THE ARCHIVE

The final saga in the five-year architecture program at Cornell is an independent design thesis. For the majority of our undergraduate lives, this looms far in the future and is conceived vaguely as a ritual act performed by the most mature members of the architecture cult. Then, the moment arrives when you too must prepare for this rite of passage and become one of the deranged and sleep-deprived creatures known collectively by the younger generation in Rand as “those thesis students.”

In the spirit of Cornell, we tend to place a lot of pressure on ourselves when considering the thesis – hoping that it will be a shinning culmination of our extended tenure in Ithaca, but worrying that it might fall short. At his birthday party a few weeks ago, I told Richard Meier that we’ve been staying up at night with thesis nightmares and he responded humorously “who doesn’t have those?” Apparently, he continues to suffer from the same anxiety fifty years after his own undergraduate thesis at Cornell.

Today, we put aside anxiety and took our first official step in the thesis process by submitting posters for public display in Sibley Hall. Using a combination of text and visual material, these announce our intentions to professors in Ithaca and help us solicit advisors for the upcoming spring semester. The deadline caused a fury of activity throughout the week and a number of late nights, but forced us to solidify our ideas into a single, compelling proposal.

I have chosen to pursue an interest in destruction and intend to claim this process within the realm of design. Although slightly morose, I think the theme raises a number of interesting questions regarding the life-cycle of buildings that production-driven architects tend to neglect.

My site is on the southeast periphery of Rome along the New Appian Way and I am proposing to redesign an auto-demolition facility that caught on fire there last summer. If you’re curious, here is the first paragraph of my thesis statement:

In the summer heat of 2009, hundreds of discarded cars along the new Appian Way caught on fire, sending plumes of smoke into the skies above Rome. The pyre of automotive waste frightened residents throughout the capital city and called attention to a striking discontinuity in the historic and increasingly populated landscape of Rome’s periphery. The flames marked the site of an existing auto-demolition facility, where the traces of consumer culture have been awkwardly lodged between the expansive park of the ancient Appian Way and a developing residential district. Within this context of permanence and growth, how can architecture accommodate volatility and destruction? How might the internal metabolism of waste positively contribute to the life and economy of the Eternal City? READ MORE >>

With poster and proposal complete, the real work is about to begin. Before next semester, I hope to assemble a thesis committee that draws expertise from a variety of different disciplines. So far, I have enlisted a Roman architectural historian who has provided me with some fascinating information about the funerary monuments that once lined the ancient Appian Way. Now I am looking for people with expertise in material properties,  the (de) manufacturing process, and the automobile. Let me know if you have any ideas!

I learned very early on that donations to homeless people do them little good. Throughout the United States, and especially in wealthy cities like New York, the handouts given by kind individuals to ease the suffering of the less fortunate do precisely the opposite. They offer an incentive for homeless to remain on the streets rather than seeking help at a shelter, and they perpetuate harmful addictions. It has been said many times that the money flowing into the cup often flows out as liquor.

I do not give money to the homeless. That has been my steadfast rule since arriving to the city two months ago. And so, as I pass through the streets and subways of New York each day, I look into the forlorn eyes of each washed-up soul with nothing to offer them. I consistently reject the warm feeling of charity that a handout would buy me and remain strictly rational – knowing that my spare change can do more good in other hands.

While riding the subway late the other night, a woman walked onto my car and delivered yet another plea for help. But this time it was different. She dropped to her knees and spoke in a manner that resonated deep within me; it was impossible to ignore her. “I am starving” she said in a deep voice that shook her frame and mine. She choked on the words as she repeated them: “I am starving. Please. Please help me.”

I didn’t want to give her money, but another idea crossed my mind. Earlier that evening, we had an event at the Cornell studio and – like any normal college student — I had harvested as many left-overs as possible to eat during the coming week. As the homeless women waited for donations on her knees, I rooted through my backpack and found a large bag of vegetables. I offered this to her and she accepted them appreciatively.

