BoundaryPlaySpaceandCulture

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Boundary Play Christena Nippert-Eng Space and Culture 2005 8: 302 DOI: 10.1177/1206331205277351 The online version of this article can be found at: http://sac.sagepub.com/content/8/3/302

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Boundary Play Here The Title Goes

Christena Nippert-Eng The subtitle goes here Illinois Institute of Technology The Author goes here Body text

In this essay, the author introduces the concept of “boundary play” as it is manifested in and through interactions with space. Cultural, categorical pairings of concepts—and the classificatory systems that they are part of—are embedded in and evoked by the features of our environment.

Accordingly, the ways we define and use space are rife with the possibility of boundary play, that is, the visible, imaginative manipulation of shared cultural-cognitive categories for the purpose of amusement. The discussion focuses on three analytical opportunities: (a) children playing in and around a cagelike dog crate, (b) the design solutions found in the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas’s McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and (c) an interactive design project called Tableportation by Giorgio Olivero and Peggy Thoeny. These examples each reflect and encourage our explorations of classificatory boundaries. In the process, they reveal this particular kind of play as well as the worldview that lies behind it.

Keywords: boundaries; play; space; classification; cognition; architecture; interactive design

“Boundary play” is the visible, imaginative manipulation of shared cultural1 cognitive categories for the purpose of amusement. It comprises some of the most

Author’s Note: I am extremely grateful to Jay Melican for very helpful conversations and feedback on this article, as well as photos, fact checking, and technical help; to Kris Cohen, Eviatar Zerubavel, and Gary Fine for their remarkably useful comments; to Peggy Thoeny and Giorgio Olivero for additional stimulating conversations and their images of Tableportation; and to the attendees of the May 2004 Ethnography Workshop session at Northwestern University’s Department of Sociology and the January 2004 Catalyst Lecture and workshop at the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy, for comments on aspects of this work. Jeffrey Johnson, site architect, provided one of the most generous and insightful tours that I had of the Koolhaas building. This research was supported by a grant from the Intel Research Council titled “Islands of Privacy”; the author is principal investigator. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Christena Nippert-Eng, Department of Social Sciences, Illinois Institute of Technology, 3301 S. Dearborn, Siegel Hall Room 116, Chicago, IL 60616; e-mail: nippert@iit.edu. space and culture vol. 8 no. 3, august 2005 302-324 DOI: 10.1177/1206331205277351 ©2005 Sage Publications 302

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compelling and enjoyable of all social interactions. This is especially true for instances of boundary play that focus on the use and experience of space.

In this essay, I introduce the concept of boundary play and explore this idea as it is manifested in and through interactions with space. Cultural, categorical pairings of concepts—and the entire classificatory systems that they are part of—are embedded in and evoked by the features of our environment. Accordingly, whether natural, artificial, or hybrid kinds, and whether we are reacting to or reacting with them, the ways we define and use space are rife with the possibility of boundary play.

Although I draw on numerous examples of space-based boundary play throughout my discussion, this article is anchored in three extended opportunities for analysis. I start with a simple, everyday example of space-mediated boundary play: children playing in and around a cagelike dog crate. Next, I move to a detailed discussion of the new McCormick Tribune Campus Center (MTCC) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. Finally, I turn to an engaging interactive design project called Tableportation by Giorgio Olivero and Peggy Thoeny.

Throughout these examples, my attention will be focused on what we learn about the edges of the boundaries that they reference and the categorical pairings that are evoked. I am interested in the ways in which these examples reflect and encourage our explorations of classificatory boundaries, in other words, revealing a particular kind of play and a worldview that lies behind it. This is a type of play that is not limited to its spatial forms, of course, but it is nonetheless especially and provocatively visible here.

The explicit study of (a) symbolic, cultural boundaries; (b) the classification systems they are part of; and (c) the cultures that create them enjoys a rich history within the discipline of sociology. The ideas presented in this article build on my earlier efforts (Nippert-Eng, 1996) to add my particular interests in the sociology of cognition, science, and knowledge to this tradition, and the efforts of numerous scholars who have most deeply influenced me.2 In addition, here I continue to explicitly link more theoretical understandings of cultural-cognitive, categorical phenomena with the visible behaviors and objects that we find in everyday life. The everyday and, in this case, the playful reflect our more invisible, classificatory behavior (Bateson, 1972/2000; Davis, 1993; Zerubavel, 1991/1993). Thus, this work should be placed along with that of other sociologists who put an explicitly “real-life” and accessible twist on these same kinds of scholarly concerns.3

The Dog Crate Consider this first photograph. A 5-year-old child who had just given a rawhide bone to her dog (a black lab, partially blocked by the chair cushion on the left) began the play by crawling into the dog’s crate. As she did so, two 12-year-olds entered the room. They immediately asked if they could come inside the crate, too. Amid much giggling as everyone shifted about and settled in, the moment of the photo arrived.

The girls have closed themselves inside the dog’s crate, smiling with delight. The dog, free to come and go as he likes, sprawls on the carpet and chews on his bone just outside “their” cage. The girls are certainly engaged in “play” at this point.4 But they are also engaged in the specific type of play with which I am concerned here, what I call “boundary play.”

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Boundary play centers on the classificatory boundary between two related, cultural-cognitive categories. This connecting boundary is manipulated—redrawn, as it were, perhaps repeatedly—to include and exclude unusual, anomalous or normally oppositional elements within or across the connected categories.

Although the play is unquestionably anchored in the sociocognitive realm, it is inevitably manifested in and focused on the visible, tangible signs of a player’s mental categorical agility. IndiFigure 1. Children Sitting Inside a Dog Crate viduals’ behaviors and conversaSource: Author. tions, and the design and manipulation of objects and features of buildings, for example, provide just some of the amusing clues we might see of the cognitive activity going on as an individual engages in boundary play.

The children’s fun in the dog crate, for instance, stems in large part from the fact that the crate manifests any of a number of categorical boundaries. This includes the lines dividing such meaningful cultural pairings as person-dog, owner-pet, oursyours, inside-outside, confined-free, powerless-powerful, and real-pretend. It is their shared ability to quickly recognize and make the connection between the act of climbing into the dog’s crate and the simultaneous redrawing, perhaps even inverting, of at least some of these categorical contents (albeit temporarily) that so effectively provoked, defined and facilitated this particular session of play. The space mediates between the physical and the cognitive, creating a compelling play experience that is both intellectually stimulating and felt.

