I’ve been a writer and editor for my entire adult life. I’ve written one-point-five books: The Perfect $100,000 House: A Trip Across America and Back in Pursuit of a Place to Call Home, published by Viking in 2006 and Angry Graphics, written with Steven Heller, published by Gibbs Smith in 1992. I’m working slowly on a new book, True Silence, for Knopf.
I’m a contributing editor at Metropolis magazine where I write a monthly column, “America,” about how ideas and strategies in architecture and design play out on the landscape. And I’m also a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure where many of my articles deal with architecture-related destinations, like the world’s tallest hotel or major new developments like CityCenter in Las Vegas.
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I was the founding editor-in-chief of Dwell, the San Francisco-based magazine about modern residential architecture and design. And, after a long period of not writing for Dwell, I now do the occasional article for them.
Prior to launching Dwell in fall of 2000, I was the architecture critic of New York Magazine, and I’ve written about design, technology, and visual language for many periodicals including The New York Times, ID, and Fortune. In the early 1990s, I was the founding executive editor of Benetton’s Colors Magazine.
I was a contributing editor at House & Garden, where I blogged about architecture for the magazine’s website, until it folded in November 2007. I was a contributing editor at Metropolitan Home where I wrote a series of features on innovative approaches to houses and housing until it folded in November 2009.
I’m tired of magazines dying on me.
Lately, I’ve also been teaching. I’m a faculty member of the Design Criticism graduate program at the School of Visual Arts. I teach a course called Urban Curation in which I send students out onto the streets of New York City and try to teach them to judge for themselves the difference between a good building and a bad building, and to understand how the city changes over time.
Here are some things I’d like to do:
* I am interested in teaching workshop versions of Urban Curation in other cities. For instance, I’ll be teaching a weekend version at Otis Parsons in LA in June 2010.
* I would like be a paid blogger again, writing about visual culture, housing, or architecture for the website of a smart publication or organization.
* I am willing to do consulting work with developers and others who are exploring innovative approaches to building and planning. I can be helpful in rethinking a stalled project, hiring the right architect, or coming up with better ways to work with the surrounding community.
* I would like to develop a magazine specifically for the e-reader format, probably Apple’s iPad.
*And, yes, I’m always open to magazine assignments and interesting copy writing gigs.
I live in downtown Brooklyn and can be reached via email: kj[at]karriejacobs[dot]com.