Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of CzechoslovakiaMariusz Szczygiel
Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! A Paul Scheerbart ReaderEdited by Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin
The Sympathy of Things: Ruskin and the Ecology of DesignLars Spuybroek
The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the MachineLewis Mumford
The Bone Clocks: A NovelDavid Mitchell
@KarrieUrbanist
kj (at) karriejacobs.com
January 14, 2015
The view from the middle of the LA River, near the 6th Street Bridge.
Right now, I’m writing a piece for Architect Magazine on the LA River. It won’t be out for a couple of months, but I thought I’d mention it because it’s tied to pretty much everything that’s been of interest to me in the past couple of years: what it means to be a 21st century city,
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September 24, 2014
1WTC as framed by Fulton Street. (Photo by Karrie Jacobs.)
For one thing, my website looks somewhat different. It was recently overhauled and fine tuned by Greg and Patricia of Kind Company. It’s now a bit crisper and a lot more functional, although the overall look (courtesy of Randy Hunt) remains the same.
For another thing, I’m now writing with increasing regularity for Fast Company‘s Co.Design website.
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May 15, 2014
BBVA Compass Stadium (designed by Populous), H0uston (as seen from MFAH design curator Cindi Strauss’s vintage red Mercedes).
It’s been so long since I’ve posted anything on this blog that I’ve forgotten how Word Press works. (And Flickr is a complete mystery to me.) Where have I been? Mostly right here, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (Although we’re relocating to Downtown Brooklyn in the very near future. Too many hipsters!) I’ve also been on Twitter a lot.
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September 11, 2013
1 WTC from Sixth Avenue in Chelsea on a June evening. (Photo by Karrie Jacobs.)
Yesterday I was mostly thinking about the primary elections here in NYC. And not about the twelfth anniversary of 9-11. Then, last night, we emerged from a party at Pravda, thrown by Pentagram, in honor of a book of drawings (of Joe McCarthy!) by Arline Simon (Emily Oberman’s mom!), and saw the Tribute in Light framing a fat crescent moon.
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June 27, 2013
Urbanity, Texas style, 2011. (Photo by Karrie Jacobs)
More of my favorite “America” columns from the Metropolis website. (If you want to know why I’m compiling these columns now, go to The Metropolis Project, Part I).
Madison Square Station, December 2007
In which I realize that the problems with the Moynihan Station plan have much more to do with money and politics than architecture.
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June 21, 2013
A “stand-alone loft” as discussed in “I Am the Uncool Hunter.” Frederick, CO, 2003. (Photo by Karrie Jacobs)
Here are more of my favorite Metropolis “America” columns in a random order chosen by the magazine website’s search function. (See Part I, below, for an explanation of why these links are suddenly necessary. Hint: it’s not nostalgia.)
Like Urban Renewal,
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June 20, 2013
A Chilean glacier as seen from the deck of the Infinity, 2005. (Photo by Karrie Jacobs)
Recently, Metropolis Magazine, for which I’ve been writing a column called “America” for about nine years, redesigned its website. And, for reasons unknown, it was done in a way that renders useless all the links to all the stories that were on the site prior to the redesign.
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May 22, 2013
What I saw at Javits: A CNC router carving small wooden cars (top), 3D printers spewing tcatchkes (center), and a built-in countertop espresso gizmo emitting cappuccino through a faucet.
Another year, another furniture fair. It was the 25th anniversary edition of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Javits Center in New York. Every year I go and attempt to assess the state of the world by looking at sofas,
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April 11, 2013
The American Folk Art Museum, October 2007.
Above is my one not-very-successful attempt to photograph the American Folk Art Museum on 53rd St., designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. It opened to great acclaim in 2001 and was sold by its financially distressed owner in 2011 to the big museum next door. Which, of course, was the beginning of the end.
I took the picture in 2007,
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February 5, 2013
The Edible Schoolyard, Berkeley, CA 2007 (photo by Karrie Jacobs)
At last week’s memorial for Bill Moggridge, who died in September, I began thinking about the places where his life intersected with mine, moments I’d almost forgotten. Bill was an industrial designer, famous for designing the first portable computer back in 1979. He was one of the founders of the well-known Palo Alto design firm IDEO,
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