 Hello. Hello, everyone. Thank you. Can you hear me? Sometimes I drop my voice. People can't understand. Hi. Welcome. We're so happy to have you here. I'm Amy Chan Lindquist. I am the Director of Advancement here at Cooper Hewitt. And could not be more thrilled and delighted to welcome Debbie and Laurence this evening. I personally am such enormous. I feel like I'm fangirling all over the place over them because I just, what both of them do is just so special. But I have notes because I can't forget certain things. So Laurence, okay, sorry. Laurence is a Grammy Award-winning designer and the Creative Director and Founder of Lad Design. Author of SuperSonic, The Design and Lifestyle of Concord. Has been profiled by Monaco, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, British GQ among many, many others. And we're so happy that he is here in New York sharing this moment with us. And then the infamous Debbie Millman, who is just, I have to plug this a little bit, as the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award winner. National Design Awards celebrating our 20th year this year. So yay. She is an author, an educator, a curator, and the host of the very, the most amazing podcast Design Matters, which I'm sure all of you know of. And if you don't, that's, you know, now you knew. She was named one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company. So we could not be in better company this evening. At Cooper Hewitt, for those of you for your first time here, we create opportunities for everyone to discover the importance of design and its power to change the world through exhibitions, education programming, and museum-wide initiatives. And what I think is so significant about this is that really this is such a passion project of Lawrence's. And the Concord's story truly embodies this spirit. It's an emblem of possibility. Its design reflects a spirit of curiosity and optimism. It's about elegance and innovation in the highest form and the power of design to inspire and uplift. Tonight we will explore ideal visions of the future as expressed through the design, ingenuity, and enduring legacy of the Concord. What better duo to bring the Concord's story to life other than Lawrence and Debbie, truly. So, and just a little FYI for you all to know. Tonight we'll also feature a book signing and a cash bar from 8 p.m. Books are available for purchase in our Cooper Hewitt shop, and members get a special discount to shop in events such as this one. So if you enjoy tonight's event, talk to one of our shop representatives who can sign you up for a membership today. We are also so thankful to Nina at Paper and Lawrence's studio for this very memorable limited edition gift box. And I will, on that note, I will turn it over. Thank you so much everyone for coming. We're thrilled to have you. Thank you Debbie and Laura. I just wanted to thank, of course, the Cooper Hewitt, my dear friend Amy Chan-Linquist, the wonderful and inspiring Debbie Milman for being here. It's really fantastic to have you here tonight. And, of course, our partners in making these special gifts for you tonight, Nina Paper and LCP printing, which we're going to talk about that, the gift a little bit more. And most importantly, I wanted to thank all of you guys for coming out on a very humid Monday evening. So it's really, really special that you're here tonight to me because it is a passion project and a labor of love. But really, we're not here exclusively to talk about an aircraft tonight. What we're really here to talk about is the power of design to unify, inspire, and uplift. To see through design a reflection of our best selves and what we can do when ingenuity, creativity, and determination come together. So a little bit of background to how I got started in design. I got my start at Warner Brothers Records. I have some friends from there tonight. It's also where I met my wonderful wife, Julie Muncie, who I'm super thankful that she's here tonight too. But, yes, Julie, she is, of course. If you know Julie, you should be clapping for her. But it's where I got to start working with artists such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers and 20 Years with Wilco and the Silver Sun Pickups, Herbie Hancock, Esperanza Spalding, and so on. And it came to be not just a point of work, but an understanding that music serves as a crucial and critical point where we understand who we are as humans. No matter what continent you are on, what culture music really helps you access that vital human connection. And art for music is what really provides the articulation of that experience. It provides evidence of being human. And it's really interesting as a designer who does artwork for music, you have the capacity to connect with people through that connection of design and music. And through creativity, you have the capacity to hopefully make a difference in other people's lives. But then this thing came along, and I am absolutely embracing of technology, which is wonderful that we have these devices that where you can listen to any song, anywhere, anytime, any place, and it gives us wonderful access. But it's drastically changed the way we access and our relationship to music, and the way we discover music, and the way we understand music. And design, it has changed our relationship to music as it pertains to design. So it's really caused a necessity for creative adaptation. And adaptation is really what the Concord story is all about. It's about facing a challenge and answering it through