Observatory

Gene & Jackie Lacy

By Amelia Lacy
Gene and Jackie Lacy, Indianapolis-based graphic designers and illustrators practicing from the 1950s through the 1980s.

Observatory

Managing Digital Durability

By Rob Walker
Learning to manage the disconcerting durability of digital objects.

Places

The Uses of Daylight

By Keith Eggener
On Places, Keith Eggener casts new light on the little-known Boley Building in Kansas City, by Louis Curtiss, which featured one of the first glass curtain walls in America.

Observatory

Our Mothers, Our Selves

By The Editors
"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world," wrote James Joyce, "a mother's love is not." Herewith, a Mother's Day celebration of designers and their mothers.

Observatory

The Mother of Us All

By Alexandra Lange
Reyner Banham on Esther McCoy: "She speaks as she finds, with sympathy and honesty, and relevantly to the matter at hand." Could there be a better definition of the role of the critic?

Places

The Last Days of Kaixian

By Zhang Xiao & Aaron Rothman
On Places, a slideshow by Chinese photographer Zhang Xiao, documenting the last town to be submerged by the reservoir of the Three Gorges Dam; with an introduction by Aaron Rothman.