Through the Interface

London - Heatherwick Studio and UCL PEARL

At the end of the last post I was waiting for my new flight from Schipol to Heathrow, the original having been cancelled for some reason. In the end I managed to fly out the same night: I was in a middle seat, but by that point I would have stowed away in the hold or in the toilet if I had to. Next time I need to do that journey I will take the train - I really don't know why it didn't occur to me this time. It was getting late when I got in: I was... Read more →

DevCon Europe 2025 in Amsterdam - Days 1 & 2

On Tuesday morning, the beginning of the first day proper of Autodesk’s DevCon Europe 2025 in Amsterdam, attendees started to arrive at the historic Beurs van Berlage. It’s really a beautiful conference venue. It wasn't long before I was catching up with old friends, including past and present Autodesk employees. The Piro brothers are regulars at Autodesk events, although they're now there with different companies. For the first day's general session employees were asked to use an overflow room with a large screen. I ended up standing at the back. I propped my machine on a table holding a... Read more →

DevCon Europe 2025 in Amsterdam - Day 0

This week I'm spending time in Amsterdam and London. On Sunday I headed across to Geneva airport and checked into a hotel that’s a gentle 10-minute walk from the terminal. It was the first time I’d stayed there, and I admit I was pleasantly surprised. The atrium was nice and I even had a cheeky sauna before sleeping. The alarm going off soon after 5am was a bit of a shock, but I felt rested enough. The walk across to the terminal was pleasant, considering the early hour. There weren't yet cars on the roads. Security was really quick,... Read more →

Venice Biennale 2025 - Arsenale

As mentioned in the last post, I ran across to the Arsenale site of the Venice Biennale to take as many photos as I could in approximately 30 minutes. This post includes those photos, but I’ve decided not to even try to fake some meaningful commentary. It's just unfair on the people who worked so hard to create the exhibits to have someone come along and pretend he knows anything about their work. I will just give a quick shout-out to my new friend - and neuroscience classmate - Ehab Mokhtar, who you'll see in photo 56. Ehab kept... Read more →

Venice Biennale 2025 - Giardini

I was up earlier than I needed to be on Saturday - even after the MIT party of the night before - so headed across to the Giardini della Biennale in very good time for the 11am opening. It was a very nice walk along the main waterfront. I decided to stop nearby for breakfast. If I'd known at the time that this would be the last thing that passed my lips until getting to the airport, I'd definitely have eaten more. I walked through a very nice park with an arts & craft market just being set up.... Read more →

Venice

This mini-series of posts relates to my trip over the weekend to Venice for the opening of the 2025 Biennale. I took so many photos that I’ve decided to split it into three parts. The first being about my trip across to Venice with the second two focusing on the Biennale itself. My main purpose for visiting Venice was to attend the last in-person session of the Neuroscience and Design class I've been attending. On Thursday afternoon of last week I took the train to Zurich, while doing my best to participate in the course’s last virtual session. I... Read more →

Encoding Experience in Boston and San Francisco

After posting several times about our recent trip to the US - with stops in Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco - it’s time to talk about the broader purpose of the tour. My team has been organizing a series of evening events called “Encoding Experience”, with the primary goal of bringing together a community of interest around capturing the human experience of the built environment. We invited interesting people from academia and industry to come together and have a discussion about how we might start to quantify and simulate human experience. Our first event was in Boston on... Read more →

San Francisco

After posting about our time in Boston and Los Angeles, it’s now time to talk about San Francisco. Before finally (in the next post) getting around to the whole point of the trip. Let’s hope it’s not too much of an anti-climax. On Monday of last week, Dagmara and I arrived in San Francisco after a short hop from LA. Seeing the Marin Airporter brought back lots of memories from when I lived in San Rafael from 2000 to 2003, back before Uber and Lyft made airport drop-offs a breeze. I can’t count the number of times I took... Read more →

Los Angeles

In the last post I talked about arriving in Boston. I’ve deliberately skipped the reason we were in Boston - and in San Francisco afterwards, too - as I’ll cover those in an upcoming post. I do want to spend some time talking about what we did between Boston and SF, though. When I originally looked at the options for this trip, I first thought about spending the weekend in Baltimore with my son: it turns out he’s in full-on exam period, though, so it wouldn’t have been the best time to visit, to say the least. Besides that... Read more →