The staircase is the most honest room in a building
Every floor plan lies a little. Stairs cannot: they show how a building really moves people from one level to the next.
Author
Lena Hartmann
Writes about rooms, objects, type and the cities that hold them. One piece a week, every Sunday.
Why Zurich trams still run on time
Four minutes between trams, all day. The timetable is a design object, and it is printed at every stop.
Orange chairs and the case for public seating
Benches that face each other, chairs you can move: small decisions that decide whether a square is used.
Learning to set type by hand
Lead, ink and patience. A week in a print shop changes how you look at every letter on a screen.
The colours of a concrete block
One building, hundreds of balconies, each one painted to tell you where you live.
What a painted wall does for a street
A wall costs little to paint and changes how a whole street feels at night.
Yellow is a safety colour first
Before it was a trend, yellow was a warning. Why the colour of caution keeps showing up in good design.
Pink concrete, blue sky
Some buildings only work under one kind of sky.