Periphery Magazine

PERIPHERY Stories about the untouchable things that shape our world

ISSUE 1 WINTER 2014 VOLUME X

Above, photo by Julie Roche. Cover photo by Ramell Roscoe.

PERIPHERY

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Amanda Buck CREATIVE DIRECTOR Kim Walker RESEARCH LEAD Will Holman EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Stephanie Davis MANAGING EDITOR Melvin Webster

COPY WRITERS Clark Boyd Roman Mars Richard Smith Graham Coreil-Allen Anna Holligan PUBLISHER Typotheque DESIGNERS Nikole Gramm Grace Wu

PROJECT MANAGER Traci Wile PRINTER Swanson Graphics CONTRIBUTORS Interboro Partners Chelsea R. Behrens Meena Kadri Nate Dimeo Linda Buck Brandon King

Periphery Magazine Š2013 Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher is strictly prohibited.

Periphery Magazine 1301 W. Mount Royal Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21211 440 212 3939 | info@peripherymag.com peripherymag.com

FROM THE EDITOR

W

elcome to the pilot issue of Periphery, a quarterly, ad-free print magazine for the curious mind. We cover stories that reveal who we are through the lens of what we build; stories about the untouchable things that shape our world.

With each issue, we will endeavour to surprise our readers with beautifully designed features covering a rich mix of peripheral subjects­— all connected by the theme of human creativity. At Periphery, we believe in celebrating the ordinary and elevating the mundane. We uncover stories of ingenuity from throughout history, as well as stories occurring today.

We assert that creativity is not the exclusive domain of artists or designers, but something that surrounds us in our daily lives—something so embedded in our everyday experience that it often escapes attention. We acknowledge these creative people, places, and objects that shape our world through engaging storytelling and design.

We hope our subjects affect the way you look at the world, but most importantly, we hope to publish articles you will enjoy sharing with your friends. Thank you for reading!

AMANDA BUCK

CONTENTS PERIPHERY | ISSUE 1 | WINTER 2014

2

18

FROM THE EDITOR

ESSAY

A Stretch ◊

4 OBSERVATIONS

Belgian Solutions, My Stoop, Poetry as Architectural Permanence, and The Art of Graffiti

12 THE INVISIBLE

The Color of Money, New Public Sites, and Cycling in The Netherlands

40 HISTORY & TODAY

Ladislav Sutnar, Sign Painters, and How Street Food Become Haute Cuisine

22 FEATURE

Dabbawallas: Delivering Excellence ◊

30 FEATURE

Razzle Dazzle ◊

34 FEATURE

The Arsenal of Exclusion ◊

48 BUILT FOR...

Speed

Submit your finds to observations@periphery.org.

OBSERVATIONS

“In the particular is contained the universal.” – james joyce

OBSERVATIONS

BELGIAN SOLUTIONS

BY CLARK BOYD

Belgian solutions Nr. 82, David Helbich.

D

Belgian solutions Nr. 1, David Helbich.

avid Helbich says he’s fond of long walks, and loves looking for interesting things to photograph on the streets. And Brussels, as anyone who has lived there can tell you, does not lack for interesting. So, he started snapping photos.

And then he started to notice a theme emerging.

“Maybe it came with an understanding of the city, but I started to see things other people wouldn’t see immediately. A cable hanging out there, isn’t that weird? Then you realize the whole city is kind of taped together. I think Brussels has like, these layers. On the ground, it’s like a puzzle.

On the human level, it’s taped together. And then from the sky, there are hanging cables.”

Truly, the evidence is everywhere. Look around and you’ll see staircases that disappear into solid brick walls; construction fences redeployed by picnickers as windbreaks along a canal; electrical wires so jerry-rigged that you’re amazed the entire city block hasn’t been consumed by a giant fireball. Take a closer look, though, says Helbich, and focus on the solution, not the fail.

“The staircase that ends in a wall: I called this a solution, not a failure. At one time, it made sense. Then somebody just closed the door and thought,‘Hey, let’s keep the staircase, because someone might want to sit on it, or something.’

It looks incredibly absurd, almost surreal, but

on the other hand it also makes sense.” In their own way, these Belgian solutions are a kind of metaphor for the taped together nature of the entire country, divided as it is among Dutch speakers, French speakers, and a tiny Germanspeaking community. The regions of Flanders and Wallonia each have their own Parliaments with as much power, in some ways even more, than the federal government. And in the middle sits Brussels, the only officially multi-lingual part of the country, with its OWN parliament. Each little part of Brussels comes complete with it’s own mayor, and its own legion of city hall workers.

But wait, there’s more. Don’t forget Brussels is the capital of Europe, the seat of the European Union which directs its 27 member states on how things should be done.

Amid all these layers of rules and regulations, you’d think it would be impossible not to solve problems quickly and efficiently. But instead, notes Helbich: “It’s an example of how too much bureaucracy can, in the end, lead to a certain kind of anarchism.”

“Belgians are very conscious of the fact that nothing is fixed. People don’t care in the end.

It just enriches the whole thing. It gives a certain sense of nothing, yet everything is changeable.

That’s incredibly inspiring for an artist.”

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OBSERVATIONS

MY STOOP

BY BRANDON KING

T

he Brooklyn stoop is where I dwell. In my world, it’s the best part of the city. The stoop is where my neighbors and I while away entire days, from spring into fall, shooting the shit and watching everything pass by and all kinds of people go about their lives.

This nether-region between private and public space is where the secrets of the home might be revealed to utter strangers—the door is close to enough for safety, and the street is far enough that

we are not fully on display. My stoop is my favorite part of the city—and it’s where I greet it every day.

Feratusda di omnis ressed etur, si tem. Et velestin.

Con ratibusam quaepudit, veliquam dolutat fugit quam quaeperum eniendestrum remquid elicte estemos elitiunt intentis dolessit, officias et volestrunt perum facea si doluptas rerro do en tvolupta vendellit expligente praeperit perionny praectatiam incium et laborunde consed que no volor architio. Odi doluptatum re, quam dole.

Brooklyn Stoop in Fall, Brandon King. Opposite page: New York from the Sky by Alexa Walker.

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OBSERVATIONS

POETRY AS ARCHITECTURAL PERMANENCE

BY ROMAN MARS

Battery Park City–World Financial Center Plaza, Wally Gobetz King.

PERIPHERY 8

OBSERVATIONS

ishes—I can’t eve ry one w n enj eene oy a e gr bla l th de t al of ge to rk Yo

sign tha tp eo ple do no tt ot al l

record store or some other

ow kn

e’s er th

a y, or and ay h w ub as

acts in pastures. No. One erted need perv n e v er l ea ve

PERIPHERY 9

th ec o nf in es

the Hudson River with his friend Malissa O’Donnell, Sean Cole discovered a monument—two of them actually — to two of his poetry heroes. The tribute wasn’t very obvious.

