Roman Mars is the engine and mellow voice of “99% Invisible”, a podcast appreciated by urban nerds, design enthusiasts and all those who revel in the strangely desirable stories of what surrounds us.
On October 6, Roman and co-author Kurt Kohlstedt will publish the printed and audio edition of their new book, “The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design”. In this document, they answer questions you didn’t even know you had, revealing mysteries lurking in plain sight of all around us: what do those ripple spray-painted marks mean on the sidewalks?Is there a call for the half-sphere lumps that keep us in our lanes on roads?Why prevent symptoms from looking the same?
The e-book does not communicate about the coronavirus pandemic, at least in part because Mars and Kohlstedt finished writing it before the epidemics began, but here they communicate how, big and small, the pandemic is already turning our world.
Mars told us about his home in Berkeley, California. Kohlstedt, with the sound quality of the Chronicle’s audio, was under a duvet in his Oakland apartment.
With the coronavirus pandemic, it turns out that we’re at a time when story settings and all sorts of things change What settings have caught your eye?Who do you think this virus is going to be?
Roman Mars: All those ad hoc responses gave the impression almost instantly, faster than I imagined: plexiglass dividers and duct tape on the floor. Tape on the ground and steering markers can be an integral component of our landscape from now on. I’m intrigued by that.
I don’t like plexiglass as a delight user because I don’t listen to people, but I like the prints on the floor a little bit, there’s some of that. He tells me where to go, tells me where to be. It’s a little anxiety That’s useful.
But one of the confusing parts is public transportation. Here in the Bay Area, public transportation is down 90%. We were reaching a point where public transportation was entering a kind of Renaissance. People are disappointed with the car as a means of transportation.
I know what the recovery of public transport will be like or what will change, it makes me think. It will be a very, far superior expectation.
Kurt Kohlstedt: I’m a bit involved with popularity in many cities about converting streets into spaces for motorcycles and pedestrians. At first glance, this turns out to be an incredible reuse of space, but for other people, this will restrict accessibility: there are other people who have to drive and use the streets in their path.
One of my open questions about all this is that when we think about how to replace cities, are we doing it fairly?
For example, I love seeing other people dining on the street, the way parking spaces have become outdoor seating to eat, but I also wonder, who benefits?Is that the kind of people who can do this kind of activity or is it the general public?
I would like to focus more, for example, on turning entire car parks into parks, things that are public goods, not just things that are oriented towards a certain demographic.
We’re seeing an acceleration of the house’s work, which means we’re seeing a kind of other people sending from advertising architecture, but we’re still seeing a very strong call for residential architecture. I think this is the beginning of a long process. .
I hope we will see the conversion of many genuine real estate listings (shops, offices and grocery shopping malls) into homes, as this country is going through a housing crisis. That’s not necessarily what I’m planning. But I hope it’s a trajectory that some peoples are taking. We’re starting to see evidence of this in Oakland: buildings are being bought and set aside for the homeless.
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The way we think about it is that it’s a tragedy, but it’s also an opportunity to reflect on how we just need to respond to the immediate situation, but also make the next generation a city.
In the book, you describe many ad hoc responses that predating urban disorders that are permanent. Could you tell us about some of the improvised answers that turned out to have legs?
Marcha Romana: In Bogota, Colombia, starting in the 1970s, on Sundays began to leave some car streets blank and open them to cyclists and pedestrians, the program La Ciclovía has grown and grown and has recovered, now covering 120 kilometers. streets and roads every Sunday.
Parking day here in San Francisco. La people were taking a parking spot on a street, they were feeding the meter, then they were doing anything like laying artificial turf and installing a mini golf. Now it’s an annual occasion across the country.
People push against the rigidity of the peoples and they are converting them, they did it forever. A virus is not for other people to do. What happens in those moments of crisis is that other people are creative.
Especially in the last bankruptcy of “The 99% Invisible City”, we communicate about such urban interventions and how they are in constant discussion with the people. People are pushing against the people, the people are putting pressure on people, and somewhere in the middle, there is a creation We create the city in which we really live.
A person cannot build a street, a user cannot build a sewer. But an individual user can, like, take control of a component of a street, within the limits of what is allowed and a little out of bounds of what is allowed.
I genuinely enjoy those things. Some of them are misdeeds, of course, but others are quite glorious, like seed bombs, for example. People see those moors, those deserted, fenced places, that don’t work because no one has discovered an advertisement that explains why their existence, then someone collects a pack of seeds from the local flora, throws it to the wall and creates a small garden.