creative solutions. So what my studio has done is we've authored an initiative where we've really come to understand that music is not just about listening, that design transforms the way music transforms us, that the intersection of where design meets music is where fashion, film, TV, branding, culture, and all these critical things about being a human alive and culture today all come together. And most importantly, music is the touch point where we access how music, how we relate to music as far as gender, class, race, political position, social structure. It also represents key life moments in our life cycle when you fall in love, when you've lost a loved one. Music is this kind of core touchstone to all of us around the world. And as our relationship through technology has changed in vis-a-vis music, our relationship to music as it is in design has changed too. So we've authored an initiative where we're compelling design students across the world to uncover different ways to deepen the relationship to music through innovation in design, such as how do we experience and engage with music, undercovering the life cycle of design and music, the visual translation interpretation of music, and of course curation and discovery of music. And it's called Designing the Future of Music, and it's manifesting as a design master's program at the California College of the Arts and the Royal College of Art in England. And we are also curating a show at the Museum of Design Atlanta that will be in the winter of 2020, which Debbie also curated a show at Moda, which we're excited to be in good company there too. But for me in my studio, because I've been doing design for so long with these bands, that experience is all about the tangibility because now that we live in a digital space, that tangibility is ephemeral and fleeting that we connect to music on our phones. So this is an example of Wilco's new record. I've been working with Wilco for 20 years. This is our seventh album with Wilco. This is also being printed by LCP. And we wanted to create something very tangible, very memorable, this keepsake that people wanted to touch and connect to the creative experience by holding it, by feeling it, by returning to it in their hands. So we've created this very elaborate pop-up book which will be available October 4th. It has advent calendar doors and wheels at spins and cards that pull out. And then before we get to Concord another, as we migrate more towards science, another story about tangibility as an object in design is our work on, as Amy Chen-Linquus mentioned, The Voyager Golden Record, which if you know or not about, it's a really kind of mind-blowing story. But basically in 1977, NASA launched these two little spacecraft. They're no bigger than a Honda Civic to pass by all the planets in our solar system. They realized that the way the planets were aligned in a certain way that if this vehicle went out at a certain speed, it would pass by all these planets, giving us the first-time look at our planetary neighbors for the first time. And what we did was we had this crazy esoteric idea to put this record, a message from Earth to extraterrestrials on the side of the spacecraft. They played to the record in gold because that's the only material that could withstand the cold temperatures of gold out there. And just in the event that the extraterrestrials come into contact with the spacecraft. Now notice I didn't say like, if extraterrestrials exist, because we worked with Frank Drake on the project, the author of the Drake equation. And if you could just read this really quickly, you'll probably know that this just states the probability of extraterrestrial life existing is very high just based on the number of planets. But we're not going to get too much into extraterrestrials tonight. But it's really our message to them. What's on the record? Well, it was actually curated just a couple of blocks where we're sitting here tonight by the ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. It's considered basically the first world music compilation out there. And it's a portrait of ourselves. It's kind of a compilation of Earth's greatest music and its cultures. There's Bach and Beethoven and Blind Willie Johnson and Chuck Berry, Solomon Island panpipes, 55 human spoken languages, a beautiful sound poem containing Zababy's cry, whale sounds, a human kiss. It's a record of who we are and our greetings to others out there. And then there's also images of humanity encoded in the groups on the record. Today, we upload billions of images to Instagram a day. At the time of the making of this record in 1977, there were only two companies in the country that were actually digitizing images. And they took that data of the images and they put that data in the groups of the record. And just in case you're wondering, I know where your minds are going, there is a stylus in the case on the spacecraft so that the extraterrestrials can play it. And there's also a diagram explaining how to play it. But the images tell the extraterrestrials the story of who we are, where we are, our family cycles, eating, licking and drinking, of course. And just in case you just think this is all too esoteric, it actually works. The data encoded from the records, if you just encode it using the diagram on the record itself, it is actually... This is actually the images being decoded from the record. That's actually Dr. Jengadal on the right there. Which is just kind of like a phenomenal idea that it wasn't just a concept, but