Biolite makes cool stuff. If you aren't already a card-carrying believer, you might remember them for their portable wood-powered cook stoves that also generate electricity. Originally aimed at increasing burn efficiency and reducing emissions in cook stoves (smoke inhalation is still the second most common cause of death around the world), the stoves they came up with were also just cool. The People spoke, and the fuel efficient, thermoelectric equipped, fan-powered, USB-charging stoves are now available both for indoor home use around the world, and as a camp stove for outdoor gear junkies.

People love these things, but they weren't satisfied. They craved more. More burgers that is. Biolite has been hit with requests for a larger portable stove since the get-go, and their current Kickstarter campaign is going to make it happen. The Basecamp is a sweet portable grill that builds on the earlier Biolite design successes and ramps them up. The power pack now puts out 5w and can store power, and they've added a "smart dash" so you can monitor the stove's heat and power output. With the increased size they added a lever to concentrate heat for a more efficient boil, and the fuel port is large and supportive enough for longer pieces of wood. Most crucially, you can fit eight burgers on this thing! That's just an estimate, since average burger size varies by region and gluttonousness, but a promising one. Ask anyone who's ever taken their tiny camp stove on a group trip: sometimes bigger is just better.

At just over halfway through their funding period, they've already met their goal 11 times over, and they just set a stretch goal that will put another crowd-chosen accessory into development. If you're an outdooring foodie you should pony up now while there are still sweet offers available. Get a USB powered LED light, so you can see how bad you're scorching your weenies in the dark! But wait, there's more: buy now and get a special edition djembe cover/protective carrying case! In all seriousness, these things are well-designed, super-efficient and fun to use. If I get one I might not make it out of basecamp.

None of you clicked onto Core77 today to read about impacted fecal matter, but design touches all aspects of our lives, including the gross ones. Don't worry, and don't put that sandwich down yet; I'm not going to dwell on the scatological. I am writing this entry out of amazement that some people do not understand the ingenious design of plungers and how they are meant to be used.

It's bad enough that this lack of understanding exists among consumers, but I find it unforgivable for product designers. When designers fail to understand the very devices they're designing for, it becomes what we call Epic Fail. First off, look at this design and see if you understand why it is flawed:

You either know right away why the design is fundamentally incorrect, or you don't. Read on.

A dishwashing machine is a luxury this blogger can't afford, but I've used these miracle machines at friends' houses. They are amazing and I've always wondered exactly what was going on inside after you close that door and hit "Start."

Well, thanks to GoPro and YouTube, now there's video:

YouTube user Bito wasn't the first to stick a GoPro inside a dishwasher, but he was the first to do it while lighting the interior properly for visual clarity. My first thought was, holy cow, how much water does this thing use? Washing dishes by hand has to consume less water, no?

AGAM designs and manufactures an Aluminum Modular System primarily for the exhibit and display industries. Their continued success for over 30 years allows them to effectively pursue innovative new concepts and products while consistently providing excellent service to their loyal customers. AGAM houses state-of-the-art machinery and equipment which means they can bring state of the art designs to market quickly.

They are seeking an enthusiastic, talented, well-organized individual with the ability to generate original concepts. As the next Junior Industrial Designer, you will interface with project coordinators and clients to engineer creative design solutions for display environments utilizing our aluminum system. This is the perfect opportunity to join a grow with an established company and make an immediate contribution. Apply Now.

By Mathieu Turpault, Director of Design at Bresslergroup

As technology evolves, designers are focused more on multisensory design. We're enthusiastic about its potential—but as with anything novel and compelling, there's a tendency for the pendulum to swing too far.

Too many early attempts at designing multisensory products tend to maximize for all or most senses without any consideration of context or of how the different senses relate to each other when people are processing information. (We get it—we had the same tendency of maximizing for all the senses when we first started.) While this is fine as an experiment, it's not appropriate as a product design methodology.

As we've dipped more into multisensory design, we've surveyed the breadth of relevant research being done (and that has already been done) in psychology and human factors. We've compiled a summary of it in our post, Psych for Product Designers: Research To Inform Multisensory Design.

This research has demonstrated that the most effective experiences are designed for perception and not for individual senses. This means that experiences and perceptions are contextual, and sensory research and analysis needs to pass through product designers' user research techniques and methodologies before ending up as product features.

