David Stairs
Upon meeting Kabaka Mutesa I, King of the Baganda, in 1878, Henry Morton Stanley was favorably impressed. In Through the Dark Continent, among the many journal observations regarding his visit to the shores of Lake Victoria,… Continue Reading →
David Gunn
Twenty years after the end of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia still bears the scars of this time. Some of its effects are obvious – related to the decimated infrastructure, the depopulation of cities and displacement of peoples…. Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
One of the fastest growing industries in the United States is surveillance. Municipalities, retail emporia, banks, and condominium associations are spending millions of dollars on video cameras to record the actions of citizens. As if there were not enough to view on network TV,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
You know the popular saying, “No pain, no gain”? It’s always kind of bugged me. I mean, it just doesn’t stand up to common sense. There’s no animal in the universe that likes pain. Most go out of their way to avoid it…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I want to be upfront about this: I’m not giving any money to Haitian relief. That sounds mean-spirited, I know. But truth be told, on the heels of my Oxfam donation following the tsunami, I was already beginning to feel relief fatigue…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
“The professional tends to specialize and to merge his being uncritically in the mass. The ground rules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serve as a pervasive environment of which he is uncritical and unaware.”… Continue Reading →
If you’re not entirely comfortable following the assurances of “the world’s leading design firm” or the blandishments of “the association for design” regarding sustainability, there may be hope for you yet.
David Stairs
The author, at his homemade miniature golf range, with his Father’s Plymouth Belvedere in the background.
I was driving across northern Indiana last year when a wide-tracking station wagon blew past me at 85mph. Once upon a time this event would not have warranted notice…. Continue Reading →
An irresistible object, a homeless man and the future economy of the world
Tasos Calantzis
On a chilly late autumn afternoon the curator of one of Europe’s most prestigious art and design museums clicked through images of a new wooden vase and immediately ordered 8 pieces via e-mail for sale in the museum store…. Continue Reading →
Raymond Prucher
When I initiated this piece, I had expectations of culling out what was at the core of my own altruistic mission, to help put a face on the people who are today’s enemies of choice, namely Arabs and Persians…. Continue Reading →
Joyce Epolito
For us, it’s been all about relationship and listening. This year, a group of friends and I had the opportunity to inject design into the context in which we lived. It all started when we met several Burmese (Karen) refugee families in our neighborhood in Chicago (Rogers Park),… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
“The subordinate place of history, theory, and criticism in design education is concomitant with the difficulty most designers have in envisioning forms of practice other than those already given by the culture.” –Victor Margolin… Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
Mr. Shinkey by Lucien Stairs, age 5
Writing an e-mail to a friend recently, I happened to mention the word ‘pornography’ in my note. The word turned red as I wrote it. Then the words that followed reverted to black as I moved on with my thoughts…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Guaranty RV sales, Junction City, Oregon
One doesn’t notice it at first, not until you start frequenting environments dominated by parks and resorts. Until then it’s subtle, in the background. But driving through the Targhee National Forest it’s inescapable: the number of RV-related camps and services expands exponentially…. Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
For years, George Orwell’s novel, 1984, has embodied the dystopian vision of a society where technology has gone awry and fallen into the hands of malevolent rulers, who use it to keep to keep a docile population under their thumbs…. Continue Reading →
Wes Janz onesmallproject
Every human who has walked the surface of our planet has thought and acted in relation to the landscape. We have some understandings of these dynamics including Ansel Adams’ photography of the U.S. southwest, Frank Lloyd Wright’s design for Fallingwater,… Continue Reading →
Design-Altruism-Project has been included in the recently published Blogs: Mad About Design from Barcelona’s maomao publications, and Singapore’s Page One. Edited by Macarena San Martin and featuring over 500 pages and 243 sites from the design blogosphere,… Continue Reading →
Wes Janz
In Part 1 of this two-part post, I called for a “humane architecture” and reflected on the challenges and potentials found when designers put people at the center of our work.
Among the individuals and architectures discussed: Mary Martha and a dormitory for border crossers returned to Mexico;… Continue Reading →
Wes Janz
1. It’s two years since the Midwess Distress Tour, a 6-day drivathon with architecture students, organized by Olon Dotson and me. To challenged places, abandoned lives, upstart efforts. Detroit, Flint, Gary, Chicago,… Continue Reading →
Victor Margolin
Illustration by Lucien Stairs
As a remedy to the current economic downturn, economists tell us that we have to spend more money to keep the financial system from collapsing. This advice is on a collision course with the admonition to conserve resources for ecological reasons and save money for future needs…. Continue Reading →
Editor’s Note: With this article we celebrate the third anniversary of the Design-Altruism-Project. Always intended as an outlet for the unheralded young who are doing good work for the unknown and forgotten, it is appropriate that we enter our fourth year with the following account by a Ugandan-born designer,… Continue Reading →
David Stairs
Kasule Kizito is not your everyday Ugandan. For one thing, he’s too direct. He says what he thinks without undue regard for taboos or political correctness. In an oral culture this of itself is amazing. For example,… Continue Reading →
Raymond Prucher
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” – Desiderius Erasmus
Images taken at the Qalandia checkpoint inside the West Bank, well beyond the ‘Green Line’ that was set up by the 1949 Armistice…. Continue Reading →
David Stairs
I was trudging through my local neighborhood big-box megastore the other day en route to my weekly rendezvous with groceries when I found myself in what passes for the book section. This isn’t a Borders experience;… Continue Reading →
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