In fact, he and Malissa nearly walked right past it.

Still, embedded in the architecture of a 25 year old plaza were the words of Walt Whitman and Frank O’Hara. And weirdly, Sean had been reciting from O’Hara’s Lunch Poems just minutes before.

Thus began Sean’s quest to talk to the people whose idea this was—forging a largely unloved art form into a permanent fixture of the cultural landscape. He talked with urban landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg, former Battery Park official Richard Kahan and none other than Frank O’Hara’s younger sister, Maureen O’Hara.

Sean was thrilled to see the poetry wrought in metal, treated with a reverence and architectural permanence that is rarely bestowed upon the art form. Here is an excerpt of the poem by Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency.

of ast tp en oc nn ni ra fo

O

life , no rw ith no st al g ne night, drunk and stumbling around

w Ne of

ve ha

ia

y

∑I fe. i l et gr re

myself with the praises o gged f pas r clo e tora v ne l

gra ss u n les sI

OBSERVATIONS

THE ART OF GRAFFITI PHOTOS BY LINDA BUCK

Graffiti in Berlin, Germany and Baltimore, Maryland.

PERIPHERY 10

Submit your story to invisible@periphery.org.

THE INVISIBLE

“Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.”– r. buckminster fuller

THE INVISIBLE

THE COLOR OF MONEY

BY RICHARD SMITH

Dowling Duncan's attempt to redesign the dollar.

U

nited States’ paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really look at its graphic design with fresh eyes requires some deliberate and focused attention. So pull out a greenback 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.

Even though paper currency itself, just the idea of money, is a massive, world changing technology, the look and feel of U.S. paper money is very stagnant. Richard Smith is the founder of the Dollar ReDe$ign Project and in an article in the New York Times, he pointed out five major areas where the design of US currency could improve: color, size, functionality, composition, and symbolism.

It just so happens that Australian currency addresses each and every one of the points made

by Richard Smith. Tristan Cooke and Tom Nelson of the blog Humans in Design are big fans of all of the design innovations in Australian money.

Aussie polymer notes are varied in color, get larger with each denomination, are more durable and

are generally considered better and easier to use than U.S. currency.

But there are some interesting reasons why the greenback is the way it is. David Wolman, author of The End of Money, explains that the legacy features that make U.S. paper money look stale and anachronistic are meant to convey stability and timelessness. Since the U.S. economy is so important in the world economy, why mess with it? Some fear that changing the design of the currency significantly (or even eliminating the penny) could undermine the faith in the federal reserve note.

Even though Tristan and Tom are fans of the Australian polymer bills, they share Wolman’s view that the more interesting future innovations are not going to have anything to do with physical cash. Clever user interfaces that help us manage our money better, while providing even greater convenience, are getting more refined and accepted. So that ugly $20 in your wallet may never actually get prettier and more functional, it’ll just be gone.

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THE INVISIBLE

NEW PUBLIC SITES

BY GRAHAM COREIL-ALLEN

S

omewhere between a suburban strip mall and its urban surroundings lies a poetic amalgam of space both epic and discrete.

Situated within disparate zones of overlap, contradiction, ambiguity and interstice, the ongoing New Public Sites project investigates the ways in which invis-ible sites and overlooked features exist within our everyday environment. Based on a critical approach to understanding public space, this project proposes alternatives for signifying and activating sites through urban analysis, mapping, installations, video, tours and a book. Through this process of city resignification, New PublicSites (NPS) invites a practice of “radical pedes-trianism”. If a pedestrian is simply a person traveling by foot, a radical pedestrian is one who travels by foot through infinite sites of freedom, both concrete and dispersed.

The radical pedestri-an tests the limits of and redefines public space through drifting direct action and insightful and compelling discourse.

The NPS investigation is predicated by an expansive definition of public space. For this ongoing project, public space is any open area accessible to most people in a given community.

In this case, accessibility describes the ability for individuals to physically enter and actively engage with their surroundings. Given that no public space is entirely accessible to all, this radical approach qualifies a space’s “publicness” by asking the degree to which anyone off the street is able and permitted to enter and engage. This perspective on public space disregards typical assumptions about private property, and opens the frame of research to a wide range of places and terrains. Public space can then encompass a variety of areas, including but not limited to: vacant properties, parking lots, streets, highways, squares, parks, campuses, shopping centers,

waterfronts, transportation hubs, and civic buildings. Within these differing public spaces there exists a multitude of overlooked and under-signified places that can collectively be understood as “new public sites”.

While there is no explicit set of conditions defining new public sites, they generally consist of everyday public spaces existing in one or more of three states: rendered mute by their physical and discursive emptiness, ambiguous due to contextual contradictions of urban design, and/ or invisible from a lack of formal architectural framing and practical readability.

The Typology of New Public Sites consists of sites, components and qualities indexed and described through terms and definitions both invented and appropriated. The typology not only represents a system of classification, but also a linguistic intervention. Drawing from the fields of architecture and urban planning, the appropriated terms and definitions are repurposed with complete sincerity. In some instances the definitions for these lifted terms remain unchanged, while in others they are altered, recombined or entirely rewritten.

Through invented and appropriated language, this reference book and manifesto challenges the authority of how public space is typically represented. While declarative and technical, these definitions also hew towards the poetic and absurd. The linguistically playful moments of this otherwise serious endeavor are derived from the latent beauty and humor within many of the spaces, features and experiences addressed.

Six examples of these New Public Sites are shown and described on the opposite page. the latent beauty and humor within many of the For more information on the book, check out newpublicsites.org.

PERIPHERY 14

THE INVISIBLE

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT Freeway Eddy An interstitial fragment of space between intersecting curves of highway pavement.

Median Refuge A liminal zone of linear respite between parallels of churning traffic.

Parallax of Transit A compressionscape of traffic and transit, spanned by overlapping, muscular structures of freedom and expanse.

Strip Mall Fortress An array of shops neatly organized into a homgenous, horizontal mass protected by an impressive moat of parking.

Triangle Crossing A three-sided concrete platform or asphalt zone providing solace for pedestrians.

Parking Archipelago Grassy islands stretching across a vast asphalt sea.

PERIPHERY 15

THE INVISIBLE

CYCLING IN THE NETHERLANDS

BY ANNA HOLLIGAN

T

here are more bicycles than residents in The Netherlands and in cities like Amsterdam and The Hague up to 70% of all journeys are made by bike. Before World War II, journeys in the Nether-lands were predominantly made by bike, but in the 1950s and 1960s, as car ownership rocketed, this changed. As in many countries in Europe, roads became increasingly congested and cyclists were squeezed to the kerb.

