David Stairs
Who doesn’t love a podcast?
Some weird personality or obscure ideology you need to catch up on on that long commute to work in the morning? Needing to block out ambient noise in your open space office cubicle?… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Have you ever been in a super loud environment? I don’t mean the usual sort, like a kindergarten classroom or a football stadium on an autumn weekend— a scene of audio cacaphony— I mean a visually loud room…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Illustration by Chris Stairs, age 9
I often think about stubbornness. My son Chris is a Leo, and he can be one of the most stubborn people I know. This is not to criticize my son, or to implicate all Leos,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Affluence isn’t free.
Giraffes at a gallop on the Serengeti, Tanzania
In May 2019 the UN released a report about the state of the natural world. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services reported that species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Since when did coding corner the market on the definition of “smart”?
I recently attended a UCDA design conference where Helen Armstrong was one of the keynoters. Ms. Armstrong, a multiply-credentialled academic with deep ties to the AIGA,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
While most people these days don’t think much about cattle when they discuss branding, they also probably don’t focus on Apple’s iconic 1984 Superbowl ad as the catalyst for a whole new generation of brand differentiation…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
The editors of MIT Press and Design Observer have compiled a collection of essays to celebrate that weblog’s 15th anniversary. Culture Is Not Always Popular sports the same title as the presentation Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel made at the 2003 AIGA Power of Design conference in Vancouver B.C.,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
In 2014 my program hosted a campus visit by the popular and likeable Stefan Sagmeister. Since I made the arrangements for his talk, and chauffered him from and back to the airport, we had plenty of time to visit…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
On Christmas Day one year we visited our friend Kasule Kizito, who was staying at his home in Masaka. We traveled to Bukalavu taxi stage by matatu, where Kizito met us and took us to his home…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
It’s seemingly on every designer’s mind these days. No, not sex (although that might be a close second) but social design. How did a matter of collective conscience come to rival primordial drives?
Not long ago only cranks and fuzzy-headed idealists were talking about social design…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Economic growth is one of those hot-button issues politicians are always promising to support. In fact, almost the surest way to a failed career in politics is to preside over an economic downturn.
This land in NE Portland won’t be empty for long… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Way back in 2011 I first wrote about a wonderful device my friends in South Africa had come up with. Known as Eva, the Arivi paraffin stove had been an INDEX competition finalist in 2009,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Homemade hotplates
Some of the most interesting places in modern day Kampala are the tinsmith’s stalls opposite the Balikuddembe Market. Here sheet metal is daily transformed from dross into useful implements for household chores. The scope of activity is only limited by the workman’s imagination as numbers of boxes and appliances are tinkered together…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Nativity façade of Sagrada Familia
If you are planning to visit Barcelona for reasons other than seeing the FCB, Futbol Club Barcelona, chances are you will visit a site designed by Antonio Gaudi. Gaudi is the city’s favorite son,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
The Original Omusajja along Entebbe Road
Along the highway leading from Uganda’s former colonial capital Entebbe to its modern capital Kampala there is a landmark that characterizes colonialism in a nutshell. Known as “Omusajja ku luguudo lweNtebbe” or just “Omusajja” for short in Lugandan,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Say what you want about Art Nouveau, but when it came to invention its practitioners were not short-handed. For an example, I turn to Gaudi’s most famous residence design.
Casa Battlo, or “House of Bones,” so named for its bone-like exterior columns… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
When we speak of malls today Americans generally mean the air-conditioned, all-inclusive mega-mall with its food court and full-service-everything. But when I was a kid growing up in upstate New York such things didn’t exist, or, if they were being developed in cold places like Southdale Center (1956) we didn’t know about it…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Ruin porn is everywhere. Photos of Detroit’s semi-preserved Michigan Central Station abound, and photographers continue to document while critics and journalists debate the pros and cons of what Dora Apel in her recent book Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline (2015) terms the “deindustrial sublime.”… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Slingshot made from bicycle innertube
I’ve talked many times about how successful African DIY design is when it comes to recycling materials. Most African nations are not heavily industrialized, except those involved in mining, so technology and manufactured goods are often imported…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
There’s a little place in the Indian city of Agra famous as a testament of a man’s love for a woman…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Completion of Kampala’s Northern Expressway has been plagued by delays in right-of-way acquisition
Returning to Uganda for the first time in ten years has held a few surprises. The charm of its people, and the beauty of Uganda’s countryside are unchanged,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I was recently in Prague, which in June 2017 celebrated the 75th anniversary of one of the most heroic and daring commando actions of the Second World War. On June 4, 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, the Protector of Bohemia and Moravia was attacked on his way to work when his Mercedes slowed at a bend in the road…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
courtesy TheNation.com
The iconic images of Houston under 10 feet of water should have by now burned themselves into your brain. “How did we get to this point?” you ask. With one word: Design…. Continue Reading →
The third and final article in our series on the American prison system. —Ed.
Hannah Boyd
For you, DJ, the person who shared part of his life with me.
And for you, former mayor of Indianapolis Greg Ballard,… Continue Reading →
This essay continues our investigation of America’s prison system, and extends D-A-P’s collaboration with Ball State architecture students into the fifth year. —Ed.
Julia Voigt
Despite jails being one of the most recognizable typologies of the built environment,… Continue Reading →
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