it is kind of like the ultimate design project, this piece that's this encapsulation of who we are. And that's what we wanted to design when we did the 40th anniversary reissue. We wanted... we could have done something 70s, we could have done something spacey, but we wanted to design something that honored the legacy and the gravity and the weight of these ideas of who we are and how we want to say it. And we didn't want it to be bound by fashion or style, but we wanted it to be the type of piece that if you did chuck it out into space and it flew out there for a thousand years that if somebody picked it up, it would be this codex that people could understand what it meant and what it was about. And this is the record, as Amy mentioned, this is the record that we did win the Grammy for for Best Box Set and Package. And we did break Kickstarter's record for highest grossing music record, but I only mentioned that tonight vis-a-vis the conversation about tangibility. I mentioned that because that's evidence that people want the artifact. They want that piece that they could hold on to and understand and spend time with and uncover and experience themselves. Let me promise you, nobody is cleaning up their apartment or driving home and saying, I think I'm going to put the Voyager Golden record on. There's whale sounds and hyenas on it. This is not easy listening, but definitely hundreds of thousands of people wanted this piece because they wanted a connection to the story. And that's the power of design and that's what we're here to talk about tonight. So none of the original creators actually expected that extraterrestrials would understand Akkadian or Urdu or Somali. You see the messages on the record were actually messages for the inhabitants of this planet. And that's kind of the beautiful idea of the Voyager Golden record. One of the creators of the record, Sagan, who put the committee together to put the record out there, he said, the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet. And the creative minds behind the creation of the record, they made a conscious decision not to include any images of war or disease or violence or poverty on the record. What you could say is it's an idealistic self-portrait. And the point is it's something for us to aspire to. And I think we need that today now more than ever. A reflection of our best selves and what we can be when we do aim to be our best. So as we consider how to explain ourselves to others out there, we begin to consider who we are in a much deeper way. So this is the vehicle assembly room at Jet Propulsion Laboratory out in Pasadena, my home town of California, home state of California. This is where basically every vehicle that America has made has been built in this room. You could see the mission patches up on the wall. And everything in this room has been built with a great sense of inspiration and a great sense of creativity. And as you walk into the room at JPL, there's this sign that says, dare mighty things. And it's something that I think that we can implore ourselves to do whether you're a designer or a writer or a teacher. But as we go into our work, that reminder that through creativity, through our best efforts, if we just remember to dare mighty things, we can elevate the entire human experience through the work that we put out there for others to experience. And that's kind of a principle that we love to embrace in our work, which brings us to the Concorde, which is a funny paradox because sometimes to see our best future, you have to look backwards. So we're nearing the 20th year where the last Concorde flight was 2003. 252.59. That's the hours, minutes, and seconds of the fastest transatlantic crossing from New York to London. Under three hours. So Concorde brought humanity together in real terms. If you have any flight time, you make the world a smaller place. So if you had an ailing family member that you had to get to right away, or a meeting or an event that you absolutely, positively had to be there as soon as humanly possible, this was the vehicle to do it. It actually made the world a smaller place. But it also made the world a smaller place through a unified goal. And as we look at the climb of civilization, the advent of innovation in technology is intrinsically linked to big steps in human progress and the evolution of human progress. A lot of these, a lot of the darker side of humanity also met at the end of these kind of next steps of evolution, but it's also wonderful to see that through the evolution of transportation we see greater leaps and growths in our society and in humanity. But when you look back at some of these kind of earlier ideas of the future, some of these ideas look kind of tentative or look kind of funny, but the idea of the future as far as fantasy, sometimes it has a fun way of leaving its thumbprint on reality. So here you have the Jaguar, the Corvette Stingray, the Citroën and then Raymond Lowe's Studebaker Avanti. These are cars that are informed by the idea of fantasy, by the idea of inspiration, that they look like they could almost fly. The future is here tomorrow today. And then of course you see these ideas also manifested in architecture of the day. I just took these pictures with my friends and my wife last weekend we stayed out at the TWA hotel at Kennedy. It's incredible. But you're actually walking through a sculpture. It's by of course Aero Saranen's TWA terminal. This sculpture, this building is a poem to flight. And of course if you look at his Dulles