With this in mind, we've created some user research approaches for designers seeking to achieve the right mix of multisensory features:

1. Observe the environment.

Take note with all your senses of the environment and whether aspects of it might obscure sensory cues. We designed a medical product a few years ago for which we optimized for both tactile and audible feedback. It turned out the typical user (a surgeon) often blasts music in the operating room, making the audible feedback pretty meaningless.

Organizers Tim Hwang & Xiaowei Wang

By Ben Valentine

"Infrastructure is a text we can read about ourselves." Nikola Twilley of Edible Geography and Studio-X NYC said during the final remarks of MacroCity, the new Bay Area conference dedicated to exploring the infrastructure critical to supporting much of our urban way of life. Noting the complex and rarely examined "cold chain," a climate-controlled supply ecosystem for food, Twilley sadly reflects, "we've built an entire artificial winter just as we're melting the arctic."

Although not overtly political or environmental in nature, MacroCity was very much about exposing the hidden flaws and needs of our cities. Organized by Xiaowei Wang and Tim Hwang as part of The Bay Area Infrastructure Observatory, MacroCity was founded on the premise that "urban dwellers are often only dimly aware of the numerous, enmeshed layers of critical infrastructure that quietly hum in the background to make modern life possible."

The dangers of these vital infrastructures being too illegible to the average person was palpable throughout the entire two days of guided tours, lectures, and panels. Our highways, waterways, cooling systems, surveillance systems, and more are the main arteries of our society, yet few understand or can even spot them.

The conference kicked off with field trips—attendees signed up for one of the seven options—throughout the Bay Area on Friday, May 30. Since I live in Downtown Oakland and happen to be interested in surveillance, I chose DEMILIT's Surveillance History Walk through downtown Oakland. The walk started at Latham Square, the site of the 1946 Labor Strikes, which has remained an epicenter of infrastructural and surveillance power in Oakland ever since.

Across the street in the Rotunda building is an office of the Department of Homeland Security; Science Applications International Corporation, the fourth largest private defense contractor responsible for making drones, weapons, and surveillance equipment, has a large office just down the street; and the FBI's largest office in Northern California is just north; and the list goes on.

Interestingly, Latham Square is where Telegraph Avenue—named after the telegraph lines laid under it in 1859—ends. What feels like a very distant history remains preserved and reconstituted in the huge telecom hotel owned by AT&T just across the street. What was once telegraph lines over 150 years ago happened to make an ideal site to later lay phone lines, and now is also a wireless tower. This is just one example of how infrastructure design is dictated by key decisions throughout history: It becomes very hard for designers to really reinvent a system, even if the original plans were based on a very different world.

In just over two weeks, a very interesting group of people will gather in Brooklyn to talk about what they do best in life: solve problems and generate transformative ideas for our benefit. Perhaps you've seen the line up of speakers for the Core77 Conference, but have you checked out the schedule yet? If not, here's a quick summary of what you'll get when you register for this June 19th, one-day event in the best borough of New York City. Get your tickets now so you don't miss out.

8:30am - When You Arrive and First Block of Presenters

Yes, it's early, but don't worry. We have coffee and snacks on deck to perk you up for the day. While you're settling in, shaking hands and getting to know your fellow conference-goers, Stuart Constantine, Co-founder of Core77, will welcome everyone with some opening remarks about the day. He'll then open the floor for our first presenter, Dong-Ping Wong of Family and +POOL. His work installing a floating, water-filtering swimming pool in the East River, which is also the world's largest crowd-funded civic project, should inspire you to consider what kind of "rad shit" you could accomplish where no one asked you to.

Following Wong, Jordan Brandt, Technology Futurist at Autodesk, will present on what cloud-based data can teach us about teaching machines to design, which may lead you to examine your own learning process. Carla Diana, author of Leo the Maker Prince, is up next to share her theory about the meaningful stories that usher new technologies into existence by presenting them in a human context. The break that follows will give you a chance to discuss these presentations with fellow attendees and the presenters themselves.

11:15am - Second Block of Presenters

If you're a cyclist or just admire the bicycle as an enduring example of successful design, the day's first panel, Cult of Bike, is for you. Moderated by Core77's own Ray Hu, panelists Michel Dallaire, Ethan Frier and Edward Albert, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Hofstra University, will discuss how the humble bicycle influenced the urban landscape, personal expression and, of course, personal travel. Michael DiTullo, Chief Design Officer of Sound United, and Heather Flemming, CEO of Catapult Design, round out the second block of presenters with their presentations on creating and implementing a design strategy in the marketplace, and carving a role for design in the global development, respectively. These talks will leave you motivated to work smarter for the greater good.

