dunja
yoonsun
tian
nate
110108 - market models
Examples of the final market models. Go here for a slideshow of more models and here for the handout that introduced this exercise.
110108 - market drawings
110108 - transportation and transaction networks
110108 - material studies (2)
Examples of later material studies. Go here for more images and drawings.
yoonsun
tian
alex
meg
nicole
sunkyung
101201 - final
…seemingly random but structured patterns strike a resonance within us, for our ‘internalisations’ may be built on similar ideas – a kind of haunting, of interior space being made external, of buried archetype surfacing. The whispers we hear will sharpen our intuition.
- Cecil Balmond
Informal, The Chemnitz Solution
Your final review is Monday December 13, 1 - 6pm in the 2nd floor hall. Plan your time carefully and work efficiently during the next week and a half. Continue refining the material execution of concepts while developing final presentation materials. Do not simply remake what you already know.
Final Requirements:
Compose and rehearse your verbal presentation; it must be precise and concise. Trace a coherent line of thinking through the entire project. Presentations need not be chronological. Focus on latest drawings and models while using earlier work to support the current position of the project.
Final jury: Jeremy Carvalho, Michael Chen, Jason Lee, Karla Rothstein
- Cecil Balmond
Informal, The Chemnitz Solution
Your final review is Monday December 13, 1 - 6pm in the 2nd floor hall. Plan your time carefully and work efficiently during the next week and a half. Continue refining the material execution of concepts while developing final presentation materials. Do not simply remake what you already know.
Final Requirements:
- relevant digital and physical material studies from project 2A
- food production / distribution / consumption maps from project 2A
- relevant digital and physical material studies from project 2B
- site analysis maps
- temporal diagrams
- site plan showing surrounding blocks, 1:200 scale
- 2 vertical sections of project in site, 1/8” scale
- 1 plan section of project in site, 1/8” scale
- 4 images of project in site, each image to convey a particular idea of the project
- physical model of a particular aspect and zone of the project, 1/4” scale
- position statement, text large enough to be legible on the wall
Compose and rehearse your verbal presentation; it must be precise and concise. Trace a coherent line of thinking through the entire project. Presentations need not be chronological. Focus on latest drawings and models while using earlier work to support the current position of the project.
Final jury: Jeremy Carvalho, Michael Chen, Jason Lee, Karla Rothstein
101118 - envelope
The skin is not a straightforward simple covering of our interiority…The skin is an organ, divided internally into differentiated and interpenetrating strata. It is a surface that is continuous in its depth and, like the Klein bottle, slips from outside to inside in a continuous surface.
- Alicia Imperiale
New Flatness, Surface Tension in Digital Architecture, 2000
Consider two definitions of envelope: 1. An enclosing membrane that continuously enfolds interiority and exteriority in a manner more like the skin of a body than a normative system of architectural walls, floors, and ceilings. 2. A set of performance limits as in the performance limits of an aircraft. These definitions of envelope are related and critical in the continuing transition from abstract material study to concrete architectural proposal.
ENVELOPE COMPONENT
The material derived from a component-based aggregation system has potentials for producing ranges of surface and volume conditions, organizing program, and structuring a response to site. It cannot, however, produce all aspects of an architecture. With this in mind, augment your material system at the component level thinking of envelope as skin and envelope as a set of performance limits.
This augmentation, the envelope component, will enhance existing component’s capacities to produce enclosure and do other work: enable movement of bodies across horizontal and vertical thresholds, control views, control light, and clarify distinctions between indoor and outdoor space. When adding the envelope component, the existing component may be modified. The envelope component must occur as an outgrowth of component-based logic.
PHYSICAL MODEL
Develop a physical model of a portion of your project at 1/4”=1’-0”. Select the portion to document a wide range of spatial and programmatic conditions and to describe the project’s relationship to the existing site. The physical model need not be a duplication of a digital model; it may study specific aspects of the project.
Build selected features of the model from laser-cut parts. A version of this model will be required for the final review.
- Alicia Imperiale
New Flatness, Surface Tension in Digital Architecture, 2000
Consider two definitions of envelope: 1. An enclosing membrane that continuously enfolds interiority and exteriority in a manner more like the skin of a body than a normative system of architectural walls, floors, and ceilings. 2. A set of performance limits as in the performance limits of an aircraft. These definitions of envelope are related and critical in the continuing transition from abstract material study to concrete architectural proposal.
Taichung Metropolitan Opera House, 2005
ENVELOPE COMPONENT
The material derived from a component-based aggregation system has potentials for producing ranges of surface and volume conditions, organizing program, and structuring a response to site. It cannot, however, produce all aspects of an architecture. With this in mind, augment your material system at the component level thinking of envelope as skin and envelope as a set of performance limits.
This augmentation, the envelope component, will enhance existing component’s capacities to produce enclosure and do other work: enable movement of bodies across horizontal and vertical thresholds, control views, control light, and clarify distinctions between indoor and outdoor space. When adding the envelope component, the existing component may be modified. The envelope component must occur as an outgrowth of component-based logic.
PHYSICAL MODEL
Develop a physical model of a portion of your project at 1/4”=1’-0”. Select the portion to document a wide range of spatial and programmatic conditions and to describe the project’s relationship to the existing site. The physical model need not be a duplication of a digital model; it may study specific aspects of the project.
Build selected features of the model from laser-cut parts. A version of this model will be required for the final review.
101118 - 3/4 review notes
Here are my notes from the review yesterday. Read through all of them, many of the comments apply to the whole class.
Liz:
Liz:
- How does the space of the section relate to food production/manufacture?
- Develop drawings to convey intent more effectively.
- The timeline analysis is good; it is about usage. How does it begin to inform the project?
- How can the project create interlacing like the diagrams?
- The project statement is ambitious. How does the ‘tool set’ (the material system) work to produce space in response to the project statement?
- How is the material responsive to program?
- How can material operations inform carving operations on the site?
- The material study is autonomous from the prison research, how do they become synthesized?
- Don’t automatically move the project in normative directions (i.e. flat floor slabs and diagonal structural members), tap into the complexities of the material studies to respond to the prison research.
- Assess the site analysis map and use its findings to inform the project.
- Present models (and other work) to document thinking process. Progression vs. production.
- Scale of the material on the site seems too big.
