Vice President Kamala Harris has selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, choosing a popular Midwestern governor who brings an authentic connection with rural white voters. 

Mr. Walz grew up on a farm in small-town Nebraska and moved to Mankato, in southern Minnesota, to teach high school geography and coach football in the 1990s. His teams won two state championships. He was elected to Congress in 2006, winning a red-leaning rural district. He is an Army National Guard veteran who served more than two decades; when he won his House seat he had the rank of command sergeant major, making him the highest-ranking enlisted soldier to ever serve in Congress.

He brings to the table the folksy, plainspoken vibe of a Midwestern former schoolteacher, which could help win over voters skeptical of a San Francisco progressive like Ms. Harris.

Former Minneapolis Democratic Mayor R.T. Rybak  has known Mr. Walz since his first run for Congress – and says he’s the same “incredibly authentic human being” that he was in 2005.  

“Vision, joy, and compassion are very much part of what Tim Walz is, and he also translates that through the eyes of the working people of this country,” Mr. Rybak says. “The country is going to have to get used to seeing a vice president in a schlumpy T-shirt and cargo pants. ... And they’re going to have to get used to seeing a vice president who can fix a car or go hunting.”

That demeanor and his governing record made Mr. Walz a favorite of progressives and populists in the truncated search for a Harris running mate. His description of former President Donald Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, as “weird” in recent interviews quickly caught on with Ms. Harris and other Democrats.

She cited his biography and personality for why she selected the governor.

“One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his convictions on fighting for middle class families run deep. It’s personal. As a governor, a coach, a teacher, and a veteran, he’s delivered for working families like his own,” she said in a statement announcing the pick.

The Walz track record

Mr. Walz was a relatively centrist congressman during his time in the House. He supported the Keystone XL oil pipeline, worked across the aisle to pass a bipartisan veterans suicide-prevention bill into law in 2015, and was a darling of the National Rifle Association in his early career. He’s a gun owner and avid hunter. But he has shifted to support more restrictions, like an assault weapons ban.

He’s won a number of tough House races in a rural district that leans Republican and two hard-fought gubernatorial elections in Minnesota, a liberal-leaning but competitive state. 

He worked across the aisle with Republicans who controlled the Legislature in his first term to secure more funding to fight opioid addiction and cut middle-class taxes. And in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 by a police officer in Minneapolis, he helped negotiate a bipartisan law putting new restrictions on police use of force in the state.

It was striking that Mr. Walz’s selection drew praise from across the Democratic Party – both progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and centrist West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin cheered him. Mr. Manchin called Mr. Walz “the real deal,” and said he “will bring normality back to the most chaotic political environment that most of us have ever seen.”

The protests and riots that broke out in Minneapolis after Mr. Floyd’s death are a vulnerability for him, however: Mr. Walz later admitted that the state’s initial response was an “abject failure.” Mr. Walz also faces criticism for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. A local nonprofit siphoned off a quarter-billion dollars in federal funds meant to feed children during the pandemic, the largest pandemic fraud case in the United States; a jury found five people guilty in June of fraud, bribery, and money laundering, and dozens of others face charges.

A recent legislative audit found that his administration’s Department of Education failed to conduct proper oversight to prevent the fraud.

Republicans are already attacking Mr. Walz on these issues. 

“Tim Walz let BLM rioters burn buildings to the ground. At the same time, he set up ‘snitch phone lines’ to report Minnesotans to the police for going to the store or having a barbecue during COVID. Just like Kamala Harris, he’s dangerous radical,” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas posted on X on Tuesday.

How Walz came from behind to win veepstakes

He began the rapid veepstakes race as a little-known governor, but quickly gained support from progressives, many of whom wanted to find another Rust Belt candidate to block the more centrist Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro from the ticket. Mr. Walz has earned plaudits from the left for his successful push in recent years for legislation to protect abortion access in Minnesota, create paid family leave, provide free school meals to all Minnesota students, offer free college tuition for all students from families that earn less than $80,000 annually, legalize recreational marijuana, and force public utility companies to use green energy. And he has close ties with organized labor.