12:45pm - Lunch & Core77 Design Awards Announcements

While you're eating lunch and chatting with everyone about your favorite bike story or what you found most inspiring about the morning, we'll announce the winners of the Consumer Product category from the Core77 Design Awards program. Jury captain Johan Liden, along with jurors Brett Tom, Josh Morenstein, Isabelle Olsson and Wyatt Cline will be there to announce the winners, the runners up and the notable submissions in the category.

When last we looked in on Dyson, it was to show you their UK proving grounds in Malmesbury. We only got to see half of the R&D facility, namely, the testing area where they abuse the products that are going to market; but what's going on in the other half, in the skunkworks? Dyson spends a staggering £3 million on research a week—that's £428,571 per day, about US $718,000—an amount that they're planning on doubling. And now, for the first time, they're revealing some of their research projects that never made it to market.

Interestingly enough, one of the first projects they're revealing was started just four years after the company launched their first vacuum cleaner in 1993. In 1997, Dyson began looking around for other nails that could be driven by the hammer of their cyclonic filtration technology. The resultant research project was code-named the X007, known internally as the Diesel Trap:

This is the latest installment of our Core77 Questionnaire. Previously, we talked to Leon Ransmeier.

Name: Giulio Cappellini

Occupation: I'm an architect and the art director of Cappellini.

Location: Milan

Current projects: I'm working on some new products for Cappellini, and also on two new showrooms for the company—one in Rome and the other in London.

Mission: I always say that my mission is to try to make people dream. That means that we try to do products that are good and nice and useful for others—but I think that really we have to work a lot on beauty, because nobody needs useful but horrible products. So I think that the most important thing in my mission is to try to make people smiling and dreaming.

The Peg sofa and table by Nendo are two of several new furnishings launched by Cappellini during last April's Salone Milan

Jasper Morrison's Elan sofa system was first released in 1999. Cappellini has now expanded the range for its 15th anniversary.

When did you decide to pursue a career in design? Since I was a kid. I think it started when I was six or seven years old, playing with Legos and making small drawings of architectural buildings or furniture. So, really, this passion started when I was very small.

Education: I studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, and during university I had the opportunity to work for one year in Gio Ponti's studio, which was a fantastic experience. I always say that one year with Gio Ponti was worth five years at the university. Then, after the Politecnico, I studied marketing at Bocconi University in Milan for one year.

First design job: When I entered the Cappellini company, it was a very small company, not working on design, just producing furniture. So I started by asking Rodolfo Dordoni to design some products for us, and I also began to take care of the art direction for the company.

Who is your design hero? Definitely Ray and Charles Eames, because when I see the Eames products after 50 or 60 years, they are still so contemporary and so beautiful. Also, when I look at the Eames house and studio—today, people like to mix different products and different styles, with different designs by different people, and really the Eameses started to do this 50 years ago, mixing traditional and contemporary design products. This idea of freedom was for me very, very strong.

This year, Cappellini began producing Shiro Kuramata's Steel Pipe Drink Trolley, designed in 1968.

For some reason, tea manufacturers seem keen on the idea that thoughtfully worded phrases of motivation are the cherry on top of our drinking experience. Maybe there's hope in the idea of the tiny, squares of paper inspiration that physically keep our tea bags grounded have some sort of psychological correlation to the mantras we use to get through the day. (Whew, deep.) I'd much rather see a rad use of packaging materials than some sweet sentiment that I look forward to tossing out. So I'm all for BOH's clever use of the steeping process with their Chamomile tea bags.

Using edible tea ink, the brand created an eye-catching tea bag with a clear "before and after." Pre-water, the tea bags feature a silhouette of shapes and animals that are anything but relaxing: a grimacing grizzly, a taloned bird, lightening projecting from a storm cloud and more. Give the bag a dip, let it steep for a bit and the silhouettes soften, the grizzly's face turning into a smile, a song bird appears in lieu of its predatory predecessor and the lightening dissolves. The ad agency behind the packaging concept M&C Saatchi, is focused more on marketing solutions, with the interactive design being a bonus—which is why this video makes sense (not to mention it's a good excuse to see the bags in action):

Seed Scientific is about solving big problems with Big Data. They leverage Big Data to craft solutions, fuel innovation, and improve decision-making for clients around the world in the commercial, public, and social sectors -- like GE, the United Nations, and the Government of Canada. They are looking for talented and passionate design technologists who love hard challenges and want to apply - at least a portion of - their expertise to making a difference on social and humanitarian issues. Want in?

