Described by Fortune magazine as an “intellectual hedonist” with a “hummingbird mind,” Richard Saul Wurman has always sought ways to make the complex clear. He has written, designed, and published 83 books on topics ranging from football to healthcare to city guides, but he likes to say that they all spring from the same place—his ignorance.
Wurman’s first book, published when he was 26, features models of 50 world cities on a uniform scale. His latest book is called 33: Understanding Change & the Change in Understanding. It chronicles the adventures and musings of an eccentric (yet oddly familiar) character: the Commissioner of Curiosity and Imagination.
Wurman created the ACCESS city guides, using graphics and logical editorial organization to make places such as New York, Tokyo, and Rome understandable to visitors. Other volumes he created focus on topics such as baseball, football, and the 1984 Olympics. His road atlases employed similar techniques to elucidate U.S. geography and transportation networks. Several of his books are in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Wurman chaired the IDCA Conference in 1972, the First Federal Design assembly in 1973, and the annual AIA Conference in 1976. He is perhaps best known for having created the TED conference in 1984, bringing together many of America’s clearest thinkers in the fields of technology, entertainment, and design. He also created the TEDMED conference in 1995 and the eg conference in 2006.
Now in his 76th year, Wurman continues to quell his restless intellect with a slough of new projects. Planned for September, 2012, the WWW.WWW conference will be a gathering of the world’s greatest minds in improvised conversation about the complexity of emerging patterns on our planet.
Wurman received both his M.Arch. and B.Arch. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1959 with the highest honors and was awarded the Aurthur Spayed Brooks Gold Medal and two graduate fellowships. He has been awarded three honorary doctorates, two Graham Fellowships, and numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Wurman lives in Newport, Rhode Island, with his wife, novelist Gloria Nagy, and their three biblically named yellow labs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
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Design Books to Win, December 18, 2014: Winners of Five Books by Pentagram Designers Announced
The winners of five books designed by Pentagram have been announced. The three winners are Joy Weeeng, Tyler Wilson, and Tim Zissou — congratulations!
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Our new giveaways begin again in 2015. Happy Holidays!
New Book Release, December 31, 2014: What If...?: The Architecture and Design of David Rockwell
Widely admired for his sophistication, creativity and exuberance, David Rockwell is one of the leading architects, interiors architects, and set designers working today. For over 30 years, he has explored his desire to imagine new worlds, to tell stories and to engage with others. This interest is rooted in his sense of play and possibility—an endless curiosity that continually drives him to ask, “What if?”
Edited by Chee Pearlman; texts by David Rockwell, et al.
Published by Metropolis Books
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New Book Release, February 2, 2015: The Modern Architecture Symposia, 1962–1966: A Critical Edition
In a series of three symposia at Columbia University in the 1960s, leading scholars and critics gathered to re-examine the architecture of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s and assess its scope and significance anew. Chaired by Henry-Russell Hitchcock with the support of Philip Johnson, the Modern Architecture Symposia marked a pivotal moment in the reappraisal of early modern architecture and its historiography during the late modern period.
Edited by Rosemarie Haag Bletter and Joan Ockman, with Nancy Ecklund Later
Published by The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture; distributed by Yale University Press
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New Book Release, February 9, 2015: Reproducing Scholten & Baijings
The first book on the work of the Amsterdam-based studio Scholten & Baijings, which has become renowned for its sensitive and subtle yet functional products—from ceramics and silverware to textiles and even a concept car.
By Louise Schouwenberg
Published by Phaidon Press
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New Book Release, August 25, 2014: Hello, I am Erik
A visual biography of graphic designer Erik Spiekermann that explores Spiekermann’s over 30-year career and body of work.
Johannes Erler, editor
Published by Gestalten
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New Book Release, September 16, 2014: Designing Here/Now
An ambitious global compendium of the most thoughtful and innovative design objects (over 500) invented or produced in the past five years, compiled by experts at the online industrial design magazine Core 77.
Edited by Allan Chochinov and Eric Ludlum
Published by Thames & Hudson
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