He begins: “I started this site as a way to reach out to people in the community. I thought that a virtual a cup of coffee would be a low pressure way to meet and discuss our shared ideas, passions, and vision for the profession. Then, at some point, I went a different way with it. Enjoy the angst,” proclaims Jody Brown, with a hint of madness and glee. Here we start with what you might call the ‘ten stages of minimalism’ – watch and learn!

Indeed one has to laugh sometimes, or risk crying otherwise, as any struggling architect knows from experience, trying all kinds of combinations simply to get to a simple solution. Coffee with an Architect takes all kinds of approaches, from serious narratives to slapstick postcards and self-deprecating visual definitions … all of this is (arguably) done with the aim of illuminating what should be (but often are not) readily-apparent facts surrounding built-environment professions.

Of Minimalism he has (not) much to say, as you saw – the series of illustrations work far better than words, just like good architectural diagrams. Of Modernism and Postmodernism there is an inevitable head nod to Robert Venturi’s ducks and decorated sheds. Then there are postcards from architects … and later come Valentine’s Day cards, too.

His humanist/humorist approach is, to be bold, what architecture needs – or, more specifically, what many architects need. A rich cup of coffee to wake the sense, spiced with a dollop of deep self-deprecating insight that creates an “ah-hah!” moment too often found only at the end of a grueling ten-week design studio process. Article titles like “Ugly goes all the way to the bone” and “New York I love you but you’re freaking me out” jar us into full attention with the blunt absence of pretense. He also features faux conversations he didn’t have, or no one had, with famous architects, and speculates on the things one should not say to particular past heroes of the field.

“His work focuses on urban infill projects, mixed-use, urban design, and urban renewal. Over the last 18 and half years, he has built on his passion for planning and urban design, and, has worked on enhancing, adding to, re-using, renovating, and sometimes creating from scratch the places where people meet, learn, play, and become inspired. His work is grounded in the belief that Architecture can save cities. When he’s not doing that, he can be found making fun of himself and his profession, and blogging about his ideals at – Coffee with an Architect. Or, you can find him sipping coffee with someone at a cafe near you, blathering on and on about Le Corbusier, while looking aloof and interesting at the same time somewhere over in the corner. In other words, he’s just an Architect, standing in front of an ideology, asking it to love him.” Coffee with an Architect is, in short, well worth a read.

As of today, WebUrbanist has 110,378 subscribed readers from around the world – in addition to everyone else who visits regularly and follows us via our new Twitter profile and Facebook group. This is nothing short of amazing – to us at least. What started as a pet project by one person has grown into a global art, design and culture publication with multiple authors and an ever-evolving approach to creating original content. Thank you all for helping making WebUrbanist what it is today.

So, what is new in the world of Webist Media? Stephanie Rogers remains our go-to gal for everything under the sun – and switch-hitter going back and forth between WebUrbanist and its sibling site: WebEcoist. We have recently had our resident technologist, Steve Levenstein, covering radical retrofuturistic technologies as well as the evolution of all kinds of technology. Gerri Elder is the newest addition to the Webist fold and has written some awesome articles collecting everything from wine label designs to vintage movie posters. Kurt Kohlstedt, the original WebUrbanist author, still pipes in now and again with a geekalicious article on whatever he is stuck on at the moment.

Speaking of WebEcoist, the green sister site of WebUrbanist, we have new authors covering content that continues to range from entertaining to educational. Some articles contain practical tips on home gardening, air purification and brilliant bio-fuels. Others err on the side of the extraordinary, spectacular and unusual, such as the seven wonders series, natural phenomena and formations, elemental forces and disasters and exotic plants and strange animals. If you are a regular reader and enjoy WebUrbanist be sure to check out WebEcoist and sign up for the feed.

Some of you will have no doubt noticed links to the latest venture by Kurt, founder and lead editor of Webist Media: Dornob Design. For those of you not familiar, Kurt has an undergraduate degree in philosophy and a graduate degree in architecture and urban design. WebUrbanist has been his passion for nearly two years but he also has felt the need to launch a new venture more directly tied to his original interest in the designed spaces and objects. The site has already been mentioned in such publications as BoingBoing, Gizmodo and the Huffington Post.

While WebUrbanist also covers a great deal of art and design, Dornob is more specifically focused on architecture, interiors, furniture, furnishings and fixtures – but of course contains a catch-all “more designs” category for offbeat gadgets, funky fashions and artistic designs that simply refuse to fit into a single conventional category. If you have not yet done so, feel free to browse the categories on Dornob, sign up for the feed or newsletter, join the Facebook group and follow the site on Twitter.

We hope in particular you have enjoyed the ways in which WebUrbanist has grown and diversified over time, bringing in new voices and introducing new directions to keep things interesting without (we hope) losing our core focus on creating fantastic content. As always, thanks for following us on the strange paths we take and for all your support through subscriptions, comments, feedback and sharing links to our content with your friends along the way. In short: that you, once again, for reading WebUrbanist and be sure to visit WebEcoist and Dornob Design as well.