99% Invisible

Roman Mars podcasts

Design is everywhere in our lives, perhaps most importantly in the places where we’ve just stopped noticing. 99% Invisible (99 Percent Invisible) is a weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture. From award winning producer Roman Mars and KALW in San Francisco. Learn more: http://99percentinvisible.org

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99% Invisible-54- The Colour of Money
5/16/2012
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Duration: 16:44

US paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really look at its graphic design with fresh eyes requires some deliberate and focused attention. So pull out a greenback from your wallet (or look at a picture one online) and just take really take it in. All the fonts, the busy filigree, [...]
99% Invisible-53- The Xanadu Effect
5/1/2012
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Duration: 11:23

What happens when we build big? Julia Barton remembers going to the top floor of Dallas’s then-new city hall when she was teenager. The building, designed by I.M. Pei, is a huge trapezoid jutting out over a wide plaza. Julia found the view from the top pretty fantastic, especially when munching on a Caramello [...]
99% Invisible-52- Galloping Gertie
4/18/2012
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Duration: 12:29

Even during the construction of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the deck would go up and down by several feet with the slightest breeze. Construction workers on the span chewed on lemon wedges to stop their motion sickness. They nicknamed the structure Galloping Gertie. The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge design by Clark Eldridge [...]
99% Invisible-51- The Arsenal of Exclusion
4/4/2012
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Duration: 10:48

“Cities exist to bring people together, but cities can also keep people apart” - Daniel D’Oca, Urban Planner, Interboro Partners. Cities are great. They have movement, activity and diversity. But go to any city and it’s pretty clear, a place can be diverse without really being integrated. This segregation isn’t accidental. There are design [...]
99% Invisible-50- DeafSpace
3/23/2012
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Duration: 11:43

The acoustics of a building are a big concern for architects. But for designers at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, it’s the absence of sound that defines the approach to architecture. Gallaudet is a university dedicated to educating the deaf and hard of hearing, and since 2005, they’ve re-thought principles of architecture [...]
99% Invisible-49- Queue Theory and Design
3/9/2012
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Duration: 09:55

In the US, it’s called a line. In Canada, it’s often referred to as a line-up. Pretty much everywhere else, it’s known as a queue. My friend Benjamen Walker is obsessed with queues. He keeps sending me YouTube clips of queue violence. This preoccupation led him to find a man known as “Dr. Queue.” Richard Larson [...]
99% Invisible-48- The Bathtubs or the Boiler Room
2/26/2012
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Duration: 11:08

“I have this habit of walking into any door that’s unlocked…You start poking around, going into doors…you find the coolest things…” -Andrea Seabrook, NPR Congressional Correspondent In the eight years Andrea Seabrook has been reporting on Congress, she has made it a point to get to know the whole Capitol building. “The [...]
99% Invisible-47- US Postal Service Stamps
2/10/2012
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Duration: 12:27

Somebody might be able to do a great painting that’s 20 x 30 inches, but you take that down to 1 x 1.5 inches, and it’s a challenge to make it work. -Ethel Kessler, Art Director for USPS Stamp Services Stamps design takes, on average, a year to a year and a half, from [...]
99% Invisible-46- Vulcanite Dentures
1/27/2012
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Duration: 09:27

Before the 1850s, dentures were made out of very hard, very painful and very expensive material, like gold or ivory. They were a luxury item. The invention of Vulcanite hard rubber changed everything. It was moldable, it could be precisely fitted, and it was relatively cheap. Everyone began making dentures with [...]
99% Invisible-45- Immersive Ideal
1/18/2012
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Duration: 12:06

Beauty Pill is band I really like from Washington DC. They have released two EPs (The Cigarette Girl From the Future and You Are Right to be Afraid) and their last album, The Unsustainable Lifestyle, came out in 2004. In the interim, the singer/guitarist/producer for Beauty Pill, Chad Clark, got very sick and nearly died. [...]
99% Invisible-44- The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
1/6/2012
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Duration: 11:28

The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis became most famous at the moment of its demise. The thirty-three high-rise towers built in the 1950’s were supposed to solve the impending population crisis in inner city St. Louis. It was supposed to save the urban poor from the indignities of the [...]
99% Invisible-43- Accidental Music of Imperfect Escalators
12/19/2011
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Duration: 07:22

“There’s a secret jazz seeping from Washington’s aging Metro escalators - those anemic metal walkways that fill our transit system…they honk and bleat and squawk…why are you still wearing those earbuds?” -Chris Richards, “Move along with the soundtrack of Metro’s screechy, wailing escalators” The Washington Post, 01/14/11 Ever since the industrial revolution, when it [...]
99% Invisible-42- Recognizably Anonymous
12/9/2011
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Duration: 10:36

