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Moving, important work

If you were a movie star in the market for a mansion in 1930s Los Angeles, there was a good chance you might call on Wallace Neff.

Neff wasn't just an architect--he was a starchitect. One of his most famous projects was the renovation of  Pickfair, the estate owned by the iconic silent film actress Mary Pickford, and her husband Douglas Fairbanks. When the couple moved into Pickfar, the house sat on a nameless street in an empty neighborhood called Beverly Hills. If you were lucky enough to be invited to dinner at Pickfair you might find yourself seated next to Babe Ruth, the King of Spain or Albert Einstein. Life magazine called Pickfair “only slightly less important than the white house, and much more fun.” Neff designed estates for Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland and Groucho Marx. His Libby Ranch is now owned by Reese Witherspoon.

But at the end of his life, Wallace Neff lived in a 1,000 square foot concrete bubble. And Neff believed that this simple dome was his greatest architectural achievements.

Los Angeles-based reporter David Weinberg spoke with historian Jeffrey Head, author of No Nails, No Lumber: The Bubble Houses of Wallace Neff.  David also spoke with Kathy Miles, who grew up in Igloo Village; Steve Roden, an artist and current resident of the last remaining bubble house in the US; and architect Stefanos Polyzoides, who has his practice in a classic Spanish/Mediterranean-style Wallace Neff building.

We also hear from Dakar-based producer Juliana Friend, who was nice enough to go check on the bubbles over there.

A different version of this story originally aired on KCRW as part of their Independent Producer Project.

David Weinberg is also the brains behind Random Tape, an audio experiment in, well, random tape.

99% Invisible-89- Bubble Houses

During the 1961 Berlin Crisis—one of the various moments in the cold war in which we came frighteningly close to engaging in actual war with the Soviets—President John F. Kennedy vowed to identify spaces in "existing structures both public and private that could be used for fallout shelters in case of attack."

After JFK's speech, a fallout shelter economy sprung up overnight in the U.S. There were door to door bomb-shelter salesmen, shelter displays at malls and county fairs, and pamphlets for sale on every magazine rack.
But by the time Kennedy made that speech, one small town in Southern New Mexico had already broken ground on a unique shelter that would double as an elementary school.


99% Invisible-121- Cold War Kids

This week on the show we're presenting one of our favorite radio features, "Three Records from Sundown," about singer Nick Drake.  Neither the devastating beauty of Drake's music, nor the amazing craftsmanship of the documentary itself are going to come through in this web article—so we suggest you stop reading this and just listen.
The documentary, by producer Charles Maynes, retraces the roots of Drake's legend through interviews with Drake's producer, Joe Boyd. Boyd signed Nick Drake to Island records when Drake was just 20 years old. The first album they recorded together was Five Leaves Left, released in 1968.

99% Invisible-141- Three Records From Sundown

There’s a little trophy shop called Aardvark Laser Engraving  down the street from our office in Oakland. Its small but bustling, and its windows are stuffed to the brim with awards made of all kinds of materials and in any shape you can imagine. Chalices, orbs, golfers, gavels, apples, and plaques. Plenty of plaques. Engraved to award the Club DJ of the Year, the newest member of a local Freemason branch, one mysterious trophy that just says "Rifle Expert," and plenty of heartfelt engravings to spouses, family members, and retiring co-workers.

99% Invisible-142- And The Winner Is

Hanging in the garage of Fire Station #6 in Livermore, California, there’s a small, pear-shaped light bulb. It is glowing right now.
This lightbulb has been glowing, with just a couple of momentary interruptions, for 113 years. You can see it glow in real time.
The bulb is a genuine heirloom from the dawn of electric illumination, built by one of its pioneers: Adolphe Chaillet.