The jump in car numbers caused a huge rise in the number of deaths on the roads. In 1971 more than 3,000 people were killed by motor vehicles, 450 of them children.

In response a social movement demanding safer cycling conditions for children was formed.

Called Stop de Kindermoord (Stop the Child Murder), it took its name from the headline of an article written by journalist Vic Langenhoff whose own child had been killed in a road accident. The Dutch faith in the reliability and sustainability of the motor vehicle was also shaken by the Middle East oil crisis of 1973, when oilproducing countries stopped exports to the US and Western Europe.

These twin pressures helped to persuade the Dutch government to invest in improved cycling infrastructure and Dutch urban planners started to diverge from the car-centric road-building policies being pursued through urbanising West.

To make cycling safer and more inviting the Dutch have built a vast network of cycle paths.

These are clearly marked, have smooth surfaces, separate signs and lights for those on two wheels, and wide enough to allow side-by-side cycling and overtaking.

In many cities the paths are completely segregated from motorised traffic. Sometimes, where space is scant and both must share, you can see signs showing an image of a cyclist with a car

behind accompanied by the words 'Bike Street: Cars are guests'.

At roundabouts, too, it is those using pedal power who have priority. You can cycle around a roundabout while cars (almost always) wait patiently for you to pass. The idea that “the bike is right” is such an alien concept for tourists on bikes that many often find it difficult to navigate roads and junctions at first.

Even before they can walk, Dutch children are immersed in a world of cycling. As babies and toddlers they travel in special seats on “bakfiets”, or cargo bikes. These seats are often equipped with canopies to protect the children from the elements, and some parents have been known to spend a small fortune doing up their machines.

As the children grow up they take to their own bikes, something made easier and safer by the discrete cycle lanes being wide enough for children to ride alongside an accompanying adult. And, as young people aren't allowed to drive unsupervised until they are 18, cycling offers Dutch teenagers an alternative form of freedom.

The state also plays a part in teaching too, with cycling proficiency lessons a compulsory part of the Dutch school curriculum. All schools have places to park bikes and at some schools 90% of pupils cycle to class.

In the university city of Groningen, a cyclists' dream even by Dutch standards, the central train station has underground parking for 10,000 bikes. Cyclists are accommodated in the way motorists are elsewhere, with electronic counters at the entrance registering how many spaces are available. Bike parking facilities are ubiquitous in The Netherlands - outside schools, office bikes. Cyclists are accommodated in the way buildings and shops. In return you are expected to only lock up your bike in designated spots.

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THE INVISIBLE

All images by Anna Holligan.

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Bradford Lee Gilbert designed the Tower Building, New York City’s first skyscraper. This is Gilbert’s story.

BY NATE DIMEO

Bradford Gilbert had spent his career close to the ground. At 23 he took a job as the architect for the New York Lake Erie & Western Railroad. It was 1878. The Western was basically just western New York and just left of Lake Erie. Gilbert would walk its ridges and dells; map its contours and calculate its slopes and rises; build bridges and trestles and new ways to go over the river and through the woods; new routes for coming around mountains. As an older man, he would redesign Grand Central Station, but his early twenties saw him designing less grand buildings in less central locations: in Avon, in Hornellsville, in Oyster Bay, in Toms River, and Essex Fells—the places you waited to get places where things actually happened. But buy a ticket there for Manhattan or St. Louis and you could see other architects building more impressive things. You could disembark and marvel at six- and eight- and ten- story structures. Mammoth buildings of stone and brick and wrought iron, holding court on whole city blocks, like medieval fortresses made for the kings of the modern American insurance industry— the emperors of imports and exports.

PERIPHERY 19

“What if we built the railroad bridge up instead of out?”

O

ne of these was looking to expand his empire. John Noble Stearns had made a lot of money importing silk and he was looking to make a lot more in real estate. He bought some land in a prime location at 50 Broadway. It was the perfect place for a new office building—right downtown, near the ports, in the heart of the growing financial industry. But there was one problem: the lot was less than 22 feet wide.

There are rules that dictate what you can build and how. Rules of physics and rules of men who sit on various bureaucratic boards and bodies. And those rules dictated that if Stearns wanted to build one of those ten-story office towers that were all the rage in 1888, he would need to build walls of stone and brick that were five feet thick, with ittybitty windows, and that left room for an interior that was only eleven feet wide. Slice off a few feet for a hallway, a few for a bathroom, a couple for a coat closet, another for some filing cabinets and an umbrella stand, and he would be asking the quintessential modern titan of American industry to work in a dark cell, better suited for a monk illuminating a manuscript.

Stearns asked all the best architects for a solution. They had built medieval bell towers for Manhattan bank headquarters. They had made midtown hotels look like mountain fortresses. But what Stearns wanted was a flagstaff. What Stearns wanted was a blade of grass. And they weren’t in

the blade of grass-building business. They told him it couldn’t be done.

Everyone except Bradford Gilbert. The in-house architect for the New York, Lake Erie & Western Railroad had an idea. Even the simplest train trip between two of his back-water stations often required stunning feats of engineering. Hundreds of tons of cars and cargo hurdle over thin trestles and bridges every day. What if he turned one of those bridges on its head? What if he used one of those steel frames that so capably carried trains and built it up, instead of out? He told Stearns that if he did this, the walls wouldn’t have to be five feet thick. They could be nine inches. And in the 20 foot wide office spaces that would create, the quintessential modern titan of American industry would have room to stretch out his legs —while he made out his rent check to John Noble Stearns.

They would call it the Tower Building. Stearns loved the idea, for a while...Until people started telling him it was completely bananas. First, he heard it from business associates­—people looking out for his investment. Then, it was the press, who called the project and the man behind it, idiotic. Architects came in from all over the country to watch the Tower Building rise, to pore over Gilbert’s blueprints. And they all pretty much agreed: Gilbert and Stearns were idiots. The walls were just too thin, the foundation was too narrow. Sure, those quintessentially modern men

PERIPHERY 20

Gilbert’s design used the same frame as a railroad bridge, but rotated vertically.

could stretch out their legs in sunny, 20-foot wide offices, stacked up like cardboard boxes.

But they could also be crushed to death when the first stiff wind came and blew the building down. Stearns asked Gilbert to change the plans.

And he refused. He said he was so confident in his design, that he would move his offices to the top two floors of the building. If the building blew down, he would have the farthest to fall and the longest time to consider his mistakes, before he slammed into the pavement.