As a member of Seed Scientific's design team, you will apply your creativity and technical skills to design, build and deploy custom, data-driven tools that help solve complex human-scale problems. To land this job, you'll need a solid design and data visualization portfolio and a passion for data visualization and are on top of current thinking and trends. If you are curious, love learning new technologies and testing new ideas, Apply Now.

About one year ago, I was giving a talk to students who were about to graduate from the various design schools in Copenhagen. After I finished, I leaned back in a chair located rather close to the door (and close to the drinks and snack section...) when I caught myself staring at a bag. It captivated me to the extent that everything around me disappeared, and the only thing left was the bag and me. Once I snapped out of it, I went up to the person holding the bag as to ask him where he had bought it. To my great despair, it turned out he had made it himself, and he was holding the only sample. The Man with The Bag turned out not just to have a great eye for design, but to also have a great and intricate mind, and his name is Brian Frandsen

Core77: Tell us a bit about your background. How did you end up in the field of design?

Brian Frandsen: I was not supposed to study design to begin with, I never thought I would do anything like this. It sort of just happened. I've always been a bit of a book nerd— I live very much in my head. I've always loved school, mathematics and humanistic studies, so I thought I was going to study Danish, rhetoric, philosophy, political science or something along that line.

After high school, I was lucky enough to get a job in quality control for a Danish mainstream clothing brand at their office in Hong Kong. I spent half a year there, with my partner at that time, and while I was there it hit me how disgusting the fashion industry really was.

My boss would find something she liked, draw it in Illustrator and send it off to the factory in China. After we got the sample and established the price of the product, they took away a few details to make it cheaper to produce and sent it back to the factory. The entire fashion and design mechanism was without feeling, without heart. I felt offended by the way it worked, yet at the same time it fascinated me.

I lived in Hong Kong for a while—just as with the fashion industry, I had contradicting feelings for the city itself. I loved it and hated it at the very same time. It's the most constructed place I have ever been. It feels like nothing in Hong Kong is natural, everything is man-made, everything has its place, and all of the buildings are built in a specific way. But at the same time, when you walk around and truly look you can see how the traditional Chinese culture is creating its own space in the cracks of the perfect façade. It grows like weed out of the asphalt. These perfect glass buildings and the uncontrollable growth that is happening in between theses buildings ignited something within me that changed me on a fundamental level.

After I got back, I still thought I was going to go to Copenhagen to study and get a serious degree in one of the rather academic fields. I don't know if they have it in other countries as well but in Denmark, universities have something they called Open House where you can visit the uni's and check out all of the courses available. I visited all of the ones I could think of, but in the evening, only Copenhagen design school was open so I went there just to see what they had to offer, and I was hooked. There was something about it, the same thing that had fascinated me with China, that was man-made and then the other side, the one that you could not control. That you should put yourself in the space between what the logic tells you and what your intuition tells you. That's where I wanted to be.

Another important factor in my decision to go to design school was a reform that resulted in a more theory-driven education. After that I went home, did some research and found out that there is only two design schools in Denmark: The Design School of Copenhagen and Design School Kolding. I visited Kolding and realized it was time for me to choose between a life (in Copenhagen) or a superior (to me, at least) education (in Kolding). I went for the latter. I applied the same year, and I actually didn't expect to get in that same year, but to my great surprise I did. So that was how I got into design.

British air carrier Monarch Airlines is kitting out their planes with seats fit for a king. Which is to say, the seats have something in common with thrones: They don't recline. Additionally, these new "ergonomic" seats also feature a nice, gaping cavity for you to stare at in place of in-flight entertainment. "The airline's new seat design also includes an innovative tablet holder for the technology savvy holidaymaker, an aviation first," the company enthuses. "[This] enables our customers to create their own personal in-flight entertainment system."