This discussion is what interests us most when “99% Invisible” addresses design in a city. It’s those human interactions.
I wonder what my city will look like after COVID. Houston has become increasingly dense and urban for more than 15 years, yet it remains the most widespread and passionate car city in the United States. (People think it’s Los Angeles, but we can eat Los Angeles for lunch. )
Houston is the opposite of narrow New York City, where the coronavirus first took over in the United States, and where other people were necessarily trapped in small apartments waiting for this terrible first wave to disappear.
I’ve heard the hypothesis that the pandemic can lead us back to low-density development, inspire us to see all the things that make it difficult to walk and bike: our roads, our suburban-style houses, our giant courtyards and our parking lots. .
How do you do that?
Roman Mars: You know, you can have plans and you can have a philosophy, then he comes in and hits you on the ass.
Yes, I think when you’re locked in inside for six months, having a 3500 square foot space is amazing. I am very satisfied that the other people in Houston, through their design, can better resist this, and perhaps be healthier and happier. . That’s a smart thing to do. There was a time in New York when you had the feeling that all the suffering in the world was concentrated in New York, and that was not the case.
But, in fact, there are times when this is reversed. I don’t know if we should necessarily be informed of the lesson that these hermetically sealed individual lives are the right type because of an airborne pandemic. You can’t plan or live your whole life on guard duty. like that.
When you think about the long-term vision of all this, cars and urban stoning damage the environment for everyone. A person’s carbon footprint in Houston is incredibly different from a person’s carbon footprint in New York. That hasn’t fundamentally changed.
But life in cities, all about what we communicate about, has to do with balance and choice. During the 10 years of the series and in the book, our affirmation has been that the built global is a mirror image of our values and who we are as human beings. and all this is adapting and evolving over time. And really, I wouldn’t have done it any other way.
The built world reflects who we are as humans. People who love Houston need them to be happy. But I also need to inspire them to think of their way of life as an election, that this is not the only way to be, and to think seriously about their choices.
Right now, Fate has turned the wheel and made Houston an ideal position to be remote in your big home. I sense it completely.
But there are other possible options to make, not just now in your life: other cities to live in, other life tactics. It’s worth exploring all this.
Kurt Kohlstedt: There’s something to say about dense city life right now. Many other people I know who live in cities have started walking and biking, but they haven’t done it yet. Therefore, they are outdoors, which is relatively safe. They pick up food around the corner, which is relatively safe. They don’t have to travel long distances and stay healthier because they walk and ride bikes.
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So I would be suspicious of the concept that it is necessarily more to be in a scattered place, where everyone has more space. Don’t get me wrong: I’d like my apartment to be bigger. But at the same time, there are still some benefits of being in cities.
You talked about Los Angeles, he still thinks Los Angeles works in two ways: in Silver Lake you can walk, you can shop and stop by a bar and do everything in this pedestrian zone, this facet of Los Angeles that I like.
The component of Los Angeles that I personally don’t like is: “We’re going to drive two hours to get here, then an hour there, and then we’re going to drive 3 hours to get to the restaurant. “In addition to the sustainability consultation, there is also lifestyle consultation: is that how you need to live?
It’s subjective, isn’t it? Other people will have other tastes, but personally, I would not force you to live in a city or in the domain of a city that is within walking distance to live in an expanding city where I have to drive everywhere.
Roman Mars: I agree in large part. The other thing to think about is the economic disorders caused by the pandemic. Giant cars and houses can be expensive to maintain.
So there are all sorts of compromises, possible possible options and other things, and it’s a wonderful country. So you can know where to be and what kind of city you need to live in. I like other people to think about where they are and what possible options they can make.
As Kurt said, a heterogeneous city can offer any of life’s tactics: it can have urban neighborhoods available on foot and scattered suburban neighborhoods.
You know, I use my car. I like my car. I am not like a tough and dense urban planner, but in a house.
Unfortunately, the Bay Area is not a style to provide those options. Throughout the 20th century, he never made a decision about whether it was a transit city or a city of automobiles, and it has become the worst of both in many ways. of her today.
And that’s the challenge: not opting to be a thing or you’ve created a worse challenge here than elsewhere.
Kurt Kohlstedt: Also, because the Bay Area never understood, whether it will be a dense position or not, we have tensions between other people who need to build a lot now and other people who resist. tax legislation and things like that.
But the Bay Area frankly wants accommodation and has stayed out for too long.
