Dominique Rethans
@rethans.bsky.social
Urban development - Social, environmental and economic #sustainability. Bleeding edges. Suffers from a complex-simplex syndrome. Based in Amsterdam
dutch tweet: Calvinistische Guurheid
December 12, 2025 at 6:31 PM
dutch tweet: Calvinistische Guurheid
A bit more rigour in science and academia would help. Some spatial planning and architecture faculties are expert in rebranding, recombining and repackaging what has been conceived before, but have difficulty to go beyond 'bricolage' and reproduction production.
My point: we still have 'some' work ahead to create consensus to address social and ecological sustainability as a single issue. Everytime someone comes up with new semantic distractions, it doesn't really help. We need real solutions, real agency, not fancy new packaging of old concepts.
the new buzz-words between architects and landscape architects with a focus on #sustainability and #sustianabledevelopment are #conviviality and #regenerative living environments. I think we should wait for #AGI to clean up this mess.
December 3, 2025 at 3:54 PM
A bit more rigour in science and academia would help. Some spatial planning and architecture faculties are expert in rebranding, recombining and repackaging what has been conceived before, but have difficulty to go beyond 'bricolage' and reproduction production.
My point: we still have 'some' work ahead to create consensus to address social and ecological sustainability as a single issue. Everytime someone comes up with new semantic distractions, it doesn't really help. We need real solutions, real agency, not fancy new packaging of old concepts.
the new buzz-words between architects and landscape architects with a focus on #sustainability and #sustianabledevelopment are #conviviality and #regenerative living environments. I think we should wait for #AGI to clean up this mess.
December 3, 2025 at 3:48 PM
My point: we still have 'some' work ahead to create consensus to address social and ecological sustainability as a single issue. Everytime someone comes up with new semantic distractions, it doesn't really help. We need real solutions, real agency, not fancy new packaging of old concepts.
December 3, 2025 at 3:37 PM
In retrospect the biggest intellectual shitshow around must have been Baudrillard. 'What are you doing after the orgy?' was a memorable pick-up line but the idea that the state of our culture is subject to cyclic movements is an absolute fallacy for the inertia-perverts among us...
November 18, 2025 at 6:10 PM
In retrospect the biggest intellectual shitshow around must have been Baudrillard. 'What are you doing after the orgy?' was a memorable pick-up line but the idea that the state of our culture is subject to cyclic movements is an absolute fallacy for the inertia-perverts among us...
the new buzz-words between architects and landscape architects with a focus on #sustainability and #sustianabledevelopment are #conviviality and #regenerative living environments. I think we should wait for #AGI to clean up this mess.
November 18, 2025 at 6:06 PM
the new buzz-words between architects and landscape architects with a focus on #sustainability and #sustianabledevelopment are #conviviality and #regenerative living environments. I think we should wait for #AGI to clean up this mess.
ai-2027.com #AI #AIfutures Predicting February 2027: "With new capabilities come new dangers. The safety team finds that if Agent-2 somehow escaped from the company and wanted to “survive” and “replicate” autonomously, it might be able to do so. " The essay is from April 2025.
AI 2027
A research-backed AI scenario forecast.
ai-2027.com
November 15, 2025 at 2:10 PM
ai-2027.com #AI #AIfutures Predicting February 2027: "With new capabilities come new dangers. The safety team finds that if Agent-2 somehow escaped from the company and wanted to “survive” and “replicate” autonomously, it might be able to do so. " The essay is from April 2025.
"somewhere along the line our reality started to resemble, with uncanny specificity, the collected works of Thomas Pynchon."
September 27, 2025 at 4:10 PM
"somewhere along the line our reality started to resemble, with uncanny specificity, the collected works of Thomas Pynchon."
Reposted by Dominique Rethans
There's a big piece on resistance to AI and Luddism in the New Yorker — pleased to see @jathansadowski.com's great book and This Machine Kills get shouts, as well as a nice nod to Blood in the Machine.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
April 21, 2025 at 10:18 PM
There's a big piece on resistance to AI and Luddism in the New Yorker — pleased to see @jathansadowski.com's great book and This Machine Kills get shouts, as well as a nice nod to Blood in the Machine.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
And by the way, you don't have to bring a passport if my understanding of spanish is correct...
