heritage futures – a design paradigm

Last May I delivered the Reinwardt Memorial Lecture at Amsterdam School of the Arts – [Link] This week it was published as an illustrated booklet – Let me tell you about Hadrian’s Wall: Heritage, Performance, Design The 2012 Reinwardt Lecture. Amsterdam School of Arts, 2013 Background: phases in the growth of the heritage industry this…

automotive heritage – a summit meeting

This week I was in Washington DC for a meeting organized by the HVA (Historic Vehicle Association of America) [Link] with the Department of the Interior, National Parks Service. The purpose – to plan a new registry of historic vehicles. Why? To help promote awareness of automotive heritage in the United States. Go to the…

connoisseurship of the car

I am back from an extraordinary symposium at Miles Collier’s Revs Institute in Florida, exploring the world of collectable cars at this end of an era. The engine note, the feedback through steering wheel from rubber tyre grip, the scent of warm motor oil, the conversation by the gas station on the road trip, will be history…

Pearson|Shanks – theatre|archaeology

A decade after our book Theatre/Archaeology (Routledge – [Link]), Mike Pearson and I have started a new series of collaborative works. Here is a prospectus: Pearson|Shanks – theatre|archaeology – return and prospect Twenty years ago Mike Pearson, performance artist, and Michael Shanks, archaeologist, opened a dialogue and collaboration through the theatre company Brith Gof, of…

when the everyday becomes history and heritage

A couple of months ago Road&Track were about to throw out their old office collection of back issues, photographs, notes, books, promotional literature sent them by car companies, and all manner of paperwork reaching back to the late 1940s when the magazine, one of the most famous and respected in the automotive world, was founded….

on the road to Auto Archive 3.0

The Revs Program at Stanford is developing a dynamic archive of automotive history using the cutting edge skills and technology of Stanford Libraries. It will offer online access to an exceptional library of resources plus powerful facilities for anyone in the automotive past to collect, annotate, upload and share their interests and knowledge – a…