Geraint Franklin

A 1944 map by geologist Harold Fisk charts a 40-mile stretch of the Mississippi River from Friars Point to Gunnison, Mississippi. Fisk used aerial photos and maps to estimate the past and then-present channels. Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mississippi-rivers-hidden-history-uncovered-by-lidar?fbclid=IwY2xjawQYXkdleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFCZ2JBT2tWdVlXMmEzNU5Uc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHsbjW-Yuubr_o_Kfeh0Elzc94geDwfXIZmeNL7NyljEBAOEjH53m2QLSo1NF_aem__4NkCIJ_D8J6mI1e8eMByg

Rivers are living beings.

I was very kindly asked by the @museumofchildhood.bsky.social to contribute a personal story related to my childhood and nature, which I did.

You can read it here:
museumofchildhood.ie/that-wilder-...

Pace of global warming has nearly doubled since 2015, reveals study - Carbon Brief An acceleration in human-caused global warming could see the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C limit breached before...

I'm not suggesting this is an open secret within the climate science community, but it's remarkable how little impact this sort of research is generating. Because if the rate of warming really has *doubled* then you can kiss goodbye to 2°C. www.carbonbrief.org/pace-of-glob...

Great post.

Llun o Gapel Newydd, Nanhoron / Photo of Capel Newydd, Nanhoron

This month, the Capeli Cymru project team are hosting and attending a range of events. We would love to see you at some of these events, to discuss the opportunities and challenges of caring for chapel heritage.

Like a tiny piece of architecture.

Amazing cartoon!

An inverted ziggurat building painted white in Santiago that looks just like the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

A view of spiraling interior ramps show an array of small shops selling fashion, cell phone repair and more.

A shop window features a mannequin in a pleather bra and garters. Above her, a neon sign in yellow reads "Sex Shop."

I'm in Santiago and I made it to South America's Guggenheim. (It was on the life list.) Really, it's a spiral mall, or caracol, an architectural type typical of Chile that came about in the '70s. In this one, you can get your cell phone fixed, get your nails done and buy dildos.

Iranian Ship Was Leaving Indian Naval Exercise When Sunk, Raising Concerns in New Delhi The Iranian frigate sunk by a U.S. submarine last week had just left an Indian naval exercise. Now India's political opposition is demanding answers.

My lord! The frigate the US submarine torpedoed, the one the White House has been bragging about, was unarmed and headed home from an international naval exercise, hosted by India, that the US pulled out of at the last minute! www.military.com/daily-news/i...

David Harding obituary Sculptor and educator who embedded art within the new town of Glenrothes and encouraged students at the Glasgow School of Art to move beyond the studio

David Harding, sculptor and educator, died on 21st February 2026, aged 88.

"As town artist for Glenrothes, Fife, in the late 1960s and 70s, he embedded sculpture in underpasses, bus stops, and housing schemes", notes The Guardian in its just published obituary.

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

NHS official pushed to add patient data to Palantir platform whilst also advising company

A lobbyist who worked directly for Peter Mandelson, on the Palantir board, and on the board of *four* NHS trusts.

Lobbying the NHS to hand over even more patient data to Palantir.

This absolutely stinks. Get Palantir out of the NHS. Sign my petition:

you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

The book 'Building Modern Scotland' on a shop bookshelf, between other books. The cover shows the title, the subtitle ('A social and architectural history of the new towns, 1947-1997') and the authors' names. The image shows some new town housing. A group of boys is gathered with their bikes. One is mending a flat tyre. A smaller boy watches on, perhaps wanting to be part of the group.

Publication day for the paperback edition of 'Building Modern Scotland'. Pictured here in Blackwells Edinburgh! It's a social & architectural history of Scotland's post-war new towns, collaboratively written by a @leverhulme.ac.uk funded team from @edincollegeofart.bsky.social and @glasgow.ac.uk

📖 C20’s new High-Tech Britain book is out today!

Written by Geraint Franklin and published by
@batsfordbooks.bsky.social, it's an authoritative survey of a remarkable moment in British architecture; from gleaming global icons to forgotten industrial sheds.

