NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE
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n in the past two weeks, I’ve seen enough dump trucks, backhoes, concrete saws, and paving machines to satisfy even the pickiest five-year-old. Part of my apartment complex is still under construction, and I’ve taken in all the sights, sounds, and smells that come with making a space livable. Although it has been distracting at times (and concrete saws prove that there really is something more annoying than the sound of a chainsaw), watching the different layers come together in the construction process has been fascinating. How do you build a proper drainage ditch? I don’t know all the details, but I can assure you it’s a big hole and loads of dirt, gravel and rock, all piled in a specific order. Viewing the proceedings brought to mind the work of world-class author and illustrator David Macaulay, whose creative, insightful and highly detailed books such as city i Cathedral they were a source of wonder to me.
Macaulay, a British-born American, was fascinated by the inner workings of the world from an early age. He would spend hours studying and then drawing various objects, trying to understand how they were constructed. This interest led him to study architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, and he has worked in numerous areas related to design and teaching.
Cathedral was Macaulay’s first book, and follows the process of building a fictional medieval cathedral from the ground up. This popular book was eventually turned into a PBS program that Macaulay helped to narrate. He followed the success of this book with others, such as city (which, while this Amazon ad is clever, proves that Rome wasn’t built in a day), mill, castlei mosque. The images and layout of the books show a masterful use of space, illustrating how to scale down and bring something so complex to life. Like the drainage ditch in my backyard, it’s all about layers, and to better appreciate the whole, Macaulay urges us to see the parts.
However, these allegorical books are not Macaulay’s only publications, and at a recent garage sale I picked up a 1998 edition of his stunning visual dictionary-like tome, The new way of doing things. This was the updated and expanded version of his 1988 book with (almost) the same title. It contains explanations and drawings of everything from tin works to microphones to the aqualung, and I never imagined that it would be so interesting to read about the design behind nail clippers. A lot of care has gone into this work (in all its editions and updates), from the concept to the descriptions to the explanatory images. Macaulay even includes a funny woolly mammoth character that he uses both to capture our interest and to explain the purpose and workings of various objects. What sets it apart from other books of its kind, however, is how comes to the explanation of each element:
For any machine, work is a matter of principle, because everything a machine does is in accordance with a set of scientific principles or laws. To see how a machine works, you can remove the covers and look inside. But to understand what is happening, you need to know the principles that govern their actions. The machines of this and the following parts of The new way of doing things therefore, they are grouped by their principles rather than by their uses. This makes for some interesting neighbors. . . . They may look different, be very different in scale and have different purposes, but when viewed in terms of principles, they work the same way.
All of these books are wonderful testaments to this author’s unique way of seeing the world, but my favorite is his picture book. angelo. Sweet and simple, this story follows Angelo, a plasterer working to restore the facade of an Italian church, who rescues and befriends a pigeon. Although it is primarily a story of friendship, it is also a small lesson in restoration work and dedication to the craft. It’s a warm book, both in tone and color, and full of quirky (a hospital bed platform for a pigeon) and interesting (the scaffolding covering the church facade) illustrations.
Unlike many of the other authors I cover in this column, Macaulay is still alive and currently sharing his love of design with enthusiastic young students at Dartmouth College. Even if we cannot attend one of his classes, it is a joy to know that he has given us such a gift in all his books, and we are indebted to him for helping us see the complexities of our incredible world with new and wonders eyes