- Transpose the complexity and fineness of diagrams into the building proposal.
- Consider how the physical models inform drawings and digital models.
- Compression/expansion diagrams are good, how do they relate to the project? How do they operate at a finer grain?
- The hypothesis of the project is clear, now consider how it works.
- Infiltrate the McGraw-Hill Building more forcefully.
- Design and document the project in terms of usage.
- The presentation is clear. Temporal diagrams are a good first try.
- What is the link between analysis and proposal?
- Why is the project symmetrical?
- Work on renderings, every image should be about a particular idea.
- The project is very even; it needs more difference and more clarity in the changes occurring over time.
- Is the project intended to be a labyrinth like Reading Market?
- Reconsider the overall formation of the project.
- How do the territories of the map inform territories of the project?
- What is the relationship to Fox News and other surrounding programs?
- Why is the project symmetrical?
- Reconsider the highly conventional plan organization.
- Consider plan as section and section as plan.
- Superimpose two layers of mapping data (not all four) and make more productive comparisons that can then inform the proposal.
- Look at Santa Catalina Market.
- Look at Brian Eno scores to inform temporal diagrams.
- What is the connection between analysis and proposal?
- What is the connection between text and proposal?
- Return to the ‘circulation’ wildcard program.
- The proposal is currently a material study dropped into the site, move beyond that.
- The site analysis is very precise, how does it relate to the proposal?
- The depth of the section is a great spatial opportunity.
- Figure out how to relax the curvature of the aggregations.
- Make the proposal more continuous.
- Renovate the existing site more forcefully.
- Material studies with scale changes are great, how can that scale change become more legible and productive in the proposal?
- The project sits on the site like a cloud, it that your intention?
- What is the link between analysis and proposal?
- Move from tetrahedron to triangular surface is good, but now how do aspects of the tetrahedron get reintroduced?
- How do you create inhabitable surfaces?
101110 - time
Real time is more truly an engine, however, than a procession of images – it is expressed only in the concrete, plastic medium of duration. Time always expresses itself by producing, or more precisely, by drawing matter into a process of becoming-ever-different, and to the product of this becoming-ever-different – to this inbuilt wildness – we have given the name novelty.
- Sanford Kwinter
Architectures of Time, 2001
Architecture is durational at multiple levels – its actualization (the process of its design) and its resulting presence in the world both draw matter into processes ‘of becoming-ever-different…’ Deal with time in your project at the level of actualization by iteratively testing models in the site and feeding what they produce back through notions of site and program. Deal with time at the level of presence by developing a series of temporal diagrams.
TEMPORAL DIAGRAMS
Your project will intervene in temporal events to produce new dynamics in and around the McGraw Hill site – develop temporal diagrams that explore and document these dynamics. Diagrams must describe relational conditions (i.e. relations of program zones) and demonstrate how they change over time. Diagrams may be serial (i.e. one diagram per hour), or multiple instances of time may be superimposed (chronophotograph above). Devise notations that communicate duration. Consider different scales of time (hourly, daily, seasonal).
SECTIONS
Develop two 1/4” scale sections that clearly covey architectural intent. Cut one section horizontally and one section vertically. Orient sections to document as many different spatial conditions as possible. Describe how your intervention relates to the existing architecture of the site. The vertical section must include scale figures. Both sections must show deep space by calibrating line-weight and line-type. Consider adding a layer of notational information to describe issues of time and/or ownership.
- Sanford Kwinter
Architectures of Time, 2001
Architecture is durational at multiple levels – its actualization (the process of its design) and its resulting presence in the world both draw matter into processes ‘of becoming-ever-different…’ Deal with time in your project at the level of actualization by iteratively testing models in the site and feeding what they produce back through notions of site and program. Deal with time at the level of presence by developing a series of temporal diagrams.
chronophotograph
transatlantic telegraph
communication chart
TEMPORAL DIAGRAMS
Your project will intervene in temporal events to produce new dynamics in and around the McGraw Hill site – develop temporal diagrams that explore and document these dynamics. Diagrams must describe relational conditions (i.e. relations of program zones) and demonstrate how they change over time. Diagrams may be serial (i.e. one diagram per hour), or multiple instances of time may be superimposed (chronophotograph above). Devise notations that communicate duration. Consider different scales of time (hourly, daily, seasonal).
SECTIONS
Develop two 1/4” scale sections that clearly covey architectural intent. Cut one section horizontally and one section vertically. Orient sections to document as many different spatial conditions as possible. Describe how your intervention relates to the existing architecture of the site. The vertical section must include scale figures. Both sections must show deep space by calibrating line-weight and line-type. Consider adding a layer of notational information to describe issues of time and/or ownership.
101101 - synthesis
On a continuum without values, everything can dissolve into inconsistency; however if we negotiate its inflections, we can ensure continuities between the most disparate registers, between the most distant eras.
- Bernard Cache
Earth Moves, The Furnishing of Territories, 1995
A synthesis is a combination of diverse parts that forms a coherent whole. Begin synthesizing diverse aspects of your project into an overarching framework – a continuum that applies value across registers – material systems, food production / distribution / consumption systems and the midtown Manhattan site. Synthesize by writing a project position statement and by conditioning material systems for arrival on the site.
Write a short text (100 words or less) describing the main idea, thesis and/or topic of investigation for your project. Include concepts derived from material, mapping, and site research. Describe how the project functions within larger systems. Describe the indoor and outdoor wildcard programs. Consider how the project addresses issues of time and ownership. Begin building an argument for your project. Email rough draft of text to me by Tuesday evening.
CONDITIONING
Condition material systems in response to site and program. Consider how:
- Bernard Cache
Earth Moves, The Furnishing of Territories, 1995
A synthesis is a combination of diverse parts that forms a coherent whole. Begin synthesizing diverse aspects of your project into an overarching framework – a continuum that applies value across registers – material systems, food production / distribution / consumption systems and the midtown Manhattan site. Synthesize by writing a project position statement and by conditioning material systems for arrival on the site.
Lars Spybroek, NOX – site diagram
Mark Lombardi – Oliver North, Lake Resources of Panama,
and the Iran Contra Operation
POSITION STATEMENTand the Iran Contra Operation
Write a short text (100 words or less) describing the main idea, thesis and/or topic of investigation for your project. Include concepts derived from material, mapping, and site research. Describe how the project functions within larger systems. Describe the indoor and outdoor wildcard programs. Consider how the project addresses issues of time and ownership. Begin building an argument for your project. Email rough draft of text to me by Tuesday evening.
