The Built World

Alexandra Lange|Essays

Lunch with the Critics: Fourth-Annual Year-End Awards

Our intrepid critics, Alexandra Lange and Mark Lamster, celebrate (and castigate) the best and worst architecture and design of 2013.

Rick Poynor|Essays

Belgian Solutions: The True State of Things?

The foul-ups or “Belgian solutions” in a new book of street photographs are simply the way things are.

John Thackara|Essays

Trust Is Not An Algorithm

By some accounts the world’s information is doubling every two years. This impressive if unprovable fact has got many people wondering: what to do with it?

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?