Interview: ACCESS is everything Richard Saul Wurman, Information architect

Richard Saul Wurman most recently attracted attention as the creator of Information Architects, a showcase book wherein twenty accomplished information architects present and discuss their graphic representations of information. Mr. Wurman is also the creator/host of the TED Conferences, which gather luminaries to ignite in the convergence of Technology, Entertainment and Design; in February 2000, TED x will be held in Monterey, California.Mr. Wurman also is or has been an architect of buildings, a mapmaker, and a redesigner of many things. For a 13-year period spanning the 60s, he published a series of architecturally oriented books on building comparisons, city analyses and Louis Kahn. In the early 80s Mr. Wurman began producing his highly successful ACCESS Guides to major cities; since then he has published dozens of guides to cities and a variety of topics including medical procedures. In 1987 he founded a company called the Understanding Business which created new formats for a variety of common documents, most notably road atlases and telephone books. In 1990, Mr. Wurman wrote Information Anxiety, an exploration of the problems we experience as a result of the information explosion; the enduring value of that work testifies to its perspicacity.