Author: Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt
Title: The 99% Invisible City
Publication Info: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2020] 
Summary/Review:
99% Invisible is one of my absolute favorite podcasts series. It focuses on “the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world,” which sounds like a highly specific thing but actually leads to a wide diversity of fascinating topics. This book is a hand “field guide” to the little secrets of design you find in cities around the world. It includes many of the stories previously covered in podcast episodes as well as a lot of new material. You can read it straight through like I did, hop around the book at your leisure, or even just refer to it as a reference book.
Oddly fascinating topics you can learn about include:
- decoding the spray paint markings on pavement made by utility companies
- electrical substations disguised as ordinary houses
- seemingly useless architecture that is nevertheless maintained, known as “Thomassons”
- municipal flag design
- the Olympic history of those inflatable figures that dance outside of car washes
- the mysteries of rotaries/traffic circles
- boxes on the exterior of many buildings with emergency information for first responders
- an island named for Busta Rhymes
- synanthropes, or the animals who live among us (squirrels, fish, pigeons, racoons, etc.)
- hostile design the specifically targets “undesirable” people
- the story of a Buddha statue placed in an intersection to prevent littering that became a local shrine
All of this and more in this fascinating volume!
Recommended books:
- Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places by John R. Stilgoe
- The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past by John Lewis Gaddis
- Sightseeking by Christopher Lenney
Rating: *****
Panorama of the Mountains 