Admittedly they are not pioneers in this area, as Ryanair has been making people less comfortable since the early 2000s. And the motivation behind the non-reclining seats is, sadly, quite logical. Some 60% of flight attendants reportedly favor non-reclining seats, saving them from takeoff and landing nagging duty. Passengers hate when others recline into their own personal space. But primarily, of course, it's about money: Less hardware makes the seats lighter, which saves on fuel.

Assuming the airline industry continues to march in this budgetary direction, here are our predictions for:

Top Ten Airline Cost-Cutting Measures Coming Your Way

10. "In the event of a cabin depressurization, please place the drop-down orange mask over your face. Note that the plastic bag will not inflate, because, frankly, it isn't hooked up to anything."

9. "For our First and Business Class customers, today's in-flight meal service will consist of sandwiches made and brought from home by the passengers in Economy Class. We ask our Economy Class passengers to please start passing those sandwiches forward at this time."

8. "For today's in-flight entertainment, we invite the passengers seated in rows 35 through 45 to collaborate on a Talent Show to put on for the rest of the passengers. And by 'invite' we mean it's mandatory...Yes, that means you, grandma with the bum leg, and you, 'guy who doesn't speak English....'"

7. "To save on costly standardized uniforms, today our flight attendants are wearing outfits purchased from a costume business closeout. Today's flight attendants are Miranda, the one dressed like a giant squirrel; Marcus, who is dressed like the Statue of Liberty; Chelsea, in the 'Sexy Nurse' costume; and Bryan, who is inexplicably dressed like Batman but wearing Superman's red cape and Hello Kitty's head...Bryan, please do take that giant head off, you're frightening the children in Coach—I mean, Economy."

6. "This plane is not equipped with bathrooms, but there is a complimentary bedpan underneath your seat, which doubles as a flotation device. Unless you've filled it, in which case it will not float. And you will drown."

Former banker Jay Dweck enjoys swimming, collecting violins and being rich. After earning his fortune on the Street, the former Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley exec decided to splash out on a pool that would combine these passions.

Dweck contacted award-winning landscape architecture and masonry firm Cipriano Landscape Design, a New-Jersey-based outfit that recently added custom-designed swimming pools to their repertoire. The "exact replica in scale of a 1700s era Stradivarius violin with all of its detail and intricacies" that they came up with, in accordance with Dweck's wishes, is just nuts; the firm describes it as "one of the most complex pool designs and installations within the whole design and build industry."

First off, look at the amount of detail and AutoCADding that went into just the tiles, which are translucent glass and number nearly 500,000:

Stephen Fry, in bacteria form

Fan art is one thing, but bacteria-cultivated portraits capturing the faces of the world's most well-known? That's straight-up dedication—not to mention innovation. Microbiologist-turned-artist Zachary Copfer has devised a way to induce bacteria growth in predicted patterns to form some familiar faces.

See if you can match the bacteria to the celebrity—you can see if you're correct here.

By exposing specified sections of microscopic organisms to radiation, Copfer is able to create temporary halftone portraits in Petri dishes and other scientific vessels. In some instances, like Stephen Fry's, the image is made up of bacteria that invaded the subject's body in real life.

Think that pure white, organic cotton tee shirt is environmentally friendly? Hm, most likely not. People might jump to the bleaching chemicals and yes, those are toxic and can be polluting. But another problem is the huge amounts of energy required to bleach out the natural color of cotton. But a new study, published this week in the Journal of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Resarch, has a solution.

Currently the cotton industry requires bleaching the natural cotton fiber with hydrogen peroxide at extremely high temperatures. We've grown to love bright whites but this process compromises the quality of the cotton material. And when we realize that there are 7.3 billion pounds of cotton produced in just the U.S. this process uses too much energy for it to be sustainable.

Sometimes a manufacturer pulls the sheets off of a hotly-anticipated concept car, like Volkswagen did with their GTI Roadster Vision, and the crowd gasps. Other times, they yank the sheets off and you hear silence. Dead silence. Then mournful, declining trumpet notes.

We will leave it up to you to decide which category the following falls in.

We were excited when Ben Bowlby developed his crazy-looking Deltawing racecar design, a bad-ass piece of Batmobilery:

Well, DeltaWing Technologies, the company that owns the design, has released a "design study" attempting to adapt it to a roadgoing consumer version. Here's the rendering:

Gator Cases is a fast paced, growing company that designs and manufactures cases and stands for the Music, Pro Audio, Audio Visual, Aviation, Firearms, and other Industrial markets; with products in over 2,500 retailers in the USA and distribution in 70+ countries around the world. They are a fun-loving, award-winning group that is looking to add a junior level individual to join their New Product Development team as a Design Engineer.