The first stiff winds of a hurricane blew into Manhattan on a Sunday morning in 1889. The Tower Building stood, nearly complete, and people lined the streets to watch it tumble. By late morning the crowd numbered in the hundreds: the curious, the morbid, the newspaper men who were professionally both. And as the wind roared, a man pushed through the crowd. He walked to the base of the tower to a construction ladder and began to climb.

When Bradford Gilbert reached the top of his tower, the wind whipped through its skeleton frame at more than 80 miles an hour. It was too strong for him to stand in the girders that crossed in the center of what he hoped would someday be his penthouse office. It was too strong to look down at the crowd, who were probably placing bets on whether he would die by being blown off the building, or simply in the crushing force of its collapse. But he crawled out to the center of the building and pulled from a bag a rope with a lead weight attached to one end. He tied the other end to a girder and tossed the weight down through the empty floors below. And when it got to the ground, he looked up and saw the lead weight hanging in mid-air, stock still, held up by a building that wasn’t going anywhere.

The next day, the papers called Gilbert an idiot. And this time, he probably deserved it.

They admitted his idea was genius. And for years after, Gilbert could sit in his penthouse office in the Tower Building, and he could look out of his large window, and he could stretch out his legs, and watch a whole city stretching ever-higher, as it took his idea and built on it. ◊

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A dabbawalla in the luggage compartment on the return train journey to Bandra, a northwestern suburb of Mumbai. Photo by Meena Kadri.

by meena kadri Mumbai’s dabbawallas pick up and deliver more than 350,000 home-cooked lunches to office workers every working day. How did this amazingly efficient delivery system develop from its start with one boy on a bicycle?

M

umbai’s committed contingent of 5,000 dabbawallas delivers over 350,000 lunches per day to office workers across the megacity. Typically the lunches are packed in stacked metal lunchboxes which lend this collection of culinary couriers their name: dabba = tiffin, container; walla = worker. Each tiffin is picked up at the client’s home, delivered to his office, and then returned, a trip during which it will typically pass through the hands of at least 12 dabbawallas across an elaborate zoning system.

Somewhere in the middle—far away from the fastpaced delivery antics—a home-cooked lunch is enjoyed. Many articles about the dabbawallas start with their innovative system, but in designerly fashion, let’s start with the end user. Those who engage the services of dabbawallas tend to be middle-class office workers who embrace the Indian preference for and pride in ghar ka khana (home-cooked food). Most of them reach work by train, which means they leave home early and may be boarding chaotically packed carriages, making carrying their own tiffin a challenge. Add to this the status of arriving at work unencumbered.

The dabbawalla system provides a welcome solution by collecting meals lovingly prepared at home, then getting them to the office and back. Lunching clients have diverse dietary preferences—Muslims, Hindus, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists and more join diabetics and dieters—increasing the need for precision delivery of the correct meal to its rightful recipient.

A preference for ghar ka khana—home-cooked food—has created the local demand for lunch delivery which the dabbawallas have keenly met with a commitment to accuracy.

One such discerning diner was a Parsi banker working in Mumbai in the 1880s. He employed a young errand boy to deliver his lunch, and others, envious of his promptly delivered, freshly made, home-cooked lunches, soon requested the delivery boy’s services as well. The boy was Mahadeo Havaji Bacche from Pune, who is credited with founding the Mumbai dabbawallas.

Unable to keep up with demand, he enlisted

Dhondiba Medge, the first chairman of Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Charity Trust of Mumbai, a dabbawalla cooperative which launched in 1954. His son, Raghunath Medge, is the current chairman of the trust. Photo by Meena Kadri.

others from his village and the surrounding area.

This location-based connectedness continues to enrich the signature camaraderie of dabbawallas to this day. Bacche’s understanding of client needs, fellow workers’ capabilities and Mumbai’s specific transport context allowed him to leverage local factors to build a service which was able to grow from his initial team of 100 to the 5,000+ dabbawallas that keep Mumbai office workers fuelled and fed today. Delivering lunch boxes from people’s homes to their places of work and back again might sound fairly straightforward.

However, the challenge for dabbawallas is to do so at scale within a lean business model, negotiating time-bound trains and dense urban environments while grouping deliveries to similar locations for efficiency. For this they employ a hub-and-spoke distribution approach. Lunches are usually collected from individual homes on foot or by bicycle around 9–10 am. Once you recognise this, you’ll be surprised how often you spot dabbawallas on bicycles laden with tiffins around Mumbai during their morning or afternoon deliveries. From the morning collection, the tiffins are taken to a local sorting hub where they are grouped according to those

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“Commitment to excellence is what drives our growth.

That and the fact that the stomach is never in recession.”

Since low literacy is an issue for some of the 5,000 dabbawallas, they have devised a system in which tiffin lids are painted with colourcoded symbols, numbers and a few letters to indicate the train lines, hub points and destinations at both ends of the delivery cycle. Note: the swastika motif is common historically in Hindu decoration. Photo

by Meena Kadri.

heading into the city on the same train line.

They’re often carried overhead on large metal trays, a tricky task when having to board urban trains which only stop briefly. At the other end they enter another hub where they are sorted again according to neighbourhood destinations.

From here the tiffins continue their journey by bicycle or trolley, the final delivery usually being made on foot. Keep in mind that individual dabbawallas only serve on a specific part of the tiffin’s route. It’s the smooth running of all the hub-and-spoke locations which ensures its delivery across the average 60–70 kilometres travelled by each tiffin. A senior dabbawalla quips, ‘It’s like a cricket team. Teamwork is essential’—an analogy which resonates in the cricket-loving nation that is India. Worth noting is that some office buildings downtown, where the service is popular, keep one of their elevators free over lunchtime specifically for the well-respected dabbawallas and their appetiteappeasing deliveries.The localised efficiency of the dabbawalla system has been hailed by business and design schools worldwide. Forbes Magazine awarded it a Sigma Six rating in 2002, estimating that less than one mistake is made

in every six million deliveries—that’s 12 million dispatches if you count both directions. So how is this accuracy ensured by a workforce which has traditionally possessed low literacy? Historically the dabbawallas developed their own code utilising numbers, letters, colours and symbols applied to the tiffins to enable them to be sorted systematically at key points of the journey. (It’s not dissimilar to the notion of packet-switching by which digital data is transmitted via shared networks like the Internet.) At larger hub points, a dabbawalla is stationed with the specific task of spotting potential mix-ups and redirecting misplaced lunchboxes back onto their correct redirecting trajectories.

