99% Invisible
Episodes
Two Storeys
22 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
While we’re gearing up for season 3, we present two pieces from two shows we love: First up, Language Bites from RTE Choice in Ireland. Language Bit...
Names vs The Nothing
06 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
New Public Sites is an investigation into some of the invisible sites and overlooked features of our everyday public spaces. These are the liminal spa...
Some Other Sign that People Do Not Totally Regret Life
25 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Sean Cole is a poet and he knows what you think of that. He is also a radio producer. One night, drunk and stumbling around the Hudson River with his ...
Purple Reign
13 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
What’s the difference between what the public sees and what an architect sees when they look at a building? The hotel on the very prominent corner o...
Kickstarter Video for Season 3 of 99% Invisible
12 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
This is the Kickstarter video for funding the new season of 99% Invisible. If you enjoy the show and want to help keep it going, now is the time to go...
What Gave You That Idea
28 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Starlee Kine’s friend Noel works in advertising. In 2003, Noel was working in at an agency in Richmond, VA. Everyone wanted to work on flashy spots ...
Frozen Music
14 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
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 mu...
The Best Beer in the World
31 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
If you’re a beer nerd, or have a friend who’s a beer nerd, you’ve heard of Belgian beers. Belgians take beer very seriously. Amongst the 200 Bel...
The Colour of Money
16 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
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 o...
The Xanadu Effect
01 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
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, de...
Galloping Gertie
18 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Even during the construction of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the deck would go up and down by several feet with the slightest breeze. Construct...
The Arsenal of Exclusion
03 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
“Cities exist to bring people together, but cities can also keep people apart” – Daniel D’Oca, Urban Planner, Interboro Partners. Cities are g...
DeafSpace
22 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Queue Theory and Design
09 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
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 Ben...
The Bathtubs or the Boiler Room
26 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
“I have this habit of walking into any door that’s unlocked…You start poking around, going into doors…you find the coolest things…” -Andre...
US Postal Service Stamps
10 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
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 wor...
Vulcanite Dentures
27 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
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 inve...
Immersive Ideal
18 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
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) a...
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
06 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
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 w...
Accidental Music of Imperfect Escalators
19 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
“There’s a secret jazz seeping from Washington’s aging Metro escalators – those anemic metal walkways that fill our transit system…they honk...
Recognizably Anonymous
09 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Anonymous is not group. It is not an organization. Rob Walker describes Anonymous as a “loosely affiliated and ever-changing band of individuals who...
The Human-Human Interface
03 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Billy Possum
23 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Biography of 100,000 Square Feet
18 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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 en...
Darth Vader Family Courthouse
28 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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, di...
Sound of Sport
13 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Steering Wheel
29 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Super Bon Bonn
16 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Cities are pretty robust organisms, they tend to survive even when put under tremendous stress and strain. Local industries rise and fall, people immi...
Elegy for WTC
01 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Speed of Light for Building Pyramids
19 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Last year, Steve Burrows CBE (Principle at the engineering consulting firm Arup) spent several weeks in Egypt studying the pyramids through the eyes o...
A Cheer for Samuel Plimsoll
04 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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 lo...
Design for Airports
28 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Feltron Annual Report
14 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Nicholas Felton is an information designer. Since 2005, he has tabulated thousands upon thousands of tiny measurements in his life and designed stunni...
The Blue Yarn
01 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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. Ka...
Cul de Sac
17 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Movie Title Sequences
10 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Bridge to the Sky
03 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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 rul...
Chicago’s Jailhouse Skyscraper
20 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
The Metropolitan Correctional Center, or MCC, is a federal jail right in the middle of downtown Chicago. It’s a triangle-shaped skyscraper, 27 stori...
Unsung Icons of Soviet Design
13 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
The Capitol Columns
06 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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 be...
You Are Listening To + Radio Net
22 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
youarelistening.to appeared online on March 6, 2011 and I was hooked instantly. The combination of the police scanner and ambient music is an intrigui...
Free Speech Monument
15 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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 25t...
BLDGBLOG: On Sound
01 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Most sound design in architecture is centered around designing for silence. Buildings are trying to block out that constant stream noise from the stre...
Nikko Concrete Commando
25 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In 2001, Delfin Vigil was walking the streets of San Francisco and ran across the name “Nikko” carved into the concrete sidewalk. After seeing Nik...
RJDJ Reactive Music
21 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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 re...
Liberation Squares plus NY Dick
11 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In a recent piece from Urban Omnibus, Vishaan Chakrabarti (Professor at the Graduate School for Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia Un...
Check Cashing Stores
04 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
A few years ago, journalist Douglas McGray learned that the largest chain of check cashing stores in Southern California, Nix Check Cashing, was being...
Concrete Furniture
25 Feb 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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 s...
A Designed Language
18 Feb 2011
Contributed by Lukas
The idea is simple and quite beautiful: if we all shared a second, politically neutral language, people of all different nations and cultures could co...
Sounds of the Artificial World
11 Feb 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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 de...
Periodic Table
04 Feb 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Game Over (Snap Judgment)
07 Jan 2011
Contributed by Lukas
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...
13- Maps
17 Dec 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 wh...
99% Guilt Free
03 Dec 2010
Contributed by Lukas
“Sustainable Design is a design philosophy that seeks to maximize the quality of the built environment, while minimizing or eliminating the negative...
99% Undesigned
25 Nov 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 wi...
99% Sound and Feel
19 Nov 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 prep...
One Way Ticket To Mars
13 Nov 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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...
99% Private
05 Nov 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Privately Owned Public Open Spaces, or POPOS, are these little gardens, terraces, plazas, and seating areas that are private property, but are mandate...
99% Free Parking
29 Oct 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
99% Alien
14 Oct 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 litt...
99% Symbolic
07 Oct 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
99% Forgotten
01 Oct 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
99% Details
24 Sep 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 cr...
99% Reality (only)
24 Sep 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 ad...
99% 180
23 Sep 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 mod...
99% Noise
23 Sep 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 l...
99% Invisible: The Trailer
01 Sep 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...