Thus, in addition to players possessing the desire to play, boundary play requires at least two conditions to be met before it can occur. First, players must possess a shared, normative expectation for where one draws the line between two semiotically related, categorical (classificatory) boundaries. Second, players must then decide that they do, in fact, wish to use that boundary as the source or focal point of their amusement.

From there, boundary play can proceed, as a sequential, layering activity focused on the potential, alternative (re)drawings of the boundary at hand. These alternatives are interesting and appealing precisely because while offering a different, fun way of thinking about or drawing that boundary they simultaneously reference the original, normative boundary placement that continues to exist alongside of the new ones. Although he certainly is not a player in this particular game (more like a prop), the dog who remains nearby and outside the crate actually helps ensure the fun in this way. He serves as a visible reminder of the way these boundaries “should” “normally” be drawn, as do the differences between the interior and exterior features and spaces of the crate, itself.

A boundary player’s skill includes the ability to sustain play by cleverly inferring or referencing the “normal” ways in which one draws the categorical line while propos-

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ing and helping oneself and others to consider the world implied by the alternative cognitive configuration. This means that competency among boundary players requires (a) normative categorical knowledge plus (b) a categorical imagination (or categorical flexibility). Successful players also must have (c) an ability to effectively translate their cognitive flexibility: their alternative mental boundary redrawings into behaviors that are both recognizable and perceived as playful and compelling by those with whom they wish to play.

Boundary play can occur with any meaningful categorical boundary, for example, animal-person, artificial-natural, masculine-feminine, figure-ground, mean-funny, physical-virtual, private-public, and so on. A particular session of boundary play also may occur across a number of categorical boundaries, as it no doubt does with the kids in the crate. This simply reflects the fact that cultural, categorical pairings frequently interlace and overlap with each other and that any person, object, relationship, concept, social group, place, and so on, is symbolic of or an entry point into numerous categorical pairings. Thus, consideration of any one of these items (or any one of these pairings) instantly places all the other, related categorical boundaries on the table, too. From this conceptual smorgasbord players are free to choose from any or all elements as they proceed to amuse one another.

In fact, in some situations of boundary play, one may be hard-pressed not only to distinguish between the different members of a well-delimited, closely connected set of boundaries, but also to agree about which particular boundary is most obviously the focus of a given moment. Moreover, there may be times when no one boundary is preferenced in the play, and the whole set of categorical pairings are at the center of attention. Indeed, as boundary play progresses, it is entirely possible that players will change the choice of the boundary, the set of boundaries, or the number of boundaries within the set with which they are playing. This is in addition to changing the ways in which they actually signal any one of these boundary variations. A good boundary player can make a most enjoyable move by shifting one’s attention to yet another boundary that—although any fully socialized member of the culture knows is connected to the pairing at hand—no one else would have thought to turn to at that moment. Whether the play focuses on one boundary or a set of them, though, the success of the play depends at least in part on agreement between players about which boundary or collection of them is and is not, might or might not be, the focus of their 5 attention at a given moment.

As the children in Figure 1 came out of the dog crate a few minutes later and walked up the stairs to the kitchen, for instance, the youngest child dropped to her hands and knees and requested that she be served food and water out of two bowls placed on the floor. At this time, the two older girls looked at each other, said, “Uh, no thanks,” then left the room, giggling some more. Although the 5-year-old’s play activity continued to focus on the dog-person boundary, this new twist meant that the game had lost its appeal for the older girls.

Of course, these new acts simply may not have been dignified enough for older children, possibly too degrading even to risk experiencing them much less be seen doing so. Opting in for a new spatial experience (e.g., sitting inside a dog crate located in the official family play room) is a qualitatively different form of play activity from the kind of role-playing abandon needed to eat and drink like a dog elsewhere in the house. I also suspect, however, that these new actions shifted the play away from the more complicated and interesting conceptual categorical pairings that may have most

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strongly attracted the older girls to the occupation of the crate, for example, insideoutside (of a kind of barred jail, no less) confined-free, and powerless-powerful. As the play moved away from these and focused more intensely on the line between dogs and people, particularly in terms of body type (four legged vs. two legged, no handed vs. handed, big tongued vs. little tongued, etc.), and culturally approved eating styles and spaces (straight out of a bowl using only one’s mouth vs. off of a plate with utensils and off the kitchen floor vs. an elevated counter or tabletop, respectively) the activity was no longer playful or compelling enough to keep the older girls in the game.

This was not a problem for the youngest child as it is not necessary for others to be present to engage in boundary play. As reflexive social creatures, adept at taking the role of the other as well as manipulating classificatory schema, it is entirely possible— indeed, normal—for an individual to engage in boundary play on his or her own. The player may wish only to amuse himself or herself through the activity. Or, the player may wish and be permitted to put his or her self-amusement “out there” so that others can react to it and possibly even reciprocate.

Whenever we do wish to play with others, however, unless all players possess both the desire and the ability to play well enough, opportunities for boundary play may be missed (unrecognized), outright rejected, or eventually ignored even after an initial, seemingly successful startup. In any of these scenarios, potential or actual instances of boundary play may become instead instances of “boundary work”: activity through which we create, maintain, challenge, or change cultural categories (Nippert-Eng, 1996, pp. 7-8). In these cases, rather than serving as a springboard for fun, potential (non)players instead typically act to reinforce or defend the normative drawing of the boundary, leaving it as they started. This may happen through a variety of more explicit and tacit sorts of activities ranging from completely ignoring the boundary and its potential as a focus of play to actively (re)asserting its normative drawing as the position of choice once play has concluded.

The older girls’ choice not to play with the dog-person boundary any longer, or any of the other boundaries associated with it, demonstrates this important point. Because “play” and “work” are sociosubjective framings of an activity, an event can almost instantly change from one of play to one of work (as well as vice versa). If one person’s idea of something that is playful “crosses the line” or conflicts with another person’s idea of what’s fun, in other words, the situation may transform instantly from one of 6 boundary play into one of boundary work.