With an annual turnover surpassing 400 million, the dabbawallas have a surprisingly flat hierarchy. They are united by a workers’ association which is headed by former dabbawallas who are often found sitting cross-legged amongst workers as they take their lunch breaks at various hubs. Monthly tiffin deliveries are priced by weight, size and distance (around 300–500 per month), and each of the 800 teams splits its share evenly between members, regardless of their seniority. After maintenance costs have

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Dabbawallas sort boxes as they prepare to deliver hot lunches throughout Mumbai.

Delivering over 200,000 lunch boxes each day to workers requires an accurate system, especially as each lunch box commonly passes through the hands of at least 12 men in rapid succession on its path from home to office and back again. Photo by Luca Fabbozzo.

been paid for bicycles and other tools of the trade, as well as a fee to the workers’ association, each dabbawalla takes home around 6,000 per month. The association is in good financial health, supporting the families of deceased workers and donating to various food distribution charities.

It also supplements its income through the provision of cooked-meal services. The dabbawallas present a united workforce. High levels of trust are cultivated, with new hires being introduced by referral. Most workers sport a white kurta pyjama set, though the iconic Gandhi cap is a more prescriptive requirement and makes them easy to spot in a crowd. They take lunch together from their own tiffins at their respective hubs, where spirits run high. The edict of their founder that ‘Work is Worship’ seems prevalent in the pride shown by dabbawallas in the diligent service they provide. Acknowledgement that team effort is the essence of their enterprise is implicit in their humble approach, which celebrates teamwork over individual performance.

This united dedication to a collective pursuit of excellence has served the dabbawallas well in the face of potential disruptions of service such as riots, monsoon floods and the multitude of state and religious holidays which pepper the Indian calendar, although the 1974 railway strikes temporarily halted their service due to the interruption of a core part of their delivery model. ‘Commitment to excellence is what drives our growth. That and the fact that the stomach is never in recession,’ beams the head of the workers’ association. In fact the service continues to achieve 5–6% annual growth and adapts to evolving lifestyles by offering SMS bookings and delivering lunches from diet centres. As I ride with a group of dabbawallas by train on their return journey, I’m amazed that after a long day of fast-paced heavy labour, they still have the inclination to discuss ways they could improve the perform-ance and efficiency of their sector. Considering their thousands of satisfied customers, strong solidarity amongst workers and a delivery system ingeniously built on local conditions, you might well ask: are the best innovations home-cooked and ingeniously home-grown?

Mumbai’s dabbawallas pick up and deliver more than 350,000 home-cooked lunches to office workers every working day. How did this amazingly efficient delivery system develop from its start with one boy on a bicycle? Mumbai’s committed contingent of 5,000 dabbawallas delivers over 350,000 lunches per day to office workers across the

PERIPHERY 27

Collecting tiffins from trains and sorting for bicycle, cart and hand delivery—at the busy Dabbawalla hub near Churni Road Station. The delivery system has grown at a rate of five to six per cent per year despite the rise of office cafeterias and food chains. Photo by Meena Kadri.

“The dabbawallas’ coding system has evolved from the bottom up, to ensure accurate delivery by semi-literate workers.”

megacity. Typically the lunches are packed in stacked metal lunchboxes which lend this collection of culinary couriers their name: dabba = tiffin, container; walla = worker. Each tiffin is picked up at the client’s home, delivered to his office, and then returned, a trip during which it will typically pass through the hands of at least 12 dabbawallas across an elaborate zoning system.

Somewhere in the middle—far away from the fast-paced delivery antics—a home-cooked lunch is enjoyed. Many articles about the dabbawallas start with their innovative system, but in designerly fashion, let’s start with the end user. Those who engage the services of dabbawallas tend to be middle-class office workers who embrace the Indian preference for and pride in ghar ka khana (home-cooked food). Most of them reach work by train, which means they leave home early and may be boarding chaotically packed carriages, making carrying their own tiffin a challenge. Add to this the status of arriving at work unen-cumbered. The dabbawalla system provides a welcome solution by collecting meals lovingly prepared at home, then getting them to the office and back. Lunching clients have diverse dietary preferences—Muslims, Hindus, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists and more join diabetics

and dieters—increasing the need for precision delivery of the correct meal to its rightful recipient.

A preference for ghar ka khana—home-cooked food—has created the local demand for lunch delivery which the dabbawallas have keenly met with a commitment to accuracy.

One such discerning diner was a Parsi banker working in Mumbai in the 1880s. He employed a young errand boy to deliver his lunch, and others, envious of his promptly delivered, freshly made, home-cooked lunches, soon requested the delivery boy’s services as well. The boy was Mahadeo Havaji Bacche from Pune, who is credited with founding the Mumbai dabbawallas. workers fuelled and fed today. Delivering lunch a young errand boy to deliver his lunch, and to Mahadeo Havaji Bacche from Pune, who is boxes from people’s homes to their places. ◊ New Zealand–based Meena Kadri explores the intersection of communication, culture and creativity from her consultancy Random Specific.

She has written for Design Observer, Monocle and The Guardian and is currently a Community Manager on OpenIDEO.

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This is probably not what you think of when you think of camouflage...

by chelsea r. behrens

Camofleurs call this high similarity or blending and blending camouflage. But camouflage can also take the opposite approach.

Think about zebras: it’s hypothesized that their stripes make it difficult for a predator to distinguish one from another when the zebras are in a large herd. The stripes also might make zebras less attractive to blood sucking horseflies. This is called disruptive camouflage.When it comes to humans, the greatest, the most jaw-droppingly spectacular application of disruptive camouflage was called Dazzle.

Dazzle painting emerged in the 1910s as design solution to a very dire problem: American and British ships were being sunk left and right by German U-Boats. England needed to import supplies to fight the Central Powers, and these ships were sitting ducks in the At-lantic Ocean.

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C

amofleurs call this high similarity or blending camouflage. But camouflage can also take the opposite approach. Think about zebras: it’s hypothesized that their stripes make it difficult for a predator to distinguish one from another when the zebras are in a large herd. The stripes also might make zebras less attractive to blood sucking horseflies. This is called disruptive disruptive camouflage.

When it comes to humans, the greatest, the most jaw-droppingly spectacular application of disruptive camouflage was called Dazzle.

Dazzle painting emerged in the 1910s as design solution to a very dire problem: American and British ships were being sunk left and right

by German U-Boats. England needed to import supplies to fight the Central Powers, and these ships were sitting ducks in the At-lantic Ocean.

They needed a way to fend off the torpedoes.

Conventional high-similarity camouflage just doesn’t work in the open sea. Conditions like the color of the sky, cloud cover, and wave height change all the time, not to mention the fact that there’s no way to hid all the smoke left by the ships’ smoke stacks.