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, Internet troublemakers, and assorted combinations thereof.” But when Anonymous came up against the Church of Scientiology, a small, non-hierarchical collection [...]
99% Invisible-41- The Human-Human Interface
12/3/2011
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Duration: 5:11

Paola Antonelli is the Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art. Her most recent blockbuster show, Talk to Me, explored the communication between people and objects: from chairs that talk to subway kiosks. It’s pretty easy to get overwhelmed and frustrated by all the human-object interactions [...]
99% Invisible-40- Billy Possum
11/23/2011
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Duration: 12:05

It’s totally unfair. Hydrox cookies came out four years before the introduction of Oreos, but Hydrox could never shake the image that it was a cheap knock-off, an also-ran. As a consumer product, it’s completely out of your hands if you’re deemed a mighty Transformer, or a loathsome Gobot. Sometimes it doesn’t make [...]
99% Invisible-39X- The Biography of 100,000 Square Feet
11/18/2011
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Duration: 31:17

United Nations Plaza sits in the center of San Francisco. Most people consider it a complete failure as a public space. Its central feature, at the entrance of the plaza, is a unique fountain that was designed by Lawrence Halprin in 1975. The water shoots out at various angles, from inside [...]
99% Invisible-39- Darth Vader Family Courthouse
10/28/2011
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Duration: 7:33

It’s hard to imagine a place where more desperate and depressing drama unfolds on a daily basis than a family courthouse- custody battles, abuse, divorce- and if you were to design a place to reflect and amplify that misery, not mitigate it, it’d probably take the form of the old New [...]
99% Invisible-38- Sound of Sport
10/13/2011
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Duration: 5:29

If Dennis Baxter and Bill Whiston are doing their job right, you probably don’t notice that they’re doing their job. But they are so good at doing their job, that you probably don’t even know that their job exists at all. They are sound designers for televised sporting events. Their job is [...]
99% Invisible-37- The Steering Wheel
9/29/2011
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Duration: 7:19

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 pretend push a button, and that action would accurately [...]
99% Invisible-36- Super Bon Bonn
9/16/2011
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Duration: 9:56

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. What happens to a city when its purpose is stripped away virtually overnight? Bonn was the quiet, [...]
99% Invisible-35- Elegy for WTC
9/1/2011
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Duration: 6:22

I want to be careful not to overstate what it means for a building to die. A building’s worth is an infinitesimal fraction of the worth a person’s life. Even two buildings don’t even move the needle in comparison to real human loss. But a building is still a living thing in [...]
99% Invisible-34- The Speed of Light for Building Pyramids
8/19/2011
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Duration: 9:59

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 Channel and published in an article for DesignIntelligence, presented fascinating insights [...]
99% Invisible-33- A Cheer for Samuel Plimsoll
8/4/2011
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Duration: 6:56

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 has saved thousands of lives. The Plimsoll line shows the maximum [...]
99% Invisible-32- Design for Airports
7/28/2011
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Duration: 8:07

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 serve not only as an introduction to Allison Arieff, but also so you’ll [...]
99% Invisible-31- Feltron Annual Report
7/14/2011
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Duration: 9:55

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. The results were originally intended for his friends and family, but the “personal annual reports” [...]
99% Invisible-30- The Blue Yarn
7/1/2011
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Duration: 10:20

In 1998 Dr. Gary Kaplan, the CEO of Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle received some bad news about his hospital. It was losing money. So Dr. Kaplan started studying how other hospitals were being run to see if there was a better way to manage his hospital. He scoured the [...]
99% Invisible-29- Cul de Sac
6/17/2011
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Duration: 11:47

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 a cul-de-sac on it. Cul-de-sacs by definition aren’t well connected to [...]
99% Invisible-28- Movie Title Sequences
6/10/2011
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Duration: 9:10

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 in my heart. On this episode, I talk with Ian Albinson [...]
99% Invisible-27- Bridge to the Sky
6/3/2011
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Duration: 4:44

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 of those ten story towers that were all the rage in [...]
99% Invisible-26- Chicago’s Jailhouse Skyscraper
5/20/2011
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Duration: 7:22

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. The outside walls look like old computer punchcards. As odd as it looks, each of these striking details [...]
99% Invisible-25- Unsung Icons of Soviet Design
5/13/2011
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Duration: 8:00

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, primitive arcade games, and arsonistic space heaters. The essence, [...]
99% Invisible-24- The Capitol Columns
5/6/2011
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Duration: 6:30

