As cities evolve, architecture often fills in abandoned routes designed for cars and trains. Still, the remnants of old voids can persist in the shapes of new structures. Slicing against the grain of the city, these buildings are especially noticeable when they defy a rigid grid. … | Continue reading
Brazil’s cities already contained over half of the country’s population by the time public phones began to roll out nationwide in the early 1970s. In crowded urban areas, phones were essential but challenging to design. Initial prototypes booth to house these devices were problem … | Continue reading
It is one of the most familiar and widely used character sets in the world, but it also looks dated or retrofuturistic, like something originally designed for use in a vintage science fiction film. The numbers are indeed old and have in fact inspired lookalike fonts used in compu … | Continue reading
In Southwest Alaska, two big rivers flow across the subarctic tundra, emptying into the Bering Sea. Together, the rivers create the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, an area the size of the state of Illinois. Scattered along the rivers and coast are 56 Alaska Native tribes, in communities o … | Continue reading
Introducing the all new 99% Invisible store! The updated shop features both familiar and new items, and starting this week you can be the first to pre-order a number of new items such as a new, super soft “Beautiful Downtown Oakland California” t-shirt, a reissued logo t-shirt, a … | Continue reading
Initially known as The Great American Pyramid but often referred to by locals simply as The Pyramid, this monumental anachronism has been though a lot in its few short decades of existence. Finally built in the late 1980s, the idea of erecting pyramids in Memphis, Tennessee actua … | Continue reading
Today there are thousands of vacant homes all throughout Detroit. The Motor City has been shrinking since the 1950s, but many of these vacancies stem from a decade ago when the financial crisis devastated the city. And so, in 2014, Detroit started a city-wide demolition program, … | Continue reading
It’s hard to say where inspiration comes from. The path from the seed of an idea to its execution is often a long one. The brilliant architect Alvar Aalto expressed this sentiment well, in an extended metaphor about a fish in a stream: “Architecture and its details are in some wa … | Continue reading
Is our blaring modern soundscape harming our health? Cities are noisy places and while people are pretty good at tuning it out on a day-to-day basis our sonic environments have serious, long-term impacts on our mental and physical health. This is part one in a two-part series sup … | Continue reading
It’s a practical hack using a two-dollar swimming pool toy available at dollar stores and other outlets, but more than that: it’s an awareness-raising device for bicyclists at risk around the world. The humble foam “pool noodle” encourages safer lane passing and can create an imp … | Continue reading
Today there are thousands of vacant homes all throughout Detroit. The Motor City has been shrinking since the 1950s, but many of these vacancies stem from a decade ago when the financial crisis devastated the city. And so, in 2014, Detroit started a city-wide demolition program, … | Continue reading
Tall, thin and deep, Amsterdam’s historic canal houses are famous for their hooks and pulleys designed to help hoist furniture and valuables to upper stories (much easier than hauling stuff up narrow staircases). History shaped this problem (and its solution) — taxes were based i … | Continue reading
James T. Green went to a lot of loud family gatherings as a kid — big meals filled with gossip, complaints, and bravado. But there was one particular sound from those dinners that he’ll never forget. It came from his Uncle Scooter’s trusty flip-phone, which was always clipped to … | Continue reading
James T. Green went to a lot of loud family gatherings as a kid — big meals filled with gossip, complaints, and bravado. But there was one particular sound from those dinners that he’ll never forget. It came from his Uncle Scooter’s trusty flip-phone, which was always clipped to … | Continue reading
Architectural history is often explained in terms of movements, in turn defined by broad and sweeping aesthetic descriptions. In reality, buildings are individual creations, and understanding the larger arc of of different styles requires delving into specific stories. Below are … | Continue reading
As technologies evolved, early wood building blocks gave way to modular Lincoln Logs, interconnected Tinker Toys and plastic LEGO bricks that snap together, each representing a flexible world of creative potential. Each of these, though, was largely independent of the others, at … | Continue reading
Learn about School of Visual Arts’ courses, get the inside scoop on career opportunities, meet their faculty and discover the latest on what they have to offer. These special events begin at 6:30pm and are open to the general public, free of charge, in New York City. Advertising … | Continue reading
In 1998, political leaders in Northern Ireland signed a peace agreement. They hoped it would end the sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants who’d been fighting each other for decades. At the root of the conflict was the question of whether Northern Ireland should re … | Continue reading
Glimpsed in the bread aisles of a neighborhood supermarket, it would be all too easy to assume that all members of class Occlupanida (from: occlu: to close, and pan: bread) were functionally identical. The Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group (HORG), however, begs to differ. HORG’ … | Continue reading
Launched in 1935, Penguin Books aimed to bring serious softcovers to the masses at an affordable price, but to do that they needed to differentiate themselves through design. At the time, paperbacks were largely associated with lurid pulp fiction, and their covers showed it. Foll … | Continue reading
Hiking in the wilderness, one is apt to encounter as many attitudes toward gear as there are other hikers. Some will be outfitted with heavy, external-frame packs while others will be carrying so little one might wonder how they can even survive a single night in the woods. “In t … | Continue reading
There is more than one way to pin a map, as evidenced by 27 pages devoted to the subject in Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts. Author Willard C. Brinton dedicated an entire chapter of this 1919 book to pins, which was was “undoubtedly everything that could be said about map pi … | Continue reading
There is more than one way to pin a map, as evidenced by 27 pages devoted to the subject in Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts. Author Willard C. Brinton dedicated an entire chapter of this 1919 book to pins, which was was “undoubtedly everything that could be said about map pi … | Continue reading
During the depths of the Depression in the late 1930s, 300 craftspeople came together for two years to build an enormous scale model of the City of San Francisco. This Works Progress Administration (WPA) project was conceived as a way of putting artists to work while also creatin … | Continue reading