The strategy of this high-difference, dazzle camouflage was not about invisibility. It was about disruption. Confusion.

Torpedoes in the Great War could only be fired line-of-sight, so instead of firing at where they saw the ship was at that moment, torpedo gunners would have to chart out where the ship would be by the time the torpedo got there. They had to determine the target ship’s speed and direction with just a brief look through the periscope. The torpedo gunner’s margin of error for hitting a ship was quite low. Dazzle painting could throw off an experienced submariner by as much as 55 degrees. A journalist at the time referred to these dazzling ships as “a flock of sea-going Easter eggs.”

Our expert is Roy Behrens, a professor graphic design at the University of Northern Iowa. He’s published several books about camouflage, and also runs the Camoupedia blog. The theater of war has changed so camouflage has changed with

it, but there is still dazzle to be found…but sadly, there are no longer flocks of sea-going Easter eggs.

Camofleurs call this high similarity or blending camouflage. But camouflage can also take the opposite approach.

Think about zebras: it’s hypothesized that their stripes make it difficult for a predator to distinguish one from another when the zebras are in a large herd. The stripes also might make zebras less attractive to blood sucking horseflies. This is called disruptive camouflage. When it comes to humans, the greatest, most jaw-droppingly spectacular application of disruptive camouflage was called Dazzle.

Dazzle painting emerged in the 1910s as design solution to a very dire problem: American and British ships were being sunk left and right

by German U-Boats. England needed to import supplies to fight the Central Powers, and these ships were sitting ducks in the Atlantic Ocean.

They needed a way to fend of the torpedoes.

Conventional high-similarity camouflage just doesn’t work in the open sea. Conditions like the color of the sky, cloud cover, and wave height change all the time, not to mention the fact that there’s no way to hid all the smoke left by the ships’ smoke stacks.

The strategy of this high-difference, dazzle camouflage was not about invisibility. It was about disruption. Confusion.

Torpedoes in the Great War could only be fired line-of-sight, so instead of firing at where they saw the ship was at that moment, torpedo gunners would have to chart out where the ship would be by the time the torpedo got there. They had to determine the target ship’s speed and direction with just a brief look through the periscope.

The torpedo gunner’s margin of error for hitting a ship was quite low. Dazzle painting could throw off an experienced submariner by as much as 55 degrees. A journalist at the time referred to these dazzling ships as “a flock of sea-going Easter eggs.” Our expert this week is Roy Behrens, a professor graphic design at the University of Northern Iowa. He’s published several books about

PERIPHERY 32

camouflage, and also runs the Camoupedia blog.

The theater of war has changed so camouflage has changed with it, but there is still dazzle to be found …but sadly, there are no longer flocks of Camofleurs call this high similarity or blending horseflies. This is called disruptive camouflage.

When it comes to humans, the greatest, most jawdroppingly spectacular application of dazzle.

“The strategy of this high-difference, dazzle camouflage was not about invisibility. It was about disruption and confusion.”

NORMAN WILKINSON

Disruptive camouflage was called Dazzle. Dazzle painting emerged in the 1910s as design solution to a very dire problem: American and British ships were being sunk left and right by German U-Boats to a very dire problem: American and British ships Camofleurs call this high similarity or blending camouflage. But camouflage can also take the opposite approach. Think about zebras: it’s hypothesized that their stripes make it difficult for a predator to distinguish one from another when the zebras are in a large herd. The stripes also might make zebras less attractive to blood sucking horseflies. This is called disruptive camouflage.

When it comes to humans, the greatest, most jaw-droppingly spectacular application of disruptive camouflage was called Dazzle. Dazzle painting emerged in the 1910s as design solution to a very dire problem: American and British ships were being sunk left and right by German U-Boats of the torpedoes. ◊ Detailed dazzle-painting plans by Norman WIlkinson.

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THE ARSENAL OF

by interboro partners Though we’ve lived in a post-Fair Housing Act America more than four decades, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still ways for communities to be discriminatory. The way Brooklyn-based architecture firm Interboro Partners sees it, a housing discrimination exists still, through what they call the “Arsenal of Exclusion and Inclusion,” legal policies that may keep some people in, and keep others out. The policies can be subtle or the policies can be outrageous, as in the case of an ordinance in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, which mandates that only blood relatives can be rented to by owners of single-family homes, if they had become rentals after the disaster. But whether or not the policies are necessarily good or bad can be less than obvious, and in some cases, cause for good: Rainbow Vision, a New Mexico retirement community created for the LGBT community, has created a place for LGBT retirees that can’t be matched anywhere, with amenities like drag shows. Descriptions of these weapons are descibed in the following pages.

Animal Zoning Ordinance

Animals have a right to the city too! But most zoning ordinances prohibit animals of the farm variety, declaring them “inharmonious.” Inspired in part by the urban agriculture movement, new animal-friendly zoning ordinances such as the one passed by the Cleveland City Council in January, 2009 seek to overturn these restrictions.

the property value of homes in the community by regulating everything from paint colors to landscape materials to lawn ornaments. CC&Rs are often classist (they have restricted aluminum siding, barbecue grills, lawn ornaments, basketball hoops, and even American flags).

Annexation/Incorporation

While some cities in the southwest still annex territory, most of the American cities of the midwest and northeast have not expanded much further beyond their 1900s limits (New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis haven’t added territory since the nineteenth century). As Kenneth Jackson illustrates in Crabgrass Frontier, a combination of new laws that made incorporation easy and annexation unworkable, improved suburban services, a rising anti-urbanism that came to see the cities like New York as too big, foreign, and ungovernable, and an ensuing desire for home-rule effectively boxed big cities in. Without tax-revenue sharing, small municipalities — who still relied on the big cities for working, shopping, transportation, and entertainment—depleted the cities’ tax bases, and created the city/suburb divide that still plagues cities today.

Armrest

To deter the homeless from sleeping on park benches, decorative armrests are sometimes installed at the midpoint of the benches, making it impossible (or at least very difficult) to get too comfortable on them.

Dumbo, Brooklyn. Photo by Aaron Blazey.

Cul de Sac

A cul de sac is a “closed-end street,” which produces closure and discon-tinuity. Another name for the cul de sac is “dead end.” Inter-estingly, in 2009, Virginia became the first state to ban (or at least seriously limit) culs-de-sac from future least least developments.

Curfew

After Hurricane Katrina, the Council President of St. Bernard Parish introduced an ordinance mandating that owners of single-family homes that had not been rentals prior to Hurricane to blood relatives. As 93 percent of St. Bernard time of the storm, the target of the ordinance is pretty time clear.