Old time favorite travelling options for cross border travel between Mexico and the US - conceived by the artist Javier Tellez
April 16, 2025 at 12:55 PM
And by the way, you don't have to bring a passport if my understanding of spanish is correct...
Old time favorite travelling options for cross border travel between Mexico and the US - conceived by the artist Javier Tellez
April 16, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Old time favorite travelling options for cross border travel between Mexico and the US - conceived by the artist Javier Tellez
Reposted by Dominique Rethans
Surprised to see @economist.com on the ‘politicians should be allowed to do crimes without consequences’ team. www.economist.com/leaders/2025...
Why Marine Le Pen should be allowed to run for president
Punish the offender without also punishing French democracy
www.economist.com
April 2, 2025 at 9:50 AM
Surprised to see @economist.com on the ‘politicians should be allowed to do crimes without consequences’ team. www.economist.com/leaders/2025...
Either author has more background info than willing to share or the entire @economist.com staff just returned from a nasty ski resort. Incomprehensible bends frame trias politica as obsolete. Why not simply observe that this particular law could be up for revision, considering the impact on society?
For what it's worth, here's what we think and I agree with it. www.economist.com/leaders/2025...
Why Marine Le Pen should be allowed to run for president
Punish the offender without also punishing French democracy
www.economist.com
April 2, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Either author has more background info than willing to share or the entire @economist.com staff just returned from a nasty ski resort. Incomprehensible bends frame trias politica as obsolete. Why not simply observe that this particular law could be up for revision, considering the impact on society?
Reposted by Dominique Rethans
In the 1930s, thousands of central Europeans landed in Britain. From architects like Erno Goldfinger to sociologists like Ruth Glass, our book of the week shows how émigrés injected modernist energy into a drab, insular culture.
By Owen Hatherley
buff.ly/ZghV82r
By Owen Hatherley
buff.ly/ZghV82r
March 25, 2025 at 12:01 PM
In the 1930s, thousands of central Europeans landed in Britain. From architects like Erno Goldfinger to sociologists like Ruth Glass, our book of the week shows how émigrés injected modernist energy into a drab, insular culture.
By Owen Hatherley
buff.ly/ZghV82r
By Owen Hatherley
buff.ly/ZghV82r
Or, like an acclaimed architect 25 yrs ago phrased while curating the Venice Biennale: 'Less Aesthetics More Ethics'. In retrospect a blatant confession that the profession facilitates the greenwashing of all dubious moral highgrounds, anywhere, anytime, anyhow.
Nihilsm is a perfectly coherent aesthetic paradigm, what's the problem here?
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
What does Maga-land look like? Let me show you America's unbeautiful suburban sprawl | Alexander Hurst
I drove 2,000 miles with a French friend across my home country – and saw the endless nowhere land that is the crucible of Trumpism, says Guardian Europe correspondent Alexander Hurst
www.theguardian.com
March 19, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Or, like an acclaimed architect 25 yrs ago phrased while curating the Venice Biennale: 'Less Aesthetics More Ethics'. In retrospect a blatant confession that the profession facilitates the greenwashing of all dubious moral highgrounds, anywhere, anytime, anyhow.
Nihilsm is a perfectly coherent aesthetic paradigm, what's the problem here?
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
What does Maga-land look like? Let me show you America's unbeautiful suburban sprawl | Alexander Hurst
I drove 2,000 miles with a French friend across my home country – and saw the endless nowhere land that is the crucible of Trumpism, says Guardian Europe correspondent Alexander Hurst
www.theguardian.com
March 19, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Nihilsm is a perfectly coherent aesthetic paradigm, what's the problem here?
