Houghton Mifflin The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design

Description

"[A] diverse and enlightening book . . . The 99% Invisible City is altogether fresh and imaginative when it comes to thinking about urban spaces." -- The New York Times Book Review "Here is a field guide, a boon, a bible , for the urban curious. Your city's secret anatomy laid bare--a hundred things you look at but don't see, see but don't know. Each entry is a compact, surprising story, a thought piece, an invitation to marvel. Together, they are almost transformative. To know why things are as they are adds a satisfying richness to daily existence. This book is terrific, just terrific." --Mary Roach, New York Times bestselling author of Stiff , Grunt, and Gulp " The 99% Invisible City brings into view the fascinating but often unnoticed worlds we walk and drive through every day, and to read it is to feel newly alive and aware of your place in the world. This book made me laugh, and it made me cry, and it reminded me to always read the plaque." --John Green, New York Times bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All The Way Down A beautifully designed guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the wildly popular 99% Invisible podcast Have you ever wondered what those bright, squiggly graffiti marks on the sidewalk mean? Or stopped to consider why you don't see metal fire escapes on new buildings? Or pondered the story behind those dancing inflatable figures in car dealerships? 99% Invisible is a big-ideas podcast about small-seeming things, revealing stories baked into the buildings we inhabit, the streets we drive, and the sidewalks we traverse. The show celebrates design and architecture in all of its functional glory and accidental absurdity, with intriguing tales of both designers and the people impacted by their designs. Now, in The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to Hidden World of Everyday Design , host Roman Mars and coauthor Kurt Kohlstedt zoom in on the various elements that make our cities work, exploring the origins and other fascinating stories behind everything from power grids and fire escapes to drinking fountains and street signs. With deeply researched entries and beautiful line drawings throughout, The 99% Invisible City will captivate devoted fans of the show and anyone curious about design, urban environments, and the unsung marvels of the world around them. Review: I used to only see the 1% - A great book that allowed me to rediscover the world around me in a new lens, taking in the things I usually just gloss over. I also gifted this book to someone who's an engineer by trade, and they loved it as well. All to say: a great read, for the uninitiated to urban planning and pros alike! Review: This book will hopefully enable you to see your walks around cities differently - “The 99% Invisible City” book is a spin off from the 99%invisible podcast, there is also a website and merchandise site. As time moves on, things change in a city, from the original roots of the city through to different fashions, which could be changes in road signs and markings, the way buildings are built, the squared design on Police uniforms. All of these things have a history, that impacts onto today. The book is written in an easy to read, light hearted way and it walks you through inconspicuous, conspicuous, infrastructure, architecture, geography and urbanism. The signs to look for and the history behind those features. At 351 pages it’s a pretty long book, but great fun and will hopefully enable you to see your walks around cities differently.