Roman Mars: Yes. Many other people love San Francisco. People love to make a stop there. They like living here. But some of the most beloved lands in the country, and most of the world, are carpeted with 3-story Victorians. This is not a way to create a healthy and functional city. That’s enough to look at. In words, this is appropriate. But there are other options where surely this is not the case.
Cities have a lot to do. There’s a lot to think about, how to make them functional for the humans who live in them. We’re looking to communicate those tensions, intentional or not.
I’m fascinated by those discussions and I’m looking for questions from a long-term perspective, without judgment. There are other people who make rational choices possible and, infrequently, possible rational choices collide with each other.
But there is also an intelligent component of human life: a bit of altruism, a little cruelty and an un empathetic thought. This addition is what is the city invisible to 99%.
One of the great adjustments to COVID-19 has been the way other people paint. When I spoke to Kurt before, he told me that he was preparing to spend a few months running in Minneapolis, making his paintings remotely, managing the online podcast page outside the office. Are there other ways, because of the pandemic, to paint differently?
Roman Mars: Oh, of course. We have our own settings, I’m in my dining room with a shotgun microphone that records this, I would normally move to a studio for higher sound quality, and that’s why Kurt is under a blanket. [Kurt, in his Zoom window, lifts the blanket, appearing in his apartment. ]
We’re in Zoom and we do meetings all day long. My whole day is sitting in front of this screen.
We have this, it is located in the charming downtown Oakland, California, and the lease is almost over. There are two entrances and two bathrooms, so, for protection reasons, only two other people can paint there at once. Usually that’s Sean Real, our composer and sound designer, and Katie Mingle, the oldest manufacturer of staff.
But when April arrives and this lease comes to an end, it’s hard to wonder whether or not we’ll renew just for the sake of what’s become those two individual modules.
We also just hired Christopher Johnson as supervising producer. He’s in New York, a year later, we would have said, “You have to go to Oakland. That’s where the store is, that’s where we do things. “
But now we’re scattered everywhere. A senior manufacturer lives in Santa Fe, producer Chris Berube lives in Toronto, it’s as if everyone has taken advantage of that moment, knowing that although we’re doing the series as a collective, there are many tactics to do so. to solve the problem.
The hardest component is keeping other people connected. There’s a loss of concepts happening in a room, and when you’re zooming in, you’re just looking to get out as temporarily as possible.
Kurt Kohlstedt: For seven years before joining the series as virtual director, I was a virtual nomad. I worked in cafes, my room, all kinds of spaces. I’ve been traveling.
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I really liked it. I swore to my friends that I would never paint in a workplace again, but you know what?After doing this for several years, you realize that you lack something because you are not in a room with an organization of artistic and attractive people.
So, for me, the decision to sign up for “99% Invisible” was amazing, well, in a component because I was a superfan of the series forever. But I also enjoyed entering the workplace and being part of that community.
So, more generally, with the offices, I think we’re going to end up seeing negative reactions. Right now, a lot of other people are thinking, “I may be gone forever. “We’ll do that for a while, but then maybe we’ll find the right balance, right?
Maybe after the pandemic, we will meet once every two weeks or once a month, there will possibly be more meetings or retreats, because even though most of your paintings can be done very well through yourself, there is something vital to do. in the same physical area as the other people he paints with.
Has the pandemic replaced the way other people pay attention to podcasts?I used to pay attention to them on my way, when I went to the paintings and home, but now I’m not traveling.
Yes: At first, in particular, we saw a fall in listening, cars are a massive driving force. So the pandemic affects that.
Podcast superfans find many other moments to pay attention to. I myself am a blind man who pays attention in the kitchen, and I pay attention to walks and things like that, so I think other people who are addicted to the environment locate time.
As a medium, podcasts have a kind of intimacy, they provide a type of company, which I think other people want even more of this than before.
But yes, there’s a bit of a retrospective in listening habits, and I think it’s because of the car listeners, that’s for sure, because before other people spent so much time lost in their car.
Lost?! I hear 99% Invisible.
Roman Mars: [Laughs. ] So we’re turning some of that into something timely, productive and unique. But above all: in vain.
Kurt Kohlstedt: One of my favorite comments is when other people say, “I stopped on my way in, but I still had 10 minutes left and couldn’t help but listen. So I sat in my car.
Roman Mars: I do that too. But I’m a user who has hearing aids in his ears, if I don’t work I pay attention to anything, that’s who I am and I think there are more and more people like that.
Has the pandemic replaced the way you advertise the e-book? You would have taken a tour of the e-book, wouldn’t you?