CONDITIONING
Condition material systems in response to site and program. Consider how:
- multiple food ‘stalls’ aggregate into a ‘market’ condition
- food stalls are developed at a range of scales
- indoor and outdoor areas are developed
- the project addresses site elevation differences
- the project relates to the scale of the human body
102610 - mcgraw-hill building panorama
Click here for panoramic photos! You can get access to the photos by using school email address, if needed.
102510 - analysis
Although architects generally make a clear distinction between what is given (context) and what is to be conceived (concept), the relationship is not so simple. Rather than a given, context is something defined by the observer, in the same way that a scientific fact is influenced by the observation of the scientist…Context is not fact; it is always a matter of interpretation.
- Bernard Tschumi
Event-Cities 3, Concept vs. Context vs. Content, 2004
An analysis is an examination of a complex, its elements and their relations. It is a study of relationships between parts. The context of a project, as described above, is a necessarily constructed condition. An analysis of specific urban conditions surrounding the McGraw-Hill building will reveal qualities of midtown Manhattan that are more than physical (temporal, transactional) and in so doing construct a site for the event-performance project.
CONTEXT
Produce an analytical map of the site. Where appropriate, tie the analysis into previous food production / distribution / consumption research. Consider how transportation, infrastructure, and transaction networks impact the functioning of the city. Consider how open space functions in this part of the city. The analysis must address issues of time and ownership. As in previous maps, notational systems are crucial to clarify codes of communication. A carefully structured set of graphic and operational attributes should be developed particular to the intent of your analysis.
Working as a studio, construct a shared site plan and Rhino model from documentation in the 501 course folder.
CONTINUITIES / DISTORTIONS / EDITS
Continue developing midterm modeling systems. Address feedback from the midterm review and define specific criteria by which models will be evaluated (spatial, programmatic, tectonic, etc). Explore continuities between individual modules. Apply forceful and deliberate distortions to existing geometry. Make a series of edits to redundancies produced by the system.
Reading / Reference:
Stan Allen, “Diagrams Matter.”
Steven Johnson, Emergence. [excerpts]
Bernard Tschumi, “Sequences.”
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/oct/08/
http://www.radiolab.org/2007/may/29/
- Bernard Tschumi
Event-Cities 3, Concept vs. Context vs. Content, 2004
An analysis is an examination of a complex, its elements and their relations. It is a study of relationships between parts. The context of a project, as described above, is a necessarily constructed condition. An analysis of specific urban conditions surrounding the McGraw-Hill building will reveal qualities of midtown Manhattan that are more than physical (temporal, transactional) and in so doing construct a site for the event-performance project.
 |
| map of Rome - Giambattista Nolli, 1748 |
 |
| interactive taxi use intensity map - The New York Times, 2010 |
Produce an analytical map of the site. Where appropriate, tie the analysis into previous food production / distribution / consumption research. Consider how transportation, infrastructure, and transaction networks impact the functioning of the city. Consider how open space functions in this part of the city. The analysis must address issues of time and ownership. As in previous maps, notational systems are crucial to clarify codes of communication. A carefully structured set of graphic and operational attributes should be developed particular to the intent of your analysis.
Working as a studio, construct a shared site plan and Rhino model from documentation in the 501 course folder.
CONTINUITIES / DISTORTIONS / EDITS
Continue developing midterm modeling systems. Address feedback from the midterm review and define specific criteria by which models will be evaluated (spatial, programmatic, tectonic, etc). Explore continuities between individual modules. Apply forceful and deliberate distortions to existing geometry. Make a series of edits to redundancies produced by the system.
Reading / Reference:
Stan Allen, “Diagrams Matter.”
Steven Johnson, Emergence. [excerpts]
Bernard Tschumi, “Sequences.”
http://www.radiolab.org/2010/oct/08/
http://www.radiolab.org/2007/may/29/
102410 - material studies (1)
Material studies further develop the modeling systems used in the first project of the semester, the surface form, and they are mined for their potential to create spatial frameworks in response to architectural program. Go here for more images, and here for the handout that introduced the exercise.
Material development from the first half of the semester will inform the final food market project. Those of you who haven't sent me your material study images yet, please do so!
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| yoonsun |
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| tian |
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| blaise |
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| dunja |
102410 - production / consumption / distribution
102410 - midterm notes
Here are my note from the midterm review. Read all of them (note just your own) because many comments apply to the whole class.
Alex
Alex
- How does the food stand operate within the high-end/low-end value structure?
- The stretching node/rib element may not be working materially yet, though techniques that make the system more flexible are good and must continue to evolve.
- Maps don’t seem to be related to the material research. How can they be connected at scale of the structure, at the human scale, at the scale of the larger system? The points of relationship exist, it is a question of finding them.
- How does the material system interact with a series of site/context/system questions?
- Do all faces with the models become actual faces or are some removed? Is the plane always the same thickness?
- How does the high-end/low-end idea fit into program and into food?
- How can you get away from the super-skeletal quality of the material system? How can combinatorial logics themselves become more spatial?
- How can the material become less repetitive, able to create more difference?
- May be confusing (or conflating in an unproductive way) size, distance and time in mapping notations. How do the layers correlate (or not)?
- Final model forces the architecture too much. The larger scale project of the next assignment may lend more opportunity to the material system.
- A market or food stall is a program that can have a lot of openness, don’t need so much wall to create interior.
- The project is artificially constrained the by jumping too quickly to program.
- How can degrees of flexibility be incorporated into the module?
- What flexible dynamics are embedded in the systems of food production/distribution?
- Performance comes from the surface. How does the section grow to create enclosure? (don’t say roof or wall). Need to ‘damage’ the module a lot more. Adjust it a lot more.
- How does mapping create, rather than simply extract, data?
- The logic of the lid is about mobility. How does that relate the mobility of the project? How does the space become ‘dynamic’ at some level, shadows, program, people moving, etc?
- How do the maps start to inform the design? Read the ripple effects. Read the gradients of intensities and densities.
- How do you use the project ask the questions that need to be answered? How can you use the drawings and models to see the thing you haven’t seen before?
- The food stand is very hard to understand in terms of occupation and space.
- Need to bring more concrete tectonic constraints to the project.
- Early studies show a high degree of proficiency in layering and volumetric of shadows. How do shadows and layering effect the project moving forward?
- The material system has many potentials that have not been realized in the study models. It could produce three-pronged, three-layered spaces. This might produce 'excess' spaces which is good, they will present a series of design opportunities.
- Modules can be weighted; they can be connected in different ways for different situations.
- The local/imported program is coarse, how can the idea be nuanced and refined?
- The model creates a lot of poche space; take advantage of that.
- Fibonacci sequence, snail shell, these are spiraling growth patterns that produce surface and volume. What are the parameters that produce the spiral in your project and how can they be manipulated?
- There needs to be more blind testing in the project.
- Solving the problem may be less important than testing alternatives.
- The map becomes valuable when it can be used as a speculative arena. Tracking Starbucks in the city map is simply registering data. This is very different from the flicker map that plays with data.
- Maps are dealing with too many types of data at once, need to edit.
- Don’t use the map to reduce the complexity of the city.
- There is a possibility to design a series of kiosks that are attached to more permanent sit-down restaurants.
- Internal logics of the material system are very strong, there isa strong imagination at work.
- Datascapes can be used as a way to qualify a series of relationships between elements of the system and these can be transported abstracting to the material system.
- How do you know when food tastes good, how is a judgment made? There are logics behind this and they lead to value systems that may be translated to the project.
- Feedback loops are at work within the rating system of Zagat’s. How can feedback loops work in the project?
- What is the relationship between fine dining and food carts?
- What is the difference between a shopping mall and a bazaar?
- Aggregating the stand is good.
- Changing scale changes the way components can be propagated. But as the system gets larger it loses its structure.
- What are the lessons of an egg? Shell, membrane, structure, incubation, etc.
- Eggs don’t spoil, how does that tie into the distribution system in the map.
- The map de-centers and aggregates boundary conditions in particular areas. What are the boundary conditions that emerge from the map?
- Educational aspects of the program are superfluous at the moment.
- The project would now benefit from applying a series of tectonic constraints. Thickness, structure.
- Need to make measured sections now.
- Even if the map is a fiction, there is a richness in the data that is lacking in the material and program study.
- If the map is created though a rigorous analysis of Yelp and this produces a condition that is at some level unfamiliar, that is fine. But the map must be created rigorously.
- Sections need to be drawn to analyze potential of the model.
- Three user group strategy isn’t working spatially or programmatically.
- Patterns are emerging in the material work. How can they be put to use?
- Components need to evolve more in order to begin to meet external constraints of structure, program, etc.
- Weight the components to creating more variation within the material system.
- In maps and systems analysis there are dynamics that have attractors. The richest structure might not be something you choose but one that is responsive to certain external criteria.
- Deformations of the modules might happen at some point to respond to program. When do you challenge the geometry?
- Need to edit, not just add add add. Architectural problems need to be solved.
- Consider mapping as a verb, a process of managing dynamics.
- The model is actually working on program, the model is doing work in the compression and squeezing of the model. The modules are different from each other.
- Thickness and materiality are important questions now. Are the modules rib-like in structure? Or shell like in structure?
- Look at Erwin Hauer sunshades.
- Concave / convex flip is useful.
- Where are the edges of the model, how does it end?
- Maps are a great place to begin to think about boundary conditions.
- Material and manufacturing considerations can push the development of the model.
- There is a conceptual agenda that isn't very connected to the food stand yet.
- The project seems very ‘possible.’ But it has gone against the spirit of aggregation.
- The map tries to prove some kind of causality which necessitates a type of assessment. There is not the same type of investment in model making. Can there be a similar type of assessment that allows you to evaluate models?
- How do you set parameters in the material work that allow you to enter into dialogue with the process.
- The flat linear model seems to have potential.
- Is there a substructure that ‘supports’ or interacts with the module?
101014 - midterm
In the technocratically constructed, written, and functionalized space in which the consumers move about, their trajectories form unforeseeable sentences, partly unreadable paths across a space. Although they are composed with the vocabularies of established languages (those of television, newspapers, supermarkets, or museum sequences) and although they remain subordinated to the prescribed syntactical forms (temporal modes of schedules, paradigmatic orders of space, etc.) the trajectories trace out the ruses of the other interests and desires that are neither determined nor captured by the systems in which they develop.
- Michel de Certeau
The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984
Plan your time well and work efficiently to prepare for your midterm Thursday, October 21. Do not, however, work for the sake of production alone. Continue conditioning material systems to produce spatial potentials for the food stand. Material systems will be continually modified / adjusted / augmented through modeling and drawing to produce spatial conditions in response to the program of the food stand – and the program of the food stand will be modified / adjusted / augmented by the capacities of material systems.
Project Text – Write a project text (150 words maximum) describing a conceptual position for the project. Based on insights from mapping and material systems research, describe how the food stand functions within larger food production / consumption networks. Why does it function this way? What is its attitude toward the required programs of storage, display, preparation, and consumption?
MIDTERM REQUIREMENTS
The midterm will be a comprehensive review of Project 2A work. All drawings, diagrams, and maps must be in the 20” x 20” sheet module. Present the following:
Midterm jury: Jane Kim, Raoul Rickenberg, Kristen Smith, Fredrick Tang, Franca Trubiano
- Michel de Certeau
The Practice of Everyday Life, 1984
Plan your time well and work efficiently to prepare for your midterm Thursday, October 21. Do not, however, work for the sake of production alone. Continue conditioning material systems to produce spatial potentials for the food stand. Material systems will be continually modified / adjusted / augmented through modeling and drawing to produce spatial conditions in response to the program of the food stand – and the program of the food stand will be modified / adjusted / augmented by the capacities of material systems.
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| fissures in gelatinous oil |
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| aluminum crystals |
Model / Drawings – Build a physical model of the food stand at 1/4”=1-0” or 1/2”=1’-0” scale. Consider this model the latest iteration of the material system tests – it will be abstract. Translate this model into Rhino to produce sections, diagrams, and renderings of the food stand. Drawings will be the most architecturally developed piece of the midterm presentation.
Project Text – Write a project text (150 words maximum) describing a conceptual position for the project. Based on insights from mapping and material systems research, describe how the food stand functions within larger food production / consumption networks. Why does it function this way? What is its attitude toward the required programs of storage, display, preparation, and consumption?
MIDTERM REQUIREMENTS
The midterm will be a comprehensive review of Project 2A work. All drawings, diagrams, and maps must be in the 20” x 20” sheet module. Present the following:
- first gradient model with module taxonomy separate
- diagrams of module, variation, and combination
- selected Rhino/GH material system test models (with sections as applicable)
- selected physical material system test models (with sections as applicable)
- physical model of food stand (1/4”=1’0” or 1/2”=1’-0”)
- one horizontal and one vertical section of food stand (1/2”=1’0”)
- component assembly diagram of food stand
- two rendered images of food stand
- two food production / consumption system maps
- project statement, 150 words max.
Midterm jury: Jane Kim, Raoul Rickenberg, Kristen Smith, Fredrick Tang, Franca Trubiano
101007 - internal / external
Dead things are easier to handle than live ones; they may not be so interesting but they are less troublesome. From the point of view of the architect seeking firmness and stability, the best geometry is surely a dead geometry, and perhaps that, by and large, is what architecture is made with. What I mean by a dead geometry is an aspect of geometry no longer under development from within…Dead geometry is an inoculation against uncertainty.
- Robin Evans
The Projective Cast, Architecture and its Three Geometries, 1993
Geometry is an active participant in architecture (and in the material systems you have been developing). Working with a live geometry, one that is under internal development produces productive uncertainties in a project. These uncertainties offer resistance to the external normalizing tendencies of program, dimensional constraints, weight requirements, codes, etc.
As the project enters increasingly architectural territory, you will be required to negotiate between the internal combinatorial and transformational logics of material systems and the external demands of designing a re-deployable food stand prototype. Internal logics (material systems) will condition external demands (program) and external demands will condition internal logics.
Build a series of five physical models that iteratively condition material systems in response to the external demands outlined in the next section. These models must extend from physical and digital material systems developed in the past week. Laser cut patterns for building componentry. Incrementally scale componentry and consider incrementally shifting position and rotation of connections.
Qualitative differences in surface, volume, and porosity, as well as changes in the scale of assemblies relative to the body, present opportunities to respond to the external demands of the food stand. Material systems always present particular opportunities and limitations, acknowledge them in the evolution of your project.
EXTERNAL DEMANDS
The midterm project is to design a re-deployable food stand prototype for an urban location. As outlined in the class syllabus, the food stand must address the following constraints:
- Robin Evans
The Projective Cast, Architecture and its Three Geometries, 1993
Geometry is an active participant in architecture (and in the material systems you have been developing). Working with a live geometry, one that is under internal development produces productive uncertainties in a project. These uncertainties offer resistance to the external normalizing tendencies of program, dimensional constraints, weight requirements, codes, etc.
As the project enters increasingly architectural territory, you will be required to negotiate between the internal combinatorial and transformational logics of material systems and the external demands of designing a re-deployable food stand prototype. Internal logics (material systems) will condition external demands (program) and external demands will condition internal logics.
unit accumulation with
internal combinatorial logic
unit accumulation with
planned external constraints
INTERNAL LOGICS Build a series of five physical models that iteratively condition material systems in response to the external demands outlined in the next section. These models must extend from physical and digital material systems developed in the past week. Laser cut patterns for building componentry. Incrementally scale componentry and consider incrementally shifting position and rotation of connections.
Qualitative differences in surface, volume, and porosity, as well as changes in the scale of assemblies relative to the body, present opportunities to respond to the external demands of the food stand. Material systems always present particular opportunities and limitations, acknowledge them in the evolution of your project.
EXTERNAL DEMANDS
The midterm project is to design a re-deployable food stand prototype for an urban location. As outlined in the class syllabus, the food stand must address the following constraints:
- 8000 cubic ft maximum volume
- built from components that can be carried by two people
- roof canopy must be at least twice the size of the stand footprint, rainwater must be distributed to a maximum of three points in the canopy
101004 - injunction
It may be helpful to realize…that the primary form of mathematical communication is not description, but injunction. In this respect it is comparable to practical art forms like cookery, in which the taste of a cake, although literally indescribable, can be conveyed to the reader in the form of a set of injunctions called a recipe.
- G. Spencer-Brown
Laws of Form, 1969
An injunction is a directive or command. Working by injunction is a process that involves specifying, and then carefully implementing, directives. This process is a technique for avoiding pre-figuration, it is fundamentally exploratory, and it involves iterative improvement (recipe for baking a cake is followed, results are evaluated, recipe is adjusted to achieve a better outcome, cake is baked again). The images below are outcomes of injunctive processes. Your maps and models will function as injunctive devices in the development of your project.
MAP DEVELOPMENT
In continuing map development, focus on the comparative data. Calibrate graphics so that organizational structures in the comparative data become legible. Clarify how the regional-scale and city-scale maps work together to document different (yet related) aspects of the same food production / consumption systems. When maps have become sufficiently analytical, test how they may become speculative by modifying variables in the underlying relational rule structures. Consider how localized (even seemly insignificant) alterations to production / consumption systems may produce system-wide reconfigurations.
MATERIAL CAPACITIES
Material studies will no longer be purely abstract. They will be engines for generating innovative, diverse spatial potentials. Modify and/or augment material’s underlying rule structures to condition capacities for producing qualitative difference in the following spatial categories: surface, volume, and porosity. Test the material at different scales and in different orientations to gravity. Material work will be primarily digital (GH/Rhino), though consider returning to physical models to study localized conditions within the system.
- G. Spencer-Brown
Laws of Form, 1969
An injunction is a directive or command. Working by injunction is a process that involves specifying, and then carefully implementing, directives. This process is a technique for avoiding pre-figuration, it is fundamentally exploratory, and it involves iterative improvement (recipe for baking a cake is followed, results are evaluated, recipe is adjusted to achieve a better outcome, cake is baked again). The images below are outcomes of injunctive processes. Your maps and models will function as injunctive devices in the development of your project.
 |
| Haresh Lalvani |
 |
| Aranda/Lasch |
In continuing map development, focus on the comparative data. Calibrate graphics so that organizational structures in the comparative data become legible. Clarify how the regional-scale and city-scale maps work together to document different (yet related) aspects of the same food production / consumption systems. When maps have become sufficiently analytical, test how they may become speculative by modifying variables in the underlying relational rule structures. Consider how localized (even seemly insignificant) alterations to production / consumption systems may produce system-wide reconfigurations.
MATERIAL CAPACITIES
Material studies will no longer be purely abstract. They will be engines for generating innovative, diverse spatial potentials. Modify and/or augment material’s underlying rule structures to condition capacities for producing qualitative difference in the following spatial categories: surface, volume, and porosity. Test the material at different scales and in different orientations to gravity. Material work will be primarily digital (GH/Rhino), though consider returning to physical models to study localized conditions within the system.
100927 - mapping
…it is becoming clearer to architects and planners that ‘space’ is more complex and dynamic than previous formal models allowed. Ideas about spatiality are moving away from physical objects and forms towards the variety of territorial, political and psychological social processes that flow through space. The inter- relationships amongst things in space, as well as the effects that are produced through such dynamic interactions, are becoming of greater significance…
Speculative techniques of mapping may generate new practices of creativity, practices that are expressed not in the invention of novel form but in the productive reformulation of what is already given.
- James Corner
The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique & Invention, 1999
Maps describe relationships and organizations. They prioritize specific types of information (space, time, value, emotion, connectivity, etc.). They differentiate types and degrees of information through notation. Maps construct the unconscious – what is not yet understood.
The process of mapping, as outlined by Corner in The Agency of Mapping, involves three stages: first, set the field of information to map and the system by which to map; second, select and isolate the data to be mapped; third, draw out relationships that re-connect the data. In the next phase of the semester, mapping will be used to analyze systems of food production / consumption and to speculate on potential reconfigurations of these systems.
PRODUCTION / CONSUMPTION ANALYSIS
Choose two food production / consumption systems to research, analyze and compare though mapping (example comparisons: farmer’s markets and big-box retailers, luxury food purveyors and neighborhood bodegas). Consider the following parameters of the systems:
- key inputs and outputs (material, financial, social)
- geographic, economic, and temporal extents
- stakeholders (who participates in and is affected by the systems?)
Select the systems and define their parameters so that is it possible to gather multiple types of overlapping data distributed across a geographic field. Use Grasshopper definitions based on attractor point logics to draw out relationships in the data. Focus on the meta-analysis (comparisons of directly mapped data) and on calibrating notations to form fields without gaps.
MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT
In Rhino, build a digital version of your new plate or lid gradient model. Identify the variables regulated by the physical model and develop a Grasshopper definition that seeks to regulate a conceptually similar set of variables. Construction and variation of modules will change in the shift from physical to digital modeling. Without undermining principles of the physical modeling system, carefully explore how the digital model allows / requires other types of construction and variation.
Develop a series of at least 15 unique tests of the material system in GH/Rhino. Scale and orientation will not be defined in these tests. Explore potentials for creating both surface and volume. Select the two most promising tests; draw sections in two orientations through both.
Speculative techniques of mapping may generate new practices of creativity, practices that are expressed not in the invention of novel form but in the productive reformulation of what is already given.
- James Corner
The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique & Invention, 1999
Maps describe relationships and organizations. They prioritize specific types of information (space, time, value, emotion, connectivity, etc.). They differentiate types and degrees of information through notation. Maps construct the unconscious – what is not yet understood.
The process of mapping, as outlined by Corner in The Agency of Mapping, involves three stages: first, set the field of information to map and the system by which to map; second, select and isolate the data to be mapped; third, draw out relationships that re-connect the data. In the next phase of the semester, mapping will be used to analyze systems of food production / consumption and to speculate on potential reconfigurations of these systems.
 |
| Nick Hardeman – analytical map of “Mo Money, Mo Problems” video by the Notorious B.I.G |
 |
| R. Justin Stewart – three-dimensional map of the Minneapolis/St. Paul public transit system |
Choose two food production / consumption systems to research, analyze and compare though mapping (example comparisons: farmer’s markets and big-box retailers, luxury food purveyors and neighborhood bodegas). Consider the following parameters of the systems:
- key inputs and outputs (material, financial, social)
- geographic, economic, and temporal extents
- stakeholders (who participates in and is affected by the systems?)
Select the systems and define their parameters so that is it possible to gather multiple types of overlapping data distributed across a geographic field. Use Grasshopper definitions based on attractor point logics to draw out relationships in the data. Focus on the meta-analysis (comparisons of directly mapped data) and on calibrating notations to form fields without gaps.
MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT
In Rhino, build a digital version of your new plate or lid gradient model. Identify the variables regulated by the physical model and develop a Grasshopper definition that seeks to regulate a conceptually similar set of variables. Construction and variation of modules will change in the shift from physical to digital modeling. Without undermining principles of the physical modeling system, carefully explore how the digital model allows / requires other types of construction and variation.
Develop a series of at least 15 unique tests of the material system in GH/Rhino. Scale and orientation will not be defined in these tests. Explore potentials for creating both surface and volume. Select the two most promising tests; draw sections in two orientations through both.
100927 - agency of mapping
Here are my notes from James Corner's "The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention." This is a long(!) post, but it is all relevant information and should be helpful as you work on your distribution / consumption analysis maps.
“…mappings discover new worlds within past and present ones.”
Maps delineate not only physical attributes of the world, but also “the various hidden forces that underlie the workings of a given place.” (wind, sun, historical events, economic and legislative conditions, political interests, regulatory interests, programmatic structures, etc.)
AGENCY OF MAPPING
Maps have directness in the way they delineate information, but this should not be mistaken for “benign neutrality.” Maps are inevitably abstract because they omit, isolate, and codify. Therefore, they have a particular point of view.
The inventive capacities of mapping are not widely recognized in urban design and planning arts.
When they have been used, they have generally been seen as a way to objectively survey a stable existing condition in order to rationalize planning decisions.
“What remains overlooked…is the fact that maps are highly artificial and fallible constructions, virtual abstractions that possess great force in terms of how people see and act. One of the reasons for this oversight derives form a prevalent tendency to view maps in terms of what they represent rather than what they do.”
The conditions for how a project is realized depend upon how a map is made. In other words, the information selected and prioritized in a map frames the realization of a project.
Mapping is an agent of cultural invention.
The process of making a map is as important as the final product. “Speculative techniques of mapping may generate new practices of creativity, practices that are expressed not in the invention of novel form but in the productive reformulation of what is already given.”
Projections of the globe (Mercator projection vs. Fuller’s Dymaxion map) bias geographical information (size, relationship, orientation).
Torres-Garcia’s maps offer a critique of the overly mapped world.
MAPS AND REALITY
Tension between reality and representation, between territory and map.
Borges’ and Carroll’s map fables demonstrate that a map becomes useless as it becomes more detailed are representative of the world. Maps must be abstract to sustain meaning and utility.
While for Borges and Carroll the territory wins out over the map, Baudrillard argues (because in 20th century technology, what is real and representational has become blurred) that the map precedes and constructs territory.
In the end however, it is not very useful to draw such definitive lines between maps and reality. Reality is not something external given for our apprehension; instead it is formed through our participation with things (example of play in children, imagination constructs reality).
There is a difference in looking at the world as derived from “pre-formed nature” vs. “cultural invention.”
Maps require an “application of judgment.”
The contemporary condition blurs “what is information and what is concrete, what is fact and what is fiction, what is space and what is time.”
Banham argues that Los Angeles may not be as interesting a city if it made been developed more with the input of professional planners. This indicates that whether the professionals are participating or not, new urban formations are developing.
“…’space’ is more complex and dynamic than previous formal models allowed. Ideas about spatiality are moving away from physical objects and forms toward the variety of territorial, political and psychological social processes that flow through space.”
Relationships of things in space and the effects produced by these interactions are becoming more important than the compositional arrangement of forms.
It is more important to understand how things work, than what they look like. This is where maps become instrumental.
MAPPING
Mapping differs from planning because it involves searching, finding and unfolding in an existing context rather than imposing an idealized project from on high.
“Actions precede conceptions: order is the outcome of the act of ordering.” In other words, making a map is a practice, a way of thinking and working. It is not conceived and then documented, but the act of making it is a process of investigation and discovery.
Maps create meaningful relationships between otherwise disparate parts.
MAPPING OPERATIONS
The design and set-up of the map is one of the most creative aspects of the process of mapping. The set-up or organization of the system will influence the types of observations that are made.
Three essential operations in mapping:
- creation of the field
- extraction of the data
- plotting of relationships (re-territorialization)
A setup that is unconventional has more potential to yield unconventional findings.
‘Extracts’ are the sets of data that are selected and tracked (quantities, velocities, forces, trajectories). Once they are detached, they made be studied in relationship to other figures in the field.
‘Plotting’ is an articulation of the various relationships and comparisons that can be made across the field.
Plotting may be geometrical and spatial but it may also involve naming and indexing.
Four discreet practices of mapping:
- drift
- layering
- game-board
- rhizome
Drift
Example: Debord’s cut-up situationist maps of wanderings around Paris.
The drift privileges the contingent, the ephemeral, and the vague over the dominant ocular gaze.
This view takes a position for individual participation against the seemingly repressive and dominant power of the state. “If mapping had been traditionally assigned to the colonizing agency of survey and control, the Situationists were attempting to return the map to everyday life and to the unexplored, repressed topographies of the city.”
Drift maps are related to performance, they are connected to a particular set of events. They access repressed or unavailable topographies.
They are personal; they are made from below (not enforced by dominant power regimes).
Plottings are played out not only on the field of the map, by on the terrain itself.
Layering
Layering involves the superimposition of various independent layers to produce a heterogeneous ‘thickened’ surface. Example: Tschumi’s and Koolhaas’s projects for Parc de la Villette.
Various sets of information are dismantled, then analyzed and organized independently. When the separate layers are subsequently overlaid, “a complex fabric, without center, hierarchy or single organizing principle is revealed.”
A richness and complexity of multiple orders is revealed that is not possible to achieve in the clear order of a compositional plan. Activities or events may bring a particular reading into focus, but there is also the possibility for new hybrid events to emerge.
The effect is performative and not representational. The projects (as well as the mappings themselves) are open-ended, not prescriptive.
Eisenmann’s University Art Museum, Long Beach CA uses layers of information recombined to “construct a radically new fiction out of old facts.”
In layering, mapping has extended into the process of design.
Game-Board
Conceived as working surfaces on which competing groups meet and work out their differences. It is an act of playing out scenarios and choreographing a variety of movements and interests.
Raoul Bunschoten has used this technique to put a series of relationships into effect in urban projects. ‘Proto-urban conditions’ are drawn out from existing structures and potentials.
Rhizome
As opposed to tree-like structures, a rhizome is non-hierarchal and expanding across multiple terrains. As opposed to ‘tracings’ that limit innovation, a rhizomatic map supports multiple readings. “Rather than limiting reality, the rhizomatic map opens reality up to a host of new and alternative possibilities.”
Unlike college, which also deals with many different types of information but operates suggestively, a rhizomatic map deals with systemic material relations.
A rhizomatic map depicts fields of interrelationships. It “may not ‘represent’ any one thing at all; rather, it might simply array a complex combination of things that provides a framework for many different uses, readings, projections and effects…”
The contemporary world is as much temporal as it is physical – maps can also be temporal. The process of mapping can be a spatio-temporal practice.
CONCLUSION
“Although drawn from measured observations in the world, mappings are neither depictions nor representations but mental constructs, ideas that enable and effect change. In describing and visualizing otherwise hidden facts, maps set the stage for future work. Mapping is always already a project in the making.”
If mapping is done critically, it can lead to critical projects.
The challenge of architecture and urban design today is not what to do, but how to do anything at all. In this regard, mapping holds great value.
“…mappings discover new worlds within past and present ones.”
Maps delineate not only physical attributes of the world, but also “the various hidden forces that underlie the workings of a given place.” (wind, sun, historical events, economic and legislative conditions, political interests, regulatory interests, programmatic structures, etc.)
AGENCY OF MAPPING
Maps have directness in the way they delineate information, but this should not be mistaken for “benign neutrality.” Maps are inevitably abstract because they omit, isolate, and codify. Therefore, they have a particular point of view.
The inventive capacities of mapping are not widely recognized in urban design and planning arts.
When they have been used, they have generally been seen as a way to objectively survey a stable existing condition in order to rationalize planning decisions.
