Reference

Rem’s Love Letter
You probably know that that the phrase “the noxious whiffs of Roark,” in Philip Nobel’s review of Rem Koolhaas’s new book, is a reference to Howard Roark—
the irrepressible visionary hero of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, perhaps the most famous architectural novel of the twentieth century. But here’s something you may not know: there is an actual firm in Belfast, Ireland, called Howard Roark Design (www.howardroarkdesign.com). Founded by Lawrence McCleery, the outfit takes its inspiration both from the fictional Roark and from the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, whose dictum, the company’s Web site tells us, was “firmness, commodity and delight.” Its site also includes a “boutique” with convenient links to Fountainhead books, audiobooks, and movie memorabilia on Amazon.’

Peter Bilak
Should you decide to do some further reading on the type designer Peter Bilak, you’ll find that his name often appears a bit differently than it does in our pages: many publications place an apostrophe after the l in his last name. In fact, Bilak is properly spelled with a Latin small letter l with a caron. Introduced by the Slovak linguist Anton Bernolák, the caron may look like an apostrophe, but it’s actually a diacritical mark on the l itself—making for a significant difference in how the character is kerned. Unfortunately, we were unable to typeset the letter to Bilak’s satisfaction. It’s hardly the first time this has happened to him. In 2010, Bilak wrote an entertaining online essay (www.typotheque.com/articles/lcaron)
about his attempts to convince Dutch civil servants to render the proper type on his daughter’s birth certificate.

Mia Birk
Thanks to planners like Mia Birk, American cities are finally getting robust bike-sharing initiatives. But—no surprise—the United States is not exactly at
the forefront of urban cycling infrastructure. There are already more than 300 bike-sharing programs worldwide, and although the idea smacks of Old World charm (Paris! Stockholm!), even G5 countries are well ahead of us. In fact, the largest and probably most efficient program is in China. The Hangzhou Public Bicycle Company (www.hzzxc.com.cn) is less than four years old, but it already has 60,600 bikes and 2,400 stations (that’s one station every 200 meters in the city). On average, 240,000 trips are made daily—and because trips of less than an hour are free of charge, 90 percent of rides are gratis.