Postopolis!

A few months ago, I got a call from Joseph Grima, the director of New York's legendary Storefront for Art and Architecture gallery. Joseph wanted to put together some kind of event about architecture blogs – how blogs are participating in, redefining, and sometimes even leading the architectural conversation today, on the street, in the schools, at practicing design firms, etc.
If architecture blogs are now changing what people talk about in fields ranging from urban planning, public transport, landscape architecture, green design, architectural history, and even archaeoastronomy and documentary filmmaking, then surely there should be some way to celebrate that, and to mark it with a public event or exhibition?

[Image: New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture, with its famous hinged facade, designed by Steven Holl and Vito Acconci].

So I said yes, in an instant, then waited for things to develop – only to learn that the event would take place over five straight days of near-continuous activity, that I'd be flown all the way to New York City for it, and that Jill Fehrenbacher of Inhabitat, Bryan Finoki of Subtopia, and Dan Hill of City of Sound would also be involved (Alex Trevi of Pruned couldn't make it).
The four of us would be given total freedom to plan whatever we wanted (provided it had at least something to do with architecture, space, landscape, and the city) – to take the same motivating energy behind our various blog posts, interviews, dialogues, plotlines, reviews, ideas, rants, histories, surveys, etc., and to recreate that in person, organizing lectures, panels, pecha kuchas, film screenings, live interviews, readings, casual mingling, wine drinking, purposeful caffeine experimentation, and maybe even some walking tours and site visits... and we'd do it at all from Tuesday, May 29, to Saturday, June 2, 2007.
The event would be called Postopolis! – exclamation point included.

[Image: The Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York City].

The four of us are still in the process of assembling speakers and guests, from architects and city planners to urban explorers, military historians, novelists, and documentary filmmakers – not to mention musicians, photographers, ecologists, climate change scientists, plate tectonicists, and so on – and we'll even be putting together an event within the event so that other architecture bloggers can join in.
After all, Postopolis! is meant to be about architecture blogs – not just about the four of us – so expanding the conversation to include as many other bloggers as possible only makes sense.
In any case, it should be awesomely and unbelievably fun – five days to talk about everything, nonstop, live from the Storefront in Manhattan.

[Image: The Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York City].

More info will continue to come out on all of our blogs over the next month, so check back often – but if you're anywhere near New York City that week, please feel free to stop by. You'll see City of Sound, Inhabitat (check out Jill gracing the pages of Vogue this month), Subtopia, and myself, in person, with hundreds of our favorite blog posts printed out and plastered all over the walls...

Finally, thanks to Joseph Grima at the Storefront for Art and Architecture for asking us to put this together!