Mr. Trump’s campaign immediately sought to paint him as a far-left politician.

“From proposing his own carbon-free agenda, to suggesting stricter emission standards for gas-powered cars, and embracing policies to allow convicted felons to vote, Walz is obsessed with spreading California’s dangerously liberal agenda far and wide,” Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Some pundits criticized Ms. Harris for not picking Mr. Shapiro, both because of the missed opportunity to shore up her support in Pennsylvania, perhaps the most important swing state in the country, and because Mr. Shapiro, a first-term governor, has a more moderate record that could win over independents.

But while Mr. Walz and Mr. Shapiro share similar views on Israel, Mr. Shapiro has been more outspoken in criticizing some protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, making him more of a target for criticism from the left.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a progressive who has known Mr. Walz since they were both elected to Congress in 2006, praised his home-state colleague for being able to build bridges with various disaffected groups.

“He’s a listener; he believes in sitting down with people and talking to them. Let me tell you, there’s a lot of communities who have felt historically marginalized in Minnesota who Tim Walz has built bridges with,” he says. “His basic impulse is to sit and listen and try to understand. He’s great at that.”

And Mr. Shapiro, an attorney from the Philadelphia suburbs, didn’t offer the blue-collar appeal that Mr. Walz brings – and Ms. Harris lacks. 

“I always think of him [as] giving off the football coach vibes,” says Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chair Ken Martin, who has known Mr. Walz for two decades. 

Mr. Martin says that Mr. Walz’s bio and skill set will make him an asset in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – three “blue wall” states crucial to winning the presidential election.

“There’s no one better equipped to speak to those Midwestern values, with Midwestern sensibilities and sort of a folksiness than Tim Walz, who is one of the best communicators I’ve seen,” he says.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated and expanded during the day of publication.

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Israeli police and a soldier work at the impact site of a projectile, after Lebanon's armed group Hezbollah said it launched a swarm of attack drones against military targets in northern Israel, in Nahariya, Israel, Aug. 6, 2024.

The drumbeat of escalation is getting louder, and the warnings more urgent, as the Middle East braces for the prospect of its worst war in half a century.

But a different kind of struggle – facing the leaders of all the major rivals – will determine when, and indeed whether, the 10-month-long conflict in Gaza expands to engulf the wider Mideast.

It might best be described as a contest between right brain and left brain, a hot swirl of emotions set against a cold, hard reality that all the combatants understand: In a full-scale war pitting Israel not just against Hamas in Gaza, but Iranian-armed Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iran itself, all will pay heavily.

And none can, in any meaningful sense, expect to win. 

It’s a reality Washington and key allies have been striving to drive home in their effort to keep the latest round of tit-for-tat violence from plunging the region into its most serious multifront conflict since the Arab-Israeli war of 1973.

And while U.S., European, and Arab governments now seem to accept a major escalation as inevitable in the coming days, they still hope a recognition of the huge costs for all sides in an all-out war will allow it to be contained and gradually dialed back.

That’s what happened three-and-a-half months ago, the last time the region seemed on the brink of war.

Vahid Salemi/AP

Vehicles drive past a huge banner showing the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh (at left), who was killed in an assassination last week, joining hands with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a square in downtown Tehran, Iran, Aug. 5, 2024. Iran has vowed to respond with "power and decisiveness" to the targeted killing of Hamas' top political leader, which it blamed on Israel.

An Israeli airstrike had killed senior officers in an Iranian embassy compound in Syria, and Tehran retaliated with its first direct attack on Israel.

Yet Iran publicly telegraphed its timing, Washington coordinated with Arab allies to help shoot down dozens of missiles and drones, and Israel responded with a single strike on an air-defense installation in Iran a few days later.

This time, the potential catalyst is more dramatic: Israel’s assassination of a Hezbollah commander in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, followed by the killing in Tehran of Hamas’ political leader and main cease-fire negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, who was attending the inauguration of Iran’s new president.

