99% Invisible-34- The Speed of Light for Building Pyramids

From99% Invisible

Start listening View podcast show

99% Invisible-34- The Speed of Light for Building Pyramids

From99% Invisible

ratings:

Length:

10 minutes

Released:

Aug 19, 2011

Format:

Podcast episode

Description

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 … Continue reading →

Released:

Aug 19, 2011

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.

Skip carousel

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-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-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-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-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-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-31- Feltron Annual Report: Nicholas Felton is an information designer. Since 2005, he has tabulated thousands upon thousands of tiny measurements in his life and designed stunning graphs and maps and created concise infographics that detail that year’s activities. by 99% Invisible
10 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-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-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-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-69- The Brief and Tumultuous Life of the New UC Logo: If you’re not from California, or missed this bit of news, the University of California has a new logo. Or rather had a new logo. To be more precise they had a new “visual identity system,” which is the kind … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
23 min listen
99% Invisible-28- Movie Title Sequences: More and more I’m finding that the first 2-3 minutes of a movie are my favorite part of the film. My life is devoted to the beautiful expression of information, which is why film title sequences hold a special place … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
10 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-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-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-25- Unsung Icons of Soviet Design: There’s something that links most of the everyday objects presented in “Made in Russia: Unsung Icons of Soviet Design.” But it’s hard to tell exactly what that is just by looking at this collection of wobbly dolls, drinking glasses, by 99% Invisible
8 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-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-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-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-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-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-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-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
99% Invisible-42- Recognizably Anonymous: Anonymous is not group. It is not an organization. Rob Walker describes Anonymous as a “loosely affiliated and ever-changing band of individuals who… have been variously described as hackers, hacktivists, free-expression zealots, by 99% Invisible
11 min listen
99% Invisible-37- The Steering Wheel: If I asked you to close your eyes and mimic the action of using one of the simple human interfaces of everyday life, you could probably do it. Without having a button to push, you could close your eyes and … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
8 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-56- Frozen Music: Goethe said, “Architecture is frozen music.” I like that. Of course that was before audio recording, so now, for the most part, music is frozen music. It’s only very recently in the history of music that we’ve been able to … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
11 min listen
99% Invisible-33- A Cheer for Samuel Plimsoll: If you look at the outer hull of commercial ships, you might find a painted circle bisected with a long horizontal line. This marking is called the load line, or as I prefer, the Plimsoll line. This simple graphic design … Continue reading → by 99% Invisible
7 min listen

More Episodes from 99% Invisible

Skip carousel

582- Rocket Man: Where's my jetpack? by 99% Invisible
40 min listen
581- It's Howdy Doody Time!: How an ugly puppet created television as we know it by 99% Invisible
37 min listen
579 BONUS- Towers of Silence: Vulture Conservation: In this bonus episode, Lasha talks about extra reporting she did for Towers of Silence on the current state of vulture conservation. by 99% Invisible
32 min listen
580- Mr Yuk: Our pal Gillian Jacobs takes us through the history of poison control and the yucky face meant to warn children about the dangers lurking in their kitchen cabinets by 99% Invisible
56 min listen
579- Towers of Silence: How the loss of vultures in India has put an ancient burial tradition in crisis by 99% Invisible
71 min listen
The Power Broker #04: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Featuring the U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional district, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and covering the second section of Part 4, chapters 16-20. by 99% Invisible
160 min listen
578- Anything's Pastable: Eat Sauté Love: Dan Pashman embarks on an epic trip across Italy in search of lesser-known pasta dishes — and to learn about the evolution of pasta more broadly. by 99% Invisible
45 min listen
577- The Society of Ambiance Makers and Elegant Persons: Bright, flamboyant central African fashion by 99% Invisible
35 min listen
576- Chambre de Bonne: The history of the chambre de bonne, the tiny French apartment type that may be, finally, on the way out. by 99% Invisible
33 min listen
Roman Mars Describes Athens GA As It Is: A 99pi guide to some of our favorite design features of Athens, Georgia. by 99% Invisible
37 min listen
575- Autism Plesantville: How to accommodate autism in the built world by 99% Invisible
33 min listen
574- The Monster Under the Sink: The garbage disposer and the dream of a garbage-free city by 99% Invisible
27 min listen
The Power Broker #03: David Sims: Featuring Blank Check co-host and The Atlantic movie critic David Sims covering the first section of Part 4, chapters 11-15 by 99% Invisible
127 min listen
573- Toyetic: The constant and sometimes fraught back and forth between cartoons and toys, as exemplified by Transformers and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by 99% Invisible
39 min listen
572- WARNING: This Podcast Contains Chemicals Known to the State of California to Cause Cancer or Other Reproductive Harm: Understanding the clunky Prop 65 warnings on products by 99% Invisible
43 min listen
Roman Mars Describes Santa Fe As It Is: A 99pi guide to some of our favorite design features of Santa Fe. by 99% Invisible
33 min listen
438- The Real Book [rebroadcast]: Since the mid-1970s, almost every jazz musician has owned a copy of the same book and originally it was a totally unlicensed publication by 99% Invisible
42 min listen
Significant Others: A Sneak Peek at the Woman Behind Benedict Arnold’s Betrayal: It’s been said that history is written by the person at the typewriter. But who did the person who made history depend on? by 99% Invisible
7 min listen
571- You Are What You Watch: How much film and television shapes us as individuals and as a society, far beyond what we give it credit for by 99% Invisible
31 min listen
The Power Broker #2: Jamelle Bouie: Featuring New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie covering Part 3. by 99% Invisible
105 min listen
570- The White Castle System of Eating Houses: How White Castle invented fast food by 99% Invisible
43 min listen
569- Between the Blocks: The interblock parks of Sofia, Bulgaria that are caught between old failed communism and new hyper capitalism by 99% Invisible
34 min listen
568- Don't Forget to Remember: There are memorials to lost fishermen, lost astronauts, even lost members of Lynyrd Skynyrd. What should a COVID pandemic memorial look like? by 99% Invisible
40 min listen
Roman Mars Describes Chicago As It Is: A 99pi guide to some of our favorite design features of Chicago by 99% Invisible
37 min listen
567- The Double Kick: The design evolution of the seemingly simple, but not all that simple, skateboard by 99% Invisible
52 min listen
Power Broker #01: Robert Caro: Featuring author Robert Caro covering The Introduction, Part 1, and Part 2. by 99% Invisible
93 min listen
566- Imitation Nation: The fake villages and role players used to train US soldiers by 99% Invisible
35 min listen
565- Mini-Stories: Volume 18: Upside-down construction, the linguistics of filler, and a fire that has been burning...and will burn... for decades. by 99% Invisible
35 min listen
470- Another Visit from the Three Santas of Slovenia: Mapping the long history of Slovenia onto the three "Santas' that visit each year by 99% Invisible
39 min listen
564- Mini-Stories: Volume 17: We have a year-end mix of short stories about a rogue architect, spooky kitchens, a hundred year old music streaming service, and the crazy way the French tried to make telling time less crazy by 99% Invisible
48 min listen

Discover this podcast and so much more

99% Invisible-34- The Speed of Light for Building Pyramids

99% Invisible-34- The Speed of Light for Building Pyramids

Description

Titles in the series (100)

More Episodes from 99% Invisible