he works those sticks, skiing was not Walters forte.

Jacobs, Jane

Merry Christmas to You from Jane Jacobs´ glasses. (Jane Jacobs´ glasses are not alone in the "traced-glasses-from-pictures-of-architects"- folder, check out the latest Arkitektur N. There you will find the whole collection, in an add for NAL Akademiet on page: something. Made by the NAIve Architect)

Mounty Everest

Sir Edmund Hillary on his way up to the top of the tops, Mount Everest. Looking mighty cool in his blue outfit, oxygen mask, strange sunglasses and handmade(/homemade?) mittens. For some reason, this image gives the impression that it used to be warmer up there. If you compare these two people with the characters stolling up the steep hills along a rope nowadays, the modern crowd seems to wear a whole lot more down paraphernalia.

Once a climber was asked the question: Why do you want to climb Everest and risk your life? The climber responded rather nonchalant, as if the answer was obvious: Because it´s there. (Lets say the climber was Sir E. Hillary, the origin of the Hillary steps)

King Winter

Skiing is not only good for your health, it is also a splendid opportunity to trace a landscape with the trail you leave behind. If you want to ski hardcore in a geometric way, patterns could be your focus of choice. From time to time, your pattern will be erased by the arrival of fresh snow, and a new clean sheet lays before you. Follow the example of these fine people, from the right: Crown prince Olav, Queen Maud, King Haakon, a lady with a big hat and a guy trying to get a glimpse of something.

Dot Matrix

After being interviewed by a kind of creepy guy with no head on the internet, answering: emotional, understated, progressive and relaxed to his questions, he could annonce that my type is: Dot Matrix. I´m very much happy with the result.

Do the interview (even though your level of internet scepticism will probably increase when you have to type your name), do it: Your type

Al To The Bert

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." Albert Einstein. (Einstein, baby!) I really like his pointing finger. Note to self: Time for some more index-finger-pointing-action.

Play It Self

Snapshot moment from: LA plays itself. A seriously long movie where the information flow is fascinating but sort of extreme. If your level of concentration drops during the never ending watch, I recommend the entertainment of a camera to reshoot the scenes of LA into snapshots of your own. Picture above: Shopping carts in action on their way through a parking lot.

(mis(s))Match

My after work activity these days; decide colors for my home made posters. The production of posters is actually just an excuse to write a few sentences and create nice color combinations. A good example of activity match making. My poster collection is called (for now): Things I tell myself.

Bottle Of Rome

I really (really) want to go to Rome. I´ve never been there, and I guess that is a terrible thing/sin when you´re supposed to call yourself an architect (not that I do). But I´m not sure a tourist trip is enough, imagine waking up to crazy traffic and espresso in a tiny apartment where the ceilings are high and the windows wide open, in some old dodgy building in the cheap area (if they exist) of town. Followed by days of slow adventures and impressive impressions. Priceless.

The drawing is a section of Pantheon. A place to remember I´ve heard.

Love Letter

Bonus: Apart from the fact that letters joined together often create fantastic imaginary worlds and/or add a level of enlightenment through well or poorly written books, they look pretty good.

Independent Day

Directly translated from Norwegian: Sprawl takes the cake. This version of the popular urban planning system looks like a spaceship, transformed into buildings of serious similarity. Orbiting the most important feature of the local neighbourhood, the one and only Mall. Sweet.

Brain Fuel

Brain(s). More later. Fascinating piece of human body part. CT scans. More later. Fascinating medical equipment. Bonus info: Did you know that if you "unwrap" the brain tissue, it would cover the surface of a swimming pool? ...What kind of swimming pool? Medium size I would say.

Rails Of Russia

The Trans siberian railway from Beijing/Vladivostok to St. Petersburg or vice versa. It´s 9289 km from Moscow to Vladivostok, and 7622 km between Beijing and the Russian capital. To traverse the great distance between Beijing and Moscow you need more or less six days. According to a Finnish friend of mine (she decided to go countryside when moving back to Finland after a year in Hongkong. (I have the feeling that three days might have been more than enough)) you´ll get a view of pretty much every tree in Russia during the quite monotonous travel. The only interruption is the green fields of Mongolia, and a few hours of outback China.

The little shape of dotted line is Lake Baikal, despite a small surface area the lake contains more (fresh)water than any other lake in the world. In other words, very deep. A population of freshwater seals enjoys life here. The other bigger shape of dotted line is the Caspian Sea, the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area.

The Groth

The master of lines, the Norwegian artist, Jan Groth. Extensive minimalist to the point of extremity.

Sardegna Sun

Last week was spent on the beautiful island of Sardinia. A few hours a day we observed the surrounding scenery from a horizontal point of view. When renting extremely ephemeral homes, you get a couple of beds, a very small table and a dynamic roof. The roof may be positioned in two different ways, A) unfolded; creating a big umbrella, providing shadow for sensitive skin, and B) as you can see on the photo, a sticklike feature, providing no necessities but looks good in formation. The Sunbed Army ready to serve Scandinavian weather refugees and locals, craving sunshine.
Let operation T A N begin.

DBS Spesial

Dude

OSL - TRD

This is the plan of tomorrow. Drive and drive. From the Oslo to the Trondheim. Rule #1: The more time you spend behind the wheel, the more time you get to boss the soundsystem. Time to get some sleep, I don`t want to listen to Eva Cassidy all day. The solid line is E6 through Gudbrandsdalen, to the dotted line is Road3 through Østerdalen. Solid = approximately 500 km, Dotted = slightly shorter.

Book Or Zine

I`m making a book. It`s a super slow process. Writing essays is not something you just do I`ve come to realize. Takes forever to create sentences (that I think is good), not to mention the story. That`s why the book contains more and more images and drawings, some stolen from the great abstract world of internet (ops), some made by the author.

Busy Card

Adopting a Japanese networking tradition; business cards. They always have one (probably several) available, for every occation and situation. It doesn`t matter if the only word uttered is hi. You`re still on the vip list worthy a card. Which I guess is a very nice thing. Only problem: to remember the people behind every hi. My solution: personal cues added to the excisting information. E.g. Tomi Ogata, photomaker, Tokyo + extremely skinny pink jeans, plastic hat, favourite color: yellow.

(the card is not supposed to have the dotted line and half a scissors, it is just to make a frame on this white background)(just so you know)

1983

My age in computer years. Mac from 1983

Green Greeny

aka. jungle. Looks fantastic, but imagine all those bugs living there. In other words, you`re not alone.

Road Of Silk

When blogger went moron on me, I was about to tell you a really fascinating story about the trade route "The Silk Road", from China to the middle East. It was a filled with facts and amazing information. But it turns out that it was a: NO GO. Bite me, I don`t know why. It began like this:

When I was a kid at the age of 5-6, I was obsessed with a television series called "The Silk Road". Obvious to the masses, this show presented the history of the trade route (in a very objective way). I remember the scenes on the screen to be unbelievable picturesque with a hint of fairytale and last but not least, extremely dangerous. The series was broadcasted on a weekday after the news, so every week I had to fight for my desperate need of historical facts, in regards of bedtime. Some years later I wrote a letter to NRK (the channel), and asked if they could broadcast this amazing piece of television imagery once more. I never got an answer.

Then all the wonderful facts arrives on scene, but..No.
If this survives the unwanted censor, I just want to end this feature with: OK, so now it works!

"Kawaii?" "Hai"

Those Japanese people really got it going on. Barcodes of the future, coming your way. (This might be ancient information, I`m generally not up to date on the topic "breaking news", so this might actually be barcodes of the past).