And raw emotion now seems to be driving the leaders of Iran, Hezbollah, and Israel – reinforced by an apparent belief that a show of military force makes political sense as well.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defiant response to the prospect of a two-front war with Iran and Hezbollah has, for now, muted growing protests over his failure to prevent Hamas’ cross-border attack of Oct. 7, its killing and abduction of hundreds of Israelis, and his rejection of a U.S.-backed deal for a Gaza cease-fire to recover dozens of Israeli hostages that Hamas still holds.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his top military leaders are also determined to make Israel pay for Mr. Haniyeh’s death, and to expunge the political humiliation of failing to keep him safe during a major state occasion in Tehran.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah seems equally intent on a significant military response to the killing of one of his top advisers, Fouad Shukur, especially since he was targeted in a densely populated southern suburb of the Lebanese capital.

The harsh reality of what full-scale war would mean, however, is what the U.S. and its Arab allies still hope will allow for this latest crisis to be contained.

The costs for Israel

The potential costs for Israel? Having already found that despite the huge scale of destruction and nearly 40,000 deaths in Gaza since Oct. 7, it has been unable to achieve the “total defeat” Mr. Netanyahu vowed to inflict on Hamas.

A wider war would be incomparably harder.

A sustained conflict with Iran could tax even Israel’s highly effective air defenses. That’s especially true given the likelihood that Washington would find it increasingly difficult to enlist Arab allies, angered over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, to help as they did in April’s Iranian missile attack.

And Hezbollah would present an even greater threat. Massed across Israel’s northern border, it is a far larger and better equipped force than Hamas. It has some 150,000 missiles, many of them precision-guided and capable of hitting anywhere in Israel.

Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters

Lebanon's Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah appears on a screen as he addresses his supporters, during the funeral of Hezbollah senior commander Fouad Shukur, who was killed in an Israeli strike, in Beirut's southern suburbs, in Lebanon, Aug. 1, 2024.

Hezbollah’s calculus – and Iran’s

Hezbollah, too, knows the cost of an all-out war: almost certainly, Israeli strikes deep into Lebanon, including Beirut itself, targeting key national infrastructure, and inflicting huge damage and high casualties. The last such war was nearly two decades ago, a conflict neither side won and that Mr. Nasrallah later said that he came to regret.

Finally, Iran. Its Middle East strategy has been built around a self-styled “Axis of Resistance.” That network of allies and proxies, which includes Hamas, militia groups in Iraq and Syria, Houthi forces in Yemen and, above all Hezbollah, holds political sway in those countries and in effect encircles Israel without the need for Iran to risk direct military involvement.

An all-out war with Israel could risk all of that, beyond the likely damage that Israeli airstrikes would do to Iran’s infrastructure and its already struggling economy.

Washington’s deep concern remains that an angry churn of emotions and domestic political calculations may still win the day, and that a spiral of attack and counterattack will take on a momentum that proves impossible to halt.

Yet the U.S. hope remains that the left brain will trump the right brain: that cooler judgment will bring all sides to stop short of all-out war.

The colors of most of the world's nations have been on display at the Summer Olympic Games in Paris, with one notable exception: Russia. Due to its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been officially banned, and only 15 of its athletes are allowed to compete as individuals without national identification.

The Russian public appears to be turning away from the Olympics in response.

Moscow’s official reaction to the Olympic ban of most Russian athletes has been furious denunciation. The state media are full of derisory commentary about the alleged hypocrisy, decadence, and even blasphemy that is supposedly on display in Paris. No Russian TV station is broadcasting the Games.

Still, they are being closely followed in the print media, particularly the mass-circulation daily Sport-Express. And live coverage of the Games is available with Russian-language narration on the official Olympic website, and the Russian government seems to be making no attempt to block it.

Yet barely 4% of respondents in an ongoing Sport-Express poll said they were watching the Olympics online, and only a further 10% said they were following it in the media. A whopping 60% indicated that they were not interested in the Games at all. In the comments section on the site, many remarked on the lack of Russian participation as a key reason for ignoring these Games.

“There are two trends in public opinion about this,” says Oleg Shamoneyev, an editor at Sport-Express. “Some think the 15 Russian athletes who went there to take part as ‘neutrals’ are traitors, and we should show no interest in any part of this show.

