William H. "Holly" Whyte, the former Fortune magazine editor best known in urban circles for his classic book The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, famously did a report on Bryant Park in the 1970s that was ultimately used as a basis for transforming what was then known as "Needle Park." Andrew Manshel used to work for Bryant Park Corporation, the entity that actually did transform and still runs the park. (If you get a chance to see Bryant Park Corp. CEO Dan Biederman give a talk, be sure to take it). He now runs an excellent web site on … [Read more...]
Archives for October 2016
The Places Where We Work
Gary Hustwit is a New York based filmmaker known for his various documentaries on design, including Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanized, and a forthcoming documentary on legendary Braun designer Dieter Rams (a project I backed on Kickstarter). I really liked Helvetica, which told the story of typography through the lens of that ubiquitous font. Objectified I have not seen, but I did see Urbanized and gave it a pretty tough review. Hustwit's current project is a film called Workplace about the design of the office. This is a bit of an … [Read more...]