Infrastructure

Observed|Essays

Parking Meter History

The history of the parking meter — originally designed to have a positive affect on traffic flow and shopping.

Philip Nobel|Reviews

Oops: Understanding Failure

A review of To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure, by Henry Petroski.

Observed|New Ideas

A Campaign to Save The Post Office

Tucker Nichols is campaigning to save the Post Office.

Observed|Miscellaneous

Forgotten Tube Stations

A graphic tribute to the forgotten stations of the London Underground.

Observed|Miscellaneous

Celebrate World Toilet Day

2.6 billion people don't have access to a toilet. For them poop can be poison.

Alexandra Lange|Essays

Knolling Your Polling Place

Knolling your polling place: for the next election, a little spatial organization would go a long way.

Rob Walker|Essays

The Infrastructure of the Cloud

On the material structures we depend on to deliver us the immaterial digital world.

John Thackara|Essays

Design In The Light of Dark Energy

A shortened version of a talk on why the world has to reduce energy consumption, the five per cent energy solution and some of the people around the world who are leading the way.

Alexandra Lange|Essays

Lessons from the High Line

How can the High Line become a new paradigm, and not a dead end?

Alexandra Lange|Essays

An Atlas of Possibility

The Institute for Urban Design's By the City/For the City project provokes crowd-sourced possibilities for New York's future.

Alexandra Lange|Essays

Jane Jacobs Is Still Watching

Despite my dislike of Jane Jacobs's beef with architects and planners, so many points seem strangely prescient.

Roger Martin|Report

Design Thinking Comes to the U.S. Army

Design is almost overnight the centerpiece of military doctrine and the U.S. Army has gotten design thinking quite right. The struggle to get design thinking ensconced in Army doctrine, though, is no easy feat.