I found out today that Richard Saul Wurman (creator of L.A.T.C.H., founder of the TED conferences, and renown information architect) is my alumni. He graduated from UPenn back in the late 50′s with a bachelor’s in architecture and a masters in architecture. Though we also share the same undergrad alma mater, I was more interested in his time at PennDesign since I was part of the MArch program before leaving it for CMU’s Interaction Design program. I thought Louis Kahn and Bob Venturi were the last of the “great ones” from Penn’s program and thought the school had lost its touch with a changing world. I don’t know what’s happening there now but Wurman is a pleasant surprise (despite the fact that he graduated in ’59).
I think of his work relevant in the context of a changing world for two reasons. At the personal level, his contribution to the discipline of Design is relevant today. At CMU, his work was one of the first that I was exposed to and helped me understand information in a different light. Secondly, one of his other projects is very interesting:
Supercities Study - http://192021.org
19.20.21 stands for “19” cities, “20” million people, in the “21st” century is a ”five-year study that will encompass all aspects of the phenomenon of supercities”. The study will cover comparative and statistical analysis of the world’s 19 major cities based on the following subjects: health, education, transportation, demographics, energy consumption, growth patterns, water sources, use and quality, waste management, economics and the cost of living, infrastructure, quality of life and standard of living indices, crime dynamics, calamity risk, culture and art.
Pretty interesting.