Indeed, in cases in which boundary play has gone too far, it may take the form of a serious, threatening, legal, and/or even violent effort to replace the boundary gone awry to a more acceptable position, perhaps its normative starting place. Of course, players may simply choose to ignore or deny a badly played attempt, or direct the player who offered it up to save it for another player who might actually find it amusing. This is a milder type of boundary work and probably a much more common response to this sort of a “pass” or “foul.” Players may choose simply to reset the play to the more acceptable, alternative boundary and cognitive world that existed prior to the undesirable offering. whether the blunder is enough to halt play altogether, however, is yet another dimension of the overall ecology of the play session and the many micro interactions, boundary drawings, and classificatory questions it entails.

The potential for both boundary play and boundary work in immersive environments such as aquariums, museum exhibits, and fantasy restaurants and buildings, for instance, is readily apparent. Here we see designers’ boundary play, embedded within

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what is no doubt a great deal of more conventional, expected boundary work. Along with his team of colleagues, for instance, Paul Bluestone’s efforts at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago offer some fine examples of this mixture of boundary play and boundary work in the architect’s craft.

Consider the well-known Oceanarium portion of the institution.7 Situated on the shore and looking out across Lake Michigan, visitors to the huge, glassed-in Oceanarium can easily forget that they are inside a building, watching captive Pacific Northwest mammals who live in artificial tanks. Rather, the surfaces of the tanks appear to be level with—and part of—the lake, the exterior wall of glass allowing all the water to appear as if it’s part of the same body, stretching out as far as the eye can see.

As one sits on rocky ledges, the surrounding stones, artificial trees and sounds support the feeling that one is actually sitting in a natural coastal environment, looking out into the ocean itself.

The new and highly acclaimed Philippines portion of the building includes an even greater variety of boundary tricks in an assortment of engrossing exhibits designed to bring the visitor much closer to the animals and their environments. These allow for more spontaneous and uniquely individual boundary-playful experiences. The enormous cantilevered shark tank, for instance, creates the feeling of being completely surrounded and dwarfed by the water and the swirl of large, exotic fish schooling around almost one’s entire body. A nearby tank for rays is located in the floor, challenging wary visitors to step onto and perhaps even drop on all fours to peer through its Plexiglas cover. Overhead, yet another Plexiglas tank forms a portion of the room’s ceiling offering yet another twist on our usual point of view and a bottom-up view of species that turn out to be even more interesting if we laid on the ocean floor, on our backs.

With darker, more quiet lighting, the entire wing creates an immersive, scuba dive–like feel for visitors as the animals are brought into much closer proximity to their bodies, in unusual kinds of ways.

Similarly, much of Jordan Mozer’s ingenious, fun, lush interiors (including the enormously popular Cheesecake Factory restaurant and tourist magnet located in Chicago),8 fit the boundary play bill. So do places such as the popular Rainforest Cafe.9 Like well-done aquarium exhibits, these are all remarkably popular precisely because they are manifestations of—and invitations for—experiences based on boundary play.

Yet one person’s playground undoubtedly may be another person’s workplace.

Clearly, the trick to any of these places is matching visitors’ ideas of “playful” with the designers’ ideas of it—and what they think is likely to produce a playful experience in others. For instance, I’ve never seen a 2-year-old scream in fear of the voluptuous, batter-inspired ceiling or the drizzled-icing stair railings inside the Cheesecake Factory. I’ve seen a number of them do so inside the Rainforest Cafe, however. And I’ve seen a number of parents and older siblings doing frantic boundary work as a result, trying to convince their terrified toddlers that the bull elephant trumpeting and flapping its ears or the silverback gorilla brachiating and staring down the customers is really just a robot, a toy, “not real.”10 I’ve heard them explaining this all the way to the gift shop or the sidewalk outside the building, in fact, where they then wait for the child to finish sniffing and hiccupping and for the lucky others in their party to finish their meals.

There is a similar, panic-stricken cohort who bailed at the last minute waiting outside many of the amusement park features at Disney World or any other theme park, of course, not to mention the visibly shaken small ones exiting what turned out to be

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an inappropriate attraction after all. Like immersive, boundary playful restaurants, theme park attractions run the same risk of failing to match play levels between the designers and those who experience their efforts. The Haunted Mansion at Disney World, for instance—dark, eerie, filled with sights and sounds we have long associated with “spooks” (some of which even sit in your buggy with you at one point)—is great fun for many of us. Yet it is absolutely terrifying for others. And all the technical explanations in the world about “how they do that” (and all the let-me-make-it-up-toyou sweets and souvenirs bought afterward) may do little to reset the dial to “fun” once the real-pretend boundary has been too thoroughly transgressed.

In fact, like all play,11 boundary play may include a mixture of more serious, risky, or threatening moments and elements. These may be interspersed with those that are perceived as more purely fun, safe, or harmless. Part of the skill of players and the success of the play relies on finding a good match between players in how much they desire of each of these elements—and in the desirability of the different forms that these emotive elements might take.

One rather hidden dimension that contributes to the mixture of seriousrisky–playful-harmless dimensions in the play is the duration of the play and the perceived duration of its consequences. Play is a localized phenomenon. It exists in the here and the now. Awareness of and orientation toward long-term consequences is part of a serious endeavor, more like a work experience,12 not the experience of play.

Flow, for instance, is perhaps the ultimate in desirable experiences and frequently associated with excellent “play,” (in practice, if not theory). It is defined by a complete engrossment in the task at hand because the task itself is so rewarding. There is little thought to time, itself, much less the implications of what one is doing for the future and how that future might make one want to change what one is doing now.13 Perhaps the tendency of adults to localize or embed play into a designated time and place is at least partly due to the reassurance this provides. The seeking out of places designated for play and where the resources for a particular kind of play are uniquely located helps facilitate the play by keeping it and its consequences from trickling out into other parts of one’s life. One can play all the better, with more abandon and more commitment, if one knows that the play will end and everything will continue to be or go back to being normal. The popularity of dedicated play places may be not only directly linked to the extent to which engaging play may occur there but also to the inability of that play to happen anywhere else, at any other time.14 Returning to the example of boundary play discussed earlier, this is another factor that may have influenced the older girls’ decision to stop playing with the 5-year-old once the activity moved outside the confines of the dog crate. Locating the play within a specific space (e.g., in the dog crate, in the playroom) frames the play extremely effectively. It bounds it off in a way that makes it less likely to infiltrate one’s life and reputation than the kind of “let’s eat like a dog” role-play that the 5-year-old proposed out in “normal” space. Thus, locating play in a particular space and time is a way of automatically achieving a kind of role distance (Goffman, 1961) from one’s identity and actions as a player, once the play is over.15 In terms of boundary play, this phenomenon may be especially important. Bending or redrawing the line between classificatory categories is some of the most dangerous activity that humans can engage in.16 The edges of categories and the relationships between them are the backbone of a culture. Religions are founded, wars are fought, personal identities are forged on, and everyday life is lived over and through

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these very things. For some people, for instance, it is one thing to allow people of the same sex to live with and behave “as if ” they are married to each other. It is quite another to officially redraw the married-unmarried line so that such couples may be permanently included in the “married” (or “marriageable”) category, “for real.”

