99% Invisible-06- 99% Symbolic

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99% Invisible-06- 99% Symbolic

From99% Invisible

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Length:

5 minutes

Released:

Oct 7, 2010

Format:

Podcast episode

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Before I moved to Chicago in 2005, I didn’t even know cities had their own flags. In Chicago, the city flag is everywhere. It’s incorporated into all different aspects of city life and the design elements are used on businesses, … Continue reading →

Released:

Oct 7, 2010

Format:

Podcast episode

Titles in the series (100)

Design is everywhere in our lives, perhaps most importantly in the places where we've just stopped noticing. 99% Invisible is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture. From award winning producer Roman Mars. Learn more at 99percentinvisible.org.

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99% Invisible-04- 99% Details: It’s a stick with bristles poking out of it. It doesn’t even qualify as a simple machine, but the careful thought and design that went into the creation of the modern, angled bristle, fat handled toothbrush shows just how much … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-13- Maps: I’m sorry, but if you don’t love maps, I don’t think we can be friends anymore. Maps are amazing. They are art and story. A representation of where we are and where we wish we could be. They’ve always had … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-12- 99% Guilt Free: “Sustainable Design is a design philosophy that seeks to maximize the quality of the built environment, while minimizing or eliminating the negative impact to the natural environment.” -Jason F. McLennan, The Philosophy of Sustainable Design I like McL... by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-01- 99% Noise: This episode of 99% Invisible is all about acoustic design, the city soundscape, and how to make listening in shared spaces pleasant (or at the very least, possible). It features an interview with Dennis Paoletti from Shen Milsom & Wilke. by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-03- 99% Reality (only): There’s not much that we can do about all the physical matter that’s been designed and built by someone else. It is the way it is. But with the advent of portable devices with GPS, a compass, and a network, … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-05- 99% Forgotten: At the top of Mt. Olympus in San Francisco, on what was once thought to be the geographic center of the city, is a pedestal for a statue that isn’t there. There’s no marker. You can just make out the … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-02- 99% 180: In the beginning, former AIA-SF president Henrik Bull and the Transamerica Pyramid did not get along. The building was an affront to late 1960’s modernist ideals. It was silly. It looked like a dunce cap. Its large scale had no … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-21- BLDGBLOG: On Sound: Most sound design in architecture is centered around designing for silence. Buildings are trying to block out that constant stream noise from the street and insulate you from those jarring clangs of industry. by 99% Invisible
6 min listen
99% Invisible-09- 99% Private: Privately Owned Public Open Spaces, or POPOS, are these little gardens, terraces, plazas, and seating areas that are private property, but are mandated for public use. City planners require developers to add these little “parks” to their buildings to m... by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-06- 99% Symbolic: Before I moved to Chicago in 2005, I didn’t even know cities had their own flags. In Chicago, the city flag is everywhere. It’s incorporated into all different aspects of city life and the design elements are used on businesses, … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-14- Periodic Table: Everyone knows it when they see it. The classic “castle with turrets” periodic table is a beautiful and concise icon that contains a great deal of amazing information, if you only know how to read it. And even if you … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
6 min listen
99% Invisible-13x-Game Over (Snap Judgment): 99% Invisible Extra! The tape rolls as we witness the tearful end of a perfect online world. This is a piece I did for Snap Judgment, based on a story from Robert Ashley’s brilliant A Life Well Wasted internet radio … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
12 min listen
99% Invisible-07- 99% Alien: Humans need a few basic things to survive- air, water, food, heat, shelter- but just surviving isn’t really enough. We also need familiarity, a little comfort, interaction, a small place of our own. When it comes to designing space habitat … Continue r... by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-08- 99% Free Parking: It’s weird how much anxiety comes from parking in a city. Beyond the stress of looking for parking, you must contend with the frequently unreliable meters. The signage can be indecipherable. As a point of interaction with your municipality, by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-09X-99% Doomed: 99% Invisible Extra! NASA is figuring out how to take the next great leap into space. The difficulty is, if we leap to Mars, we might not make it back. This is a story I produced last year (Summer 2009) … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