Teen curfews are arbitrary and legally-murky.

Teen Curfews can be less arbitrary—for example, when Baltimore last year announced a teen but many teen curfews represent an unlawful imposition of martial law. Indianapolis recently over turned its curfew laws when it determined that they forcefully undermine adolescents’ first amendment rights. Nonetheless, teen curfews are being implemented in cities around the country.

CC&Rs

Fire Zone

Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (CC&Rs) are rules governing land use in private communities. Typically drafted by a Homeowners’ Association, or HOA, CC&Rs attempt to guard

In beach-front communities like New York City’s Rockaway, the streets that dead-end at the beach are sometimes declared “fire zones,” on which parking is prohibited (the houses on these streets all have driveways).

Blood

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Berlin, Germany. Photo by Amanda Buck.

Gate

Minimum Lot Size

The gates that guard gated communities offer one of the more obvious examples of how we keep out “undesirables.� Though statistically there is little evidence that gated communities are safer (or have higher home values) than non-gated communities, the perception that they are has led to more Americans living in them each year.

Minimum Lot Size regulations define the smallest lot size that a building can be built on. Minimum Lot Size is in the Arsenal of Exclusion because suburban municipalities use them to exclude affordable housing, public housing, and the poor, for whom building on large lots is not possible.

Housing Voucher

Greenmount Avenue between 33rd Street and Cold Spring Lane in Baltimore is a wall. On the east side, 85% of residents are black, 16% have a Bachelor degree, and the median income is $40,000. On the west side, 96% of residents are white, 75% have a Bachelor degree, and the median income is $75,000. Such rapid shifts in demographics are common in Baltimore, but this stretch of Greenmount Avenue is interesting for the physical devices that one side deploys to maintain a disconnect from the other. Of the eight streets that intersect Greenmount Avenue between 33rd Street and Cold Spring Lane, only one allows travel from east to west. Six of the streets are one-way pointing east (out of the wealthy, white side), and one of the streets thwarts westward movement with bollards.

The large-scale use of housing vouchers began in 1966, when Dorothy Gautreaux and 43,000 other Chicago public housing tenants sued the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for discrimination. This case eventually led to the Gautreaux Demonstration Project, where people were given vouchers to move from inner city public housing to private housing all over the Chicago metropolitan area, city and suburbs.

Today, housing vouchers are among the most progressive weapons in the Arsenal of Inclusion, as they give the poor access to low-poverty communities with good access to jobs, education, and health.

Inclusionary Zoning

Inclusionary Zoning requires developers to make a percentage of housing units in new residential developments available to low and moderateincome households.

One-Way Street

Racial Steering

Racial steering refers to the illegal practice whereby real estate brokers guide prospective homebuyers towards or away from certain neighborhoods based on their race.

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“Cities exist to bring people together, but cities can also keep people apart.”

DANIEL D’OCA, URBAN PLANNER

Regional Contribution Agreement

If, under an inclusionary zoning pro-vision, a developer is required to set aside a percentage of the units for affordable housing, the developer can, in some states, enter into an agreement with a separate municipality, and effectively pay it to build the units. These agreements are called Regional Contribution Agreements. They are dubious because forcing affordable housing away from wealthier housing discourages a mixture of areas and only serves to reinforce ghettoization.

Residential Parking Permit

Residential parking permits create restricted parking districts and exclude the larger public from specific areas. While Residential Parking Permits make sense in congested, residential areas next to universities, medical institutions, sports complexes or tourist attractions, they are often established and enforced in very low-traffic neighborhoods that have plenty of street parking available, especially wealthy ones that are next to poor ones.

School District

The stellar reputation of some public schools can segregate family households from non-family households, especially in urban areas. When a family is in a good district, the money mom and dad save not having to send kids to private school is tacked on to the cost of housing. This in turn re-

sults in a self-sorting: people who don’t have kids find that it is not worth their while to live in the district, and opt (or are forced) to live somewhere else where rent is cheaper.

Stoop

Functionally, the stoop provides formal access to the parlor-level floor of a brownstone, townhouse, or rowhouse. Stoops are in the Arsenal of Inclusion because they are semi-private spaces that have the qualities of openness and community, but also an unspoken boundary of ownership. In some neighborhoods, they promote interaction and communication among residents of a street or block.

Snowflake

Snowflake is an “Environmental Isolation” community in Arizona, where a group of people with debilitating sensitivities to certain chemicals live in about thirty homes on large, widely-spaced lots. Snowflake offers isolation and neutrality to individuals who would otherwise suffer from exposure to life-threatening ailments and diseases. Originally founded by two Mormons (last names: “Snow” and “Flake”), the community offers privacy and isolation for people unable to healthfully exist in other, more chemically saturated areas.

To learn more about Interboro Partners, check out their Web site: interboropartners.net. ◊

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Contribute a story by emailing history@periphery.org.

HISTORY & TODAY

"He who knows only his own generation remains always a child." – george norlin

HISTORY & TODAY

LADISLAV SUTNAR

BY STEVEN HELLER

Photo by Brandon King.

L

adislav Sutnar was a progenitor of the current practice of information graphics, the lighter of a torch that is carried today by Edward Tufte and Richard Saul Wurman, among others.

For a wide range of American businesses, Sutnar developed graphic systems that clarified vast amounts of complex information, transforming business data into digestible units. He was the man responsible for putting the parentheses around American telephone area-code numbers when they were first introduced.

The English author Anthony Trollope, who held a day job as a postal employee, is not remembered for “designing” the British postal box in 1852.

Likewise, Sutnar has not been credited for the American area code, which was so integral to the design of the new calling system that it was instantly adopted into the language. The functional typography and iconography the he developed as part of various design programs for the Bell System in the late 1950s and early '60s made public access to both emergency and

normal services considerably easier, while giving America’s telecommunications monopoly a distinctive graphic identity. Yet the Bell System denied him credit, considering graphic designers as transparent as the functional graphics they designed. Nonetheless, Sutnar’s unheralded contributions to information architecture remain milestones, not only of graphic design history but of design for the public good.

As impersonal as the area-code design might appear, the parentheses were actually among Sutnar’s signature devices, one of many he used to distinguish and highlight information.

Overshadowed by two contemporaries, El Lissitsky and Moholy-Nagy, Sutnar is a relatively unsung leader of Modern objective typography.

Yet he was a household name in Prague. “To be a Sutnar in Czechoslovakia was to be a prince,” recalls his younger son Radoslav Sutnar. As evidence of his father’s fame, a 1934 exhibition (which is still intact) entitled Ladislav Sutnar and the New Typography earned considerable praise.

