Peter Dörfell lives in Dresden Germany where he works in elder care, visiting clients at their homes, and to do that, he usually takes the bus. But one morning last September, he noticed something unusual as he boarded. “When I got on the bus, I see that the bus driver had put up … | Continue reading
All kinds of songs get stuck in your head. Famous pop tunes from when you were a kid, album cuts you’ve listened to over and over again. And then there’s a category of memorable songs—the ones that we all just kind of know. Songs that somehow, without anyone’s permission, sneak t … | Continue reading
Nearly two millennia before slotted quarters begat cigarettes or snacks, the world’s first vending machine poured out portions of holy water thanks to mathematician and engineer Heron of Alexandria. Heron (AKA Hero) was an avid experimental designer who dabbled in all kinds of th … | Continue reading
All kinds of songs get stuck in your head. Famous pop tunes from when you were a kid, album cuts you’ve listened to over and over again. And then there’s a category of memorable songs—the ones that we all just kind of know. Songs that somehow, without anyone’s permission, sneak t … | Continue reading
Raccoon Resistance Pt. Deux by Vivian Le Byōdō-in is one of the most celebrated Buddhist temples in Japan. This idyllic structure was built in the 11th century to emulate Buddha’s palace in paradise and is even featured on the back of the ten yen coin. But Byōdō-in, along with 80 … | Continue reading
If you heard that there was a piece of technology that could do away with traffic jams, make cities more equitable, and help us solve climate change, you might think about driverless cars, or hyperloops or any of the other new transportation technologies that get lots of hype the … | Continue reading
If you heard that there was a piece of technology that could do away with traffic jams, make cities more equitable, and help us solve climate change, you might think about driverless cars, or hyperloops or any of the other new transportation technologies that get lots of hype the … | Continue reading
Deep within the National Museum of American History’s vaults is a battered Atari case containing what’s known as “the worst video game of all time.” The game is E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and it was so bad that not even the might of Steven Spielberg could save it. It was so loat … | Continue reading
Deep within the National Museum of American History’s vaults is a battered Atari case containing what’s known as “the worst video game of all time.” The game is E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and it was so bad that not even the might of Steven Spielberg could save it. It was so loat … | Continue reading
Vantablack is a pigment that reaches a level of darkness that’s so intense, it’s kind of upsetting. It’s so black it’s like looking at a hole cut out of the universe. “Vantablack is striking when you look at it… because it [doesn’t look] like something is colored black. It looks … | Continue reading
Vantablack is a pigment that reaches a level of darkness that’s so intense, it’s kind of upsetting. It’s so black it’s like looking at a hole cut out of the universe. “Vantablack is striking when you look at it… because it [doesn’t look] like something is colored black. It looks … | Continue reading
The unveiling of new US Space Force uniforms has led some spectators to observe that these green, tan and brown outfits would serve well on battlefields like the forest moon of Endor, a fictional setting from Star Wars (in which white-clad stormtroopers really stood out). Defende … | Continue reading
The unveiling of new US Space Force uniforms has led some spectators to observe that these green, tan and brown outfits would serve well on battlefields like the forest moon of Endor, a fictional setting from Star Wars (in which white-clad stormtroopers really stood out). Defende … | Continue reading
In the Netherlands, a combination of geographical size, flat landscapes and frequent flights conspire to makes airplane noise a particularly vexing problem. It turns out that extant landscapes in the region, however, also contained the seeds of at least a partial solution. In the … | Continue reading
Journalist Sam Bloch used to live in Los Angeles. And while lots of people move to LA for the sun and the hot temperatures, Bloch noticed a real dark side to this idyllic weather: in many neighborhoods of the city, there’s almost no shade. He was surprised to find people awkwardl … | Continue reading
PO Box 1663 by Delaney Hall In the early 1940s, the town now known as Los Alamos, NM was selected as the site for a top-secret atomic weapons lab. The area was remote and there was an old boys’ school there that could be repurposed into living quarters for the physicists, explos … | Continue reading