12 min listen
99% Invisible-34- The Speed of Light for Building Pyramids: Last year, Steve Burrows CBE (Principle at the engineering consulting firm Arup) spent several weeks in Egypt studying the pyramids through the eyes of a modern day structural engineer. The result, which was presented in a documentary for the Discovery... by 99% Invisible
10 min listen
99% Invisible-18- Check Cashing Stores: A few years ago, journalist Douglas McGray learned that the largest chain of check cashing stores in Southern California, Nix Check Cashing, was being bought by the nation’s largest credit union, Kinecta. The credit union thought it had something to … ... by 99% Invisible
6 min listen
99% Invisible-27- Bridge to the Sky: There are rules that dicate what you can build and how. Rules of physics and rules of men who sit on various bureaucratic boards and bodies. These rules dictated that if silk magnate John Noble Stearns wanted to build one … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-15- Sounds of the Artificial World: Without all the beeps and chimes, without sonic feedback, all of your modern conveniences would be very hard to use. If a device and its sounds are designed correctly, it creates a special “theater of the mind” that users completely … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-19- Liberation Squares plus NY Dick: In a recent piece from Urban Omnibus, Vishaan Chakrabarti (Professor at the Graduate School for Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University), wrote about how urban open spaces contribute to political change, by 99% Invisible
11 min listen
99% Invisible-11- 99% Undesigned: Almost everything in modern life is designed to waste energy. The whole system evolved on a false premise that petroleum is cheap and plentiful and will be that way forever. The awesome Lisa Margonelli, author of Oil on The Brain … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-10- 99% Sound and Feel: Chris Downey explains it like this, “Beethoven continued to write music, even some of his best music, after he lost his hearing…What’s more preposterous, composing music you can’t hear, or designing architecture you can’t see? by 99% Invisible
5 min listen
99% Invisible-32- Design for Airports: When I spoke with Allison Arieff about the design of airports, she said to me, if all airports simply played Brian Eno’s album Ambient 1: Music for Airports over the speakers, every airport would be better. I say this to … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
9 min listen
99% Invisible-16- A Designed Language: The idea is simple and quite beautiful: if we all shared a second, politically neutral language, people of all different nations and cultures could communicate freely and easily, and it would foster international understanding and peace. by 99% Invisible
6 min listen
99% Invisible-20- Nikko Concrete Commando: In 2001, Delfin Vigil was walking the streets of San Francisco and ran across the name “Nikko” carved into the concrete sidewalk. After seeing Nikko once, Delfin began to see the name everywhere. One block after another, there he was … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
7 min listen
99% Invisible-19X- RJDJ Reactive Music: This week, the radio audience heard episode #10, but for you web and podcast listeners, I have a story I did about a year and a half ago, about the reactive music app called RJDJ. I did this piece for … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
10 min listen
99% Invisible-36- Super Bon Bonn: Cities are pretty robust organisms, they tend to survive even when put under tremendous stress and strain. Local industries rise and fall, people immigrate and emigrate, but most of these changes happen over decades. by 99% Invisible
10 min listen
99% Invisible-29- Cul de Sac: When people critique cul-de-sacs, a lot of the time, they’re actually critiquing the suburbs more generally. The cul-de-sac has become sort of like the mascot of the suburbs– like if suburbia had a flag, it would have a picture of … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
12 min listen
99% Invisible-26- Chicago’s Jailhouse Skyscraper: The Metropolitan Correctional Center, or MCC, is a federal jail right in the middle of downtown Chicago. It’s a triangle-shaped skyscraper, 27 stories, with tall, super-narrow, irregularly-spaced windows up and down each wall. by 99% Invisible
8 min listen
99% Invisible-17- Concrete Furniture: The New City Hall, designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell, was the first modern, concrete, civic building in Toronto. When it opened in 1965, it stood out very prominently in the traditional Victorian fabric of the city. by 99% Invisible
7 min listen

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99% Invisible-06- 99% Symbolic

99% Invisible-06- 99% Symbolic

Description

Titles in the series (100)

More Episodes from 99% Invisible