In fact, perhaps the biggest cause of missed opportunities for boundary play has nothing to do with individual judgment, talents, or motivation, per se, nor with a lack of well-contained places to facilitate it. As this last point intimates, classification schema are social and learned. Often, individuals as well as entire cultures do not share (a) the same classificatory categories, (b) the same pairings and triangulations of such categories, and/or (c) the same categorical boundaries separating or connecting them.

That is, even when the names of categories are the same, their contents may differ in subtle or striking ways. This fact, alone, means that boundary play along many categorical boundaries may never happen between certain individuals or whole groups of people; sociocognitive mismatches prevent it.17 In addition, it is entirely possible that some people, perhaps whole cultures, do not have the categorical flexibility that allows them to play with boundaries, even if they shared the same idea of what the boundaries look like. From individuals who notoriously have “no sense of humor” to fundamentalist and historically war-friendly cultures, for instance, some people may never develop the kind of cognitive imagination necessary to play with boundaries. In part, this may be due to socialization that includes not only an especially change-resistant view of the world but also the idea that categorical boundaries are not things one should “play” with (see Douglas, 1966/1985; Levine, 1985/1988; Zerubavel, 1991/1993). The point is that not only the basic categories but also the basic ability to “see” or envision different ways in which categorical boundaries might be drawn interferes with the possibility of play.

It is not that some ways of thinking are predicated on dichotomies and others are not, with the former being somehow less playful than the latter. Either or, black and white, “digital” conceptual pairings persist in many if not all cultures. Without such oppositional pairings to think with, even highly playful, flexible people would not be able to see and celebrate categorical inversions or the gray areas where they might overlap.

Thus, dichotomies, alone, do not preclude play. I suspect they are especially good at inviting it. As in a good game of any kind, dichotomous conceptual pairings simply mean that the possibilities for play are basic, easily understood, and endlessly workable. Rather, and this brings us back to an earlier point, dichotomous categories, such as real-pretend, are equally good opportunities for both boundary play and boundary work. There is something about an either-or occasion that provides a great opportunity for those who have a vested interest in maintaining the dichotomy as a staunch reality (rather than a tool for interpreting and manipulating reality) as well as for those who like to use the occasion to have a little fun. The former possess what Zerubavel (1991/1993) called a “rigid” mind, whereas the latter possess a “flexible” mind. The flexible mind appears to be a prerequisite for boundary play, in fact, allowing an individual to categorize something as “both this and that” rather than one or the other.

Conceptual dichotomies and their categorical boundaries are like the beach, for instance, which clearly functions as an opportunity for boundary work and for boundary play. The beach is a place where land and water meet, defining each other as what they are and what they are not. At the beach, people who have a vested interest in

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maintaining the land-water dichotomy include groups like the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard, and Lighthouse Keepers. All of these individuals shore up the distinctions brought together at the beach, working to delineate and maintain the difference between the land and the water through their actions and responsibilities. The boundary players, however, include waders; sandcastle builders who design their moats to be filled by the waves; middle-aged people sitting in beach chairs 6 inches deep in the water; and all the adolescents playing football and Frisbee while standing waist high out in the water, sometimes wrestling with one anther a little farther out while perched on the shoulders of friends. These are fine examples of boundary play, both literal and categorical, with one of nature’s often enhanced and most appealing dichotomies as the focus of attention.

Koolhaas’s Campus Center at IIT Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has produced another opportunity to witness some rather extraordinary boundary play.

This is the MTCC located on the campus of IIT, designed by renowned architect and founder of IIT’s Bauhaus-style program in architectural design, Mies van der Rohe.

The IIT campus consists of a series of small, boxy, flat-roofed buildings, scattered along the Miesian 20-foot grid on which the entire, master-planned campus was laid out.18 The new building was opened in September 2003 and has received numerous rave reviews. It respectfully subordinates itself to and highlights the Miesian components of the campus, yet is an inspirational, radical showcase in its own right, successfully negotiating much of the anxiety of adding a new building to the preexisting heritage left by Mies. Here, I offer a play-filled analysis of some of the building’s features to further demonstrate the rich phenomenon of boundary play through the use and design of space.

The overwhelming boundary being played with in this building is, of course, inside-outside,19 and there are many quite different manifestations of it. Yet this boundary inevitably is linked with other boundaries and categorical pairings, too. I begin with exterior features directly reacting to the system of buildings and the institutional culture surrounding them.20 Perhaps the most recognized feature of the OMA’s building is the gigantic steel tube spanning its roof and through which the Green Line runs for “the el,” Chicago’s elevated train system.

In Figure 2, one can see that the tube is outside and excluded from the building, itself. Yet the Figure 2. Rem Koolhaas and the Office of Metropolitan Architube is also “inside” and part of tecture’s McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology the building.

Source: Jay Melican.

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The tube is embraced by the building, in fact, not only as it nestles into the inverted peak of the roof but as it is referenced inside the building via a number of visible features: the large black stanchions that support the tube, the gray concrete pillars that hold up the tracks, a glossy interior ceiling cutaway revealing a long exFigure 3. Interior Ceiling Cutaway Showing Exterior Elevated Train Tube panse of the botSource: Jay Melican. tom of the tube, and random windows and nooks in the center of the building that allow exterior views of the tube. Inside the building, then, one is always remind one of its presence outside even when the el is not audibly rumbling overhead.21 In Figure 3, in which we see how the tube (and the enclosed el) are made a feature rather than a flaw in the building (and the campus), one can see another, similarly playful aspect of this building: the ceiling finish. It has the look of drywall, normally hidden from view by the final finish on a ceiling or wall. Here, then, we see an overt move to play with the line between finished–not finished, seen-unseen, outside-inside, all of which are evoked by this “unfinished finish.” In fact, this trademark ceiling of Koolhaas took a little getting used to by one particularly important group of people: the men on the job who specialize in preparing drywall for finishing. According to several building tour guides, the workers were initially resistant to the idea of their work being seen. It took a bit of reassurance before they began to enjoy the inversion of these categories in their efforts and take pleasure in the idea of their work being exposed—permanently, for a change.