Imagine a plastic cup and one particular red-wrapped variant will likely come to mind, designed in the 1970s by Robert Leo Hulseman, son of the Solo Cup Company’s founder. In the realm of paper cups, there is parallel icon — the dynamic “Jazz” pattern is also a classic, but its h … | Continue reading
It’s that time of year again when we get to bring you bite-sized portions of your favorite design stories! Closing out 2019 we have a story about Lincoln Logs, a case of mistaken identity that made its way into the built environment, a trip to the Hollywood sign, and a cartoon th … | Continue reading
In the Netherlands, a combination of geographical size, flat landscapes and frequent flights conspire to makes airplane noise a particularly vexing problem. It turns out that extant landscapes in the region, however, also contained the seeds of at least a partial solution. In the … | Continue reading
Throughout Joseph Weizenbaum’s life, he liked to tell this story about a computer program he’d created back in the 1960s as a professor at MIT. It was a simple chatbot named ELIZA that could interact with users in a typed conversation. As he enlisted people to try it out, Weizenb … | Continue reading
Pine Island seems like strange name for a New York hamlet entirely surrounded by dry land. Historically, though, it was a seasonal islet — a high point in region defined by the regular spring flooding of the Wallkill River. The Wallkill flows from New Jersey into New York, spanni … | Continue reading
Cat ladders, shelves and other feline-oriented designs are commonplace features inside domestic spaces, but in places like Bern, Switzerland, they reach out into the public sphere as as well, merging with architecture to create community-driven cat infrastructure. In her book Swi … | Continue reading
Show your support for 99% Invisible and the entire Radiotopia collective so that we can continue to bring you the stories you love every week. Visit radiotopia.fm for more details on how to donate and to see the fabulous perks being offered this year such as the Radiotopia Foreve … | Continue reading
There’s an old apartment building in South Minneapolis that looks totally out of place. It’s in a residential neighborhood with small bungalows and some auto body shops. And in the early 1900s, it used to be part of an amusement park called Wonderland. The park’s biggest attracti … | Continue reading
There’s an old apartment building in South Minneapolis, that looks totally out of place. It’s in a residential neighborhood with small bungalows and some auto body shops. And in the early 1900s, it used to be part of an amusement park called Wonderland. The park’s biggest attract … | Continue reading
Carolyn Fisher Bastian passed away in 2011, but before she did she told her daughter-in-law, Jeanne, a story that she never forgot. Carolyn grew up in Hannibal, Missouri and remembered a family friend named Lester Gaba. Gaba had grown up in Hannibal in the early 1900s and then ma … | Continue reading
We tell our children unsettling fairy tales to teach them valuable life lessons, but these Cautionary Tales are for the education of the grown-ups — and they are all true. Tim Harford (Financial Times, BBC, author of “Messy” and “The Undercover Economist”) brings you stories of a … | Continue reading
We tell our children unsettling fairy tales to teach them valuable life lessons, but these Cautionary Tales are for the education of the grown-ups — and they are all true. Tim Harford (Financial Times, BBC, author of “Messy” and “The Undercover Economist”) brings you stories of a … | Continue reading
There are symbols all around us that we take for granted, like the lightning strike icon, which indicates that something is high voltage. Or a little campfire to indicate that something is flammable. Those icons are pretty obvious, but there are others that aren’t so straightforw … | Continue reading
There are symbols all around us that we take for granted, like the lightning strike icon, which indicates that something is high voltage. Or a little campfire to indicate that something is flammable. Those icons are pretty obvious, but there are others that aren’t so straightforw … | Continue reading
Strange structures start to appear all around as one drives toward the Korean Demilitarized Zone from either side of the border. There are overhead signs and what appear to be bridges connecting nothing at either end, roadside concrete blocks stacked like Brutalist totem poles, b … | Continue reading