Reporter Andrew Leland has always loved to read. An early love of books in childhood eventually led to a job in publishing with McSweeney’s, where Andrew edited essays and interviews, laid out articles, and was trained to take as much care with the look and feel of the words as h … | Continue reading
The Iron Curtain was an 8,000-mile border separating East from West during the Cold War. Something unexpected evolved in the “no man’s land” that the massive border created. In the absence of human intervention and disruption, an accidental wildlife refuge formed. After the fall … | Continue reading
Hiking in the wilderness, one is apt to encounter as many attitudes toward gear as there are other hikers. Some will be outfitted with heavy, external-frame packs while others will be carrying so little one might wonder how they can even survive a single night in the woods. “In t … | Continue reading
Driving between Oakland and Los Angeles in February offers glimpses of a spectacular scene — neat, symmetrical rows of trees covered with pink and white flowers, stretching on for hundreds of miles. This is the annual California almond bloom. Almond trees take up a million acres … | Continue reading
Launched in 1935, Penguin Books aimed to bring serious softcovers to the masses at an affordable price, but to do that they needed to differentiate themselves through design. At the time, paperbacks were largely associated with lurid pulp fiction, and their covers showed it. Foll … | Continue reading
Oakland resident Dan Stevenson was never the type to call the cops on drug dealers or prostitutes in his neighborhood. He took a lot of technically criminal behavior in stride, but he drew the line at piles of garbage people that kept dumping across from his house. When the city … | Continue reading
Oakland resident Dan Stevenson was never the type to call the cops on drug dealers or prostitutes in his neighborhood. He took a lot of technically criminal behavior in stride, but he drew the line at piles of garbage people that kept dumping across from his house. When the city … | Continue reading
Snow plowing patterns seem an unlikely subject of a gender study conducted in a small town in Sweden. After all, the town’s approach appeared logical and neutral enough on the surface: plow major roads first, particularly those leading into and out of town, followed by smaller lo … | Continue reading
It might seem obvious or even inevitable that numbers on a telephone would be laid out from left to right and top to bottom in a gird. In fact, that familiar design configuration was the product of a great deal of thought and research done back in the 1950s at Bell Labs. In the v … | Continue reading
The design of games has evolved a lot over the last few centuries, from structured play for children to interactive games made to engage adult players through sophisticated storytelling. The following stories trace modern gaming from toy building blocks and playgrounds through ca … | Continue reading
Snow plowing patterns seem an unlikely subject of a gender study conducted in a small town in Sweden. After all, the town’s approach appeared logical and neutral enough on the surface: plow major roads first, particularly those leading into and out of town, followed by smaller lo … | Continue reading
Local wireless internet helps promote the feeling that data moves through thin air, but in reality: the vast majority of international data transfers are made possible by underwater cables. These slim fiber-optic tubes are the backbone of our global internet. Per the Vox video ab … | Continue reading
Tech analysts estimate that over six billion emojis are sent each day. Emojis, which started off as a collection of low-resolution pixelated images from Japan, have become a well-established and graphically sophisticated part of everyday global communication. But who decides what … | Continue reading
About an hour east of St. Paul, is a tiny little city called Darwin, and it isn’t the kind of place you’d expect to find a great wonder of the world. The main street is only three blocks long — there’s a bank, a water tower, and a nine-ton ball of twine entombed in a | Continue reading
A single dot of color on a curb (just above a storm drain) could be dismissed as a stray splotch of spray paint, but a series of them stands out, even amidst all the visual noise of San Francisco’s streets. These aren’t art or underground utility markings, but rather signals of a … | Continue reading
Sand is so tiny and ubiquitous that it’s easy to take for granted. But in his book The World in a Grain, author Vince Beiser traces the history of sand, exploring how it fundamentally shaped the world as we know it. “Sand is actually the most important solid substance on Earth,” … | Continue reading
Reporter Andrew Leland has always loved to read. An early love of books in childhood eventually led to a job in publishing with McSweeney’s, where Andrew edited essays and interviews, laid out articles, and was trained to take as much care with the look and feel of the words as h … | Continue reading
In 1959, after nearly a century and a half of British colonial rule, the people of Singapore took the first step toward their independence. They voted to run their own internal government. It was a joyous moment. But they inherited a difficult situation. The island had been bombe … | Continue reading
The Anthropocene is the current geological age, in which human activity has profoundly shaped the planet and its biodiversity. On The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green rates different facets of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale. This week 99% Invisible is featuring t … | Continue reading
On a March afternoon in 1996, a brand new team NBA called the Toronto Raptors were playing the Chicago Bulls. This was the Michael Jordan era. The Bulls were the best team in the league, and the Raptors … not so much. The Raptors actually beat the Bulls that day, but it was a mos … | Continue reading
A new restaurant called Eatsa opened up a few years back in downtown San Francisco It was designed to be a high-tech affair where people order on iPads and then retrieve food out of a cubby. Instead of placing an order with a waiter or someone behind a counter, customers were di … | Continue reading
In the early 1950s, teenage students in Lake County, Indiana, got up from their desks, marched down the halls and lined up at stations. There, fingers were pricked, blood was tested and the teenagers were sent on to the library, where they waited to get a special tattoo. Each one … | Continue reading
The largest city in North America, Mexico City, sits at the center of a high valley, 7,000 feet in the air, surrounded by volcanoes. Over a millennium and a half ago, a volcano called Xitle erupted. Molten lava poured into the valley and covered around 30 square miles in a bed of … | Continue reading
Sounds can have serious impacts on our wellbeing, even (or especially) in places focused on health like hospitals. This is the second episode in a two-part series supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation about how sound can be designed to reduce harm and even improve wellb … | Continue reading