In fact, the interior of the building contains numerous intersections with all kinds of bold, playful, and sometimes anxious joinings, especially bringing together and redefining the old with the new, the tube with the building, and again and again, the inside with the outside. There are not even discrete “floors.” Instead, there are rather unpredictable, Escher-like recesses that both are and aren’t separate stories. They leave one wondering just how to answer visitors’ inevitable question of “So, just how many floors are there?” It’s one, but there is an upstairs and a downstairs, so, how can that be?

A remarkable piece of universal (or “inclusive”) design contributes to this quandary. The OMA came up with a poured epoxy staircase for this building that incorporates a handicapped ramp into the stairs. With a very gentle gradient, the ramp

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zigzags back and forth down the staircase, serving as an extrawide step every so often. It is a beautiful and playful attempt to achieve some rather serious boundary work in blurring the line between those who can use their legs and those who can’t to move between the interior elevations. Unfortunately, although the staircase offers fabulous oppor- Figure 4. A Multiplicity of Categorical and Physical Intersections tunities for play to Is Visible in the McCormick Tribune Campus Center those who have good Source: Jay Melican. eyes and are steady on their feet—or skateboards—it requires a bit too much work for others. The center of the staircase sports stairs of uneven and unpredictable heights. It is a risk—a fun one for some, too much of one for others—to descend the stairs down the middle. At the top of the staircase, a ribbon now cordons off access to the middle of the staircase to encourage people to use the even, predictable stair depths on the side.

The “amoeba” bathrooms also have provoked an interesting bit of boundary work in response to a feature that was a bit too playful for those in the know.

Not only the walls of the interior bathroom stalls but also the exterior bathroom walls, themselves, are translucent. The walls are a sandwich of clear Plexiglas filled with a chain-linkshaped plastic webFigure 5. Poured Epoxy Stairwell With Incorporated Handicapped Access bing in orange or Ramp gray.

Through this Source: Jay Melican. material, one can

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see the blurred shapes of the plumbing running through the walls from the inside of the bathrooms. This is quite interesting, really, and again creates opportunities for reflecting on the inside-outside, invisible-visible conventions of other buildings.

However, from the building hallway outside of the bathrooms, it is possible to see the shadows of people on Figure 6. Translucent-Walled Bathrooms the inside of the bath- Source: Jay Melican. rooms, inside the stalls, doing whatever they’re doing: standing, sitting, flushing, adjusting, and so on.

For some of the building’s occupants this is just a little too playful, redrawing the private-public line in a way that’s not especially comfortable. I’ve seen some students using this feature as their own source of play: yelling, laughing, and pounding on the wall from the hallway at a friend who was inside the bathroom. When it comes to these bathrooms, though, others engage in some simple and logical boundary work. They avoid them and use the less visible bathrooms around the corner, at the end of the hall.22 The exterior walls of the building as well as the office walls facing the hallways are constructed in a similar way. Here, another glass sandwich is filled with a tight orange plastic honeycomb. Imagine grabbing a handful of orange plastic drinking straws and turning them sideways so that you were looking through them, like a bunch of little telescopes. This is exactly what the fill of these walls looks like.

The resulting effect is one that plays with a number of predictable categorical pairings: opaque-translucent, invisiblevisible, single-layer-multilayered, wall-window. But there is an optical illusion created by this material, too. Wherever you look through the window you see big circles within the rectangular window frame, a function of limiting one’s peripheral vision and collimating one’s view.

Thus, whenever you move, the Figure 7. Collimated, Circular Optical Illusion Produced in Extecircle “moves” with you, too. Acrior Orange Wall cordingly, the lines dividing recSource: Jay Melican.

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tangular-circular, stationary-mobile, and (light that is) reflectedabsorbed become additional sources of play here. Windows are the quintessential architectural tool for playing with the inside-outside boundary. Yet here, the tool itself is given an inside and an outside to up the play ante a bit more.

Nearby, a different bit of play—perhaps commentary (it is always difficult to tell when it’s done well)—appears on a wall that is covered with surveillance Figure 8. Interior Wall Paying Tribute to the McCormick Triphoto images. The images are of bune Corporation what appear to be college-age Source: Jay Melican. people on a sidewalk walking past a building, as if it were an exterior building security camera that took the pictures. In the center of the wall is a large rectangular television screen perpetually tuned to the news. This is the wall explicitly paying tribute to the McCormick Tribune media conglomerate that helped underwrite the costs of the building. Again, this references the inside-outside dichotomy in a number of ways, but also relates to categorical boundaries such as those between private and public, between watching and being watched, between being informed and being intrusive, between our own and “somebody else’s” problem, and the correct and incorrect uses of technology. Given European sensitivities to privacy and surveillance issues in general, I also wonder if we aren’t seeing some very clever play here on the fine line between paying homage to someone and publicly critiquing him or her.

The pervasive attention to people passing by—and through—is a major focus of the building’s designers. It is also an excellent opportunity to explore the point of whether a specific spatial feature constitutes boundary “play” or boundary “work.”

When it was proposed, for instance, the land for the new building was either undeveloped or used as a parking lot (with the exception of the property occupied by the Commons Building, now attached to the Campus Center). Students were constantly moving through this space as they walked between their dorm rooms (located a block east of State Street) and their classrooms (located on the west side of the same street).

A study of the building site was conducted to ascertain the students’ “paths of desire” that took them between these two major destinations. The entrances and exits of the Koolhaas building were then placed precisely where the prebuilding, pedestrian traffic paths would intersect with the new building.

This was an extremely important decision. The population of IIT is much less than it was when Mies designed the campus. Part of the problem of the campus is that it tends to feel lonely, a consequence of this low density. The new building needed to be one of a number of steps that have been taken since to increase the density of campus and create a more visibly sociable, companionable experience. In a public presentation after winning the competition, Koolhaas explained that part of the appeal of the student center project for him was this density problem, a classic challenge in many ur-

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ban spaces. The goal was twofold: Take up as much space as possible with the building to make the campus feel more occupied; simultaneously, design that space to increase the likelihood of people bumping into one another as they entered it.

Placing the doors right in the paths of desire meant that students would tend to go through the building rather than around it. In addition, the OMA strove to make sure that while inside the building, an occupant could always see at least one other entrance from wherever he or she stood. If someone came in that entrance, one would be almost forced to notice. In this way, students would thus receive the reassurance that other students’ active presence offers and even find themselves in serendipitous interactions.

In other words, one enters and exits many—if not most—buildings to do some specific tasks inside of them. This building, however, was specifically designed to facilitate the preestablished nature of the space as a thoroughfare. Not only does it house and support its own collection of offices and activities, but it is a space that one simply passes through on the way to one’s real destination. It is entered into and exited in relatively rapid succession with minimal diversions to one’s physical path or agenda outside of it. This is incredibly functional and a brilliant solution because it is built on a way-finding response whereby logic and preexisting habits guide people’s behavior.

These then bring them to precisely the conclusion that the designers wanted from them.

But the functionality of this decision does not negate the playfulness of this move in redrawing—perhaps even negating—the inside-outside boundary. In this case, it happens via foot traffic patterns. This source of boundary play and the theme of encouraging people to travel through the building are continued via the tube as well.

Here, other kinds of travelers are embraced at the same time that they continue their journeys. This theme is further echoed in the computer station recessed into the floor underneath the tube. The entire building is a Wi-Fi hotspot, and the PCs available here mean that numerous virtual visitors can “pass through” the student center, too.

So, is this boundary play or is it boundary work? There are at least two kinds of answers to this question. One would not only accept the existence of this dichotomy but also the need to answer on the basis of a forced choice. A second might disavow the dichotomy in practice, if not in theory, pressing our understanding of the relationship between both concepts as well as the building’s features.

First of all, “play” and “work” are frames of mind. They are ways of perceiving the activity at hand, rather than classifying the inherent attributes of that activity (Bateson, 1972/2000; Fine, 1987; Goffman, 1974; Nippert-Eng, 1996; Zerubavel, 1991/1993). One of the implications of this is that my claim that these building features are playful and about playing with boundaries, in particular, is at least as much a reflection of my mind-set—my interpretive frame when viewing and experiencing the building—as it is a semi-informed guess at what might or might not have been going on in the designers’ minds.

Second, though, there is the point that play may be an extremely effective way of achieving work. As Nelson Foote (1955) once put it, “The seriousness with which [an activity] is pursued at its best should not conceal its playful nature, because work and play at their best are indeed indistinguishable” (pp. 296-297). In a superb, succinct review essay titled “The Ideas of Work and Play,” John Cohen (1953) traced the historical emergence of this view. He identified Schiller as responsible for a shift in seeing “work” as ideally playlike, a condition that defines the essence of humans: “Man only

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plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays” (p. 316). By the 20th century, Cohen wrote, In place of the notion that play is a waste of time that could better be devoted to work, play has come to be valued as an end in itself. Play may be organized or an unorganized and spontaneous impulse to activity. This chance of emphasis has been accompanied by a diminution in the seriousness of work. Where formerly the end gave value to the means and a task was assessed by its result, now spontaneous effort, as in play, dignifies the outcome. The effort in play is always lavish and prodigal. It is not restrained and calculated with an eye to the quantity of reward. It is unstinted. Only those to whom work is play exert the same abundance of effort in their work. (p. 317)

From this view of work and play as frames of mind, indistinguishable in their highest forms, we are left with a very practical observation. Just because something looks like “work” doesn’t mean it isn’t “play,” and just because something is “play” doesn’t 23 mean that it isn’t getting some real “work” done. The Koolhaas building is filled with 24 excellent examples of clever and flirtatious responses to serious problems that require real solutions. It is filled, that is, with boundary play that is also accomplishing boundary work.

In other words, boundary play is done for purposes of amusement but this doesn’t mean that it can’t facilitate or be embedded within other purposes and activities.

Moreover, through boundary play we may find ourselves accomplishing a kind of boundary work that we never expected. A child’s desire to connect with and experience the world through the eyes of her dog may be very effective in subtly shifting and redrawing if not blurring or erasing altogether the line between dog and person, pet and owner, nonhuman and human animals, certainly for her. A building such as the OMA’s Campus Center at IIT may not only solve a number of practical problems but also challenge and subtly reconfigure dozens of categorical contents and alignments through its flagrantly unconventional and joyous architecture. The impact of its playfulness could go quite a bit beyond local, momentary amusement and the categorical status quo—much further than, say, any series of serious lectures or articles on the matter.

Tableportation Likewise, a club featuring Tableportation,25 an interactive design project by Giorgio Olivero and Peggy Thoeny, may do as much to soften the lines between self and other, between ours and theirs, and between physical and virtual reality as any of the currency-sharing, passport-waiving, or cultural diversity policies of the European Union.

The images in Figure 9 by Thoeny and Olivero give a basic idea of how the design works.

Tableportation begins with a table, wired to present a square matrix of small lights located in the center of the tabletop. Each light may be turned on or off by a simple touch of the finger. There is room for food, drinks and other objects around the edges of the light square as well as across it. The image of the tabletop and whatever is on or over it is projected via a hanging camera onto the wall, alongside of the images of all the other players’ tables. Thus, the design provides an open invitation to multiple

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Figure 9. Tableportation, an Interactive Design by Giorgio Oliver and Peggy Thoeny

Source: Giorgio Oliver and Peggy Thoeny.

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kinds of boundary play using unique digital drawing and projection tools, along with the bodies, physical objects, and imaginations that the players bring with them.

Again, here we see a great example of a well-contained, spatially defined playground. Tableportation evokes an intense play experience not only because it contains unique possibilities for boundary play, but also because the lack of its availability outside a specific space cordons off the play from other places and identities. Moreover, the concept builds on very easily understood and shared categorical pairings for the people it is designed to appeal to: on-off, here-there, horizontal-vertical, threedimensional–two-dimensional, reality-representation, me-you, mine-yours, us-them, ours-theirs, private-public, physical-virtual,26 playful-serious, good idea–bad idea, attractive–not attractive, interested–not interested, patrons–wait staff, and so on. Indeed, in a very poetic way, the digital essence of the game simply intensifies the realization that either-or options frequently make for good play, especially when they are embedded within each other over and over again in Tableportation, like the layers of an onion. And, as with an onion, one move, one turn in Tableportation can cut through and reveal how so many cultural, categorical pairings can be related to one another.