Airport building as well, you have these cars and buildings and fashions that reflect the spirit of tomorrow in the day. That these buildings and cars look like that they could fly almost. But of course they can't fly. They couldn't fly. Concorde absolutely could fly and it could fly beautifully. It was a reality that served as an emblem of possibility. Concorde was such a beautiful flying machine that it was the only aircraft that remains so today that could keep a supersonic speed without the use of afterburners and that includes military aircraft. Afterburners are where they light the fuel coming out of the engine to make the thing go faster. It was so, it's the ultimate case of form following function. It's kind of like why is a child's paper airplane the shape that it is because it's the most logical, beautiful shape for it to work that way. So the era of Concorde brought a palpable hopefulness for a better future. It brought a spirit of curiosity and optimism. And it brought an idea of a better world to come. This is a view of our world from a different perspective that was also brought to us by daring and innovation and design and ingenuity and trying and answering a challenge. A challenge that President Kennedy laid out to us when he said that we choose to go to the moon because that goal will serve to measure and organize the best opportunities and skills. Because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept when we're unwilling to postpone and one which we intend to win. So here's the story about Concorde where it gets a little even more interesting. All of these stortices they all represented all the different airlines that were intended to fly Concorde. American Airlines, United Airlines, Qantas Airlines, Iran Airlines. Everyone had orders for Concorde. This was not intended to be this airplane for the elite only. It was going to be we were entering the supersonic age. So it was going to be very much part of a utopian ideal that this was that logical next step of the future. Here's a diagram and the early models of the airport in my hometown, LAX. It was built as the jet port of the future. Now as many of you know anyone's been there, it's the worst airport ever. But you can see here at the gate the delta wing concords and the planning drawings, this serves as proof that we fully expected that we would all be flying around on Concords today. And it makes sense if you look at the through line from propeller aircraft then to jet aircraft of course supersonic aircraft is going to be the next logical step. So what happened? Well, you kind of have it all here in this one ad that Pan Am actually ran. You kind of have the perfect cocktail of all the things that kind of went wrong if you can call it that. So you have Concorde up here saying that we're coming with that. But then you have the same basically a year before the advent of the 747. So now you have a situation where it's volume versus speed because this thing is three times the size of a passenger that it could carry. And then you have this thing which is the American supersonic, the U.S. supersonic transport. And basically America said like hell we're going to let the Europeans win at the next stage of supersonic transport. I mean this is not some like anti-industrialist American thing that I have. If you read that mouse copy in the bottom there it says the United States supersonic transport to be built by Boeing Company and General Electric Endurance is part of a joint U.S. government industry effort to maintain American leadership in commercial aviation. So basically we had to win and if that didn't mean not only did we have to win but nobody else could win at the same time. So the American supersonic was well over twice the size, twice the capacity and it was going to go a good 35-40% faster because America, you know has got to be bigger and faster. And let's just talk about it. We never finished. It got too expensive and it got too unwieldy. The Soviets actually did build one. They actually got to flying the Tupolev before Concorde so I'm always careful. Concorde you kind of have to say was the world's only luxury supersonic airliner because believe me this was not luxurious. Actually people said there were some crashes that we know about and it was it was also kind of nicknamed the Concorde ski and also I might say it looked very similar to Concorde. I mean I don't know you know but there was all this cloak and dagger stuff about KGB agents getting caught in the airport with Concorde drawings in their suitcases and things like that but this is a representation of one another so you can get a sense of size and scale. So what was remarkable about Concorde? What was so special about it? This is a picture that I took when I had the pleasure of flying Concorde on my 30th birthday. Concorde flew at 60,000 feet instead of 30,000 feet. So at that altitude the sky is black. You're literally at the edge of the stratosphere. You're well in the troposphere and you're so high that you can't reach the orbit to the earth. Because you're flying 1,350 miles an hour you're flying faster than a speeding bullet. You're flying faster than the rotation of the earth itself which means that if you leave a destination and arrive at your point of arrival you're going to get to your point of arrival before the time you left because you're flying faster than the earth or if you were flying westward and saw the sun setting you would see the sun rise because it was flying that fast. Or if you were flying and saw a regular airplane 