![]() ![]() but in his defense, there were supposed to be two other maps available in the stations, including a geographic map of the city, but the metropolitan transportation authority (MTA) apparently didn’t produce them. so it wasn’t connected to the geographic reality of the city, vignelli didn’t intend it to. there were no street names, for instance, and vignelli moved the locations of certain stations so they’d fit into his grid. the ’72 map, which vignelli executed along with a young designer named joan charysyn, was very minimal, reduced down to just the subway routes, 45- and 90-degree lines on a grid. this was a few years after vignelli and bob noorda had overseen the redesign of the NYC subway system signage. GH: well, the controversy goes back to the 1972 map, which vignelli associates designed. so, it was a really strange and wonderful coincidence, and that’s when started thinking it would be interesting to publish the debate transcript.ĭB: can you briefly introduce the crux of the 1978 debate? who was in attendance, and what did their different voices contribute to the conversation? and it just so happened that when I spoke to them, they’d just discovered the subway map debate debate tape. it was a massive amount of recordings that had been basically moved from one storage facility to another for the past 40 years. GH (continued): so, I spoke with the archivists at the cooper union, who coincidentally were in the middle of a major initiative to catalog and digitize an archive of over 4,000 reel-to-reel recordings of events that had taken place there from the 1940s to the 1980s. Photographs by stan ries, copyright © gary hustwit, 2021 Gary hustwit: the new york subway map debate, published by standards manual but aside from a few short quotes in the new york times and new yorker from that era, there wasn’t any record of what was actually said in the debate. I’d heard about this infamous debate about the map that had happened between massimo vignelli and john tauranac at cooper union in 1978. so, as part of my research, I was looking deeper into the history of the map. it’s reacting to the actual conditions in the subway - you can see the trains moving, etc. Gary hustwit (GH): last summer, I was making a short documentary called ‘the map’, which followed work & co’s process of designing the new live subway map. To learn more about the evening surrounding this epic design dispute and the events that led to the publication of the new york subway map debate, designboom spoke with gary hustwit…ĭesignboom (DB): what led to the discovery of this lost audio recording, and how did its finding develop into the publication of the new york subway map debate? Image from the national archives at college park, public domain, via wikimedia commons ‘I just love the idea of publishing a whole book about a two hour conversation that happened 43 years ago,’ hustwit tells designboom.Ī woman looks at a route map of the new york city transit authority subway system in 1974 these exceptional images and the audio transcript from the event has now been edited into a 140-page publication, edited by hustwit, and aptly titled, the new york subway map debate. in his research, hustwit also unearthed unpublished footage by a photographer named stan ries who had been there that night and captured the scene in its controversial and creative glory. It was a ‘wonderful coincidence’ then, when filmmaker and design historian gary hustwit got his hands on the lost two-hour long audio recording of the event, which captured this pivotal moment in design history. ![]() architects, designers, city officials, and ordinary new yorkers attended the debate and weighed in with their considerations and concerns about the future of the new york city subway map in a lively conversation thought to be lost to history. the crux of the now-legendary dispute centered around a battle between the minimalist, graphically-gratifying 1972 map by creative force massimo vignelli, and the more contextual, geographically-accurate map proposed by cartographer john tauranac. Looking at a new york city subway map today might not necessarily conjure up visions of a highly contentious and controversial design debate - but in 1978, that’s exactly what went down one april evening at the cooper union. ![]()
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