If you were present for any of the presidential inaugurations, from Andrew Jackson to Dwight D. Eisenhower, you saw the solemn oath of office taken between twenty-two smooth, sandstone columns at the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol Building. The slabs that made up the columns were considered so important that [...]
99% Invisible-23- You Are Listening To + Radio Net
4/22/2011
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Duration: 19:46

youarelistening.to appeared online on March 6, 2011 and I was hooked instantly. The combination of the police scanner and ambient music is an intriguing, and distinctly live, experience (unlike most of the time shifted audio I tend to consume). Its other appeal is its simple and elegant execution. There are three [...]
99% Invisible-22- Free Speech Monument
4/15/2011
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Duration: 7:33

In 1989, a group called the Berkeley Art Project decided to hold a national public art competition to create a monument that would commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, which began on the University of California Berkeley Campus in 1964. The winning design, created by Mark Brest van [...]
99% Invisible-21- BLDGBLOG: On Sound
4/1/2011
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Duration: 5:22

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. Geoff Manaugh loves the intersection of sound and architecture, but he’s primarily interested in those cases where buildings [...]
99% Invisible-20- Nikko Concrete Commando
3/25/2011
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Duration: 6:52

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 again and again: Nikko. The carvings numbered in the hundreds, seemed [...]
99% Invisible-19X- RJDJ Reactive Music
3/21/2011
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Duration: 9:29

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 an ill fated tech show pilot that was never broadcast, which [...]
99% Invisible-19- Liberation Squares plus NY Dick
3/11/2011
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Duration: 10:46

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, “Public spaces like Tompkins Square, Tiananmen Square and Tahrir Square have been stages for history because they provide [...]
99% Invisible-18- Check Cashing Stores
3/4/2011
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Duration: 5:05

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 learn from the check casher about how to reach out and serve [...]
99% Invisible-17- Concrete Furniture
2/25/2011
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Duration: 6:33

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. The striking concrete design was carried throughout the building and was even incorporated [...]
99% Invisible-16- A Designed Language
2/18/2011
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Duration: 5:54

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. This is the idea behind the invention of Esperanto. It was a linguistic solution to [...]
99% Invisible-15- Sounds of the Artificial World
2/11/2011
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Duration: 4:50

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 buy into. Electronic things are made to feel mechanical. It’s the [...]
99% Invisible-14- Periodic Table
2/4/2011
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Duration: 6:00

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 don’t know anything about the table, it’s still easy to admire and [...]
99% Invisible-13x-Game Over (Snap Judgment)
1/7/2011
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Duration: 11:06

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 program. New episodes of 99% Invisible start on 02/04/11. Stay tuned.
99% Invisible-13- Maps
12/17/2010
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Duration: 4:30

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 a power over me. Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City, a new atlas of [...]
99% Invisible-12- 99% Guilt Free
12/3/2010
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Duration: 4:30

“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 McLennan’s definition of sustainable design because it’s broken into two parts (1) minimizing negative impact, and [...]
99% Invisible-11- 99% Undesigned
11/25/2010
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Duration: 4:31

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 and a fellow at the New America Foundation, talks us through the [...]
99% Invisible-10- 99% Sound and Feel
11/19/2010
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Duration: 4:52

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?” Chris Downey had been an architect for 20 years before he lost his sight. It would [...]
99% Invisible-09X-99% Doomed
11/13/2010
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Duration: 11:31

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) for a public radio tech show pilot that didn’t get picked up, and since [...]
99% Invisible-09- 99% Private
11/5/2010
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Duration: 4:30

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 make downtown more pleasant (or even just tolerable). Some are out in [...]
99% Invisible-08- 99% Free Parking
10/29/2010
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Duration: 4:51

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, it’s just a nightmare. Plus, from an urban planning perspective, the spaces [...]
99% Invisible-07- 99% Alien
10/14/2010
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Duration: 4:30

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 modules, engineers have that first set of basic needs covered, but [...]
99% Invisible-06- 99% Symbolic
10/7/2010
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Duration: 4:30

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, websites, clothing and apparel. So when I moved back to San [...]
99% Invisible-05- 99% Forgotten
10/1/2010
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Duration: 4:30

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 word “erected” on the stone surface, but there’s nothing that lets anyone know that this [...]
99% Invisible-04- 99% Details
9/24/2010
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Duration: Not Available

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 brainpower goes into something that is designed to simply work well and not be noticed [...]
99% Invisible-03- 99% Reality (only)
9/24/2010
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Duration: 4:30

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, we can now design a layer on top of the real world that can contain [...]
99% Invisible-02- 99% 180
9/23/2010
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Duration: Not Available

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 respect for the neighborhood in which it lived. But over 40 years, [...]
99% Invisible-01- 99% Noise
9/23/2010
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Duration: 4:21

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.

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