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HISTORY & TODAY

SIGN PAINTERS

BY SAM GREENSPAN

Photoin byMankato, Brandon MN, King.ca. 1930. Courtesy of Sign Painters and Princeton Architectural Press.

Sign painter Chancey Curtis

T

here was a time when every street sign, every billboard, and every window display was painted by hand. This sounds unremarkable until you think about what that actually means.

Every single sign in existence was made by a sign artist with a paint kit and an arsenal of squirrelor camel-hair brushes. Some lived an itinerant lifestyle, traveling from town to town, knocking on the doors of local shops, asking if they could paint their signs.

And this was the way things were until as recently as the 1980s, when everything was upended by the vinyl plotter. Now, sign-making was faster, easier, and cheaper than ever before.

Moreover, vinyl signs didn’t require any skill to make. The resulting proliferation of computerdesigned, die-cut vinyl lettering and inkjet printers ushered a creeping sameness into our visual landscape. Fortunately, there is a growing

trend to seek out traditional sign painters and a renaissance in the trade.

In 2010 filmmakers Faythe Levine and Sam Macon began documenting these dedicated practitioners, their time-honored methods, and their appreciation for quality and craftsmanship.

Sign Painters, the first anecdotal history of the craft, features the stories of more than two dozen sign painters working in cities throughout the United States. The documentary and book profiles sign painters young and old, from the new vanguard working solo to collaborative shops such as San Francisco’s New Bohemia Signs and New York’s Colossal Media’s Sky High Murals.

Sign Painters, the book, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in November 2012, features a foreword by legendary artist (and former sign painter) Ed Ruscha. Buy a copy at your local book store or web shop.

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HISTORY & TODAY

All images courtesy of Sign Painters and Princeton Architectural Press.

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HISTORY & TODAY

HOW STREET FOOD BECAME HAUTE CUISINE

BY ROMAN MARS

F

rom food trucks to hot dog stands to county fair favorites, “street food” has enjoyed a rich and storied history in American cuisine. However, street food has been around for thousands of years.

In fact, street food is believed to have originated as far back as Ancient Rome. Only wealthy and middle-class urban dwellers could afford kitchens in their homes, so the urban poor had no way to prepare fresh, hot foods in their own dwellings.

Hence, street food arose as a way to fill this need.

It was the first “fast food” concept in existence, although ancient Romans probably weren't doling out chicken nuggets and French fries! However, it is believed that French fries actually did originate as street food in Paris, as did cotton candy at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 (although it used to be called “fairy floss”).

In fact, many of the beloved foods that we think of as classically American (hamburgers, ice cream, hot dogs, club sandwiches, peanut butter, and even iced tea) actually started out as street food and became popular staples thanks to festivals and fairs such as the World's Fair. These foods were simple to prepare in mass quantities and with limited space and resources, which made them ideal to feed hundreds and hundreds of hungry fair-goers.

In time, foods such as hamburgers and ice cream became more than just meals. They became part of American history and culture, touchstones that are almost immediately nostalgic and sentimental no matter how old you are or what part of the country you are from. That is the very essence of street food: it is more than just a hot dog, it is a unique sensory

experience that has the ability to tell you the story of a country's culture and give insight into how the people there really live.

That's why street food is always a good way for travelers to learn more about the city they are visiting. Whether it's a lobster roll in Cape Cod or elotés in Mexico, street food can often be a more enriching (and delicious) experience when compared to the typical tourist restaurants.

However, in recent years, street food has become more than just simple basics like fried fare and ice cream. Food trucks have taken over the nation in almost every major city, and they are offering everything from Middle-Eastern favorites to empanadas to meatballs to couture cupcakes.

Food trucks give creative entrepreneurs the ability to cook with freedom and make they love, meaning that they can create highly specialized meals without having the high overhead costs of running a restaurant. It also allows diners to eat out and enjoy new foods without at a lower cost and with more convenience. It's not just street food anymore--it's gourmet dining on the go.

Many restaurants are joining in on the street food trend as well. We took inspiration from street food and created a menu featuring street food from a variety of different areas of the world, including Thailand, Mexico, the Middle East, the U.S. and China. It's a way to enjoy street food and have a culinary tour without having to worry about using plastic silverware and without having to eat on a park bench. From Ancient Rome to fine dining, street food is a trend that's not going away any time soon!

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HISTORY & TODAY

Miaokou Night Market, Taiwan by Neil Wade.

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HISTORY & TODAY

TOP, LEFT TO RIGHT

BOTTOM, LEFT TO RIGHT

Banh Mi Sandwiches, Vietnam Serving with a smile, a Vietnamese vendor taps a colonial legacy to create an irresistible street cuisine, consumed for breakfast or lunch. .

Chicken Intestines, Philippines Filipino food vendors created this isaw manok, skewered chicken intestines that are first marinated and later grilled or deep fried.

Roasted Pigs, Cambodia Visitors needn’t speak Khmer in order to understand the menu of this street-side food stand in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Ceviche, Peru A cook prepares ceviche in the seaside town of Máncora, Peru by pickling and cooking a mix of raw fish and seafood with limes.

Shanghai Dumplings, China A Shanghai street vendor serves up a freshly fried helping of the city’s favorite snack—dumplings.

Noodles in Thailand A strainer full of noodles, fresh off an open fire, commands the total concentration of a cook in Bangkok's Chinatown.

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HISTORY & TODAY

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OBSERVATIONS

BUILT FOR...

Conjure an image in your mind of the stripes that divide the lanes of traffic going the same direction on a major highway. How long are the stripes and the spaces between them? You can spread your arms out to estimate if you want to.

Over the course of many years, a psychology researcher named Dennis Schafer at Ohio State asked students from many different parts of the country this question and the most common response was that the white stripes are two feet long.

Current federal highway administration guidelines actually suggest a length of 10 feet for the stripes with 30 feet between them. It’s all about perception.

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Photo by Allison Roche.

INSIDE PERIPHERY | ISSUE 1 | WINTER 2014

A STRETCH

Bradford Lee Gilbert designed the Tower Building, New York City’s first skyscraper. This is Gilbert’s story. ◊

By Nate Dimeo DABBAWALLAS

They pick up and deliver more than 350,000 home-cooked lunches to office workers every working day. How did this amazingly efficient delivery system develop from its start with one boy on a bicycle? ◊

By Meena Kadri

RAZZLE DAZZLE

The strategy of this high-difference camouflage was not about invisibility, but disruption and confusion. ◊

By Chelsea R. Behrens

ARSENAL OF EXCLUSION

We’ve lived in a post-Fair Housing Act America more than four decades, but there are still ways for communities to be discriminatory. ◊

By Interboro Partners