99% Invisible-144- There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

If you're sending out party invitations, what's the sure-fire way to get ahold of everyone? Mail? Email? Facebook? Texting? Do we even know each other's phone numbers anymore? Why can't there just be one system that everyone uses?! http://waywordradio.org

1413-Lex-Bag-Modern-Communication-Problems

If you are looking at a computer screen, your right hand is probably resting on a mouse.  To the left of that mouse (or above, if you're on a laptop) is your keyboard. As you work on the computer, your right hand moves back and forth from keyboard to mouse. You can't do everything you need to do on a computer without constantly moving between input devices.

There is another way.

99% Invisible-149- Of Mice And Men

United States paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really look at its graphic design with fresh eyes requires some deliberate and focused attention. Pull a greenback out from your wallet (or look at a picture online) and really take it in. All the fonts, the busy filigree, the micro patterns...

It’s just dreadful.

99% Invisible-54- The Colour Of Money (R)

A month is hardly a unit of measurement. It can start on any day of the week and last anywhere from 28 to 31 days. Sometimes a month is four weeks long, sometimes five, sometimes six. You have to buy a new calendar with new dates every single year. It's a strange design.

99% Invisible-159- The Calendar

Steeped in the cutting edge of research around the social lives of networked teens, danah boyd demystifies technology while being wise about the changes it’s making to life and relationship. She has intriguing advice on the technologically-fueled generation gaps of our age — that our children’s immersion in social media may offer a kind of respite from their over-structured, overscheduled analog lives. And that cyber-bullying is an online reflection of the offline world, and blaming technology is missing the point.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/danah-boyd-online-reflections-of-our-offline-lives/7449

[Unedited] danah boyd with Krista Tippett

The pursuit of lock picking is as old as the lock, which is itself as old as civilization.

But in the entire history of the world, there was only one brief moment, lasting about 70 years, where you could put something under lock and key—a chest, a safe, your home—and have complete, unwavering certainty that no intruder could get to it.

This is a feeling that security experts call “perfect security.”

Since we lost perfect security in the 1850s, it has has remained elusive. Despite tremendous leaps forward in security technology, we have never been able to get perfect security back.

99% Invisible-160- Perfect Security

During World War II, a massive recruitment effort targeted students from the top art schools across the country. These young designers, artists, and makers were being asked to help execute a wild idea that came out of one the nation's most conservative organizations: the United States Army.



The crazy idea was this: The United States Army would design a “deception unit”: a unit that would appear to the enemy as a large armored division with tanks, trucks, artillery, and thousands of soldiers. But this unit would actually be equipped only with fake tanks, fake trucks, fake artillery and manned by just a handful of soldiers.

99% Invisible-161- Show Of Force

What sorts of breakthroughs are possible by modifying an organism’s genome – something researchers are now able to do ever more cheaply and efficiently? Researchers around the world are already able to program microbes to treat wastewater, generate electricity, manufacture jet fuel, create hemoglobin, and fabricate new drugs. What sounds like science fiction to most of us might be a reality in our lifetimes: the ability to build diagnostic tools that live within our bodies, or find ways to eradicate malaria from mosquito lines, or possibly even to make genetic improvements in humans that are passed down to future generations. Wyss Institute Founding Core Faculty Members Pam Silver and George Church discuss the high-impact benefits of their synthetic biology work, as well as how they manage the potential of unintended consequences.

Transcript: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/wyss-prod/app/uploads/2015/05/26123354/Ep001_Disruptive_SyntheticBiology.pdf

Disruptive: Synthetic Biology | Wyss Institute

What if a harmless little game you used to play in your living room, ended up giving you real magical powers, magical powers led to an irreversible and terrible chain of events?

Find more of Katie Lippa’s work on her website www.lippalogic.com

Producer: Nancy Lopez
Sound Design: Renzo Gorrio and Davey Kim

Check out the life and work of Samantha Smith http://www.samanthasmith.info/

With Great Power / Snap Judgment, "Godsend"

Emily's Keeper is a eulogy for the missing 13-year-old girl whose case has been rumbling on for three years.  The church and school suggest now is the time to bring the matter to a close.  The whole country searched for Emily and everyone has given up - except her brother.  Now at the funeral Emily's brother delivers a forensic examination of the congregation convinced that the perpetrator is among them.  Listen to find out what became of the missing schoolgirl referred to simply as "Emily"...