Roman Mars: Yes, an e-book tour to 10 cities is planned, but instead of giving hands loaded with sweaty viruses, we make virtual appointments elsewhere.
More people will be attached to the virtual elements than would have been served during the stops of the visit. So the question is: is being virtual really the effectiveness of a tour?Honestly, I don’t know. We are all pioneers in this space.
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Another attractive thing is the e-book itself. It’s a collection of stories about things we love and locate attractive. He disguises himself as this convenient consultant for places in the city where he is already located. the resonance I would have right now, when other people can’t make exotic plays. Right now, finding wonder and joy in the position you are in, just outside your door, is resonant and engaging.
Also, finding out that other people are handling things on your behalf in a way you didn’t realize makes you feel a little better in the world.
The eebook is an advisor to those things. The screen has also been a consultant for these things, however, the eBook actually sells the concept that you can look out the door on the sidewalk and see red bomb-painted marks, and you’ll know that means, “Don’t dig here, because anything can explode. These marks began due to a horrific incident in Culver City in the 1970s. Someone put this mark there to make sure everything’s okay.
Knowing these stories, how they spread through history, how all this idea gets into things, it’s kind of comfort, there’s a kind of warm embrace around you, in everything that’s as hostile and concrete as a city, there’s all those things to make everything bigger for you.
Kurt Kohlstedt: The other day, I was looking to tell all the things discussed in the e-book that I could place on a block from my apartment. He temporarily passed double digits and just got back from there.
That’s one of the things I love about this book. He’s not a consultant Florence. No want to fly around the world. He’s a consultant to things you’ve already seen. Some you’ve already seen and others have noticed once. you’ve read the book These are things that, no matter where you are, are all around you right now.
I love knowing the call of Bott points, because I saw those little circular mounds that keep my car on the track, but I never knew what to call them.
Roman Mars: It’s so much fun to know these things! It is the center and worldview of the series and the book. These pieces of esoterianism nourish the soul.
What are you thinking those days?
Kurt Kohlstedt: I’m fascinated by everything that’s going on, there’s a lot of bad stuff. But many other people find artistic tactics to use their time and energy. They inspire me.
Roman Mars: Whenever you have a moment like this, when you live in attractive times, it allows other people to question basic assumptions about why things are the way they are. Sometimes it can be really destructive; rarely can it be really constructive. I bet constructive answers.
I like it when other people consult basic assumptions about how we interact with others, to ask why things are the way they are.
Someone emailed us: Why are there symptoms of blue prevention in Hawaii?This because the prevention symptoms were in a parking lot, not in the official symptoms of the road. But this consultation has led us to ask ourselves: why does general red prevent symptoms like these?Did this happen?
You notice something strange, any adjustment in the environment, and it makes you question all the reasons that things are the way they are. Sometimes this allows you to locate places to replace and improve. And you say, “Wow, the evolution of this – why is this so – is literally smart. It’s its own comfort.
The worldview of “99% Invisible”, be it the podcast and the book, allows you to get armed with a type of interest and ask for you to realize those things, and that you can make the smartest ones.
For example: individual serpentine lines for several cash stations, so one line feeds several ATMs, seem to be implemented more in the pandemic. I think it’s because it’s less difficult to distribute well to other people on a line. But I’d be satisfied if he took over forever, everywhere. The anxiety of choosing which login to go to, which line to take, is not something my brain needs to do. Maybe other people will realize, “Oh, that’s the way to do it. He’s really smart. “
The 99% invisible mindset allows you to realize those things, move on to global thinking about those things, and maybe gently push them in a direction that counts, so there are things for everyone. That’s what I like about running in the series.
As we paint in the book, we think of it even more deeply than we already do: how to convey this contagious enthusiasm, wonder, and constant curiosity, even about the worldly things, which we neglect.
You don’t have to look for a brilliant design solution, you don’t want to go too far to locate something that was designed as one thing and is used for something else. The attractive stories created there, that’s all, about.
That’s what I expect other people to do about the podcast and the book: I hope they feel the things I feel. They’re complex feelings, but they’re a laugh and tickle your head and make you think.
This interview has been modified for clarity and extension.
lisa. gray@chron. com, twitter. com/LisaGray_HouTX
Lisa Gray is a senior editor at the Office of Functions. Previously, she held several of Chronicle’s most attractive positions: digital editor, corporate editor, editorial board member, interim editor, columnist and, most importantly, founding editor of Gray Matters, The Chronicle named “Best Blog” in Texas 3 years in a row.
Email or stay with lisa. gray@chron. com on Facebook, where you spend too much time.