30,000 feet below you going in the same direction that airplane would appear to be flying backwards because you were flying twice the speed. And lastly they would do this really fun little stunt where a regular airplane would take off at London, Concorde would take off in New York, fly to London and back to New York before that regular airplane got there but it was at the time until Bezos or Branson get it together this was as close as you could get to being in outer space. So it's really about an idea of tomorrow delivered in the here and now where the sky is no longer the limit all manifested through ingenuity and creativity. And that's what the book is about. As a graphic designer myself I'm kind of enamored by the ideas of design where you see that exuberance you see that enthusiasm reflected in all these objects. So here you have things as quoted in as data processors, motor oil, compasses, spark plugs and you still see that exuberance and enthusiasm for tomorrow in this graphic design. Or the idea that children would not be playing with iPhones and iPads but with toys that reflected ideas that came to us through science and innovation and aspiration and representing things that could do wonderful things like fly faster, twice the speed of sound. Sir Terence Conran wrote our forward for the book and he so eloquently said Concord had that magic ingredient of the truly special and it helped the imagination of millions of people all over the world. Concord had this remarkable shape I spoke a little bit about that but it was the engines that brought us the thrust of course now that they had only 15 concords in service after all the airlines dropped their orders what they did was they turned to a program of graphic design to create this ultra-special experience. So British Airways created this very club-like environment where everything was kind of special so they could entice people on the very few 15 airplanes they had just in case you forgot where you were you had little concords running around the glass this is the interior designed by the great Raymond Lowy it looks like something out of 2001 this was the silverware also designed by Raymond Lowy Andy Warhol used to love to steal the silverware and if you were sitting next to him and weren't taking your silverware you were set he was known to be a pack rat but on the point of Mr. Warhol it became the airplane that kind of the world's kind of most glamorous would fly such as Her Majesty, Her Royal Highness, The Queen, The Pope, Heads of State and Heads of Rock, Jacques Chirac and Mick Jagger and then Sir Terence Conran when he outfitted the lounge for Concord at JFK he fulfilled it with all these kind of icons of great design of the 20th century such as Eames lounge chairs and Bauhaus lamps so you were surrounded by all these kind of icons of great design all before you stepped on one of the great icons of design and this held true for all of the other iterations of the Concord lounges basically everything that you touched had the forethought of creativity that Concord had in it uniforms by the Queen's fashion designer Edwin Hames menus designed by Christian Lacroix and then you would get these gifts, these presents that they gave out to everyone which is in the spirit of what we're giving out tonight these boxes from Nina and LCP that contain all of these items of Concord gifts so everything was a manifestation of the original ideals of Concord it was very small, it was very tight these were the chairs that Sir Terence Conran did he even got the logo into the armrest on the side there and then people complained about the size that these aren't where are the pods, where are the couches, where are the sleeper life flat beds this is like being in a Ferrari instead of a Bentley like I had this interview with Mr. Brokaw it was very tight and tiny in there it says very small little airplane that's because you're in a fighter jet with 100 people so there's no room for these giant sleeper sets this on the left is the interior by the wonderful Andre Putnam on the right is her hotel suite for the Morgan's Hotel here in New York they almost look identical it was that same kind of elegance and simplicity and beauty that she put in the design for Concord and it was kind of like the perfect design nothing more than nothing less than what was needed you have the such as the Calamari's Calamini's French Press the Eames Legsplint and now here's the idea of what luxury travel is and it's absolutely ridiculous this is about as modern as traveling on an ocean liner and it's been proven to be ridiculous because they just ended the A380 this year it doesn't make any sense we don't need living rooms and state rooms and burlwood and gold we need to get there that's what we need and sadly this is our reality for travel today you know I wouldn't I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the crash of Concord which wasn't entirely Concord's fault but basically was the result of cutting corners and sloppiness in care in practice of design and of course it's a very little known fact that after they fixed everything from this incident the very first flight back in service was September 11th, 2001 so that also didn't help but now we live in a world where economy prevails over scale and economy prevails over speed so the 737 is the most popular aircraft as I say to this that this is one of my favorite pictures in the book because it is sad this is the cabin crew service director first of all British people don't cry so this is a big deal but