🛒 shop.c20society.org.uk/products/pre...

Tales of the Suburbs by John Grindrod review – an entertaining alternative history of queer Britain From London’s commuter belt to the country village gay club, these portraits of LGBTQ+ life are filled with humour, compassion and observational flair

Tales of the Suburbs is Book of the Day in the Guardian! ‘This fantastically entertaining alternative history of queer life in Britain’ www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...

Landscape ecological restoration. It can be done but we need to get a move on. This is Carrifran where the sheep were removed to allow this native woodland to take over.

The international boycott of ChatGPT has absolutely exploded.

2.5M people have already joined, and this is just the beginning.

Go to quitgpt.org.
Cancel your subscription, delete your account.
And tell at least one person why.

My op-ed: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Art of Persia - Series 1: Episode 3 Samira Ahmed goes back to when Persia faced her gravest threat, Genghis Khan, and reveals how the Safavids, who succeeded the Mongols, give Iran a powerful new identity.

UNESCO-listed Golestan Palace damaged by US/Israeli bombing. www.theartnewspaper.com/2026/03/03/u... A historic building and archive of priceless objects like the Timurid era Shahnameh that we visited in Art of Persia (from 28 min 24s). www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Thank you John. And congrats on yours!

Save Dallas City Hall | Dallas, TX The future of Dallas City Hall is too important to be decided in shady back-room dealings or on numbers no one trusts. Contact your council person today! Save Dallas City Hall!

Much more serious things happening in the world, obvi, but if you live in the DFW region, Dallas is taking a vote on March 4 to decide the future of one of the most important pieces of 20th century architecture, IM Pei's city hall building. Contact the city council and urge preservation.

New podcast: Lutah Maria Riggs, designer of the American Riviera podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n...

This was a fun one! The lady architect whose houses sell for $18M in Santa Barbara and Montecito

The institutional buildings of 1960s Canada were extraordinarily well-built. Throwing them away would be madness.

The 1969 Science Centre is an incredible piece of architecture. It needs some work.

The new building complex is a kludge that will be inferior by any measure.

Palantir currently runs the tech that links our health data across the NHS

www.bmj.com/content/386/...

An aerial photo shows three diggers excavating the ground for graves. More than 65 graves are already dug. Those not yet dug are marked out by chalk.

Not a single US newspaper will publish this photo. No news channel will broadcast it.

The graves are being prepared for more than 80 young children killed in the US/Israeli strike on the school in Minab, Iran on Saturday.

(📸 Middle East Observer)

Today is St David’s Day: patron saint of Wales, of course, but also of vegetarians and poets. He was reputed to have helped introduce bees to Ireland. He is famously quoted as saying “Gwnewch y pethau bychain”, meaning “Do the little things”. Small changes and good choices matter, especially now.

Plan and section of the State of Illinois building (Thompson Center) in Chicago. The drawing is done in colored pencil, sepia ink, and oil pastels on tracing paper.

New online database for the permanent collection of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt.

For example: a presentation drawing for Helmut Jahn's Thompson Center.

sammlungen.dam-online.de

Sums it up.

Shoutout to my amazing colleagues at Cambridge & Birmingham on the 'Small Performances' project into John Baskerville's typographic punches - today is released a @camdiglib.bsky.social collection of imagery of the punches. Check it out! cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/...

I'm totally pinching myself announcing this, but a film about my life journey rewilding a West Cork farm, An Irish Atlantic Rainforest, will get its first screening at the Dublin International Film Festival on Saturday the 28th of this month.

Tickets are available here:
www.diff.ie/programme/an...

Poster stamp to mark the International Hygiene Exhibition, Dresden, 1930

Poster stamp marking the 14th International Drama Week, Korbach, 1962

A friend has just introduced me to the Modernist German craze for Reklamemarken -- aka poster stamps -- little adverts to seal envelopes, ephemera now pretty much forgotten.

With the leaves fallen, the difference is less striking, but I took the left-hand image in February 2022, and the other yesterday.

Not one of these trees was planted. All I did was prevent sheep and other grazers from getting at them, and the forest came by itself.