Jeff Byles

Remaking Gateway

Gateway National Recreation Area—a 26,000-acre landscape spanning three boroughs, two states, and an ungodly collection of airfield detritus, coastal defenses, and marshlands in varying states of decay—is like no national park you've ever seen. I'm proud to have played a role as consulting editor on a new book that looks at the park's past and possible futures. Gateway: Visions for an Urban National Park culminates a research and design initiative that re-envisioned the role of urban nature in the twenty-first century, and tells a powerful story about New York City as a complex cultural and ecological canvas.

Image credit: Laura McPhee

Visions of the Vanguard

My new history of modern design, co-written with Ann Ferebee, is out! We've been having a wonderful time sharing the story behind the icons of twentieth-century modernism, and tracing this lineage of high-spirited design innovation ahead to today's knock-out-brilliant architects, landscape architects, interior designers, product designers, and photographers. Thanks to The New York Times and Metropolis for great coverage of the book, and to 92YTribeca and The Skyscraper Museum for hosting two terrific programs. Come to the New York Public Library on August 24 for a third event featuring modern design history, looking at the global vanguard in Russia, Germany, and beyond that sparked the modern spirit. (Oh, and buy the book—a perfect back-to-school resource for the budding designer in your life!)

Image credit: Patricia Wall / Courtesy The New York Times

Modern Design Redux

 
Over the past year, I've been privileged to work on a new edition of a classic design history text by the urban historian and Institute for Urban Design founder Ann Ferebee. Due out this summer from W.W. Norton, the book's title sums it up pretty much definitively: A History of Design from the Victorian Era to the Present: A Survey of the Modern Style in Architecture, Interior Design, Industrial Design, Graphic Design, and Photography. Stay tuned for lectures, events, and the book launch celebrating more than a century of fast-moving modern design, from the Crystal Palace of 1851 to the epoch-defining iPhone.