also the idea that we can do better that we can do better because in our history of design progress we rarely go backwards or as Andre Putnam so eloquently put it to not dare is sort of already lost we should seek out ambitious even unrealistic projects because things only happen when we dream or as Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders said we came all this way to explore the moon and the most important thing we discovered was the earth so the last thing I'll say on the view from 60,000 feet is can we return to these ideas of progress be it the fight against cancer access to clean water everywhere literacy design that leads to a better understanding of each other and our best selves we have the capacity we have the obligation to engineer and realize the future that we should have today and tomorrow it's time to show the world that kind of future again thank you very much everyone yes very fancy to you thank you well I feel like when so many designers they want to wear the hoodie the street wear is so popular now today the sneakers but we're talking about Concorde we're talking about this object that kind of manifested this elegance and the experience was elegant and everything about Concorde was elegant and special so it just seems fitting and more comfortable I just wouldn't feel comfortable talking about Concorde in like a black hoodie from Supreme I mean no offense against Supreme I mean the Supreme sweatshirt is probably more expensive than the suit honestly how many of those do you have? the Supreme or the suits actually both I'm curious I have a few suits I'm gonna be honest no Supreme okay okay before we talk about your glorious new book let's talk a little bit about the golden record you did mention it at the beginning of your talk I felt like it gave me permission to ask you a few questions about it I was one of the Kickstarter supporters I love love love the golden record thank you for your support it's very rare for an interdisciplinary designer to win a Grammy Award so congratulations you're much more than a music designer so to have the pinnacle of the music awards is quite an accomplishment second one thing that astounded me when I saw the Voyager documentary was how once the space the spacecraft left our solar system it would be another 40,000 years before it reached another celestial body yes it is it's I wanted to go quickly because I wanted to get into the conversation with you the two Voyager spacecrafts the only human made things ever to leave our solar system so that's kind of a huge thing and that led to the Carl Sagan's pale blue spot the number before it reaches the next galaxy it's a lot of years and it really is very humbling that you it puts us in scale of the universe 40,000 years it's incredible it's incredible we are really and this is what the essence of the pale blue dot speeches and if you don't know I recommend you looking it up on YouTube it's probably one of the most beautiful pieces of writing ever but the idea that we are on this piece of dust floating in space and the infiniteness of space is so overwhelming and humbling that things like trade wars or wars or racism or fighting with your brother and sister really shouldn't matter because we should just all be the best we can be while we're on this blink of a piece of a dust for a millisecond so that was a big learning experience for me on the Voyager did you think about what the impression would be of any other intelligent life coming into proximity with the golden record? it's fun to imagine and we did work with Carl Sagan's widow and I wanted to ask her why they excluded religion and things like that and I could imagine why and that's why they put only our best side and it is that kind of like humanity on its best day it's our best Instagram selfie just kind of I and in some ways it's not a fair depiction because it doesn't show hate and violence and things like that but what it does show it is a beautiful world and there's not just in humanity but in biology and geology and there's a lot of things microscopically and globally and architecturally that are beautiful and inspiring and one more thing but when they recorded the greetings at Cornell University they let the native speakers speak whatever they they could say whatever they wanted to the extraterrestrials and their own idioms and in the book we have a table on a chart of what they say and it was really kind of beautiful to see culturally the differences of what so like the Swedish person is very like rigid, greetings from a laboratory at a university from Sweden the Farsi one is really beautiful like greetings to our brothers and the stars so it was kind of beautiful to see like all these kind of very hopeful and warm gestures like hey mom actually the English one is Carl Sagan's son and he says greetings from the children of planet earth close enough you start your new book Supersonic with a quote from Mr. Lawrence Conran who also wrote the forward who stated that the Concorde was not only the most iconic aircraft of all time but also the most beautiful and exhilarating man-made object he had ever seen and you go on to write that the Concorde was instantly recognizable immediately eye catching and so unspeakably elegant that it became one of the great design icons of the modern age how did this happen what made it so incredibly special well to me it looks like a mugliani sculpture or a Brancusi sculpture it looks like this beautiful futurist kind of swan the French called it the white swan I'm not going to try