Patrick Sisson - Writer, Journalist, Cultural Documentarian, Music Lover

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CityMonitor September 2020 To understand the 15-minute city, consider two very different scenes from Paris. In 1976, the film director Claude Lelouch strapped a gyro-stabilised camera to the front of his car and set off on a joyride across Paris. While running through 18 red lights and topping out at 142 miles per hour – […]

Vox November 2018 Staring down a seemingly endless aisle of products, including an entire grocery store-within-a-store, it seems like the shopping never ends at Walmart’s Santa Clarita Supercenter, 30 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. Inside, through an entryway wedged between freezer cases full of seafood, past employee locker rooms, behind a door with a […]

T Brand Studio Paid Post May 2016 “Roots” remains a touchstone for its portrayal of an African-American family over generations; decades later, the miniseries’ themes, and artistic influence, couldn’t be more relevant. A poignant, painful and ultimately empowering family story, “Roots” was the rare cultural event that combined unthinkable reach — around half of the […]

Line//Shape//SpaceFeatureJune 23, 2015 Technological shifts don’t always begin with keynote speeches or media frenzies. Sometimes, they just arrive in the mail.  This past spring, high school students and aspiring designers accepted to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) received more than just a letter. The postman also dropped off a white cardboard mailer […]

Dwell Feature December 2014/January 2015 Prefab Issue   When you’re a grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright and planning to build near Taliesin—Wright’s studio and architecture school near Spring Green, Wisconsin—you have no shortage of design resources. Tim Wright, a documentary filmmaker who teaches at Taliesin, and his wife, Karen Ellzey, managing director for a commercial real estate firm, […]

Chicago Reader Story September 29 Link Bowie at Neo in August 1980 with Noni Martin and Noe Boudreau (Photo Courtesy of Ken Ellis, Taken by Gavin Morrison) As much as David Bowie exuded his own charisma, he understood how fashion could be harnessed to magnify his power and presence: an Alexander McQueen Union Jack coat, […]

Post Chicago Reader August 28, 2014 Link You can hardly throw a game token ten feet without hitting a vintage arcade bar in certain Chicago neighborhoods. The barcade boom has been a boon for lovers of old consoles, and it’s also piqued people’s interest in new indie games created by up-and-coming developers (as evidenced by […]

Post Dwell May 21, 2014 Link Matt Litwack can’t tell you exactly when he first began exploring the tunnels, ghost stations, and secret passages of underground New York, or who first ushered him into the secret society of those who have journeyed past the subways and layups (areas where trains are parked overnight). He literally […]

Dwell Post June 3, 2014 Link     Practice Space“It provides a sense of old and new together, showcasing the opportunity in Detroit,” says Justin Mast, an architect and organizer behind Practice Space. “Development here operates in its own way. People need to figure it out and connect the dots.” Photo by Catie Newell It […]

Post Dwell June 5, 2014 Link He Conceived of a Gorgeous Headquarters for the Lenkurt Electric Company While Wright displayed a keen understanding of the roles cars played in modern America and incorporated them into his designs, for his proposed corporate headquarters for the Lenkurt Electric Company in San Carlos, California, he surreptitiously swept them […]