“But there are others who believe sports should be separate from politics. Whatever we may think about the International Olympic Committee excluding Russia, we should still take an interest in the performance of Russian athletes, even without national symbols, because these Games are an important global sporting event and one day we will return to them.”

Dmitri Lovetsky/AP

Russia's state TV channels aren't broadcasting any of the events from the 2024 Olympics, forcing the public to turn to hard-to-access outlets like the Kazakhstan satellite channel showing the opening ceremony at this pub in St. Petersburg, Russia, July 26, 2024.

The overwhelming disinterest in the current Games is a far cry from just 10 years ago, when Russia hosted the Winter Olympics in Sochi with much fanfare and an outpouring of public enthusiasm. But a series of doping scandals involving Russian athletes in the years that followed put serious political strains on Russia’s Olympic involvement, even though Russians continued to show effusive interest whenever their teams were allowed to participate.

With the near-total exclusion from Olympic involvement that took hold after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government has begun sponsoring alternative athletic events to keep Russian athletes active and the public engaged. The Russian city of Kazan hosted the BRICS Games in June, featuring athletes mostly from countries of the Global South. That lavishly funded competition got a lot of play on Russian TV.

September will see the World Friendship Games in Moscow and Yekaterinburg, which organizers claim will involve over 5,000 athletes from dozens of countries competing in many quasi-Olympic sports for cash prizes as well as medals. Critics say these alternative Games are unlikely to attract much top-tier athletic talent, and probably won’t make any lasting impression on global sports.

But a March poll conducted by the state-funded VTsIOM agency found that two-thirds of Russians thought the upcoming Moscow games were a significant event for the country. Thirty-eight percent mentioned the importance of creating an alternative to the Olympic movement, while 34% said it was necessary for Russia to continue developing international cooperation in sports.

That suggests that Russia’s alienation from the mainstream of international sports may be taking on a permanent character.

“I think the Paris Olympics have nothing to do with genuine international sports,” says Alexander Sharygin, a former sports adviser to the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party in Russia. “By depriving Russian athletes of the chance to take part, someone may have hoped that angry Russian fans would turn against the Russian leadership. But what people really think is, well, if that’s the way it is, then who needs your Olympics?”

Editor's note: The original version misspelled Mr. Sharygin's last name.

Diana West

Clarendon Presbyterian Church in Arlington, Virginia, has been swamped with significant maintenance problems, and plans to replace its edifice with housing and programming space for older adults in the LGBTQ+ community in a few years.

It began with the boiler, which stopped working in 2020. Related pumps, pipes, and hoses were also replaced at Clarendon Presbyterian Church, but there were still frequent leaks in the basement. The treasurer warned that the repair needed wasn’t financially feasible. The internet stopped working when it rained, leading to the discovery that the entire building needed to be rewired. Then one night in 2022, the windows in the third-floor preschool fell out of their frames and into the parking lot below.

Pastor Alice Tewell knew that her Arlington, Virginia, church was at a crossroads experienced by thousands of American churches forced to reevaluate the purpose and value of their properties.

More than 75 American churches of various denominations close their doors every week, estimated a 2019 report by the United Church of Christ’s Center for Analytics, Research & Development and Data. Shrinking memberships and oversize, aging buildings drive these closures.

Some congregations manage to stay in their churches by sharing their sanctuaries with other congregations, renting out unused space, or having only part-time clergy.

Others have found unusual solutions for financial stability. St. Bartholomew’s in New York City sold the air rights above the church for $78 million this year. The Arlington Temple United Methodist Church was an early model: Nicknamed “Our Lady of Exxon,” the church was originally built in 1970 with a rental space – a gas station – on the ground level below the steepled sanctuary. Most churches don’t have such valuable real estate assets, however, and many want their properties to continue to serve their communities in a way that matches their mission. In 2012, the Baptist Church at Clarendon here in Arlington built a 10-story building that included condominiums, 60% of which are for low-to-moderate-income residents. The church sanctuary occupies the bottom floors. 

“In recent years, churches have found a number of ways to expand the use of their buildings and land for community benefit,” says Mark Elsdon, editor of the book “Gone for Good? Negotiating the Coming Wave of Church Property Transition.” He says solutions include “building affordable housing, creating new business incubators within their building, expanding food pantries into co-op groceries, opening church kitchens to food-based entrepreneurs, launching new early childhood education centers, and more.”

Diana West

In 2012, the Baptist Church at Clarendon completed the transformation of its original building into a 10-story condominium. The church occupies the bottom two floors, and 60% of the units are for low-to-moderate-income residents of Arlington, Virginia.

Church real estate offers myriad other uses

One example can be found in the Russell neighborhood of downtown Louisville, Kentucky. There, St. Peter’s United Church of Christ reached out to the UCC Church Building & Loan Fund for a $1 million loan to tackle the worst of the deferred maintenance on its 1895 church.

But even if the fund had given the church 10 times that amount, a refurbished church building wouldn’t have met the needs of its community, an impoverished African American neighborhood. Instead, the fund advised that the church work with an in-house program to determine the highest and best use of the property. After a few months of consultation, the program recommended that St. Peter’s work with the church-affiliated Molo Village Community Development Corp. to subdivide the property and use a vacant corner of the lot. The result was a 30,000-square-foot building for health care facilities, day care, a credit union, a coffee shop, and the first sit-down restaurant in that neighborhood in 50 years.

The St. Peter’s pastor was skeptical, but eventually agreed this was the best way to serve the community. It took eight years, but in 2021 The Village @ West Jefferson was completed, creating 100 jobs while continuing the church’s gospel-based mission to alleviate poverty.

Mr. Elsdon says dozens of churches have found creative, even radical, paths to a different future. And that number is expected to grow into the hundreds.

However, radical solutions require some radical thinking – something that doesn’t come naturally to congregants who’ve spent decades, or even lifetimes, following traditional ministry practices. Reaching agreement on a new mission and path forward can take years of soul-shaking consensus-building.

Professional help is an option endorsed by Laurel Wainwright, treasurer for Belmont-Watertown United Methodist Church in Massachusetts. Two congregations with church buildings a mile apart agreed to merge into one congregation several years ago and had to decide what to do with their properties. 

“I can say – and this is speaking as the treasurer – the money we spent on outside consultants was money well spent,” says Ms. Wainwright. The consultants helped them build a framework to reach consensus, and led them in exploring public-private partnerships and developing requests for proposals. And, she adds, working with architects “helped us see the possibilities of what we could do along with the practical things we were going to have to take into account in our planning.”

Diana West

Arlington Temple United Methodist Church – nicknamed "Our Lady of Exxon" – was built with a gas station on the ground level so it would always have a reliable source of tenant income.

Ms. Wainwright suggests congregations starting the process “take time to determine your end goal and make sure that’s clear to the whole congregation. Clarity is key.”

Now united in spirit and mission, Belmont-Watertown is still looking for the right solution for their aging properties that will allow them to continue serving their community.

Turning loss of beloved edifice into gain

Bob Stains, the consultant who helped Belmont-Watertown through the initial stages, stresses the importance of building listening skills in any kind of transformation.

“We ask our participants to share the experiences they’ve had at their church that illustrate why they treasure the church and stay involved with it,” explains Mr. Stains. “We also acknowledge the loss that comes with transformation and that many people may need to grieve that loss before they are ready to move forward. And then we ask what they need to welcome, find space for, or create, to move forward as a unified church.”  

Once agreement on mission and purpose has been reached, successfully reinventing a church’s place in the community involves knowing the needs of that community and what services or facilities would be of greatest value to the people living there. 

Clarendon Presbyterian in Virginia has just finished that part. It took the congregation two years to decide to replace the traditional church edifice with affordable housing and space for programming designed to support older people in the LGBTQ+ community. Before any construction begins, Clarendon Presbyterian still has much decision-making ahead on making practical considerations, abiding by building codes, and maintaining good relations with nearby property owners. 

“We were fortunate to have so little conflict within our congregation, but the rest of the process will be a bit more challenging,” says Ms. Tewell, the Presbyterian pastor. “We’ll take our courage from God, though, because our redevelopment is an act of our faith.”

There are many paths available to congregations whose property no longer works for them, and each solution will be a little different. But churches already on the way suggest that congregations are most successful when they take time to really listen to one another and their neighbors about what’s best for the whole community. 

Photos from Commercial Furniture Group/Howe A/S Phaidon Press

David Rowland holds a model of his chair design in 1964.

Is it possible to design a revolutionary new chair? David Rowland did. You’ve most likely sat on it. 

The industrial designer’s signature chair, the 40/4, is the world’s first compactly stackable chair. You can stack 40 of them at a height of just 4 feet. Singly, they can fill a room. Then they can be packed up into a tiny storage space. 

Rowland’s chair debuted in 1964. That year, it won the grand prize at the Triennale di Milano, the annual exhibition mecca for art and design. Since then, the 40/4 has become part of many permanent collections, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Musée D’Orsay in Paris. But it’s no museum piece. Many examples of midcentury modern furniture now look very much “of their time.” By contrast, the 40/4 seems timeless. It looks equally at home inside a modern office or at the ancient edifice of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. 

Rowland said the 40/4 fulfilled his goal to “create the most universal chair ever built with the least expenditure of materials and labor.”

The design book “David Rowland: 40/4 Chair” chronicles the creative, logistical, and institutional challenges that the midcentury modern designer faced to make his idea a reality. It’s a story of tenacity. More than that, it’s a manifesto for the creative principles Rowland espoused. He was an advocate for sustainability long before the concept became popular. The designer railed against mass-produced products if they weren’t “meaningfully necessary.” He also called for purposeful design aimed at solving the world’s problems.

Photos from Commercial Furniture Group/Howe A/S Phaidon Press

“David Rowland: 40/4 Chair” by Erwin Rowland with Laura Schenone. Phaidon Press, 240 pp.

As Rowland once put it, “the different is seldom better, but the better is always different.”

Those words are also an apt description for the man who said them. This beautifully illustrated monograph, eloquently co-written by Rowland’s widow, Erwin, and journalist Laura Schenone, is a detailed portrait of the nonconformist entrepreneur. 

During his lifetime, Rowland designed everything from ahead-of-their-time houses made out of shipping containers to a safety ashtray. (A devout Christian Scientist, Rowland didn’t smoke.) While studying for his Master of Fine Arts in design at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, he submitted a drawing of a vehicle to the Packard Motor Car Co. It included a gas cap hidden beneath the license plate. When the company implemented that idea without acknowledging Rowland’s blueprint, let alone paying him, he wasn’t resentful. “There are more ideas where that one came from,” he said. 

Whenever Rowland picked up his draftsman’s pen, he prayed for ideas. As a 21-year-old pilot of a B-17 during World War II, he’d credited prayer for a safe landing after enemy fire crippled two of the bomber’s engines. A few years later, Rowland turned to God during a low point. For years, the freelance designer had been visiting legendary furniture designer Florence Knoll to show her prototype chairs he’d created. She kept turning down his pitches. The thought came to him, “Why don’t you see how many chairs you can get into the smallest space?” 

Instead of trying to appeal to Knoll’s taste, he aimed to redefine the chair so as to fulfill a need. Rowland first learned the importance of purposeful creation back in 1940. Then a high school student, he’d received special permission to enroll in a college summer course taught by László Moholy-Nagy. The Hungarian was a key figure in Germany’s Bauhaus school of design. (The book includes delightful accounts of Rowland’s encounters with many other 20th-century art and design luminaries, including Charles Eames, Buckminster Fuller, and Norman Rockwell.) Like other Bauhaus exiles who’d fled Nazi Germany, Moholy-Nagy exported the school’s philosophy to America.

Photos from Commercial Furniture Group/Howe A/S Phaidon Press

The sanctuary of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London is set with 40/4 chairs totaling 3,500.

“Bauhaus teachers saw the threat of dehumanization in the rapid rise of industrialism,” the authors write. “They advocated for human creativity and imagination and wanted to educate artists across creative disciplines to work with industry to create a better world.”