“What remains overlooked…is the fact that maps are highly artificial and fallible constructions, virtual abstractions that possess great force in terms of how people see and act. One of the reasons for this oversight derives form a prevalent tendency to view maps in terms of what they represent rather than what they do.”
The conditions for how a project is realized depend upon how a map is made. In other words, the information selected and prioritized in a map frames the realization of a project.
Mapping is an agent of cultural invention.
The process of making a map is as important as the final product. “Speculative techniques of mapping may generate new practices of creativity, practices that are expressed not in the invention of novel form but in the productive reformulation of what is already given.”
Projections of the globe (Mercator projection vs. Fuller’s Dymaxion map) bias geographical information (size, relationship, orientation).
Torres-Garcia’s maps offer a critique of the overly mapped world.
MAPS AND REALITY
Tension between reality and representation, between territory and map.
Borges’ and Carroll’s map fables demonstrate that a map becomes useless as it becomes more detailed are representative of the world. Maps must be abstract to sustain meaning and utility.
While for Borges and Carroll the territory wins out over the map, Baudrillard argues (because in 20th century technology, what is real and representational has become blurred) that the map precedes and constructs territory.
In the end however, it is not very useful to draw such definitive lines between maps and reality. Reality is not something external given for our apprehension; instead it is formed through our participation with things (example of play in children, imagination constructs reality).
There is a difference in looking at the world as derived from “pre-formed nature” vs. “cultural invention.”
Maps require an “application of judgment.”
The contemporary condition blurs “what is information and what is concrete, what is fact and what is fiction, what is space and what is time.”
Banham argues that Los Angeles may not be as interesting a city if it made been developed more with the input of professional planners. This indicates that whether the professionals are participating or not, new urban formations are developing.
“…’space’ is more complex and dynamic than previous formal models allowed. Ideas about spatiality are moving away from physical objects and forms toward the variety of territorial, political and psychological social processes that flow through space.”
Relationships of things in space and the effects produced by these interactions are becoming more important than the compositional arrangement of forms.
It is more important to understand how things work, than what they look like. This is where maps become instrumental.
MAPPING
Mapping differs from planning because it involves searching, finding and unfolding in an existing context rather than imposing an idealized project from on high.
“Actions precede conceptions: order is the outcome of the act of ordering.” In other words, making a map is a practice, a way of thinking and working. It is not conceived and then documented, but the act of making it is a process of investigation and discovery.
Maps create meaningful relationships between otherwise disparate parts.
MAPPING OPERATIONS
The design and set-up of the map is one of the most creative aspects of the process of mapping. The set-up or organization of the system will influence the types of observations that are made.
Three essential operations in mapping:
- creation of the field
- extraction of the data
- plotting of relationships (re-territorialization)
A setup that is unconventional has more potential to yield unconventional findings.
‘Extracts’ are the sets of data that are selected and tracked (quantities, velocities, forces, trajectories). Once they are detached, they made be studied in relationship to other figures in the field.
‘Plotting’ is an articulation of the various relationships and comparisons that can be made across the field.
Plotting may be geometrical and spatial but it may also involve naming and indexing.
Four discreet practices of mapping:
- drift
- layering
- game-board
- rhizome
Drift
Example: Debord’s cut-up situationist maps of wanderings around Paris.
The drift privileges the contingent, the ephemeral, and the vague over the dominant ocular gaze.
This view takes a position for individual participation against the seemingly repressive and dominant power of the state. “If mapping had been traditionally assigned to the colonizing agency of survey and control, the Situationists were attempting to return the map to everyday life and to the unexplored, repressed topographies of the city.”
Drift maps are related to performance, they are connected to a particular set of events. They access repressed or unavailable topographies.
They are personal; they are made from below (not enforced by dominant power regimes).
Plottings are played out not only on the field of the map, by on the terrain itself.
Layering
Layering involves the superimposition of various independent layers to produce a heterogeneous ‘thickened’ surface. Example: Tschumi’s and Koolhaas’s projects for Parc de la Villette.
Various sets of information are dismantled, then analyzed and organized independently. When the separate layers are subsequently overlaid, “a complex fabric, without center, hierarchy or single organizing principle is revealed.”
A richness and complexity of multiple orders is revealed that is not possible to achieve in the clear order of a compositional plan. Activities or events may bring a particular reading into focus, but there is also the possibility for new hybrid events to emerge.
The effect is performative and not representational. The projects (as well as the mappings themselves) are open-ended, not prescriptive.
Eisenmann’s University Art Museum, Long Beach CA uses layers of information recombined to “construct a radically new fiction out of old facts.”
In layering, mapping has extended into the process of design.
Game-Board
Conceived as working surfaces on which competing groups meet and work out their differences. It is an act of playing out scenarios and choreographing a variety of movements and interests.
Raoul Bunschoten has used this technique to put a series of relationships into effect in urban projects. ‘Proto-urban conditions’ are drawn out from existing structures and potentials.
Rhizome
As opposed to tree-like structures, a rhizome is non-hierarchal and expanding across multiple terrains. As opposed to ‘tracings’ that limit innovation, a rhizomatic map supports multiple readings. “Rather than limiting reality, the rhizomatic map opens reality up to a host of new and alternative possibilities.”
Unlike college, which also deals with many different types of information but operates suggestively, a rhizomatic map deals with systemic material relations.
A rhizomatic map depicts fields of interrelationships. It “may not ‘represent’ any one thing at all; rather, it might simply array a complex combination of things that provides a framework for many different uses, readings, projections and effects…”
The contemporary world is as much temporal as it is physical – maps can also be temporal. The process of mapping can be a spatio-temporal practice.
CONCLUSION
“Although drawn from measured observations in the world, mappings are neither depictions nor representations but mental constructs, ideas that enable and effect change. In describing and visualizing otherwise hidden facts, maps set the stage for future work. Mapping is always already a project in the making.”
If mapping is done critically, it can lead to critical projects.
The challenge of architecture and urban design today is not what to do, but how to do anything at all. In this regard, mapping holds great value.
100926 - surface-form pics
Here are some of my surface-form pictures. You should all be documenting this work sooner rather than later because models tend to get damaged. Blaise, Dunja, Sun, Alex, and Meg - I don't have good pictures of your work. If you do, certainly post them.
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| tian, liz, sun |
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| tian, liz, sun |
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| albert, nate, nicole |
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| albert, nate, nicole |
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