With this corruption of modern design came a long, dark season of Style Wars. But we believed in the design community's humanist impulses and tried to keep its larger mission alive. So when postmodernism came along, I was hopeful. Seeing architects search for historic inspiration with great tomes of exquisite architectural details open on their desks, I thought, This is good. Surely they will also find the time-tested secrets of building siting, daylighting, natural ventilation, using water and plants to bring nature into action and into view-the sum total of human understanding of how to build on the land. That didn't happen, of course. We kept suffering from that storied modern illness, amnesia, and ended up with Italianate palazzos and Greek temples, facades tacked onto sealed buildings with energy-guzzling cooling and heating systems.

As minimalism gained strength, with its impulse to do more with less, in the service of creating beauty that functioned perfectly for its intended purpose, I grew hopeful once more. Surely we would start debating our reckless use of materials and spaces. But that didn't happen either. Minimalism, too, turned into a high style without much talk about environmental and social underpinnings.

When lawmakers discovered that nearly half of Americans were victims of these Style Wars, they passed a momentous piece of civil-rights legislation, the Americans with Disabilities Act. The mandate of the law, that everything in the built environment should be designed to enable people of all sizes and with varying abilities, was met by truculent compliance by the design community. Sure, a lot of things have improved in the past two decades, but I have yet to see systems thinking embedded in the design process. What if, for instance, wayfinding began on the city streets and was carried into the smallest nook of the home or office?

We now know that the piecemeal fixes of the past decades represent an outdated approach. As natural disasters flash across our screens with increasing frequency, we understand that it's time to address the complex problems we face. We're learning about systems thinking, which is about the connectivity we must find between every design project and the sum total of human knowledge that's embedded in our technical inventions, the sciences, our cul-tures, and beliefs. As I see it, this is our season "to gather stones together." -Susan S. Szenasy

Metropolis was founded in large part in response to that question. I did, however, get some good ideas from Skyline (which closed in 1980). The great Massimo Vignelli was one of its design advisers. His best idea was to use a tabloid size and print the magazine on good offset paper rather than on newsprint. This was how we printed Metropolis in its early years. Skyline also covered more than just architecture. This approach dovetailed nicely with my belief that most readers consider architecture and design to be one subject. (Certainly, most professional designers share this view.) As a result, Metropolis has always covered all aspects of design.

Establishing the Metropolis “voice” was a real challenge (and remains, as it should, a work in progress). I had always respected publications that not only communicated clearly but were free of jargon and what I called “cheap shots.” Many of the articles in Skyline were written in the priestly language of architecture. The institute’s other publication, Oppositions, was a thicket of unreadable jargon. I thought this was an odd way to reach a larger audience. Metropolis would instead offer an alternative. We’d strive to be sharp, lively, thoughtful, challenging, and, above all, accessible. This remains our editorial mission today.

From the beginning, we tried to tell stories from multiple points of view. That meant we’d interview the architect or designer as well as the client and end user. We wouldn’t ignore the larger cultural context. And we’d not only tell a compelling story with text but visually show the process through the layered use of photographs, diagrams, sketches, drawings, and floor plans. Like all design publications, we were interested in showing beautiful buildings and objects, but we weren’t content with merely showing them as objects of desire. Through the years, all of these approaches were refined and improved, but the desire to explain clearly and concisely why things looked the way they did was in our DNA from the start.

Thirty years later, I’m surprised by how many of our original ideas for the magazine have survived, pretty much intact. The mission statement of the founding editor, Sharon

Lee Ryder, in our inaugural issue, July 1981, describes a publication that bears a striking resemblance to the one you’re holding in your hands. Another surprise has been our readership. I’d originally conceived of a design magazine aimed at a general-interest audience, but our depth and broad, inclusive view of the field appealed to professional designers; by the 1990s they comprised the bulk of our readers. They are the audience we strive to serve today.

So after three decades I am pleased with our progress and especially proud of our dedicated staff. During one of the most challenging business climates ever, they’ve managed to maintain our high standards and break new editorial ground. The essence of this magazine, however, is to constantly look forward. The emergence of the iPad and other tablets provides us with an opportunity to create a new media form and a viable and lasting future. The changes and challenges to design and to the world at large need Metropolis. We will be there to cover them. —Horace Havemeyer III