The ideal person will realize industrial design concepts specifically in the areas of hard plastic cases and fabric bags, including material selection and fabrication methods, including secondary operations and decoration technology. Additionally, the Product Designer would support marketing efforts with the creation of photorealistic CAD renderings for use in the product catalog. If you have a successful track record designing highly cosmetic and densely integrated mobile products, Apply Now.

A before (left) and after (right) look at one "robot" fresh from the oven.

You may remember tuning into the self-assembling cube set called M-Blocks that made its way out of MIT last year. Here's a quick refresher: The modular robots had the ability to change their geometry based on the task at hand with help from an internal flywheel, magnet power and commands transmitted via computer over a wi-fi connection—which made for a hands-free, mechanical dance of sorts, much to the excitement of the Internet at large. Now, another group from MIT—the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)—has introduced a new mechanical must-see in a similar self-assembling form. This time, the magic happens when you heat things up.

The CSAIL crew introduced their most recent work on bakeable robots at last weekend's IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Hong Kong. The research incorporates printed robot parts that morph 3D components once they reach a certain temperature. The scale might be small for now, but it gives us a great way to rediscover robotics with a rejuvenated childlike appeal, in an odd Easy Bake Oven kind of way.

The video MIT has released is short, sweet and only hints at the possibilities, starting with the basic shapes such as perfect coils and formations. Check it out:

Thankfully, the research team behind this discovery (led by Daniela Rus, MIT's Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and CSAIL director), gives us a little more insight into the work with two papers on the project:

One paper describes a system that takes a digital specification of a 3D shape—such as a computer-aided design or CAD file—and generates the 2D patterns that would enable a piece of plastic to reproduce it through self-folding. The other paper explains how to build electrical components from self-folding laser-cut materials. The researchers present designs for resistors, inductors and capacitors, as well as sensors and actuators—the electromechanical "muscles" that enable robots' movements.

I'd declared it in so many words in the Editor's Note to the inaugural issue of the C77 Design Daily, but I must admit I was expressly thinking of the Kara Walker installation at the Domino Sugar Factory when I wrote the first sentences of that short text:

We live in an age of spectacle, and so too does it seem like reality is more spectacular than ever before. Between the endless airspace of social media and the inconceivably powerful devices we carry along with our pocket change, we are all but expected to express ourselves at every turn—who can fault us for indulging in the collective narcissism? Instagrammability is an unspoken criteria for the barrage of phenomena that surround us, and product, furniture and exhibition design are among the many things that will be captured, filtered and liked by thousands of eyeballs and fingertips... most of which will never come in contact with the actual things or places.

Cheeky not only for its title—"A Subtlety" is ostensibly ironic but is actually an allusion to a medieval confection—Walker's highly photogenic (albeit often blown-out) room-sized sphinx has high cheekbones and a prodigious posterior, among other unsubtle traits. That, and the fact that the massive, 35ft-high, 75ft-long mammy lords over her adoring public, her exaggerated mammaries and genitalia more cartoonish than obscene. Reportedly sculpted from some 40 tons of sugar (it's not solid), non-profit arts organization Creative Time commissioned the piece from Walker, which is accompanied by attendants scattered throughout the turbine hall-like space of the former sugar refinery; it also happens to be the first three-dimensional work for the New York-based artist, who is best known for her silhouetted cut-outs.

In the interest of providing context (both for those of you who are planning on visiting and those of you who will vicariously consume it via the Internet), some recommended reading: Hrag Vartanian's take includes with a brief history of the site (partly adapted from an October 2013 Times article) alongside his photo essay; Audie Cornish's helpfully descriptive NPR story; and Hilton Als' erudite yet accessible blogpost for The New Yorker.

Much has been made of the subtitular wall text, printed in foot-high letters on the exterior of the building (and reproduced in the video and all of the articles above), but loaded rhetoric aside, there is indeed a certain subtlety to the craftsmanship behind the piece. It's hard to tell from the time lapse above, but an Art21 segment nicely captures both Walker's myriad reference points and the actual fabrication of the work, which was assembled and hand-finished in situ. Self-styled scholars can read up at their leisure, but the makers among you might be more interested in the middle section of the video below: