Medium Design Review [Vol. 1]

volume I

MEDIUM DESIGN

Medium, an independent student organization located at Cornell University, produced and is responsible for the content of this publication. This publication was not reviewed or approved by, nor does it necessarily express or reflect the policies or opinions of, Cornell University or its designated representatives

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

EDITORIAL

ANGELA MORENO-LONG

REBECCA ALLEN

Urban & Regional Studies ‘16

Art History & Fine Arts ‘16

ADMINISTRATIVE DIRECTOR MELODY ROSE STEIN Fine Arts ‘16

EDITORIAL DIRECTORS GARRETT CRAIG-LUCAS Landscape Architecture ‘16

EMILY TEALL Fine Arts ‘16

JEISSON APOLO Architecture ‘16

ISABELLA CROWLEY Urban & Regional Studies ‘18

REBECCA JACKSON Human Ecology ‘19

MABEL LAWRENCE Mechanical Engineering ‘19

REBECCA LIU Computer Science ‘19

CREATIVE DIRECTORS ANDRES ROMERO POMPA Architecture ‘17

DANIEL PRESTON Architecture ‘17

PAMELA CHUEH Architecture ‘17

WEIHONG RONG Economics & Art History ‘17

CREATIVE TINA HE Comparative Literature ‘19

DINA KAGANER Design & Environmental Analysis ‘18

MAGGIE O’KEEFE Fine Arts ‘20

letter from the editor

W

hile there are so many innovative people, projects, and ideas on campus, too often disciplines at Cornell operate as “silos” separated by spatial and social boundaries.

At various lectures, workshops, and events on campus creators and designers working in different disciplines are able to temporarily engage with each other, but lack a medium to keep this conversation going. Medium Design Collective was born to address this void in our education and experience on campus by provoking dialogue across disciplines through design. We believe the design process provides a blueprint for innovative collaboration across disciplines.

We are an interdisciplinary collective of organizations and individuals who engage in dialogue about design education, culture and movements at Cornell and beyond. Our objectives are to: initiate and sustain dialogue between design-related organizations on campus, review and critique design culture through multi-dimensional mediums, and promote interdisciplinary collaborations that reach beyond academy into practice. These objectives are achieved through our three touchpoints: this publication, a web platform, and ongoing events.

We are very proud to present Volume I. of Medium Design Review. This publication exposes the diverse design pockets on campus and provides a unified perspective on Cornell’s creative community. In the following pages you will discover the diverse work and stories of interdisciplinary collaboration and profiles of our fellow classmates, colleagues, and mentors as well as spotlights on our first student design competition “Mechanism” and Cornell’s first Interdisciplinary Design Panel “Rethinking Design”.

The prompt for the Mechanism competition was to design a system - either conceptual or literal - that illustrates a creative redefinition of the word “mechanism”. In the most concrete sense, a mechanism is a system of parts working together to produce a result. It is my hope that this publication sparks your excitement and illustrates the potential for the many “parts” at Cornell--innovators and creators in all disciplines-- to work together.

This is just the beginning.

-Angela Moreno-Long & The Medium Design Collective Team

TABLE OF CONTENTS

46 MISCARRIAGES IN 6 YEARS Suspended Constructions in Baja California Alvaro Alvarez

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COMMENTS ON CURATING CREATIVE COLLABORATION The Unexpected Conclusion to Cornell’s First Make-a-Thon Michael Raspuzzi & Andrew Moorman

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DESIGNING A DESIGN CLASS Nicole Calace & Andrew Aquino Nicole Calace

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BLOCKS, RHYMES & LIFE Housing’s Intangible Heritage Margorzata Pawlowska

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REINTERPRETING REALITY Computer Graphics Experimental Course Andres Romero Pompa

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PHOTO ESSAY 2016 Noa Wesley

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A ROBOT’S SOFT SIDE Robert Shepherd Interview by Angela Moreno-Long

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SUSTAINABILITY IN SCANDINAVIA Correspondence from Copenhagen Melody Stein & Natalie Mufson

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“THE SOUL OF A DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHER” William Staffeld Interview by Isabella Crowley

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MECHANISM: A System for Interaction Design Competition

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RE-THINKING DESIGN Cornell’s First Cross-Disciplinary Design Panel, April 7th 2015 Co-Hosted with Cornell University Sustainable Design & Phi Gamma Nu

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m 9 Alvaro Alvarez, Architecture ‘15

46 MISCARRIAGES IN 6 YEARS Suspended Constructions in Baja California

NO OTHER CULTURE CELEBRATES DEATH THE WAY MEXICANS DO; HERE, AT LEAST once a year, spirits receive more praise and attention than the living. In Mexico, the figure of the spirit manifests itself in particular forms; however, one’s reaction will always be personal and contextual. One significant manifestation takes place in the coast of Baja California, where forty six housing projects were halted halfway through construction in 2008 because of the collapsing economy.

Structures that were once a part of Baja’s economic development plan, Cocotren, are now lifeless skeletons abandoned in the sand. The majority of these projects, dying as they reached their final construction stages, led locals to accept their presence and coexist with their spirits. This is both tragic and imprudent. After analyzing Mexican and Baja death rituals, as well as investigating two case studies, it is clear that authorities, financial stakeholders, and locals alike have a misguided attitude of acceptance towards the Cocotren phenomenon.

Baja California, one of the youngest territories in the world, has a brief history: preHispanic roots, conquest, colonization and independence. Initially, the Cucapá and Pai Pai Indian tribes lived here for 10,000 years before the Spanish arrived in the 1500s.

Once settled, spiritual conquest began with the arrival of the Franciscan and Dominican missions in the late 1600s. After its religious independence, Baja started to grow uncontrollably because of its proximity to California. The United States - Mexico border, a clear separation of two different worlds, resembles that of life and death. Baja is a midway point – a shelter for migrants who attempt to journey north and, halted by the border gates, often stay indefinitely. For both Baja California citizens and the Cocotren spirits, this border condition is a form of purgatory.

Cocotren, or Coastal Corridor of Tijuana – Rosarito – Ensenada, is one of the few carefully planned urban projects in Baja, and the most economically important since its unveiling in 1995. It was meant to be a series of hotel and residential developments stretching along 90 miles of beach south of the California border. Sadly, only 55% of the projects became fully constructed, leaving a net-worth of $3.1 billion USD in unfinished real estate, 13,000 empty habitation units, and 64,000 jobs vanished.

Regional newspapers, blaming outdated public policy, labeled the Cocotren projects “white elephants on the coast,” acknowledging their obvious presence and the difficulty to sell and get rid of them.

Despite clear evidence for grieving Baja, the persistent Mexicanismo fosters a playful relationship with spirits. A testament to this is the Day of the Dead, a national holiday in Mexico, in which the dead’s spirits and the living festively coexist. Celebrated on November 2nd every year, the alive traditionally offer food and alcoholic gifts to honor the spirits’ return.

Unfortunately in Cocotren, the 46 spirits have not only joined the living, they are also being allowed to stay indefinitely.

One of the first projects to be noticed driving south from Tijuana is The Residences at Playa Blanca, sitting alongside the road and the beach. Its fortified entrance walls have a pale look for visitors as they exit off the highway. A white cross was placed on top of the main gate, blessing the grounds like a chapel in a cemetery, and series of private guards are stationed outside to protect the building. Upon entering, one’s footsteps create an exaggerated echo on the lobby’s concrete floor, interrupting the dismal silence. Once inside, endless hallways originate from the center towards the lateral corridors, surrounding the pool courtyard, as the exposed-concrete walls and columns contribute to the darkness.

Voids once meant for windows, like the nave of a gothic church, mediate the sunlight intake as they generate shadows and depth. Outside in the courtyard, the paradisiacal pools and waterfalls became bone-dried sculptures as they never

filled up with water. For beach tourists, the abandoned building serves as an orientation landmark with its ocean-view façade stopping at the edge of the sand.

The story behind The Residences, though complex, is similar to other Cocotren projects: some units managed to be sold before the 2008 interruption and now the entire project is being appropriated by a bank. Currently, the sales office is the heart of The Residences; with functioning utilities, designer furniture, and a full staff, it remains hidden inside the building’s chambers. Outside the office, hanged renders and scale models are being exhibited as they once prophesied The Residences’ future – an oasis in the desert. Unfortunately, until an outcome is resolved, The Residences will only continue to be a mirage on the coast.

Driving further south, approaching Rosarito, a concrete and steel skeleton makes its appearance. Naos, with 400 apartment units, is a curvilinear building whose front-door neighbors are the Coronado Islands. Baja California had big plans for this building; it was meant to be the Cocotren’s poster child for luxury, sustainability, and relaxation. The site firmly pressed in between the highway and the beach and a no-longer-operating website and phone number are announced outside. The security guard, as he escorts visitors, demonstrates thorough knowledge of Naos’s history, current conditions, and uncertain future. He speaks about it with the same pride and

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regret a widowed wife would demonstrate when speaking about a dead husband.

This man is required to sit on a chair next to the monumental concrete tower, just as a person would do in a hospital room, waiting for a loved one to wake up from a coma.

During the visit, the building acknowledges our presence by manifesting itself acoustically. The wind, waves, speeding cars, and even seagulls become Naos’ tongue. As we step up its

incomplete steel staircase, we engage in a sound dialogue with the spirit. Once upstairs, the bare living spaces scream solitude as the wind blows stronger and resonates with the wood panels covering some windows. The balconies, extending across the sea-side façade, resemble a crime scene with debris on the floor and only a steel rod railing for safety. Out on the ground level, the space meant for the restaurant and pools is an empty concrete gallery, framing the waves and

sand as these reclaim their territory.

In the hills behind Naos a convention center, also facing the Pacific Ocean, was recently built as part of Baja’s tourism initiatives. An evident interruption in its ocean view is Naos’ empty vertical structure, wrongfully perceived as a natural component of the landscape. The Cocotren projects have become a part of local culture, advancing conformity over solutions. Both The Residences and Naos are two of Baja’s frustrated projects, as explained by Tijuana realtor

Luis Bustamante. These projects did not fulfill their final purpose, leading their spirits to fall into a state of “confusion and depression.” Today, this very same lack of energy prevents them from waking up to recovery.

Sancho said to Don Quijote “Let the dead go to the grave and the alive to the bread.” Though spirits are certainly welcomed in Mexico, attention should be kept on reality. The Day of the Dead example is a celebration of death after a full life of experiences. In order for

a building to become an architectural ruin, it has to have been born and lived, ultimately dying after a long life of memories. There were no memories created in Baja California; the Cocotren project was aborted before starting to create experiences with the locals. Today, thousands of daily commuters drive past them on the coastal highway and even recognize their presence by utilizing them as landmarks: “Take the second highway exit past the steel structure,” drivers say mockingly. They are not allowing these

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“IN ORDER FOR A BUILDING TO BECOME AN ARCHITECTURAL RUIN, IT HAS TO HAVE BEEN BORN AND LIVED, ULTIMATELY DYING AFTER A LONG LIFE OF MEMORIES.”

spirits to rest.

Apart from the Day of the Dead, Baja California’s Cucapá and Pai Pai tribes have spiritual rituals which differ from the Mexican holiday. These involve the deceased’s cremation and the soul’s journey to a new world. Pai Pai Indians would sing, dance, and cry until the body’s soul had absolutely left this world and then burn the deceased’s belongings.

Similarly, the Cucapá would also have a fire ritual and after the ashes from the cremation are deposited into a traditional cemetery, the soul is said to travel through the gate of the beyond. This gate is protected by the Swañj scarab. This beetle requires the souls’ body to have been cremated, otherwise the soul could not cross over to the other side of the gate. Unfortunately, Baja’s version of the Swañj is an entity that left the Cocotren stuck in limbo after their financial death.

Because of constant celebration and acceptance of these 46 deaths, Baja Californians are blinded to the fact that the projects’ souls remain stranded in purgatory, not sure to which side of the life-death border they belong.

The Cocotren spirits are a metaphor to something else, signifying a missing identity amongst locals towards these 46 foreign objects. Their spirits did not leave traces behind the same way humans and architecture ruins do; neither scars nor legacy, only wonder about the unborn building. The Cocotren ghosts will continue to roam the coast without repose until Baja Californians settle the

future of these projects. For some of these constructions, any hope left at a chance for life was destroyed in 2008.

But as corpses are being excavated, the realization that some of them can still make it is evident. Banks have been tenaciously funding the upkeep of selected projects to counter-attack the decay caused by time – a very risky move. In the case of The Residences, this is a form of artificial life support until the building can wake up from its comma.

What exactly can awake these projects? First, updated public policy from the involved governments to keep up with the recovering economy. Second, for financial stakeholders to not leave these projects lost in limbo – they must help direct them towards the right direction.

And last, for locals to adopt the projects as part of their regional and urban identity.

As these three forces address Cocotren’s questions of existence, more truth and less fantasy will rise to the surface in regards to the border dividing life and death. For Baja Californians, this truth will provide faith in these 46 uncertainties finally finding solace – whether that is in creating memories with the living, or resting their souls with the dead. m

Thanks to Bustamante Business Center for the information and resources that made this research possible.

Editing contribution: Ivan Salinas, Arts and Sciences ‘14

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Michael Raspuzzi, Architecture ‘16 & Andrew Moorman, Architecture ‘16

COMMENTS ON CURATING CREATIVE COLLABORATION The Unexpected Conclusion to Cornell’s First Make-a-Thon

MORE THAN 120 STUDENTS, VOLUNTEERS, PROFESSIONALS, AND MENTORS CAME together on the third weekend in February for Cornell University’s first ever Make-A-Thon, a 24-hour intensive marathon of tinkering, inventing, building, hacking, ideating, designing, and pitching, presented by Life Changing Labs. A dozen local high school students competed in two teams alongside eleven university groups comprised of undergraduates, graduates, and MBA candidates. While the competition was designed with two separate tracks—one for high school and one for university student teams—the trajectory was altered based on requests from the former who insisted they be allowed to contend with their higher educated competition.

And they won. No one contested the results. The decision was unanimous across five judges.

The transcendence of age and expectations reveals a certain level of absurdity inherent to traditional expectations of performance based on age and education level. It was clear the high school team deserved to win. Not simply in generating an innovative solution, but in their clarity of approach and commitment to go above and beyond what was asked did they far outcompete their university-level rivals. This posed the question of how?

Most hackathons perpetuate a chute-like model of thinking rather than that of an exploratory nature. Because of investment from external forces, such as leading sponsors, the identified solution is typically a specific implementation of something that should be attainable through an existing system. Teams break up and work alone. Competition proceeds via seclusion and divergence. Our planning team didn’t like this. So we plugged convergence.

Dealing with physical making and multi-disciplinary objectives, as opposed to virtually creating a single software product, situated the Make-a-Thon at a level of generalization for all participants to exploit. Each team needed a pitch, a demonstration, and a working prototype, fostering inter-member reliance to craft a holistic set of deliverables in which each component is bolstered by another discipline.

And in tempering an otherwise stratifying curriculum with the provision of basic technical building blocks (using Grove shields with Arduino Uno Boards); a cohort of more than a dozen engineering, entrepreneurship, design, professional, and academic mentors; and a prompt centered on commonality through smart living routines, the Make-a-Thon lost importance

“OUR ATTEMPT WAS TO CURATE A 24-HOUR, 100+ PERSON, ATRIUM-WIDE CONVERSATION IN CREATIVE MAKING”

as an exercise in event planning. Rather, development became strategies towards facilitating a dialogue between specialists in which each member had a stake and opinion, and the tools to communicate with other specialists. And unlike the isolated classrooms of most hackathons, everyone worked in one collective space where communication between teams was initiated through a bartering system for a limited amount of parts. Our attempt was to curate a 24-hour, 100+ person, atrium-wide conversation in creative making.

To that effect, involvement was intentionally designed for the neophyte who had never touched hardware or spent time developing a product - which happened to be the background for more than half of the participating students. They only had to be willing. But therein was the flaw: willingness.

So how did the high school students win? Bluntly put, they were more inclined to communicate. The university student’s perspective was prone to self-imposed labelling - a student of electrical engineering is expected to engineer this solution

electrically - a perspective which created a unidirectional momentum too large to adapt to alternative understandings of the problem, even those posed by teammates.

They suffered a predilection for monologue.

Alternatively, the high school students, as undeclared specialized generalists, were able to circumnavigate using the deflections in momentum from different considerations and perspectives to arrive at creative outcomes collaboratively, in conversation.

And while the event produced fruitful

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and unexpected results, the combinatory nature of pursuing work together with students from different backgrounds was like shaking together water and oil. While the Make-A-Thon gave the students a good enough shake for some creative collaboration, twenty four hours of bonding and working together was ultimately separated within thirty minutes of the final presentations for everyone to revert back to their categorized pursuit of learning. m

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Nicole Calace, Information Science ‘16 & Andrew Aquino, Computer Science ‘17

DESIGNING A DESIGN CLASS Introduction to Digital Product Design

WE ARE CURRENTLY TEACHING AN “INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL PRODUCT DESIGN” class as a student-run training course for the CUAppDev Project team. We designed the class structure using the very processes and techniques we teach in the design class.

Identify While Cornell offers a few human-computer interaction design classes, we found a disconnect between the academic-research-based design taught in class, and the skills and practices needed to land a job as a professional designer. While we respect and appreciate academic design strategies, we struggled to make the jump from academic design to professional design, and have seen other students struggling to make the jump as well.

We both stumbled into our careers in design by accident, and were able to make the switch to design through the guidance of supportive Cornell alumni and in-industry mentors. We hope to pay it forward and provide that guidance and support network through our class, and supplement traditional class material.

A gap exists between relevant professional knowledge and traditional academic settings because our industry is changing so quickly. It’s hard to teach frameworks, as some of the ones released a year go are already going obsolete. However, peer-to-peer education can move faster than traditional education. We don’t, by any scope of the imagination, see ourselves as experts in digital product design, but we can comfortably pass on whatever relevant application-based skills we’ve picked up over the last year.

Understand The only way to become a great designer is through extensive hands-on work and practice. One of our biggest struggles with this class was finding a balance between having people work on meaningful projects they could really learn from, and trying not to deter people from taking the class because of expected workload.

Much like how we might design any other product, we started our process by identifying our target users. When designing the structure of the assignments, we kept two types of students in mind: those who wanted to jumpstart their careers in digital product design, and

those who might not want to pursue design professionally, but still want a better sense of design thinking. Our goal was to help as many students get as much exposure as possible, so we structured the class to meet both needs. We encouraged students who didn’t feel up to the workload to audit the class and just come when they could to lecture. But we also made 1 S/U credit available to students who wanted to get the most hands-on experience. We also had optional assignment for those who wanted to go above and beyond. The grade for credit is based strictly on attendance and completion of assignments whether or not assignments were completed, not the quality of the work, so students are encouraged to submit whatever they can, rather than do no work at all.

Execute Off the bat, we came up with a general outline of topics we wanted to cover during our ten weeks. However, we opted to not release a concrete syllabus. Keeping the schedule flexible gave us the ability to change how much time we spent on each topic, allowing us to mold our class topics and focuses around our students needs.

To make the classes feel more like a conversation, and less like a lecture, we tried to put only a few words on each slide and use extremely colloquial vernacular.

In Andrew’s own words – “Making slides is insanely hard.” After the work we’ve put in to put this class together, we definitely have a newfound appreciation for all the hard work and preparation our professors carry out to make our classes a success (and we’re only teaching a 1 credit S/U class that meets for an hour a week!).

It sometimes became hard to formalize learning structures and metaphors to somehow teach design principles that have become so deeply ingrained in us. It was challenging to teach students, as students ourselves. From the very beginning we tried

to be clear about why we do things, what things we weren’t sure about, and create a relationship that optimized their learning experience (as well as our own).

We used Facebook as our main platform for communication to help foster a sense of community between students, and enforce our informal relationship. Having an online community helped us in some unexpected ways. Some students noted that they were more motivated to post when they saw that their peers had already posted the assignments on Facebook. The informal and shared nature of Facebook also made it a great space to facilitate critique. Rather than have our students submit work only to us privately, all assignment submission had to be on our class’ Facebook group. The informal posting environment made it easy for students to critique other students’ work. Learning to give quality critique, and receive critique graciously are essential design skills that can only be learned with practice. We blocked off some class time to allow students to actually participate in live critique, but feared that this might not be enough.

Repeat One of our guiding principles was trying to make the class informal and interactive, to distinguish ourselves from pre-existing classes, and to make the class feel accessible even to students who had never designed before. To accomplish this, we essentially threw a bunch of concepts at the wall to see what would stick, and iterated based on the feedback we got.

At the end of each slide, we gave a link to a Google form where students could leave anonymous feedback. Each week we tried to iterate our lecture style based on whatever feedback we got.

In our class we are always reminding our students how important it is to appropriately scope a project. You have to be realistic about how many hours you can

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November 11, 2015 11/11, 9:13am

NICOLE! DO YOU WANNA TEACH A PRODUCT DESIGN CLASS WITH ME THROUGH CUAPPDEV NEXT SEMESTER IF YOU’RE HERE LIKE IT WILL RUN PARALLEL TO the iOS STUFF 11/11, 10:08am

YES ID LOVE NOTHING MORE THAN TO DO THAT

really commit to a project, and recognize when you need to cut features. We had to heed to our own advice with regards to this class. We initially had planned to write Medium.com post transcripts of each class each week but we quickly got backlogged (writing is hard, who knew!). We also had planned to hold a weekly lunch the day of class, so our students could get to know us on a more personal level, but we had to ax that as well as we needed more time to finish our slides (making slides is hard, who knew!).

Through feedback and iteration, we found so many strategies that worked well and so many strategies that didn’t work at all. Right after our very first lecture, we got great feedback that it was not effective for both of us to explain the same material together (because it was supposed hard

for us decide who was going to explain what points on the fly). For all our future slides, we were sure to divvy up who would talk about which topic in advance. Very recently, we got great feedback on what parts of our visual design sections were difficult to follow and are working to improve those slides for the future iterations of the class.

We also learned that in-class critique was actually successful, and we hope to increase the amount of student critique in the future.

Your design will never be perfect on the first try, but you can get it closer and closer through extensive iteration. We learned so much from teaching this class for the first time, and we’re excited to announce that we will continue to iterate! Intro to Digital Product Design will be offered again in the fall, taught by Andrew Aquino m

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Margorzata Pawlowska, Architecture ‘16

BLOCKS, RHYMES & LIFE Housing’s Intangible Heritage

“EACH SPACE DETERMINES, OR AT LEAST ENCOURAGES, ITS OWN KIND OF STORY,” writes literary scholar Franco Moretti. The 20th century, an era of rapid industrialization in the Western World, saw the proliferation of standardized manufacturing processes—a paradigm shift that was not evaded by architectural design and building construction. In the years following the Second World War (1945-1975), unprecedented economic expansion, large-scale urban renewal, and mass housing estates homogenized the landscapes of not only the Soviet Union but also France, Britain, Scandinavia, the Middle East, Asia, and the United States. Neighborhoods of concrete slab block-houses became the trademark of early 20th-century standardized manufacturing processes and prefabrication. Largely in disrepair less than two decades after their construction, mass postwar housing projects have come to represent catastrophic failure and a breeding ground for crime and pathologies rather than representing the original intended message of social progress. The famous demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis (July 15, 1972) heralded the “Death of Modernism” and equated the entire architectural style with a failed Utopian vision. The dominant perception has become that “the large housing scheme destroys the city as it has evolved historically and creates a no-man’s land bereft of habitability.”

As the concrete high-rises dominated the post-war housing landscape, their depictions became widespread in visual and literary arts. These spaces acted as a blank canvas on which residents exercised their imaginations, and unpredictable histories found ways to flourish. Entire genres were born among the blocks, from fine art to film and music.

The following example highlights how the creative re-stitching and re-imagining of harsh modernist aesthetics was at once inescapable and vital to the experience of everyday life in these environments.

Faced with an overwhelming demand for worker-class housing in cities that were growing by the millions, Russian Communist Party leader Nikita Khrushchev declared in 1954 that the path of industrialization of construction was required in order to improve the quality and speed of construction of worker-class housing. Engineers, ordered by the government, came up with a series of “optimal” housing plans based on careful calculations of the human body’s dimensions as well as efficient travel distances between homes and neighborhood services. Once established, the same key patterns became ubiquitously repeated in “Microrayons” across Eastern Europe.

Clockwise: Drawings by Dmitrij Prigov (1979), Guerilla art exhibition in Moscow Microrayon (1974), 1520 Sedgwick Ave (1973)

Families seeking a home in a “Microrayon” were often placed on a waiting list, and apartments were awarded according to the size of the family. “The standard sizes ranged from M-1 (a singleroom apartment under 20 sq. meters) to M-6 (60 sq. meters). A family of three could count on no more than an M-3 unit, comprised of two small rooms and a kitchen.

Moscow Conceptualism appeared soon after the completion of the first Microrayons (1958). The uniformity of buildings and their harsh elevations were equated with the general perception of monotony alongside the hardships of life in the USSR. Artists began to express these shared sentiments. Even after Khrushchev declared a ban against formalism and abstraction in art, a strong underground movement continued to generate influential work. The anonymous block apartments became ideal sites for secret galleries, shows, and artist’s studios.

An artist who left his mark on

Moscow’s Byelayevo Microrayon was Dmitrij Prigov - poet, sculptor, performance artist, and front-runner of Moscow Conceptualism. Instead of condemning the endless and bleak nature of modernism, Prigov questioned the identity of the empty landscape, seeking in it the potential for unknown possibilities. He allowed himself to become completely immersed in his analysis and created a new “mythology” for the Microrayon. His drawings would overlay fantastical scenes onto the bleak backdrop of blank rooms from a generic post-war apartment.

Prigov believed that poetry had the right to exist not only in beautiful and unique places, but also within the anonymous.

He deconstructed the rationality that he admired in modernism and took advantage of the patterns found in architecture and urban planning, juxtaposed with typical Moscow neighborhood Plans The Birthplace of Hip-Hop At around the same time in New York

City, the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954 provided federal funding for the clearing of “blighted” inner-city areas in favor of modernist “tower in the park” apartments.

The resulting residential super-blocks, just like their European counterparts, created a notoriously impersonal environment.

One of these unremarkable high-rises, at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, is recognized by musicians and scholars as the birthplace of Hip Hop. Both a musical genre and urban culture encompassing the practices of DJ-ing, MC-ing, breakdance, and graffiti, Hip-Hop evolved directly from a series of events held by Clive Campbell, or DJ KoolHerc, in the recreation room of 1520 Sedgwick House in 1973.

“Herc’s break-beats drew on modernism’s affinities for repetition, regularity, and the use of standardized parts,” writes art historian Lawrence Chua.

“Hip-Hop’s visual, musical, and physical culture re-imagined modernism’s utopian dream within the inner-city decay.”

m 25 Neighborhoods full of reps, cities are projects Where the young cadets get stripes from the vets [...]

Avenues to check, boulevards to sweat The smell of gunsmoke more common than cigarettes [...]

Styles are top notch, this is the place to watch So bust the box the radio station is hot Ease your mind staring at skylines from rooftops

As hip-hop culture came to be embraced across ethnic, linguistic, and geographic boundaries, space and place have remained an important aspect of the genre. Hip-Hop became a medium through which one could define personal identity and stand out from the uniform landscape.

It thereby served as a powerful outlet for

interpreting and “owning” the often cold and alienating city. Hip-Hop created a rhythmic montage of imagery and celebrated the “neighborhood” (housing project) as a formative place of origin.

What is the future of modernist housing projects? Clearly they have acted as the instrumental birthplaces for expressive and interdisciplinary art inspiring an array of creative processes and works that otherwise would probably never have existed. At the same time, they have in many cases created socially alienating, unsafe, and increasingly neglected built environments. As neither vernacular was easily taken up in the canon of “high architecture,” do all post-war block neighborhoods have no hope but to be demolished just like Pruitt-Igoe? In 2007, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue was nearly sold and demolished for redevelopment. However, a campaign garnered widespread support

to preserve the building as the historic birthplace of Hip-Hop. Additionally, Moscowbased urban planner Kuba Snopek recently published Belyayevo Forever: Preserving the Generic (2011). This book describes the history of the Byelayevo Microrayon and highlights its vital role in the development of Moscow Conceptualism, particularly as the home of artist Dmitrij Prigov. Snopek called for support in placing Byelayevoon the UNESCO list of historical buildings. He writes: “The appearance of prefabrication half a century ago predetermined the fact that a paradigm of preservation based on uniqueness will quickly become defunct.”

To truly discern the value of a building, it is important to consider its intangible cultural heritage. m

Nas, The World is Yours (Official Music Video)

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Andres Romero Pompa, Architecture ‘17

REINTERPRETING REALITY Computer Graphics Experimental Course

IN ACADEMIA, AS IN INDUSTRY, INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION IS AT THE CORE of innovation. However, the merits of interdisciplinary collaboration are at risk with hundreds of thousands of students across the nation simultaneously specializing in their desired field of study and segmenting themselves from different disciplines. True innovation on campus can only be achieved through an intersection of different disciplines, vantage points and processes.

In the spring of 2016 Donald Greenberg, The Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Graphics, and Joseph Kidder, Research Associate in the Department of Computer Graphic, launched an experimental course with the aim of developing virtual and augmented reality technologies and bringing them to the forefront of technological and creative discourse. The course enables a group of sixteen students consisting of ten computer science students and six architecture students to speculate on the possible implementations of Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies currently available, or those that will be available in the years to come.

The projects stem from collaborations with leading technology companies around the world including Autodesk, nVidia, Valve, Oculus, and Microsoft. The synergy between these companies, the Department of Computer Graphics, and the collective energy of CS students and designers has created immersive experiences that can be used as design tools. When someone mentions Virtual Reality (VR), creating a design tool goes beyond what

usually comes to mind. The purpose of the studio is not to create a carbon copy of the “real world”, but rather create opportunities in which these tools can integrate, interject and be applied to any field.

A conversation with Joseph Kidder helped me explore the different iterations that exist and redefine the impossible.

In many ways the team is completely deconstructing our physical human experience only to have it reappear in a familiar, yet fresh and perplexing mode. They are taking our very visceral sensibilities and recreating them digitally in order to provide an environment that allows for closer examination and explorations that weren’t possible until now.

The group has developed a particular set of tools that allow designers to immerse themselves in any space they create. But this immersion doesn’t just mean to stare into a digital representation of a space, for this team it means being able to walk, look, touch, grab, and interact in many different ways that were not possible a mere five years ago. Given adequate data and development, one could experience an evening on the coast of Pangaea, get a different perspective on gravitational laws — by going bowling —or have a conversation with Joan of Arc. None of these experiences would be possible without the design/research that has been going on in this VR laboratory.

It is clear by talking to some of the participants, that their expectations have

not only been exceeded, but that they have also been completely reconstructed along the way. For many, this wasn’t a shift of interest, but rather a realization that shifting their ways of thinking would indeed completely reconstruct the results of the experiment in a positive way.

In many cases it seems to be that the shift was not only prompted by a search for results, but also by a desire to find more efficient, interesting, and compelling ways of getting to the result. For instance, Joseph remarked on the way in which teams slowly realized that presentations with compelling visuals were usually more successful at getting the ideas across, and generated more productive dialogue. Furthermore, the more graphically oriented students realized that having a strong theoretical (usually mathematical) basis for the graphics was imperative for a successful project as well.

The teams acknowledge that there have been some difficulties with communication and cross-disciplinary workflows, but such is the nature of working across disciplines which have developed mostly independently from each other. Nevertheless, these initial bumpy situations were surmounted by an understanding of each of the members’ skills and abilities that lead to a much more fruitful and symbiotic working relationship.

After setting up this productive working relationship, the teams all focused on a final project which would build upon an almost all encompassing range of disciplines.

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Each team takes a ‘word’ or ‘concept’ like ‘scale’, ‘texture’, ‘light’, ‘detail’, or ‘material’ and develops it to create a tool that expands and further develops our understanding of the word in mind.

After getting to experience first-hand the results of the collaboration and interviewing a couple of the students involved, it is clear that the collaboration with people from different fields with different opinions, and even people within the same field but that have a different perspectives created an environment for discussion with a common goal. The interdisciplinary collaborations that come from simply working in teams completely reshaped the projects in a positive way that traditional academic settings didn’t.

Strictly academic settings do nurture

a very valuable set of skills and knowledge from which industries could benefit and vice versa. Nevertheless, I do believe there should be something that actively facilitates the transition. Things like this experimental studio really get to the core of what happens when a strong academic sentiment meets industry standards.

The fact that Virtual Reality is inevitably coming, and that at Cornell there is a real academic concern for its implication in humans, leads me to believe that whatever it is that we will be doing in twenty years regarding VR and AR, will have a quite strong raison d’être. It may as well be questionable, just as anything is, but it will take some serious thought, and energy to it bring down from its established industry standard. m

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Noa Wesley, International Agricultural and Rural Development ‘16

UNTITLED 2016

“There are no landscapes. There is not even a horizon. There is only, physically speaking, our immense suspicion which surrounds everything.” – Andre Breton

THE FEMININE HAS SERVED AS THE TERRAIN FOR MEN TO LOSE THEMSELVES AND TO discard their rationality through the process of objectification. The female body is always transformed into an object. The body becomes fragmented, pieced apart, and chopped to a point where it can no longer be understood as a single form with a single soul. A displacing occurs in form and in body, a displacing, which has been commoned into invisibility. This series wishes to function as an uncommoning of objectification. The images here intend to present the feminine landscape as one of tension and instability. There is no condemnation of the objectified terrain, but rather a wish to present discomfort by casting off the veil. No longer should the female form be recognized as rationally justified freedom limited by definitions of productivity and banal social relations. I must uncommon my body and its horizon. m All Photographs: Untitled, 2016, 19”x19”, Chromogenic Print

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Interview by Angela Moreno Long, Urban and Regional Studies ‘16

A ROBOT’S SOFT SIDE Robert Shepherd

ROBERT SHEPHERD, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL and Aerospace Engineering, and his lab focus on the advancement of soft robotic systems.

This includes walking robots, soft electronic skins that sense touch and shape in response to mechanical stimuli, and biomimetic actuators that mimic the function and movements of natural organs, such as the heart. This is achieved by coupling bioinspired design with advanced fabrication methods (e.g., 3d printing, soft lithography, and rotational molding). The Organic Robotics Lab (ORL) focuses on using synthetic adaptation of natural physiology to improve machine function and autonomy. Research spans three primary areas: bioinspired robotics, soft sensors and displays, and advanced manufacturing.

Can you tell me a little about what you are currently working on?

Yes - every new machine, and most new technology starts because there is a new material, and [in the case of our work] we are using rubber.

Rubber has been around since World War II, and since then there have been new synthetic approaches to creating tougher rubber. In the 1950s and after there were silicone rubbers produced and material which can stretch at really low stresses - so it’s soft - but can also be stretched to large extensions - it can go from one inch to seven inches. So it is a material which is soft and stretchy but can also strengthen when you stretch it (called strain hardening).

It is used for gaskets but never for machines - not things that move. I think maybe the furthest it has gone is being used as a comfortable insert for a replacement limb.

So as is the nature with technology and innovation, several people started working on this at the same time. I started making advanced balloons; playing with shape and inflation and getting to make them in different ways. Essentially making soft machinery.

So the next questions was “I have this neat stuff... what can I do with it?�

There are defense applications, biomedical applications, gaming applications - and then you think how can [this technology] help with all that?

What is missing from making the soft machinery robots are sensors - the ability to sense their environment and respond accordingly, so we started to look at how to incorporate soft sensors into these soft machines. So now these machines can feel touch and some of the same sensors allow them to display light, which in some cases could mean displaying emotions.

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What is your design process for this kind of work?

We initially started with rapid iteration - taking a general concept and then refining through rapid prototyping.

Another way is we used TRIZ problem solving. TRIZ is an acronym for a process developed by a Soviet inventor Genrich Altshuller. His theory was basically there is nothing new under the sun - for every problem there has already been a solution you just need to look at the patent literature to find it. So he would problemsolve by studying patterns of invention in global patent literature.

I don’t necessarily believe it is true, but TRIZ can often be a useful process in finding existing solutions to these problems.

[In our process we also] identified contradictions. Soft robots are great because they can change their shape a lot and are adaptable. Our ideal robot would be like an octopus. But the problem is if you put it on land it doesn’t work.

You need a skeleton on land - to increase efficiency of soft robots it would be great to have a skeleton, but that limits the shape they can take.

By using TRIZ we can find existing solutions to this problem or contradiction.

One of the solutions [in the TRIZ matrix] is phase change material - this could be for example ice to water. Using this solution we decided to use a metal that melts at low temperatures and

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Many times people think that the technology can do more than it can, so most of the time [collaborations are] spent limiting expectations

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incorporate this into the structure of our rubber robots. So if you slightly heat the robot it becomes flexible, but if you stop the metal freezes. You can have an on demand skeleton. This is how we solved our shape adaptability contradiction.

development because it is clean and looks good with relatively little effort.

But if everyone only continues to work on software development all you will end up with is an iPhone. We need new hardware development.

What role do aesthetics play within engineering and engineering research?

What do you see as strengths and barriers to collaborative work?

Aesthetics matter to some extent.

Usually it comes for free if you are really trying to get to the bare essentials of what makes a device work.

I think people find beauty in simplicity.

I think that’s why some of the best designs come from Scandinavia - by trying to cut down to the bare bones you end up making something that looks good.

You can also attempt to [create an aesthetic]. A reason to do this, beyond function is to capture the attention of your audience, which is important if you are trying to show the public your product is useful before it actually is.

For example what we are working on will probably not be useful for 10 years, so it is important to make something look good so people can see the potential before it is there.

And in some ways this is worrisome - right now people want to work on app

Strengths: By the nature of my work I cannot focus totally on just one discipline, being able to collaborate with others who are focused on one discipline allows me to get a lot more done than I would alone.

Difficulties: If the disciplines are too disparate [there are barriers in communication or understanding]. Many times people think that the technology can do more than it can, so most of the time is spent limiting expectations. m

GREENLAND

SWEDEN

ICELAND

FINLAND NORWAY

DENMARK

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A Conversation Between Melody Stein, Fine Arts ‘16 & Natalie Mufson, Urban and Regional Studies ‘17

SUSTAINABILITY IN SCANDINAVIA Correspondence from Copenhagen

SUSTAINABILITY IN SCANDINAVIA WAS A CONFERENCE HELD BY THE HARVARD Graduate School of Design in collaboration with the Harvard Center for Green Buildings and Cities on November 6th, 2015. Medium members Natalie Mufson (URS ‘17) and Melody Stein (BFA ‘16) made the trek from Ithaca to Cambridge to watch architects and theoreticians from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden speak about their experiences with sustainable design in Scandinavia. This spring, Natalie departed to Copenhagen herself to study abroad. Below you will find their conversation reflecting on the conference, transposed through the gaps of distance and incongruous timezones into a digitally mediated Q&A.

Questions for Natalie from Melody

What qualities do you believe are unique to Scandinavian design?

Are these principles less applicable outside the region?

I think the key qualities that emerged in the 1950s that started to categorize Scandinavian design are craft, simplicity, minimalism, and functionality. I think these principles are universal but culturally, not all countries put these values as high as Scandinavia.

I loved Thomas Nørgaard’s quote: “We are not discussing objects. We are discussing systems.” How do you believe this shift in perspective alter the ultimate judgment of a successful design? He later said, “You cannot have decoration. You can only have function.” I took more issue with this purely practical, somewhat cold stance. Do you believe that Scandinavian design pedagogy is more prone to an anti­aesthetic philosophy?

Is it possible for contemporary design to achieve a balance between object and operation?

I thought Nørgaard’s point was an important one. So often we hear that architects deal with their buildings as objects that have little to do with the space they inhabit. The oil crisis in 1973 pushed architecture and planning into a realm filled with limitations. All of a sudden windows could only be a certain size, walls had to be a certain thickness

and good architects had to become creative in order to design high quality buildings. Nørgaard pointed out that in 2006 there was a demand for seventy percent reduction in energy use in building operations and that now there is a skepticism about whether limitations can be positive. He said that in Denmark right now people want to do away with all the complicated documentation and licensing that takes up time from being creative. In my opinion, what makes Scandinavian design so strong is that limitation. Now we look at sustainability and design and think Scandinavia, which would not maybe be possible without those limitations having been put in place and without the idea that the buildings had to work within a larger system. Once energy is taken into account then the spaces around the building, the people around the building, are also taken into account. Nørgaard had two titles in his presentation, “no house is an island: a house is a technology responding to the world” and “no house is an island: a house is a part of a network and constitutes a network in itself.”

I think that in Denmark, at least, there’s an attention to what you put in your house. People will pay more for a higher quality item that will last longer, work better, and make them happier rather than having many lesser quality items.

Nørgaard said that things in a house need to have a function and that gives meaning.

I think Scandinavian design pedagogy has a strong aesthetic philosophy, it’s just a

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minimalist one. Again, it’s hard to speak about contemporary design in general as each cultural landscape has different desires. There’s been a boom in the desire for Scandinavian or Scandinavian­inspired designs and maybe that’s because there’s a shift in the wish for quality over quantity—or over passing trends.

Stig Mikkelsen mentioned that sustainability is the overlap between environmental, social, and economic factors. As an Urban and Regional Planning major, have you ever encountered examples in which architects undervalue the significance of these intersectional social and economic factors? In what ways can the surrounding social and economic infrastructure impact a design’s function within a society?

Yes, and I appreciated Mikkelsen’s presentation because while it may not have been the most captivating, he was the one who so obviously worked incredibly closely with engineers and is someone who values them absolutely.

Nørgaard said at one point, “let’s do buildings without engineers,” to which Mikkelsen responded in his presentation at first saying that they use technology and make it “a language and driver for our thinking of architecture” and then he went on to say later, “we can do buildings with the industry... and work closely with those people and refine our language.”

Mikkelsen’s strategy was to incorporate

those engineers into the process from day one and ultimately it made the projects more affordable.

During the symposium I kept on thinking of the social and economic components of all the projects and of what the speakers had to say.

Scandinavia is in a particularly nice position when it comes to environmental, social, and economic factors in their designs. Most of the countries are small with relatively homogeneous populations and are incredibly wealthy due to their natural resources. A lot of the projects shown incorporated the users desires into the architecture and made that a pillar of what they view as a “sustainable” building. Buildings and spaces that work well became attractive to people and can have an impact not only on an individual but on a whole neighborhood.

One of the most controversial topics brought up at the Sustainability in Scandinavia Conference was the project to move the small Swedish town of Kiruna away from an active mine and reconstruct it two miles away.

Can a city be moved? What’s your take on this quasi­utopian endeavor?

I thought that was fascinating!

At first I thought it was due to purely environmental reasons—that the mine created fissures in the earth and so the town was being forced to move. In reality, if the mine were to continue functioning and expanding then fissures would be

created. The town relies on the mine for jobs and economic activity. If the mine were to close, residents would lose jobs and move away. The solution was to move the town! The first question that popped into my head was “who is paying for this?” It seems shocking that the price of designing and reconstructing the town don’t outweigh the benefits of keeping the mine open. The political and economic reasons for the project weren’t explained and I’m dying to know about it—I’m sure it’s a great story.

I also agreed that this seemed like a project that could only be pulled off in Sweden—it almost seemed too good to be true. What we find most attractive about cities are their history. And so while the endeavor in Kiruna seems feasible because there is a population ready to move in and inhabit it, I would worry that the lack of history within the buildings would change the social aspect of the town. People’s relationships with their built landscape is one full of memories: I had my first date there, my dad always takes me for pizza there, that’s my neighborhood café, the bookstore where I found that first edition, etc. etc. By fabricating a new town those things are lost. An example to look to might be Christchurch in New Zealand, which, following a devastating earthquake, is having to be rebuilt (initial designs were done by Gehl).

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Questions for Melody from Natalie

Terms ​ nowadays sometimes seem to lose their meaning...organic, gentrification, etc...do you think we have lost a clear definition of what sustainable means? How can fields attempt to understand each other if we don’t have a common language (or universal definitions)?

The issue of communication in design is extremely pressing and very under­ discussed. Sustainable design is by nature an interdisciplinary practice, and discrepancies between intended and perceived meaning become compounded as points of reference drift farther apart.

Words like “sustainable” have completely different meanings and connotation to an ecologist, an engineer, and an architect.

While the development of universal definitions seems like the most practical solution theoretically (though difficult to achieve in actuality), the reality is that the understanding of these general terms is context specific. The use ­value of language to a discipline depends on its coded interpretation by someone familiar with the context in which it is used.

From this standpoint, the most ideal­­and potentially realistic ­­solution would be the clear definition of potentially confusing terms at the start of a project.

What aspects of the symposium were you most surprised at or interested you the most? From reading and listening I feel that often we hear the same things

over and over. What original pieces of advice or experience did you get out of the symposium?

One of the things that stood out most was the shifting relationship between permanence and sustainable strategies.

Tine Hegli from Snøhetta and Anne Beim from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts both emphasized the idea of a predefined architectural life cycle as an essential part of the design process.

There is a tendency to equate building longevity with sustainable practices, and temporary structures with the kind of waste associated with the fast food, throwaway mentality permeating much of Western consumerist culture. However, buildings are not truly permanent and architecture constructed with a plan for its deconstruction offers many benefits­­ not least the selection of materials and construction techniques that reduce negative environmental impacts throughout the structure’s lifecycle.

Søren Nielsen from Vandkunsten Architects continued this thread through his discussion of reused and recycled architectural parts. Creating buildings with the intent to later deconstruct them enables a more streamlined demolition process, thus further reducing waste and pollution, while allowing for the effective reclamation of architectural materials.

As an artist, biologist, and potential future landscape architect, do you

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feel that there is a lack of scientific biological understanding of the natural environment that surrounds the built environment? We talk in vague terms about “sustainability” and “going green” but don’t speak about those natural systems we rely so heavily on.

Absolutely. I think the greatest issue is the idealized goal of creating a set of generalized solutions to environmental planning and design. Ultimately, the efficacy of sustainable design depends so heavily on their ecological, social, economic, and spatial contexts that to define a strict series of “best practices” would be counterproductive. A large portion of the Sustainability in Scandinavia conference dealt with the use of “green

materials.” However, from recycled building materials to specially engineered, energy­ saving textiles to sustainably managed lumber, what made a material “green” wasn’t its inherent qualities as much as the context in which it was used.

This is not a question of ecology from a purely biological standpoint as much as an intersection of multiple disciplines and factors. Architecture cannot exist in a vacuum. Sites are not static supports, but complex systems constantly evolving under multiple forces. Scandinavia offers a unique series of issues and a specific set of solutions tied to its relative economic affluence, low population levels, climatic and geographic conditions, high levels of access to forest resources, and political stability. Wood has the potential to

be an indefinitely renewable resource, however in much of the world slash and burn clearing techniques used to make way for industrialized agriculture have depleted this resource beyond repair.

To speak of wood as a “green material” in Brazil would hold very different connotations in a region decimated by crippling deforestation than in Sweden where forest resources are carefully farmed. A push toward realistic views of ecosystems and biological principles is an essential step, but to ensure truly effective, long term solutions, the full recognition of the context and space­ specific factors of a region, a people, and a place is essential.

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Interview by Isabella Crowley, Urban and Regional Studies ‘18

“THE SOUL OF A DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHER” William Staffeld

IN THE 1970S WHILE AT ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, BILL STAFFELD began photographing the neighborhoods adjacent to downtown Rochester at night. Using long-time exposures, he photographed the streets and people that he encountered. Later in his career, Staffeld returned to Rochester to shoot night photography on Monroe Avenue - a vibrant commercial strip. The images shown in his recent exhibit “Upstate ‘70s: The Soul of a Documentary Photographer” in the John Hartell Gallery document the transition of a once rich and dense urban landscape into a post-industrial upstate New York city.

Let’s start with some background information. What do you do at Cornell and what was your path like coming here?

I have worked as the photographer for Cornell’s college of Architecture, Art, and Planning since 2008. Originally I was a photographer technician. I managed the darkroom in the art department and worked with faculty and graduate students to create slides in the slide library.

I began my photographic career when the discipline was analog and generally more exclusive. In the early 1980s, I had just married and was working as an apprentice in pre-production printing.

I thought I would stay with printing because there were more opportunities. I worked as a photographer technician with the Rochester Institute of Technology for a while.

Many of the images in this show are views captured from the sidewalk.

What drew you to the streets of Rochester during this time?

It wasn’t something I had to set my mind to. I was naturally drawn to photographing street life from high school, growing up outside of Buffalo. My family had a business in the city. Traveling to the city, my fascination was almost immediately with streets, people, flavors – it was all very satisfying to me.

Did you consider your street photography a social activity, or were you more of a fly on the wall?

It was mostly interactive. Breaking through that awkwardness, weirdness, suspicion that people felt being photographed was all part of the activity for me. Mind you this was a time before social media, when “technology” meant color TV and analog cameras. The way you interacted with people was different. It was on the spot, in person.

Today the opportunities for selfpublishing, image-making, and writing is profuse. There are myriad ways to get work out there. Forty years ago the way you did that was exhibiting work in a gallery like this (Hartell gallery). Publishing was a project that involved a great deal of expertise.

In a way, the digital has simplified things in a lot of ways and made the practice more accessible. Back in the day, it was a much more discriminating process practiced by a smaller segment of the population.

This work evokes a strong sense of time and place. Do you understand these images differently today than you did when you shot them?

Hmm… that’s interesting. You mean appreciate them differently? One of the things I’ve tried to do is to see them as images instead of memories.

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At night, and even during daylight, only the shadows of former things and beings remained. It was a spirit world that would reveal itself in the moment Staffeld unwound the dripping wet film from the reel.

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So you try to overcome your sentimentality?

Yes. The distance of time and place allows objectivity. When I look at these photographs, I ask myself: do they have a life on their own that still vibrates? Are they still relevant? Good photographs stand up on their own. They should not be dependent on me to explain or memorialize them. Time separates, allows me to see them anew.

Have you ever thought about going back to shoot in the streets of Rochester again?

I’m not so excited about going back

to places, but to compare the process of shooting a similar project. The how, when and why are all different.

Does this “spirit world” reveal itself through your digital work today? What do you think is lost and gained in digital versus analog photography?

I was very inspired when I wrote this.

I’m describing this “satori” moment – a Japanese Buddhist word for revelation – that would happen after hours or days or weeks when you take the film off the reel, you see those images dripping with fixer or water, and you see the image for the first time. With digital photography that moment disappears. It’s not the same to

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It’s a element of photography that takes away the mystery. So much of art and photography involves the surprise. The philosopher Alan Watts says that the Universe is constantly sneaking up on itself. Digital has taken some of this natural surprise away, made things more predictable.

From the dean down, there is an understanding of how the staff and faculty wants to portray the college. Kent (AAP dean) is always joking around, telling me “Make us look good, Bill!” I just want to take pictures of what is.

I certainly see this at play in student life here. The way Cornell promotes itself can prevent students from pursuing creative impulses and feelings. I remember seeing this promotional poster for Cornell back in the 1990s with the slogan “elite not elitist”. I thought ha!

Wow, you’ve gotta be kidding me.

When I first came here, I had not worked in academia before. I completed my studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology and did this work for an independent study. It was a shock coming to Cornell. It really struck me that there was a hierarchy with faculty, administration, and just plain staff. I felt a little bit intimidated and inhibited at first.

A few years ago I decided to take an acting class which has really helped me as a photographer and in this setting generally. It boosted my confidence and encouraged spontaneity.

So there’s a bit of creative tension in your job description?

How has your approach to photography changed since you shot this series?

Sure. I have to be a team player and I have to know what I’m trying to portray.

We have to make AAP look like a great place to pursue goals, a place with vitality, craftsmanship, and an incredible working environment. The charge is clear. Pushing against that, I want to take pictures that really interest me. I think this tension is really good. I’m trying to feed my creative impulses as a team member of Communications.

My personal struggles and personal interests still come from the same place.

Moods, lighting, the where, and the why.

These are the foundational themes I have built myself on.

(As far as format) I don’t think much in black and white, but it’s still relevant in design culture. There is still a great deal of black and white in architecture. Crits, renderings, dress… It becomes a burden to think of a place in terms of color.

Shooting in black and white allows you to get closer to a subject.

So much of participating in the world today involves adapting to transitions.

I’ve actually felt pretty good about my ability to do that. There was something great about film, but I love image-making so much that I can achieve that joy whatever I do. Interfacing with the digital world has made work in general more

Photography can be considered a medium for communication as well as an art form. How does your work reflect these ways of understanding photography?

You’ve mentioned that your “charge” as a photographer for AAP is clear – there are certain expectations for the way you document the creative life of students at Cornell. Do you see students holding back due to the pressures of maintaining an elite image?

“Photographs seemingly bring you up to the edge of reality, and when you go far enough, you realize that you’re not taking photos - they’re taking you.”

collaborative, and has been a part of my personal growth.

Within the capsule of Cornell, I’ve morphed into different things. Before, my photography was much more of a solo experience. Now, both through mechanics and means – team dynamics have changed my approach to photography a great deal.

What can we sense through photographs that is difficult to sense through other forms of documentation?

Well it starts with the accessibility of the visual image. People are pretty visually smart now and images are ubiquitous. The visual intelligence of our culture doesn’t exist in music, writing, performance or any other artistic medium. The upside of communicating through photography is reaching a broader audience.

“The camera doesn’t lie” argument has challenged representational art. At a

certain level, a photograph has no more authority over reality than a painting.

Photographs seemingly bring you up to the edge of reality, and when you go far enough, you realize that you’re not taking photos - they’re taking you. m

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Design Competition

MECHANISM: A System for Interaction

PROMPT Design a system - either conceptual or literal - that illustrates your interpretation of the word “mechanism�.

EVALUATION CRITERIA Feasibility and real world potential. If given the opportunity, could this project develop further or does it end here?

Visual and aesthetic presentation. Is the project aesthetically compelling?

Conceptual content and convincing rhetorical premise. What is your work trying to say? Is it saying it?

Innovative interpretation of the prompt. How many ways can you interpret the prompt? Is yours innovative, thought provoking, and unique?

Interdisciplinary engagement. How does this project engage with multiple disciplines, makers, or methods or thinking?

THE JUDGES

MELISSA BROWER GRADUATE STUDENT, DESIGN AND ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS

CASEY FRANKLIN PH.D. CANDIDATE, DESIGN AND ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS

BRIAN DAVIS ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

*Caroline O’Donnell, Assistant Professor of Architecture was also a judge of this competition.

What was your interpretation or understanding of “mechanism” before judging the student competition and how did this change after judging?

Melissa Brower It’s interesting, I work in the MVR building and I saw your posters for submissions and I really wasn’t sure to be honest. It seems, I won’t say vague, but open ended. Very open ended, which, before having a better understanding of what medium was trying to achieve or approaching, I found it from an artist’s standpoint, sort of loose, almost intimidating. I don’t know if I would personally submit to this as an artist. After sitting down with the other judges and representatives of Medium, I really enjoyed their emphasis on the cross disciplinary nature of it. The vagueness of it really left it open for people from the

different departments to reach across their own discipline and do work outside the structure of their department.

Casey Franklin Well, I think initially I was thinking of mechanism as a “thing” and looking at the submissions there’s definitely a social element as well. I think what’s been interesting about this competition is bringing together different disciplines, you see that there are specific views about how this should be interpreted. It was really interesting to try to find a middle ground.

Brian Davis I would have described it as a key component in a larger process or assembly that makes stuff happen, or has some agency. After the student competition, based on what a lot of people were working on or were in that conversation, I don’t know that I could think about mechanism as much as a

component, as this small object oriented view of things, just because a lot of the entries were bigger, larger scale.

How do you see Medium adding to the design community at Cornell?

MB I’m probably sounding a little bit like a broken record here but the opportunities for interdisciplinary interaction are huge. There’s a real silo effect between arts, architecture and design and it’s nice that arts and architecture are proximate to each other so there’s an opportunity just by proximity to overlap and see what other people are doing. But design is so far removed, landscape is even further removed, and people who are outside the traditional design disciplines are even further removed. By spreading around

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the knowledge of this design competition Medium creates opportunities. It would be great if there was more opportunity for people who are in disciplines that aren’t design oriented to maybe reach across boundaries, maybe a couple networking meetings just for people to find a personality they click with that isn’t in their discipline and maybe they can start to work something together. Trying to break down the silos is really the biggest way I see Medium contributing.

CF I’m really excited about Medium because we don’t have communication between departments. My background is actually in architecture, I did a bachelor in architecture, I did a master’s in architecture, I did research, I worked as an architect, and there’s reasons that now I’m in the human behavior side! (laughs) But I don’t see it as either/or. We really need both aspects and we really need to work together to achieve a lot of common goals especially things related to sustainability or just you know generally improving the human experience in the built environment. I’m really excited for Medium, I hope that they can get people to start talking between departments.

Everybody had very specific views of what this should be but I think that we need to work together to kind of come up with an overarching picture of what we need in terms of the built environment, in the same way we had to do with this competition.

BD The thing that it is so exciting is that it is totally student driven, which takes a lot because there is already a lot

on you guys. It takes some organization and a lot of ambition, but that’s a really nice thing, to have you guys start to articulate what you bring to the table, rather than mastering what it is that we are covering in classes and otherwise, and also being fundamentally interested in cross-pollinating across all interested disciplines, that’s a real challenge at Cornell, so it’s nice that students are trying to lead that.

What part of your design process do you think could be most helped or informed by an interdisciplinary collaboration?

MB I always feel that the best design comes from collaboration so that is part of my design process, and it’s not one that I was encouraged to use at school.

We were encouraged to do our own project but, really, the most progress was made after the professors left the studio and we all started bouncing ideas off each other. Some people would leave their work and you’d walk by and think “I never would have thought of going in that direction!”

It’s an informal competition but it’s also working collaboratively towards your own separate goals.

CF All of the parts! (laughs) I want to say research early on, I mean obviously I’m doing a PhD so I think research is pretty important and you need different fields to bring different perspectives and different strengths in research. By only looking at one you’re doing a disservice to your users. And then in the design process too, again you need those different

perspectives, to really build more robust solutions in the end.

BD I work on urban rivers primarily so it’s usually multiple disciplines working together. I work with engineers and hydrologist sometimes, architects and ecologist all the time. The thing that is really important about interdisciplinary collaboration is that each discipline brings its own methods, in terms of collaboration, being able to find specific ways to link up those methods is really tough and interesting. My methods in terms of river design are different because I’m thinking about it as a Landscape, an engineer is not, they are still working in the same thing in the world but they don’t have a Landscape approach. Same thing for an architect, their medium is fundamentally different although they might be interested in water and the city as well so each bring different methods.

If there were no barriers (money, administration, etc) what is your dream project?

MB I like things that are in your face, so somewhere between like, something that everyone sees but is sort of this subterfuge at the same time. So I guess a sort of temporal intervention art. So maybe that’s a little bit outside what you’d be assigned, I don’t want to say graffiti, but one of these interventions that comes up unexpectedly and you can’t help but see it and everyone has their own reaction to it. I’d like to be on the underground, I don’t care what

department you’re in, everyone has their opinion, so let’s do something [together].

CF I want to say I’m already doing my dream project on campus. I’m living the dream! I’m working on an app that will reward people for sustainable behaviors and I’m trying to find new ways to link that with the built environment and recognizing what people are doing. I think that it would be really nice if there was a place where all the different people from Medium could gather. Right now the schools are pretty separate. I don’t know if any of you ever come to Human Ecology, it’s too far away, it’s up the hill, I understand. But, if there was no restriction at all, it would be nice to have an open space, where there wasn’t any discipline on it, just a collaborative space.

BD At least in the near term the thing that I would love, it wouldn’t take that much money or administrative roles, would be a collaborative studio with advanced Architecture students and advanced Landscape Architecture students, and find a way to link it to folks from Biological and Environmental Engineering and doing a river project in a city, and it would have a really large lab with a really large water table and better fabrication facilities in which we would be able test and prototype a wide variety of propositions. Make that happen, Medium.

In your opinion what are barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration at Cornell?

MB I think people are very comfortable working in their own language. Having the opportunity to think about the

same concept, the same word, this “mechanism” word in their own language is easy for people. And not that everyone is looking for easy but people are more comfortable submitting it under their own umbrella. Trying to come up with these ambiguous conduits for people to make the connections to other disciplines, it’s a challenge but I think the trigger word is a big thing to get people interested. They are being trained in a certain discipline and this university encourages that, so how [do you] find little underground ways to infiltrate and get all these disciplines to connect? Because in practice you will all be connecting, you can’t avoid it.

You need to understand all the different languages that people speak and speak that way as a practitioner and in whatever field you may end up in. [Outside the academic setting] there’s always going to be cross-disciplinary interaction so it’s better to get some access [now, in school] to other people’s languages and their approach.

CF One barrier is definitely just the physical departments that are very separate. I don’t think that there’s as many cross-listed classes as there could be, another one is the theoretical perspective that different departments take. I think it’s hard because you’re going to hear in architecture, in art, and in interior design, all different things that you should be striving for. And I think as a student you’re going to be wondering “Ugh, what am I really supposed to be achieving here?” And that’s part of developing your design style, it’s figuring out what’s important to you. But I think that without exploring outside of your

field that becomes really hard. And it’s funny for me because the first time I read about environmental psychology I thought “That’s what I’ve been trying to do for years!” But it took me two degrees to figure that out. So I think just being a little bit more open and willing to explore from different perspectives, what in your design is or isn’t successful.

BD There’s institutional barriers, just the fact that design schools are in different places, or the design disciplines are in different colleges. At Cornell that schism is pretty deep. There is a history, that I wasn’t really a part of but was evidently not great, but it makes it difficult to cross-pollinate.

But some of the most difficult barriers are just technical things, like we have studio at different times than the Human Ecology studios, or some of the AAP studios. The students already have a really ambitious curricula, they have a ton on them, they don’t have a lot of time to seek out a new collaboration, and for good reason but nonetheless that’s a barrier. m

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THE FINALISTS IAN PICA LIMBASEANU Architecture, ‘20

THE THIRTEENTH CITY, 1st PLACE

LUBA VALKOVA Architecture ‘17

A PUZZLE WITH NO EDGE PIECES, 2nd PLACE

TODD DRUCKER Architecture ‘17

UNTITLED, 3RD PLACE

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Ian Pica Limbaseanu

THE THIRTEENTH CITY THE CITY OF TOMORROW LOOKS LIKE THE CITY OF TODAY. THE DESIGNER HAS BEEN RADICALIZED. THEY DESIGN THEIR PRECEDENT VIA A PRODUCT; THEY DESIGN THEIR CLIENT, WITH A MECHANISM. The Thirteenth City is a critical response to Super Studio’s Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas, a short composition of writing and images first published by the group of radical architects in 1971. Within the work, twelve distinct models for utopian cities are proposed, each imbued with its own political commentary either on the state of architecture at the time or society as a whole. The Thirteenth City is intended to be the final utopian proposal and a mechanism infusing the prior twelve for the purpose of expressing two distinct notions of its own. The first intention is analytical; unlike Super Studio’s twelve constructions, the final utopian city is never explicitly described.

Rather, a floating mechanism above the city is conceived. This mechanism does not produce spaces for lifelong inhabitation, but produces the inhabitants of the spaces below via a variety of architectural conditions. By being removed from the city, it gets straight to the point; describing an utopian human, which is what each of the twelve cities achieve through their distinctive architectures. The second intent is to illustrate the continued relevance of Super Studio’s manifesto. Utopia was effectively used as a mechanism for social, architectural, and political commentary. These commentaries often pointing to the mindlessness of a population encapsulated by technology, The Thirteenth City suggests that they might continue to apply as accurately today as Super Studio satirically predicted over forty years ago.

Ultimately, this is only the beginning of what might become a manifesto in itself, where additional elements of the construction can be described and the human further dissected as the product of its environment, figuratively constructed above the contemporary city.

How did you choose this interpretation of mechanism?

The project, it originated out of work I completed for a architectural elective last semester for a class called “Drawing City Manifestos” [with Professor Leslie Lok] and basically it had a very concise method which was to first of all to look at a pre-existing architectural manifesto, analyze it, and then from there derive your own and create drawings. So mine

had a lot to do with the precedent that I researched, the manifesto was a short piece by super studio called Twelve Cautionary Tales for Christmas where they propose twelve completely crazy ideas for cities that more or less just solidified social criticisms in architecture, and then my idea was to create the next step in that process and with that bring to light the relevance with their projects and society today.

What motivated me to submit this

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project to the competition was my interpretation of their manifesto, which was something that is not explicitly described but plays a large part is the fact that each of the cities that they design actually in a way designs an individual for each [city]. With each city you get a different humanoid form or a different fragment of humanity. Really what they are doing, through architecture is describing people. What I attempted to do literally in my project was to cut straight to the chase and describe people directly. So rather than describe a city, or a city that embraces a social commentary, the social commentary is that the cities are describing people. That’s what really matters is the description of people - that is what makes the city.

Reversing their methodology, rather than designing the architecture to design

the people, the idea was to create an architecture that designs people to design the architecture.

What excites you about Medium?

I think Medium has a very cool purpose or idea in mind; it’s going to connect people designing in different disciplines.

Because, all I can do is assess from my own perspective as an Architecture student, I felt like so much of the best inspiration for architects, honestly, never comes out of architecture. It always come out of life, or other aspects of the world. In my own work, to pull out the most traditional example is freshman studio, you basically walk in and the whole idea is to bash all the terrible ideas or preconceptions about architecture you have ever had - bash them straight

out of your head. The way they do that is [through] an animal - they tell you to take an animal, derive a mechanism from it, and then begin to maybe comprehend what it is to create architecture. So I think that’s just one incredible example of something outside of architecture, but there are plenty of things. I can only think of classical examples right now. Le Corbusier - all he looked at was cars, and boats. He looked at the Pantheon but that was just the starting point to base himself, then it was about all the cars and the boats and the airplanes.

If you weren’t in the major you’re in now, what major would you be in?

Well, I think at the start I was thinking Biological Engineering or Molecular Biology but I’m not sure. I think it’s an

m 65 interesting field, but I don’t know enough about it. To be completely honest what drew me to it was that I took a summer course in biology and my favorite part was looking at enzymes in these weird structures and cells. The fact that cells just print themselves, by themselves and have all these complicated mechanisms that somehow create and move. The fact that an enzyme is just a string of proteins that by default, by the sheer chemical characteristics of those components, is able to create a three dimensional form.

It just folds into a three dimensional shape depending on how the chemicals are strung together which I later realized is an extremely architectural idea. So that’s how sometimes I feel like I chose the right place to go. But I think also CS [Computer Science] is really interesting in the same way, it’s like architecture in that you are trying to solve a problem but

there are infinite solutions. It’s a language of its own. You can find so many different ways to get to the same place, and that’s one thing I feel like I wouldn’t do so well within Molecular Biology. The fact that there is only one really good way to get somewhere is very methodical.

What do you think is the mechanism that allows for a strong collaboration?

To begin I would say that you have to recognize where the issues are. Not to be negative, at least in my experience, it was almost a language barrier. I’ve been here in architecture for almost two years now and my method of expression is completely different than someone in CS. The whole idea of the bullet point is in a totally different place on the lists of hierarchy in different people’s minds.

Some people love to see bullet points,

and I feel like a lot of architects, or at least people who think with architecture think differently, they think visually.

So what allows us to be on the same page is to realize that difference and then provide communication beyond just one method. So not just a bullet point and not just an image, but both. Redundancy to ensure the message gets through. m

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Luba Valkova

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A PUZZLE WITH NO EDGE PIECES

A map can never be upside down. Yet, nearly every map produced has the standard upward-pointing north arrow in its legend. Perhaps this is an artifact of the northern hemisphere’s constant struggle for power that we subconsciously reinforce each time we navigate to the nearest Target store. It’s not only orientation and labeling that carry this bias. In cartography, there are numerous ways to project the (almost) sphere that is Earth onto a piece of paper. Few of these projections accomplish an even distribution of distortion among the continents. Buckminster Fuller created a projection called the Dymaxion Map based on the unfolding of a regular icosahedron, with the intent of diminishing cultural bias by eliminating orientation and configuration. Yet, the iconic representation of the Dymaxion Map is a single permutation: the Air-Ocean World Map. This mechanism is an interpretation of Buckminster Fuller’s Map through a medium which remains unfixed, allowing us to experience cultural bias as a conscious move rather than subconscious stagnation. There are twenty modules which each begin as an autonomous triangle of woodwork. Each side can connect to one other module, or not. No configuration allows for all connections at once, forcing us to create geographic disparity; there are no edge pieces to this puzzle. Even a “finished” a puzzle can’t be framed into vertical orientation without disassembling, constraining it to the worksurface. Its only other place is inside its triangular box which only accommodates a disassembled, objective map. This mechanism produces our subjective visions of alternate histories, or alternately, alternate futures of the Earth.

How did you choose this interpretation of mechanism and how did you get to this?

This was around the time when I took a class about cartography. The class was talking about the different kinds of projections and how the distortions have an effect in the way that we interpret a map or a place and the cultural bias that comes with that and that kind of stuck in my brain. Later, I discovered the Dymaxion

Map by Buckminster Fuller and I liked his attempt to eliminate that cultural bias. That just floated in my head for a while and I didn’t do anything with it until winter came along and I did a present for my friend. He loves maps too and he’s a history major, and I thought this would be a great thing as a puzzle and this would exist online. It seems like the intuitive thing to do with this map so I googled it, I was looking everywhere and this thing doesn’t exist. I don’t think it’s

necessarily a very innovative approach to this map, it’s just something that I think is necessary for the expression for what Buckminster Fuller did. My father has a woodshop for furniture so I got access to materials and machines and it became a little woodworking project. As far as “mechanism”, this thing kind of evolved into a bit of a coffee table element in my friend’s room and it’s this interesting element that people don’t realize all the different configurations that it can have while still being valid. North doesn’t have to be up, it doesn’t have to have a certain orientation.

What excites you about Medium?

At the beginning I was excited about the project approach that you guys had.

It’s hard to find ways to talk to people outside of your own department and creating a design from it, and I think there’s always a chance to learn more

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about interdisciplinary design, because you have to do it to create something.

Considering that we’re in this university where all of these things are happening at once and yet we don’t all talk to each other is a loss. Also, within the design fields, we don’t know anything about what the other departments are doing outside of AAP so it’s nice that Medium allows for this.

If you weren’t in the major you’re in now, what major would you be in?

It would definitely be a hard science major. I think coming into it I would have picked physics. Now, I would be more into material studies, maybe relating to biology or earth science. I think even before coming to Cornell, I’ve always had an interest in art and science, and

I’ve always seen my major, Architecture, as a mix between the two because I also always loved art, but I think here at Cornell, it’s a lot less balanced than I had hoped. But, as I’m going up higher in the years I’m finding that it’s a lot easier to do research in what I enjoy. m

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Todd Drucker

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UNTITLED In Memory of Charlie Drucker

A sheet. A rivet. Another sheet. A simple factor creates complexity. Basic logic aggregates. It evokes beauty. I have many different definitions. An object. A toy. A figure. I can grow. I can sway. I react.

A sheet. A rivet. Another sheet. The forces carry all the way through me. There is no energy put into me, no plug, no power, except human action and my reaction.

A sheet. A rivet. Another sheet. Boing, swish, powww, I will come to life. Anchor me to ground, and I will turn your world upside down. Boing, swish, powww.

A sheet. A rivet. Another sheet.

How did you choose this interpretation of mechanism and how did you get to this?

When we made the original column we didn’t realize that the way we assembled it - that if you were to touch it - the whole object were to react to it. I thought that it was very interesting that one small action has a very big reaction. It was very fun because you would hit it and you’d have this tactile experience and the object would react. Ultimately, I would love to see the object grounded and anchored and then you could literally hit it and hit it and hit it and it won’t break.

It was made for Sasa Zivrovik digital fabrication elective where our assignment was to build a nine-foot column. We built three three-foot sections, and two out of three of them were successful at the end of the reveal. It was a long iterative process to get to the final stage.

We started with weekly assignments

to build eighteen-inch tall paper columns.

There were five or so iterations of those paper columns, where you would refine your design, refine your method of construction, and ultimately start looking at the bigger picture. We looked at joinery and materiality and then ultimately decided about how we were going to go about scaling it up. Before we went on with the final production we made one tenth of it to see if our method of fabrication would work. That’s where we first noticed the tactile effect because when we moved from thick paper to aluminum it reacted in a much different way.

We chose aluminum because we wanted something thin, a sheet material, and aluminum worked out for us because there is double curvature in it and the alumninum is able to hold its position.

We wanted a material that we were able to bend and not have to worry about it defaulting.

I think I posted [my project] because

I wanted to see if it could get recognition of some sort. It was the first time I had ever submitted work, and even though the end process wasn’t the end goal, we were still very happy with where we got. I believe in the future my designs are going to learn from this process, and I became more aware of how the design process works.

What excites you about Medium?

I was on the Student Assembly my sophomore year and I had this idea to bring togeher the design majors, but I never really found a platform to facilitate that. I wish Medium was around back then because I could have really engaged with it and been a part of it. But I would say this was two years ago, there wasn’t really a general Cornell design community, everyone was pocketed.

I definitely wanted to branch out of architecture school, because I preach to my architecture friends that you can’t lock yourself in this building. You can’t trap yourself here. A lot of Architecture and Art students have their closest friends within this community. They’re at a university where there are all these resources and people and things to do that are much bigger than what you do on a day-to-day basis. I really think that students need to know everything that Cornell has to offer.

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Take advantage of it because you’re only here for a certain amount of time.

If you weren’t in the major you’re in now, what major would you be in?

I would say that I wish I was a Computer Science (CS) major. I have no idea how software works but I feel that if I were able to think like a CS major, I would be a much better problem solver and I would get less frustrated by understanding

technology. I feel that, as someone who doesn’t fully understand technology, when I want it to do something - whether it’s a machine making an object or me telling a software or program what to do it doesn’t always do what I want. That can lead to frustration and confusion. If you had more of a holistic view and a better understanding of how whatever you wanted to do worked, you would be better at solving that problem, and you’d run into less forks in the road. m

RR EE TT H H II N N KK II N NG G D D EE SS II G GN N

m 75 April 7th, 2015

RE-THINKING DESIGN Cornell’s First Cross-Disciplinary Design Panel

“Its not about the world of design. It’s about the design of the world” - Bruce Mau

ON THURSDAY, APRIL 7TH, 2015 OVER 150 STUDENTS ACROSS ALL SEVEN COLLEGES engaged in dialogue through design with six leading design professionals. These professionals represented a variety of fields including user experience, design-thinking, branding and architecture from firms such as Buzzfeed, Huge, FXFOWLE, 450 Architects, ADP Innovation Lab. The goal of the panel was to discover how design is a problem-solving approach that can be applied to any discipline and any medium.

RICHARD SWAIN Brand Experience Director Huge, Inc.

TRACY BRANDENBURG Design-Thinking Lecturer Cornell University

DAVID BUSHNELL, AIA, B.ARCH ‘84 Owner and Principal 450 Architects Inc.

“DON’T BE AFRAID TO SAY IT’S NOT READY YET”

“START WITH STUPID”

“GO WITH YOUR INTUITION AND EXPERIENCE WHATS MY GUT?”

CAP WATKINS VP Design Buzzfeed

JESSICA HAN UX Designer ADP Innovation Lab

BRIAN FANNING, AIA, LED, B.ARCH ‘01 Principal FXFOWLE Architects

“STEP ONE IN EVERY DESIGN FLOW, CREATE THE UNIVERSE”

“IT’S ALL ABOUT THE QUESTIONS: WHO, WHAT, WHERE, HOW, WHY?”

“DO NOT GET CAUGHT UP IN THE EASY OR OBVIOUS ANSWER”

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Photos by Tina He and Bill Staffeld

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