to say it in French because that would be really bad but the truth is it wasn't set out to be designed as a beautiful object because it is the ultimate instance of form following function that the shape was predicated by the physics and that's to me if you're a believer in that idea that nothing more than nothing less than what's needed in design is the most beautiful design like Adida Rahm's kind of idea that is what the Concorde manifests the fact that there's something about it that a beautiful sculpture to me is so pleasing and then of course if you look at these big A380s they look like kind of hot dogs or sausages well there was something very birdlike about the Concorde in a way that a more conventional airplane couldn't mimic your fascination with the Concorde began with a model kit in the introduction to supersonic you detail the 1-72 scale version audio and stirred nascent thoughts of becoming a designer someday so how did you get the model what was that really your first introduction to the whole notion of design how old were you? you're laughing it was also a kind of a coalescence as a kid of the 70s you'd see it in movies there was the airport 77 movies it just seemed to be around a lot and there was just something about it just like what's that? it just looks so different than anything else being that young I didn't know until I was a much older designer or at California culture of the arts that I even came to understand what graphic design was but these ideas these aesthetic objects drawn to and the Concorde just had so much magnetism to it and I think I don't think I was alone in that I think a lot of kids were kind of inspired absolutely I'm also a child of the 70s and was absolutely fascinated but given your fascination with the Concorde what made you more interested in design rather than engineering or product design or architecture? I just had like a natural proclivity so while other kids were playing basketball or baseball I was a nerd totally just drawing but also you become good at it and then you kind of get positive reinforcement and you're like hey I can make a career out of this and then as you're graduating high school in the early 90s you see awesome illustrators and designers like Lucille Tenazis and Jennifer Moorla this is all the California people and you're just like hey they seem to be kind of like doing neat stuff Louis Sandhouse and Louis Sandhouse my dear friend Louise yes so it's once you start to realize and for me this is everything about design once you start to realize that you can make an impact on culture and make an impact on other people's lives that's really fulfilling for me as a designer and that's what the music stuff is all about that you can through a poster or an album cover or maybe an airplane that you can make someone smile or an x-ray machine or whatever but you can elevate the life we live in and that was a practical application of art that was really fulfilling that I wanted to go for so you've not only written this book you have quite a collection of Concord memorabilia I understand you have a collection of over 700 items yeah more or less audience I would like you to know that he's looking at his wife Lawrence is looking at his wife for approval here thank goodness for the storage unit down below so what kind of things do you have when did you start how did you find the things what's the most you've ever paid for something well truth be told I got started on it a while ago and I had to calm down I've had the objects for a long time Lawrence's wife is not in vigorously so now the stuff is a little bit more expensive when I was buying though it wasn't that but you know the Raymond Lawyer Fortress all the objects in the book are from my collection and then of course most of my collection is the graphic design and objects like that but there are people who have more and more expensive stuff there are people who have like engines and tires and like there's a guy in somewhere in Idaho that has like the nose wow there's quite a lot of concord memorabilia to collect some of what I saw is just magnificent you showed some of the work that Christian Lacroix did with the menu there were stamps, match books, flasks, luggage tags, letters and then other items that were on board and not really intended to be given out but as you mentioned with Andy Warhol that were outright stolen menus, dinnerware, napkin rings did you steal anything with yours? I brought a duffel bag with me on my flight I'll be honest with you my flight was two bags two months before the last flight it was also post 9-11 so I had plastic cut lowery so that was kind of a sad but honestly Debbie it was really more about just taking it in I didn't have the heart to like walk off with a plate or anything like that you know so I took like some coasters and things and stationery and things like that and a seat no the truth comes out I want to talk a little bit about your flight in a moment but when the Concorde was in 2003 it cost $12,000 to fly roundtrip on the Concorde what cost when the Concorde first started flying in 1969? about that equivalent adjusted for afflation I figured it out I did for this interview I thought I would surprise you $82,000 $82,000 you know it was such a no I'm not a math whiz so it could be wrong but I did do like I put in the number and inflation from 1969 I mean I talked to a lot of people who have flown it and because it was basically what in business they call a lost leader some tickets were you could be on there like with four other people