The Tableportation environment not only demonstrates the designers’ capacity for play but actively elicits boundary play among visitors or patrons, too, in a way that the Koolhaas building or the dog crate does not. Here, players can more actively engage in boundary play that involves altering the features of their environment. Every player, in fact, has the potential to change the surroundings for everyone present.

In the process, we can imagine that any given Tableportation session will display marvelous interplay between the reflected-projected-virtual images of players’ interactions and their physical being, objects, and behaviors. Attention and play may switch between numerous conventional boundaries: a person and another person seated at the same table; a person and the tabletop; a person and the objects in her purse or resting on the tabletop; the tabletop and the projection of it on the wall; the projection of the tabletop and other projections of other tabletops; the people at one table and the people at another who are associated with a particular projection; or, say, a patron, a patron’s projection and a waiter.

The kinds of boundary work we might see as a result of all these people fooling around with all these boundaries are equally fascinating. How might the demanding date work to keep his lover’s attention on him, not on the drawing she’s making, or on the drawings of other people who are reacting to it, much less the artists, themselves?

What will the woman do who playfully interacted with another on the wall but who now will not leave her alone as she tries to leave the playground-bar and go home?

How often will smaller clusters of collectives emerge—and merge—as tables “mingle” or resist interacting with one another through their creations? What other body parts will people try to use for interaction—and which ones will be allowed and which ones will not—and in what ways? Will the possibilities for play be so pressing and so pervasive that more customers than usual will leave (if not storm out of) a club that features Tableportation versus one that does not? Will it, in other words, serve as a Rorschach test for playfulness so that only those who can at least tolerate a certain level of play across so many boundaries will actually remain?

It is precisely because of Tableportation’s interactive and rich, boundary-tapping nature that it is extremely likely to provoke undeniable instances of both boundary play and boundary work among participants. Without doubt, each manipulation—

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like the playful counterpoint of the Koolhaas building within the system of serious, “workful” Miesian buildings—will highlight the differences and similarities between what we think of as “play” and what we think of as “work.” It will do the same for the boundary conditions that seem to lead to either.

Conclusion Not all play is boundary play. Boundary play is limited to those instances in which the (conscious or unconscious) focus of players’ actions and manipulations is one or more classificatory boundaries. The boundaries of space and the experience of spatial environments, however, generally offer excellent opportunities for boundary play.

Why? Many of our most significant categories and conceptual pairings come from reflecting on the meaning of our environment and its composite features.27 We look to our environments and the ways they are used—to an interactive club, a showcase building, or a dog crate, for instance—for meaning, especially for inspiration about meaningful categories and their relationships. But the design and experience of new places also provides a great opportunity to manifest what we’ve discovered, to explore what we know and what we don’t know, to react back against and with what is meaningful to us. Here is a concrete chance to see new meaning as well as old in the categories and relationships that are evoked by and embedded in our surroundings, no matter how active our role in shaping it.

Moreover, here is a place where the cognitive aspects of our play are manifested in ways that we can actually feel them. Space is experienced, not merely imagined.28 It is especially good at letting us understand, viscerally, the results of our more heady play, fusing mind-body distinctions into forceful, all-encompassing engagements. Here, then, in the realm of the spatial, we find the perfect place for a play date, whether it’s with childhood friends, a renowned architect, or a clever patron in the corner café.

Notes 1. The definition of the noun play in the American Heritage College Dictionary (2002) suits my purposes well in how I use the word in this article: “activity engaged in for enjoyment or recreation.” This is completely consistent with the scholarly, sociological works on play that are referenced throughout this essay, marking one of the rare occasions in which the sociological use of a concept seems to match the way that the rest of the population uses it.

2. These especially include Zerubavel (1991/1993, 1997), Durkheim (1915/1965), Durkheim and Mauss (1903/1963), Mannheim (1972, 1982, 1936/1985), Marx (1977), Weber (1904/1976), Berger and Luckmann (1968), Schutz (1973), Schutz and Luckmann (1973), Bateson (1972/2000), Goffman (1974), Davis (1983), Douglas (1966/1985), Williams (1985), Foucault (1966/1973), Fleck (1935/1979), Kuhn (1970), Waugh (1982), and Schwartz (1981).

3. See, for instance, Zerubavel (1981, 1991/1993, 1997), Schwartz (1975, 1981), Brekhus (2003), Vinitzky-Seroussi (1998), Gamson (1998), and Chayko (2002).

4. Especially if one considers “play” from Bateson’s (1972/2000) perspective, as an explicit framing of activity, a demarking of the interaction as play, that is, not “real.” This “could only occur if the participant organisms were capable of some degree of meta-communication, i.e., of exchanging signals which would carry the message ‘this is play,’” he wrote, in which the message

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320 s p a c e a n d c u l t u r e / a u g u s t 2 0 0 5 “looks something like this: ‘The actions in which we now engage do not denote what those actions for which they stand would denote’” (p. 180). This is precisely why Goffman (1961, p. 27) saw play as a world-building activity. Because we “see” and therefore construct the world through the classificatory boundaries we use, it is no wonder that these “fine lines” (Zerubavel, 1991/1993) are excellent places to play.

5. This aspect of boundary play reflects the same principle of “play,” in general. As Smith and Abt (1984) put it, “Play, especially the playing of games, is also uncertain; neither the precise course of the game nor the outcome is known to the participants beforehand” (p. 123).

6. This is, again, simply a specific case of the grounds on which boundary play may cease, reflecting the general case for all kinds of “play.” In “Sex as Play,” Foote (1954) argued, For play—any kind of play—generates its own morality and values. And the enforcement of the rules of play becomes the concern of every player, because without their observance, the play cannot continue…no system of government whatever can approach play in making the enforcement of rules the felt interest of every participant. (pp. 161-162) 7. See the Shedd Aquarium’s Web site (http://www.sheddaquarium.org) for images of these exhibits.

8. See the Web site of Jordan Mozer and Associates (http://www.mozer.com) for pictures of a variety of Mozer’s fantastic and highly original environments.

