Hello And Welcome To The Second Day Of Grindmas!
(If you missed the first day of Grindmas, you can find it here.)
Do you remember websites? Not platforms like Twitter or TikTok, or big media outlets like CNN or The New York Times. Not apps either. Just websites: run by an individual or small team, oriented around a specific topic or theme, catering to a specific audience. Remember those?
I remember them, and these days I miss them very badly. As much as I love hanging out on Twitter, I would be happy if we all spent a bit less time on the same few platforms and a bit more time exploring the wonders of the world wide web. In that spirit, here are eleven websites I think you might enjoy. It’s Friday afternoon—if you hit “pause” on your main grind and click around for a bit, I won’t tell anyone.
Let’s Get Started.
Internet Archive
I think a lot of people are introduced to archive.org via the Wayback Machine: input a url and browse through previous iterations of your favorite websites through a series of archived captures. Less well-known but just as valuable are the archives huge collections of media of all sorts, including many pre-digital sources.
Want to check out old instruction and maintenance manuals for almost any product you can think of? Internet Archive has it. You want several thousand MS-DOS games playable right in your web browser? Internet Archive has it. Millions upon millions of hours of live concert audio, free for your listening pleasure? It’s on the Archive.
Next time you’re on the hunt for a particular book, video, or other resource, check the Archive. Even if you don’t find exactly what you’re looking for, chances are you’ll come across something new and interesting.
Practical Typography
Who among us has not stayed up way past our bedtime tinkering with the fonts in our portfolio, slowly losing track of what “good” typography even means? We want our drawings and documents to be clean, professional, and hip, ideally without reinventing the wheel. Enter Matthew Butterick’s Practical Typography.
Formatted as an online ebook with an incredibly clean and straightforward reading interface, the text provides a thorough introduction to working with typefaces in a number of contexts. Butterick’s background is in the legal profession, so his recommendations point always toward clarity and simplicity rather than expressive dynamism. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)
Consider dipping your toe in with the Typography in ten minutes page or this list of recommendations for getting the most out of the fonts that come pre-installed on your computer.
Bartosz Ciechanowski
Bartosz Ciechanowski is a software developer with a penchant for breaking down complex phenomena into simple terms. Each post features interactive visualizations to explain the topic at hand. Sliders and buttons galore.
Some of the posts are a bit more math- and physics-heavy, as required by the subject matter, but the concepts are introduced slowly and clearly. A few recommendations of particular interest to anyone who works with complex forms and rendering tools:
What is Code?
Continuing the theme of interactive explainers, check out this in-depth article on code—not the building kind, but the computer kind. The article, which originally appeared as a full issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, is long but not boring or tedious in the slightest. Paul Ford breaks down the bits and bytes of how computers do what we want them to do and some of the factors and constraints inherent in any conversation about programming.1
I could hype it up more, but really it’s best if you just dive in. You won’t come out the other side a computer wizard, but you’ll almost certainly learn something new and strengthen your bullshit meter for the next time a Silicon Valley type promises they have the silver bullet for some age-old problem.
Public Domain Review
Now let’s step back in time a bit. Have you seen the Public Domain Review? Each entry highlights a work of art or historical curiosity that exists in the public domain. Some entries are brief photo excerpts with links to full collections. Others are more researched historical essays lavishly illustrated with imagery from various archives embedded.
Have a click through the architecture tag and see what strikes your fancy, or consider this more experimental piece published just yesterday about Thomas Edison’s patent for a cast-in-place concrete house.
The Serving Library
For eleven years, the Serving Library has been collecting stuff. The stuff in question is largely drawn from the art and design world, but beyond that broad category the content is all over the map. Expect lots of philosophical diversions, mathematical twists and turns, and self-referential explorations of form. (If you were the David Foster Wallace or Italo Calvino superfan in your friend group, this site is for you.)
Two great entry points are listed below, but I really think the best route its to just scroll through and click on a thumbnail that seems interesting.
Angie Keefer on Ludwig Wittgenstein and arts education
Jocelyn Penny Small on the limits of linear perspective
Atlas of Places
The rest of this list of links will be a slow convergence onto architecture-specific websites, and the Atlas of Places is a great transition from the general to specific. Edited by architect and cartographer Thomas Paturet, the Atlas is an ever-evolving collection of visual art, architecture, theory, and cartography.
Visitors can engage thoughtfully with carefully-documented projects or just browse through breathtaking images. Every time I return to the site it seems to have double the content, without ever sacrificing quality. Pretty neat!
Divisare
Speaking of atlases, I love the Atlas of Architecture organized on the site Divisare. In content and function, the site isn’t too far removed from what you’d find on a Dezeen or ArchDaily, though with less of a focus on clickbait and advertising.
Thanks to a very thorough tagging system, visitors to the site can filter through the huge collection of projects to a surprising level of specificity. Start with something simple like Architectural Models or Tea Houses and then go wild with some of the more unusual groupings like Imaginary Landscapes and Labyrinths.
RNDRD
Fans of unconventional visualization techniques should absolutely check out RNDRD, which describes itself as “a partial index of published architectural rendering.” The images are all scanned from twentieth-century architecture publications, including many projects that aren’t well-represented in other online venues.
It’s been a while since the site has been updated, but the content eye-catching, astonishing, and timeless. Check it out.
Dimensions.com
Quick: how big is a Queen-sized bed? What about an Eames lounger? And a 1998 Jeep Wrangler? Where do you go if you need dimensions and CAD blocks for all three? Dimensions.com is where.
Dimensions maintains an astonishingly large database of furniture, fixtures, layouts, vehicles, scale figures, and more all available to download. A paid tier (approx. $5 USD / mo.) includes access to even more features, as well as 3D models of many files.
The content is enormously useful for day-to-day design work and populating drawings. It’s also enormously useful for the less day-to-day things, like when you need to compare the size of LOTR characters with various crustaceans.
Failed Architecture
Last but by no means least, I want to highlight the amazing work of the whole team at Failed Architecture, some of whom I’m blessed to call collaborators and friends. FA collects conversations around our discipline in a number of formats—primarily text but also podcasts and video streams.
The work is clever, incisive, and educational without ever feeling pedantic. Polemical when it needs to be, fun wherever possible, and always thoughtful. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
I want to give a special shoutout to two pieces near and dear to my heart: Matthew Lloyd Roberts on the inconsistencies of the “traditional architecture” online fandom and Marisa Cortright on the myth of architecture being a “calling.” Both are well worth a click!
Gosh that’s a lot of websites. Consider adding some to your bookmarks tab to revisit later and have a great afternoon.
Grindmas will resume tomorrow, with ten new things to check out. Hope to see you there!
—THA
Once again, not the building kind but the computer kind.