I started this project because I kept noticing things that didn't make sense. Not big, obvious things. Small ones. The kind of decisions that shape daily life without anyone stopping to ask why.
Why are bus stops placed where they are? Who decided that apartment buildings should have the hallway layout they do? Why does every suburban intersection look the same?
These aren't idle questions. Each one has an answer, and that answer usually involves a specific person or committee making a specific choice at a specific time. Often under constraints they didn't fully understand. Almost always with consequences they didn't anticipate.
The format
I write essays because some of these stories need to be examined carefully, with room to think. You need to see the intersection to understand why it fails. You need to walk through the building to feel what the architect got wrong.
The written pieces on this site are where I can go deeper: link to sources, develop arguments, and think out loud about what the research reveals.
What I'm looking for
I'm looking for the gap between intention and outcome. The space where a designer meant one thing and the built result delivered another. That gap is where the most interesting stories live.
Not because designers are incompetent (usually they're not) but because design decisions interact with reality in ways that are genuinely hard to predict. And understanding those interactions makes us better at making the next decision.
This site is my notebook for that ongoing work.