“From the commonplace to the sublime,” writes architect Alastair Townsend, “the spline delineates contemporary aesthetics (curved and straight) because it is the lingua franca of the design, engineering, and manufacturing industries.” Splines are incredibly useful and important … | Continue reading
This summer, the governors of New Mexico and Colorado got into a fight on Twitter. Words were had. Umbrage was taken. But the fight wasn’t about tax incentives, or highway funding, or water rights. Instead, it all boiled down to this: Colorado’s governor had the gall to insult Ne … | Continue reading
Jagged concrete protrusions span for miles along the Swiss Alps. They have been cheerily dubbed “Toblerone Lines” after the famous Swiss chocolate maker, but they have other names, too. More ominous monikers like “dragon teeth” may better fit their original function: to repel inv … | Continue reading
When Eric Carlson retired, he dove headfirst into an old hobby… philately. Philately is the study of postage stamps, and it’s a tragically underappreciated field of study. A stamp can give you a perfect snapshot of the past on a single square inch of paper. Carlson finds his stam … | Continue reading
Jagged concrete protrusions span for miles along the Swiss Alps. They have been cheerily dubbed “Toblerone Lines” after the famous Swiss chocolate maker, but they have other names, too. More ominous monikers like “dragon teeth” may better fit their original function: to repel inv … | Continue reading
When Eric Carlson retired, he dove headfirst into an old hobby… philately. Philately is the study of postage stamps, and it’s a tragically underappreciated field of study. A stamp can give you a perfect snapshot of the past on a single square inch of paper. Carlson finds his stam … | Continue reading
“From the commonplace to the sublime,” writes architect Alastair Townsend, “the spline delineates contemporary aesthetics (curved and straight) because it is the lingua franca of the design, engineering, and manufacturing industries.” Splines are incredibly useful and important … | Continue reading
To help celebrate its 60th anniversary, the Guggenheim Museum teamed up with 99% Invisible to offer visitors a guided audio experience of the museum. Even if you’ve never been to the Guggenheim Museum, you probably recognize it. From the outside, the building is a light gray spir … | Continue reading
When a retired Chinese inventor unveiled his design of an earthquake-proof bed a few years back, reactions were understandably mixed. The various models look like survival bunkers crossed with torture chambers. In animations, beds that drop into metal boxes and metal flaps flip d … | Continue reading
There’s a common complaint about soccer that you often hear in the United States—that it’s not exciting enough. “They don’t score enough points!” lament these haters. But whatever your feelings about the relative excitement of the beautiful game, soccer was undoubtedly more bori … | Continue reading
As part of a restorative justice workshop, a group of San Francisco prisoners were asked what they would change about the designs of places in which they were incarcerated. The project goals were twofold: engaging inmates educationally while also providing potentially actionable … | Continue reading
Anyone who has ever seen stacks of cards cascade down their screen knows the stilly thrill of beating old-school computer card games. But unlike Typing Tutor and other explicitly educational programs, games including Solitaire, FreeCell, Minesweeper all hid a more practical purpo … | Continue reading
Maybe you have a story like this. How once upon a time, on the outskirts of the town where you grew up, or where you went to school, on the edge of the woods, there was a scary old asylum. But the one detail that almost never varies, the thing that seems to make an | Continue reading
The pursuit of lock picking is as old as the lock, which is itself as old as civilization. But in the entire history of the world, there was only one brief moment, lasting about 70 years, where you could put something under lock and key — a chest, a safe, your home — and have | Continue reading
Glass has gone from a symbol of vertical growth on steel skyscrapers to a symbol of urban wealth on luxury condo buildings. Floor-to ceiling glazing is a feature frequently boasted on idealized renderings used to sell new units in cities like Vancouver. Using that much glass, tho … | Continue reading
“Informal urbanism” is a broad term. It applies to everything created outside the legal city planning and development processes. It can be a whole community, like a favela in Brazil. Or it can be a tiny thing, like a homemade road sign that helps drivers avoid a pothole. But ther … | 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