The train stopped and we both stepped off onto an empty platform. I walked ahead with the pleasant feeling that I had helped someone in need. But the woman fascinated me and I glanced back at her from the top of the stairs. She paced back and forth on the platform and the bag of food I had given her was nowhere to be seen. Then, upon further inspection, I saw it discarded at the side of the tracks.

Furious and confused, I marched back down the stairs and approached the woman on the platform where she stood alone. “Excuse me ma’am” I said in a quivering but relatively forceful tone, “you told me that you were starving and I offered you my food. Why did you throw it away?”

“I don’t eat that stuff” she replied.

“What do you mean you don’t eat that stuff? What do you eat?

“Burgers, and chips, and things” she said as if I should have known.

I stood in shock. I always believed “starving” to be a severe condition that inspired the desire to eat food – any type of food. This is certainly the case in other countries around the world, but not so in the United States where notions of starvation have been utterly distorted, and the poor struggle with other problems.

I couldn’t insist that she take my food or eat anything besides ground beef, but she had claimed to be starving and I wanted to know more about the situation. With hardly any pressure, she began to explain her life story in great detail to me. She had been “spoiled” by a mother and grandmother who never made her work. After their deaths, she couldn’t provide for herself and landed on the streets. She moved in and out of shelters but got into fights with other residents there. She tried handing out papers for the NY Post but couldn’t pull herself together every morning to do the job. Now she rides the subways back and forth, trying to earn enough cash to pay a friend for a place to sleep and wash up.

After this narrative, I looked at her and told her that she was the best-spoken homeless person I had ever met (better spoken than some Cornell students for that matter). Why remain on the streets in such a miserable cycle of desperation? I didn’t want to patronize her or project my own values onto someone I barely knew, so I asked the simplest question that came to mind. “Do you want to be here in two years?”

“No,” obviously. But she couldn’t imagine an alternative; she seemed bound by immediate needs and immediate desires. “I’m gonna ride the train tonight until I make $15” she told me, “then I’m gonna put my head down for a bit, wake up, eat an egg sandwich, and do it all over again.”

Eat an egg sandwich? I asked myself (this time exercising enough restraint to maintain an inner dialogue). Egg sandwiches are expensive. I don’t eat egg sandwiches. Who eats egg sandwiches?

The idea of food frustrated me as I looked at the bag of discarded vegetables in the distance. “Look” I finally said, “you’ve got a tough life and I respect your struggle, but you’ve got to take what you can get. That’s what people do to get by on this earth. If you get a few bucks – or even a bit of food – you’ve got to make the most of it.” She shook her head in agreement but her glazed eyes gave herself away. She didn’t know how to make the most of anything. She was good at making money on subway cars, so she did that. She liked the taste of fast food, so she did that too.

The #4 train arrived and she stepped aboard. I climbed out of the station with more emotions than I can describe, but one distinct realization: it’s hard to help people who don’t know how to help themselves; and it’s probably naive of us to think that we can.

Living in New York City gives you the impression of being at the center of the universe and, although Copernicus may have proven otherwise, many New Yorkers believe the world revolves around them. Culturally speaking, this conclusion is surprisingly difficult to refute. Here, the rich and famous walk unannounced through the streets among corporate headquarters, trend-setting boutiques, and elite institutions. It is a strange and wonderful place. The local baseball team just won its 27^th World Series title for God’s sake!

The city may be narcissistic, but I will discuss that in a different post.  Right now I want to address something that bothers me every morning as I take the subway to class.  New Yorkers – consciously or not – have constructed an identity for themselves that departs significantly from reality; they completely deny the existence of New Jersey.

I could provide several oral accounts of this phenomenon, but I think the MTA Subway maps show NYC’s state-of-denial in its most basic form. Through a subtle distortion of geography, the transportation authority is convincing people that (a) the Hudson is much wider than it actually is, and that (b) Staten Island floats somewhere quietly in the Atlantic Ocean. Don’t be fooled by these claims; look at the maps yourself.

It turns out that the Hudson is, at points, only slightly wider than the East River. So, if it weren’t for a lopsided distribution of transit routes, Jersey would be as much a part of New York City as Brooklyn. And while Staten Island can call itself one of the five boroughs, its only delineation from New Jersey’s land mass is a narrow body of brackish water.