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Reposted by Dominique Rethans
📢 Introducing InterCities – Owen Hatherley's new podcast for Open City travelling through time and space to a series of buildings, spaces and historical moments across London, Britain, and the world. First ep: Greenwich with Ana Francisco Sutherland 🎧https://shows.acast.com/opencity
February 27, 2025 at 1:41 PM
📢 Introducing InterCities – Owen Hatherley's new podcast for Open City travelling through time and space to a series of buildings, spaces and historical moments across London, Britain, and the world. First ep: Greenwich with Ana Francisco Sutherland 🎧https://shows.acast.com/opencity
Reposted by Dominique Rethans
The Isokon Building in Belsize Park in London has become an architectural icon, and its own history is full of scandal and Central European emigrés, writes Owen Hatherley
Spies and socialists in Belsize Park | Apollo Magazine
The Isokon Building has become an architectural icon, but its own history is full of scandal and Central European emigrés, writes Owen Hatherley
buff.ly
March 13, 2025 at 5:56 PM
The Isokon Building in Belsize Park in London has become an architectural icon, and its own history is full of scandal and Central European emigrés, writes Owen Hatherley
Reposted by Dominique Rethans
‘In Co‑op Village, Rochdale Village, and the mammoth Co‑op City, Jessor’s work combined the cheapest materials, severe repetition and a consistent concern with the quality of interior space,‘ Owen Hatherley wrote in the AR.
Read more about Jessor’s work in AR September 2023: Property:
Read more about Jessor’s work in AR September 2023: Property:
Herman Jessor (1894–1990) - The Architectural Review
<p class="p2">The unsung architect of New York City’s ‘co-operative commonwealth’ designed housing that put people before profit</p>
www.architectural-review.com
March 15, 2025 at 11:07 AM
‘In Co‑op Village, Rochdale Village, and the mammoth Co‑op City, Jessor’s work combined the cheapest materials, severe repetition and a consistent concern with the quality of interior space,‘ Owen Hatherley wrote in the AR.
Read more about Jessor’s work in AR September 2023: Property:
Read more about Jessor’s work in AR September 2023: Property:
Reposted by Dominique Rethans
Herman Jessor is the most important radical architect you’ve never heard of. Now, The Cooper Union is staging an exhibition dedicated to the 40,000 co-operative housing units he designed for New York City from the 1930s to the ’70s.
Thank you, Herman Jessor
Thank you, Herman Jessor presents work by the late New York architect Herman Jessor (1894–1990), a Cooper Union alum who designed more than 40,000 units of cooperative housing throughout his sixty-yea...
cooper.edu
March 15, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Herman Jessor is the most important radical architect you’ve never heard of. Now, The Cooper Union is staging an exhibition dedicated to the 40,000 co-operative housing units he designed for New York City from the 1930s to the ’70s.
Waiting for the second revised edition...
www.theguardian.com/books/articl...
www.theguardian.com/books/articl...
March 8, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Waiting for the second revised edition...
www.theguardian.com/books/articl...
www.theguardian.com/books/articl...
Eminent Domain: I grab your land if it's in the public interest. Autocracy Inc. on ketamine: hold my beer, and by the way, what is public interest?
"The same deregulation that could be seen as pro-business will likely not favor those outside Freedom Cities’ ultrawealthy backers. These are going to be cities..without democracy, without workers' rights, where the owners, the corporations, the billionaires have all the power..anti-freedom cities.”
"freedom cities could also be used as manufacturing hubs and shipbuilding ports, allowing builders to bypass the environmental review process" You would assume the US has ample experience with laissez-faire urban developement. Next level of 'what could go possibly go wrong?'
March 8, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Eminent Domain: I grab your land if it's in the public interest. Autocracy Inc. on ketamine: hold my beer, and by the way, what is public interest?
"The same deregulation that could be seen as pro-business will likely not favor those outside Freedom Cities’ ultrawealthy backers. These are going to be cities..without democracy, without workers' rights, where the owners, the corporations, the billionaires have all the power..anti-freedom cities.”
"freedom cities could also be used as manufacturing hubs and shipbuilding ports, allowing builders to bypass the environmental review process" You would assume the US has ample experience with laissez-faire urban developement. Next level of 'what could go possibly go wrong?'
One of the core tenets of the Tech Ideology promoted by folks like Thiel, Musk, Yarvin, et al, is that of “exit”—the ability for tech elite to opt out of democratic society and to opt in to their own, closed societies.
www.wired.com/story/startu...
www.wired.com/story/startu...
March 8, 2025 at 6:47 PM
"The same deregulation that could be seen as pro-business will likely not favor those outside Freedom Cities’ ultrawealthy backers. These are going to be cities..without democracy, without workers' rights, where the owners, the corporations, the billionaires have all the power..anti-freedom cities.”