David Macaulay (born 2 December 1946)[1] is a British-born
American illustrator and writer. His works include Cathedral (1973), The Way Things Work (1988), and its updated revisions The New Way Things Work (1998) and The Way Things Work Now (2016). His illustrations have been featured in nonfiction books combining text and illustrations explaining architecture, design, and engineering, and he has written a number of children's fiction books.
Macaulay was born in
Burton upon Trent[2] and raised in
Lancashire,[3] England. At the age of eleven, Macaulay emigrated with his family to
Bloomfield, New Jersey, US.[1] He had an early fascination with how machines operated and made models and drew illustrations of them.[3][4]
After graduating from high school in
Cumberland, Rhode Island, in 1964, he enrolled in the
Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he received a bachelor's degree in architecture.[5] After graduating he decided against pursuing a career in architecture.[6] He spent his fifth year at RISD in the European Honors Program, studying in Rome. He then took jobs as an interior designer, a
junior high school teacher, and a teacher at RISD before he began to create books.[4]
Career
Literature
Macaulay is the author of several books on architecture and design. His first book, Cathedral (1973), was a history, extensively illustrated with
pen-and-ink drawings, of the construction of a fictitious but representative
Gothic cathedral. This was followed by a series of books of the same type: City (1974), on the construction of Verbonia, a fictitious but typical
ancient Roman city; Pyramid (1975), a collection of diagrams and sketches illustrating the construction process of the
pyramid monuments to the Egyptian
Pharaohs;[7]Castle (1977), on the construction of
Aberwyvern castle, a fictitious but typical
medievalcastle; Mill (1983), on the evolution of
New England mills; and Mosque (2003), which depicts the design and construction of an
Ottoman-style
masjid. The
September 11 attacks motivated Macaulay to create Mosque to show how the traditions of major religions have more in common than they have dividing them.[8]Cathedral, City, Pyramid, Castle, and Mill were later adapted into documentaries with animated period drama segments produced by Unicorn Productions, each of which aired sporadically on
PBS from 1983 to 1994.[3][9][10][11]
Other books in this series are Underground (1976), which describes the building foundations and support structures (like water and
sewer pipes) that underlie a typical city intersection,[12] and Unbuilding (1980), which describes the hypothetical dismantling of the
Empire State Building in preparation for re-erection in the Middle East.[13][14]
Macaulay authored a children's book, The Way Things Work (1988, text by
Neil Ardley). This was expanded and re-released as The New Way Things Work (1998) and The Way Things Work Now (2016).[1]The Way Things Work is his most commercially successful series and served as the basis for a short-lived educational
television program.
His books often display a whimsical humor. Illustrations in The Way Things Work depict
cave people and
woolly mammoths operating giant-sized versions of the devices he is explaining.[15]Motel of the Mysteries, written in 1979 after the
1976–1979 exhibition of the
Tutankhamun relics in the U.S., concerns the discovery by future archaeologists of an American
motel and their ingenious interpretation of the building and its contents as a funerary and temple complex.[16]Baaa is set after the human race has somehow gone extinct. Sheep discover artifacts of lost human civilization and attempt to rebuild it. However, the new sheep-inhabited world develops the same side effects of economic disparity, crime, and war.[17] Macaulay considers
concealing technology's inner mechanics as a growing problem for society, and aims to fight this trend with his work.[6][15]
To research his book The Way We Work, Macaulay spent years talking and studying with doctors and researchers, attending medical procedures, and laboriously sketching and drawing.[18] He worked with medical professionals like Lois Smith, a professor at Harvard University and researcher at Children's Hospital Boston, and medical writer Richard Walker to ensure the accuracy of both his words and his illustrations.[19] Anne Gilroy, a clinical anatomist in the departments of surgery and
cell biology at the
University of Massachusetts Medical School, consulted on the book. She said of Macaulay, "His remarkable curiosity and meticulous research led him into some of the most complicated facets of the human body yet he tells this story with simplicity, ingenuity and humor."[20]
He has collaborated with the Center for Integrated Quantum Materials at
Harvard University and the
Boston Museum of Science to create illustrations for
quantum materials. These aid in explaining visual information to researchers and a wider audience by establishing and using a consistent
visual style.[22]
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abc"MacArthur Fellows 2006". John D and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. September 2006. Archived from
the original on 16 February 2009. Retrieved 3 June 2009.