Olivier – Le sombre abîme du temps

Laurent Olivier’s wonderful book Le sombre abîme du temps has just appeared in translation (as The dark abyss of time: memory and archaeology) – [Link] Laurent offers profound elaboration of the fundamental insight that the past is all around us, before us, in material traces, that presence is filled with the past, that the future…

Heritage as design (continued)

Felipe Criado Boado (CSIC, the Spanish National Research Council and INCIPIT, the Institute of Heritage Sciences in Santiago de Compostela) is with us in the Archaeology Center for a couple of weeks. This evening he lectured about the way his new institute is approaching heritage. Heritage – the footprint of memory and oblivion – a…

graveyards and a sentimental education

I can’t help hanging around the dead. On a visit to Walter Scott’s grave in the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey. Some extraordinary gravestones. Early to mid 18th century. I have been talking with Bianca (Carpeneti) and Chris (Lowman) about a true education of the sentiments – as envisaged by Rousseau – so much more appropriately…

Optimism and transformative design

Transformative Design, my class about design thinking that makes a real difference, run with Meghann (Dryer of IDEO) and Bernie (Roth of Stanford Engineering), opens again soon in the d.school. I got thinking seriously about its themes this weekend at a fund-raising event organized by Castilleja School, where Helen teaches and Molly learns, on the…