Those principles were a sharp break from trends of the time. According to the authors, eminent industrial designers such as Raymond Loewy often focused primarily on aesthetic appeal. They wanted products to stand out on the shelf. Why own a steam iron that resembles a warmed-up horseshoe when you could own one that emulates the futuristic sleekness of a spaceship? Rowland opposed style for its own sake. In a 1968 speech titled “The Moral Basis of Design,” delivered to 3,000 people at a Smithsonian exhibition about the history of chairs, he explained that beauty emerges organically from a design that fulfills its purpose.

Rowland’s chair features elegant curves. But to shape the seat, he had to overcome numerous challenges. Usually, the only way to stack any item is for each consecutive unit to be slightly larger than its predecessor. The marvel of the 40/4 is that each chair is the same size and proportion. Yet they slot together. It appears to defy the logical limits of spatial dimension. Both the seat and the back are set within the frames, rather than on top of them, so that they don’t bulge outward and create bulk when piled atop each other.

When Rowland presented his latest chair to Knoll, he said nothing about what made it a breakthrough product. Instead, he had her sit on two prototypes stacked on top of one another. They were so slim that they appeared to be a single chair. Then he revealed that she’d actually been sitting on two stackable chairs. Ms. Knoll’s reaction was immediate: “We’ll take it.” 

They didn’t. Without explanation, Knoll Associates prematurely canceled a contract for the 40/4. Other furniture companies, including Herman Miller, couldn’t see a use for it, either. 

Photos from Commercial Furniture Group/Howe A/S Phaidon Press

The chair gets its name from its compact stackability.

“It takes time for consumers to catch up and embrace what is different, because it is unfamiliar,” the authors write.

Rowland spent years in the wilderness trying to bring his invention to the market. Eventually, he learned through an architectural firm that the University of Illinois needing 17,000 chairs for new campus buildings. The architects loved his design, and connected him with the General Fireproofing Company, a manufacturer of school and office furniture. General Fireproofing had the capacity to manufacture the 40/4 chair at scale.  

Rowland’s masterpiece has since sold in the millions. Yet he isn’t as well known today as some of his midcentury modern peers. Perhaps it’s because he ultimately had to work outside of an established system of design and furniture institutions. 

“David Rowland: 40/4 Chair” may help boost his name recognition. It also reminds contemporary designers of timeless principles that serve as a valuable North Star.

Reuters

A ship from the United Arab Emirates loaded with humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza docked in Egypt's Al-Arish port, July 26.

One clear hint that the war in Gaza may be ending soon is a remarkable shift by a key Arab state. In recent days, the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich country in the Gulf, has backed the idea of sending a multinational force to stabilize a postwar Gaza. The UAE would even consider sending its own troops.

The hurdles to achieving this peacekeeping action – notably approval by both Israel and Hamas – remain high. Yet the UAE’s about-face reflects a mood in much of the Middle East to return to the prewar tasks of growing economically and fulfilling the high expectations of restless Arab youth – many of whom are trying to leave their countries for better jobs.

The UAE’s society represents this desire for a peaceful region where progress is the norm. Among Arab states, its people – mainly youth – are the biggest users of TikTok. Last September, its researchers released an artificial intelligence model, dubbed Falcon, that was considered among the best in the world. A social tolerance by the country’s absolute monarchy allowed the release of the movie “Barbie” last year – in a country that has already advanced women’s rights. The annual Arab Youth Survey has consistently found that most young Arabs in the region want to live in the UAE, even more than in the United States.

The UAE is well ahead of other oil states in planning for a post-oil economy. In 2020, it initiated diplomatic ties with Israel. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, it has provided about $700 million in aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Keen to show that an Arab state can thrive without a radical Islamic government – like Hamas – the UAE may want to see Gaza become, well, like the UAE.

“The UAE can have a huge impact on changing narratives, as it did successfully by itself, and it can be a blueprint for a more tolerant culture in Gaza,” a former top Israeli officer, Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, told The Media Line. But first, it must get peaceful boots on the ground in Gaza.