9. Images of this restaurant may be seen at its Web site (http://www.rainforestcafe.com).

10. The toddlers are reacting quite sensibly, really: Both enactments are pretty good representations of the actual territorial displays used by these creatures to scare off intruders.

11. Bateson (1972/2000) argued that play and threat “form together a larger total complex of phenomena”; “such adult phenomena as gambling and playing with risk have their roots in the combination of threat and play” (p. 181). I argue instead that play, itself, can and frequently does incorporate threat and risk—just not too much of it, however that is defined by the players.

12. For a quick review on the meaning of work in the United States, see Nippert-Eng (1996, pp. 18-29).

13. See Csikszentmihalyi (1990) on the concept of “flow”; also, see Fine (1987, pp. 41-42) on the interchangeability of “flow” and “play.”

14. This is precisely Murray Davis’s (1983) argument regarding the sequestering of “erotic reality” to definite islands of time and space, whereas “everyday reality” is the default, “normal” frame of mind. More obviously here, there is little doubt in my mind that this principle is at least part of the reason why adults design designated “playgrounds” for our schools, parks, and cities.

15. Scott Mainwaring of Intel (personal communication, May 18, 2004) argued that the inability to distance themselves from their play may be dissolving much of the play that has been happening on the Internet. People are now beginning to realize that all the chat room and email play that they engage in, for instance, is archived and retrievable. “The internet is forever,” and so is whatever you do on and through it. Play here is not local, then; it is not contained either temporally or spatially. It can and will haunt you, in virtual and physical space. Because of this—as well as the fact that others viewing one’s “play” later or elsewhere may be unable or unwilling to see it as such—the Web may not be able to sustain its identity as an all-purpose playground for long.

16. Mary Douglas (1966/1985) offered the seminal piece of work on this point.

17. Cross-cultural research on play is bound to be limited by this factor. The inability of an outsider to recognize and comprehend the nuances of boundary play, in particular, means that such research will be severely limited to levels of generalization that are only minimally useful.

One study I happened on, Seagoe’s (1962) attempt to conduct cross-cultural research on children’s play, for instance, left her most useful findings limited to describing play in terms of the percentages of children in different age categories who engaged in structured versus informal play and playing alone versus playing with others. She could ascertain only the most obvious, descriptive factors of the activity.

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18. Photographs of the campus buildings may be found throughout IIT’s Web site (http://www.iit.edu), including those found within various university publications.

19. See Bachelard (1964/1994, pp. 211-231) for some roundabout musings on the insideoutside dialectic.

20. My favorite readings to date on thinking of a building, room, or feature as part of a system—and therefore defined in part by the rest of it—are those of Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein (1977) and Jacobs (1992).

21. In his essay “Bridge and Door” (Frisby & Featherstone, 1997, pp. 170-173), Simmel wrote that both of these structures function to connect what lies on either side. In the process, however, they also highlight the differences between both sides. The junctures between the building and the tube function in the same way.

22. As in the case of these bathrooms, the entire Koolhaas building is a bit too remarkable for some failing to conjure up anything like a playful mind-set. I enjoy it immensely and find the building a breath of fresh air that invigorates and draws me in to the expansive experience of it and myself every time I enter it. (Bachelard’s [1964/1994, pp. 183-210] thoughts on “intimate immensity” come to mind.) A number of my students claim that they do not like the building at all, however. It is too playful, too boundary unpredictable, and too discomforting because of this. Just as the unconventional, immersive restaurant or theme park attraction—or the too-close emulation of dog behavior—may be cognitively mismatched with individuals’ senses of fun, so is the case with this building. Students have described it negatively and persistently in terms of excess; it is “too chaotic,” “too colorful,” “too noisy,” and the all-encompassing “too weird.” They also do not like the university’s restrictions on their own use and redesign of the walls, floors, and fixtures in their club offices, which they say prevent them from modifying the design as they wish. These restrictions not only prevent much of their own boundary play but also the kind of boundary work (e.g., putting up window coverings, posting information, and adding carpets to deaden sound) that are too playful—and sometimes flatly dysfunctional—for getting their work done.

23. Michael Schrage’s (2000) Serious Play makes this point exactly in its lively discussion of the value of rapid prototyping. And in his discussion of “free agents” (i.e., people who work for themselves, in a variety of ways) Dan Pink (2001) explicitly and implicitly argued that this way of living is precisely what many people who become free agents have in mind and exactly what their prior employers prevented them from doing.

24. Flirting is, of course, the quintessential form of boundary play along the private-public divide. I use flirtatious here in two senses. First, these decisions or features are both private, “inside” references among the designers and their peers as well as being publicly visible, publicly shared with anyone who sees them. Second, they are charming, playful, boundary-challenging acts, inviting and compelling, just like any flirtatious gesture—and no doubt received with as wide a variety of responses as is any flirtatious move.

25. See http://people.interaction-ivrea.it/g.olivero/thesis/. Olivera and Thoeny developed this concept for their thesis work as graduate students at the Interactive Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy. The working product was being finalized at the time of this writing.

26. The Virtual by Rob Shields (2003) is a must-read for anyone interested in thinking about this dichotomy and many other categorical pairings implicated in the concept “virtual.” Chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 1-44) in particular present both the term’s fascinating past while bringing us up to its present (political) nature and usefulness as “essence,” “significance,” “valued,” and newly fused with “the real” in the best of ways.

27. Simon Schama’s (1995) Landscape and Memory may be the seminal piece of work on this theme. I also like, in a different way, Michael Bell’s (1994) Childerley, which is a more embodied and contemporary work on this point.

28. On this rather obvious but very important point, I like the accessible, short, yet sweeping work of Witold Rybczynski (1993) on architecture; Winifred Gallagher’s (1993) and Tony Hiss’s (1991) broader popular treatments on the experience of place; John Urry’s (1990) writ-

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322 s p a c e a n d c u l t u r e / a u g u s t 2 0 0 5 ing on “the tourist gaze”; a collection titled “Spatial Hauntings” edited by Degan and Heatherington (2001); and my favorite works on the meanings of space and place, belonging to Yi-Fu Tuan (1977, 1982).

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Christena Nippert-Eng, Ph.D., is an associate professor of sociology at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She is the author of Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries Through Everyday Life (University of Chicago Press, 1996) and is currently engaged in a research project titled “Islands of Privacy,� funded by the AIM Research Council at the Intel Corporation.

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