Beyond the 99% Invisible City - 99% Invisible

"In 2020, Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt put out a hit illustrated hardcover book about the built environment: The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design. Recently we revisited the 99PI City with a tour of Oakland's built environment, discussing select designs found in the book. But in this episode, we take a step beyond those original stories."

"During the COVID pandemic, Kurt became interested in how other global disasters had historically impacted urban design. His research yielded stories not only of white-knuckled perseverance and resiliency, as one would expect, but also tenacious creativity and playful innovation. This led to a "Horsemen of the Apocalypse"-themed episode titled War, Famine, Pestilence, and Design. That might all sound very somber, but o ne of its four constituent tales traces the rise of miniature golf through the Great Depression."

Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt released an illustrated hardcover guide to everyday design in 2020 focused on the built environment. Over the following five years they developed new stories intended for a revised-and-expanded paperback edition with fresh material. The creators selected four favorite short pieces that map to the book's chapters: an infrastructure tale about roadside signage and geometry, an urbanism piece linking disasters and inventive design including miniature golf's rise, a geography story about a permissive US–Canada border zone, and a set of episodes on vernacular architecture featuring multiple producers.

Read at 99% Invisible