Civic Grid was included in the @royalacademyarts summer show (thanks to @farshidmoussavi@stephmacdonald6a@tomemerson6a )
@civicgrid is an ambitious Canadian startup reimagining how clean energy infrastructure takes form in cities. It aims to advance the urban energy transition by developing decentralised, local systems conceived as civic architecture.
The flagship prototype is currently under construction and slated to open later this year. I’m so grateful to work with the immensely talented @maxfine (founder) and @harskamparchitecture (architect) – a really rare example of totally collaborative design and seamless teamwork.
One more episode before we begin the official podcast format with episodes around upcoming RR#18.
On this public feed preview, our Editor-in-Chief, Jack Self, and new Managing Director, Bryan Wolff, discuss issues in print. Both with RR18, moving printers, and the state of print magazines in general.
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Founder and Editor-in-Chief of @realrvw , Jack Self is one of the leading thinkers on postcapitalism , a subject he has explored at institutions like Princeton, Harvard, and Yale.
ACV founder Connor Rankin speaks with Jack about what it means to live today, in a time of acute flux yet deep stagnation, where the boundary between the real and surreal is increasingly blurred, and where cultural signifiers like architecture, fashion and art feel dulled by repetition and cycles of commercialisation.
Read more in ACV3 INBETWEEN, available now.
@j_self@acvmagazine@connorrankin
When the Portuguese grid crashed last April, Lisbon was forced to confront how a city can function without electricity. This led to the @civicgrid design team (myself, @maxfine and @harskamparchitecture ) collaborating with Lisbon’s Civil Defence.
The prototype shown here, nicknamed “Muster”, is part of a deployable network built for real urban crises. It represents a next generation of emergency infrastructure — combining solar charging with a battery for continuous power, outlets for community charging, shelter, lighting and on-board storage for essentials like medical supplies. It can operate independently or connect into a wider mesh network for public announcements and local cell reception. It is compact enough to transport in a vehicle and light enough to be moved on foot by a one person. Following its public debut at @trienaldelisboa , it will be handed over to the Civil Defence for active operational use.
Resilience isn’t just about delivering essential services when systems go down — but also creating meeting points that feel approachable and reassuring.
Off Grid Reality = Practical Fantasy
Architect and writer Jack Self discusses off-grid living as a practical fantasy, where the act is less about true independence from the grid and more about offsetting forms of dependency. In this framing, autonomy becomes an imaginative exercise rather than a full break from infrastructural ties.
Clip from an interview in Freehold, ‘On Refuge’, available in print.
VERMILION SANDS. An unrealised project for a @realrvw standalone LLM. Named after a JG Ballard story about automated poetry machines that achieve technical perfection while destroying the idea of poetry in the world.
Design was inspired by reflecting on the history of supercomputers. Most resemble 2001 monoliths: machine-milled titanium, anodised black steel, etc. In this era of rising precarity and violence it felt more appropriate to explore agile, robust military-grade server cases (crossed with a royal carrying chair, in reference to our reverence for tech).