Emily's Keeper is an audio drama by Rajendra Shepherd and is performed by Kijana Lewis.  Audio production by Arion Stafford.


Emily's Keeper

People who make horror movies know: if you want to scare someone, use scary music.

Some of the most creative use of music and sound to evoke fear and anxiety is on the TV show Hannibal.

Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder spoke with evolutionary biologist Dan Blumstein, Hannibal executive producer David Slade, and composer Brian Reitzell. 

Bonus: To celebrate the addition of Song Exploder to Radiotopia, we're playing Roman's favorite episode of the program, featuring John Roderick of The Long Winters "exploding" his masterpiece "The Commander Thinks Aloud."

99% Invisible-168- All In Your Head

Lawyers have an ethics code. Journalists have an ethics code. Architects do, too. According to Ethical Standard 1.4 of the American Institute of Architects (AIA): 

"Members should uphold human rights in all their professional endeavors."
 
A group called Architects, Designers, and Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) has taken the stance that there are some buildings that just should not have been built. Buildings that, by design, violate standards of human rights.

Specifically, this refers to prisons with execution chambers, or prisons that are designed keep people in long-term isolation (or as prison officials call it, "segregation"). The latter kind of prison is called a "supermax," or "security housing unit" (SHU). There is no legal definition for solitary confinement, so it's up for debate as to whether the SHU constitutes solitary confinement.  

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding one SHU at a Northern California prison called Pelican Bay.

Life inside of the SHU at Pelican Bay means 22 to 23 hours a day inside of 7.5 by 12 foot room. It's not a space that's designed to keep you comfortable. But it's not just these architectural features, that concern humanitarian activists and psychiatrists. It's the amount of time many prisoners spend in that cells, alone, without any meaningful activity. Some psychiatrists, such as Terry Kupers, say there is a whole litany of effects that a SHU can have on a person: massive anxiety, paranoia, depression, concentration and memory problems, and loss of ability to control one's anger (which can get a prisoner in trouble and lengthen the SHU sentence). In California, SHU inmates are 33 times more likely to commit suicide than other prisoners incarcerated elsewhere in the state. There are even reports of eye damage  due to the restriction on distance viewing.  Terry Kupers says that a SHU "destroys people as human beings."

Compared with some other prisons in the California system, the Pelican Bay SHU has some redeeming architectural features. Inmates can get natural light from skylights outside of their cells, which drifts in through doors made of a perforated metal. These porous doors also allow for inmates to communicate with each other, even though there are no lines of sight to any prisoner from within the cell. 

But on the other hand, cells don't have windows. Inmates never get to see the horizon. The only times prisoners get to leave the cell is to visit the shower, or the exercise yard--which is an empty, windowless room not that much bigger than a cell, with twenty-foot high concrete walls. 

Again, there is no universally accepted definition of solitary confinement. But some groups, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have gone beyond calling the SHU solitary confinement--they call it torture. In 2011, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture said anything over 15 days in solitary confinement is a human rights abuse--which other sources have interpreted as torture.
So if it is the ethical code of architects to promote human rights...what is their responsibility to the people who are incarcerated in their buildings? 

Enter Raphael Sperry, a San Francisco-based architect and president of ADPSR. He believes it's up to architects to lead the charge against these buildings. Sperry and the ADPSR are trying to get the American Institute of Architects to adopt an amendment to their ethics code:

"Members shall not design spaces intended for execution or for torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, including prolonged solitary confinement."

This episode is a special collaboration between 99% Invisible and the podcast Life of the Law. Find out about their show at lifeofthelaw.com

99% Invisible-80- An Architect's Code

A tiny radio show about design, architecture &amp; the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world.

http://99percentinvisible.org/

New episodes every Wednesday.

On the radio on 91.7 KALW in San Francisco. Fridays at 7:35am and 4:30pm, Saturdays at 8:35am.  And public radio stations across the country.

Created by Roman Mars.