it was unfortunately it was not commercially viable one of the things that I loved seeing in your book were some of the vintage pictures of how people flew back in the 60s and 70s and it was so glamorous I don't know if anybody noticed there was a tweet that went viral today of a man with bare feet using his toes to navigate the on-flight television system and he had a dog under him on the flight and I thought gee we've come really far really far since then as mentioned we just stayed at the TWA hotel last weekend Julie and I were checking out we were saying goodbye to the room the playlist is perfect the store is dressed up in uniform and then we see this gentleman with his bare feet up I'm like you're ruining the whole thing for everyone can we just have some dignity and just it's about making a good experience for others and you may want to be barefoot I get it but come on I mean one of the few things that we still dress up for as an organized group is the opera but even there you see quite a range of outfits and fashion do you think it's because we feel that the airlines have so little respect for us that we feel that we don't need to reciprocate I'm just so curious about the change in the zeitgeist about how we travel and how we present ourselves when we're traveling No it's a really great question Debbie and you open by asking about the suit and what you wear does kind of predicate how people perceive you I mean there's that very famous the Andrew Bell experiment where he's playing the violin in the metro subway and he's dressed up like just as a popper I think it's because we live in an era where people give zero cares but you're going to say zero I want to keep it clean here at the Cooper Hewitt this is a federal institution people don't care about what other people think and I think in this era of tweeting and sharing things and the share we should care a little bit about what other people think that doesn't mean you have to wear a suit but you can be your best self maybe your best self doesn't involve pajamas and a pillow in the airport 2019 marks 50 years since the Concorde's first successful test flight on March 2nd 1969 and it also marks 15 years since your flight from JFK to Heathrow you were just shy your 30th birthday at that point the Concorde announced that the service would be ending how hard was it for you to get a flight I know that it was very difficult to get a flight there was a couple from Ohio I believe that bought two tickets on eBay one-way tickets for $60,000 I think they were on the last flight that couple and then the minute they said we're pulling the plug I bought my ticket my only regret is that my wife didn't come with me that was a mistake I was already kind of obsessed with the Concorde but I was just like don't be a jerk this is the time to go and I'm glad I did and I went on my birthday it was the shortest birthday I ever had I went to New York so but three hours later my birthday was over now did you take the round trip right back or did you spend some time in London I spent some time in London Julie joined me she flew sub songically hold everything first of all we weren't married yet I'm not even sure if we were dating we were friends now where I'm in hot water you certainly are but no she had a business trip I can't even okay so now you were surprised at how tiny the windows were why were they so small because of the stress of the pressure that the plane would go on it got so hot that the plane would expand 10 inches in flight and then contract 10 inches now could you actually feel that because you said that it would expand 7 to 10 inches then when it landed did it retract there was a gap in the cockpit that accommodated for that the pilots could put their hat in the gap during the while it was open and then when it was landed the pat was like it was like that it was like closed and then that's also why it had to be white because any other color would generate so much heat you stated that the difference between a concord flight and any other commercial flight could be felt as soon as it left the gate and I was wondering if you could explain why there was a very specific kind of turn it needed to make yeah well take off you're almost like 25% faster and it just on a regular airplane you go and you go and you go and you're up this thing you feel like you're in this fighter jet and it just up and go and you're gone and then they did this noise abatement thing at Kennedy so it would just do this pivot and turn and go and it was just like when you see fighter jets go and you're instantly in the other direction also when concord leaves the gate they ran it to the front of the line of the queue on the tarmac so there was no it was all about time so everything was just fast and you said that breaking the sound barrier was barely noticeable and you only heard it because you were watching and listening for it so what was that like well yeah I was that's kind of like the moment by the time I was on there there was regular flyers but also fans of concord everyone kind of doing a last hurrah and you had in the bulk had that read out and then once it breaks the sound barrier people are taking pictures and clapping what were they taking pictures of of each other it was kind of like it was like a party it was really like you were like kind of and they ply you with some champagne okay it was just like we did it just like this faint little pop outside that but you know people expect like this kind of push or something like that but it was pretty regular