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Posts from the ‘Architecture’ Category

Aug 1

The History And Artistic De-Evolution of Patent Drawings

Fascinating look at the evolution of patent drawings.

“There’s such a focus on cost-cutting in so many industries now — pride of your work goes out the window for the benefit of reducing costs. There’s a lot of emphasis on, ‘Let’s save money on the drawings,’” Kevin Prince, author of The Art of the Patent and a registered patent agent, told Wired. “It’s probably just a cultural change. Back then, getting a patent was really like, ‘Wow.’ You wanted it to represent you and represent you very well. You had to be an artist to do the patent drawings back then, undoubtedly.”

The History And Artistic De-Evolution of Patent Drawings | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

The History And Artistic De-Evolution of Patent Drawings | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.

Apr 22

Parking & Horrid Urban Planning

There are few things I hate in life more than parking. It brings out our primal instinct. Some people fight for a parking space more fiercely than lions for a piece of red meat. But besides that, parking is a huge waste of space and a clear example of bad urban planning in most cases.

Here is an example of how bad it’s become in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Along the way, cities developed zoning formulas to determine the number of parking spaces needed—typically, between six and 10 spaces per 1,000 square feet of floor space. Mr. Ben-Joseph argues—as did Donald Shoup in “The High Cost of Free Parking” (2005)—that these ratios created an enormous oversupply of parking, designed to accommodate only two or three days of maximum use per year, like Black Friday. This seemingly minor miscalculation has had a dramatic effect on urban environments. In some U.S. cities, such as Little Rock, Ark., surface lots cover nearly a third of the land area. Mr. Ben-Joseph estimates that there are 500 million surface-lot parking spaces in the U.S., covering more than 3,590 square miles, a landmass larger than Puerto Rico.

The issue of parking has become a bit of a meme lately and I welcome it. Hopefully it awakens cities to reconsider how they develop their urban centers.

via Book Review: Rethinking a Lot – WSJ.com.

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