Richard Saul Wurman

There have been five moments in my life that were akin to having the switch turned on in a dark room. I will list these five and then expand upon the first, which allowed for the rest to occur.

1. Reading The Thinking Eye and The Nature of Nature (then published by George Wittenborn). Klee’s writings confirmed or awakened what I already knew: there exists a systemic reason or basis for visual language, color, line, area, intensity, and repetition; and the boundaries between painting, illustration, narrative, and language are blurred.

2. Lou Kahn gave me permission to be more of myself and embrace a land called “Zero”—emptiness as a place of beginning.

3. Schuyler van Rensselaer Cammann, Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, allowed me to discover, at age 19, that, “Yes, Virginia, there is another half of the world.”

4. Charlie Eames allowed me to secretly dance and fall in love with curiosity.

5. After meeting Dave Gallo and Billy Lange, I sensed the vastness, intrigue, mystery, and splendor of that 72 percent of the Earth’s surface that before I had only ridden on top of.

So, back to number 1, which was an epiphanic embrace and personal journey of understanding that came not from big words and handbooks, but awakened, codified, and induced a journey of explaining things to myself, within myself, and in a manner that was myself.

Perhaps my only strong suit is the unfiltered conversation between my eyes and the three pounds of jelly above them—my brain. It is my home for patterns, threads of connections, maps, memory, and wit.