Many New Yorkers dislike New Jersey and poke fun at it incessantly. They deride it as the “Garbage State” and call attention to its landfills, turnpikes, and communities that identify themselves according to exit number. The busy highways and industrial vistas that lead to and from Manhattan reinforce this negative stereotype — giving people an exaggerated impression of the messy sprawl that sometimes characterizes the Garden State

This, however, does not justify the calculated elimination of New Jersey from people’s cognitive map. The geographical trickery needs to stop and New Yorkers need to admit the existence — and proximity — of their closest neighbor. Next time you ride the subway in New York, take a look at the map and ask yourself…

Saturday morning, those of us studying history with Mary Woods wrestled ourselves out of bed and headed downtown to the Staten Island Ferry. On the other side — after a free ride past Governors Island and the Statue of Liberty — we climbed aboard a Park Service bus and headed toward Freshkills Park.

The weekend excursion followed in the footsteps of Gordon Matta-Clark, who gained fame in the 1970’s for artistic mischief in the outer boroughs. Like all of us, Matta-Clark studied architecture at Cornell, but he rejected the discipline and launched himself into the New York art scene with works that he dubbed “anarchitecture”. These exposed the volatility of the city (and its structures) through building cuts, social and culinary experiments, and other acts of creative recklessness.

With irony and respect, our history of architecture class now honors Gordon Matta-Clark with the unofficial course title, “What Would Gordon Do?” Besides obviously referencing Jesus Christ, this title captures the essence of our course. Throughout the semester, we look at a series of neighborhoods in New York through the historical and theoretical lens of Matta-Clark. His life and work pervade the city and provide a launching point for discussion and debate. What would Gordon do if he were presented with the largely gentrified city that exists today? Do the changes over the past thirty years represent progress? Where do opportunities for intervention still exist?

The weekend field trip to Staten Island provoked all of these questions.  The bus took us to Fresh Kills landfill to explore a site that gained fame as the world’s largest trash heap. In 1972, Gordon Matta-Clark visited this same site under much different circumstances and produced a video documenting the mountains of residential waste, the machinery that moved them, and the seagulls that feasted on the decay. (click the image to play film)

In 2001 the landfill officially closed and became New York City’s second largest park – three times the size of Central Park. The landscape firm Field Operations developed a site strategy and the land will be incrementally re-purposed over the next 30-years. Although the park remains closed to the public, there are many opportunities to visit with members of the park service, who lead weekly informational and bird-watching tours. More information is available on the park service’s website.

The site today is strikingly clean with four man-made hills covered in long grass.  One might not think twice about the rolling landscape if it weren’t for the occasional metal well-heads that vent gas from the decomposing rubble underneath. These, however, cause little disruption to the sprawling views and reflect the cool austerity of much larger infrastructural fragments below. Gordon Matta-Clark may not have envisioned a park here, but the idea now seems well within reach.

Images of a landfill: past, present, future.

Rarely do I rub elbows with world-famous architects, but this Friday night I found myself chatting alongside Richard Meier at Cornell’s studio in Chelsea. As strange as it may seem, the encounter didn’t involve a lecture or design review. It involved cake.

The evening festivities were organized to celebrate Richard Meier’s 75^th birthday. Dean Kleinman hatched the idea a few weeks ago as a friendly gesture to Meier (who serves on the Dean’s council) and as a fun occasion for students in the NYC program to meet one of Cornell’s more prolific architecture alums. In preparation, students designed an interactive birthday card (above) in Meier’s own style and decorated (ahem, cleaned) the studio space to avoid offending the well-known king of clean.

After a brutal week of mid-term reviews and presentations, we welcomed the opportunity to unwind with a bit of free food and drink. And although none of us had much experience throwing birthday parties for celebrities, everything went quite smoothly. Feelings of trepidation were overcome and Richard (with whom I now consider to be on a first name basis) proved to be friendly, gracious, and surprisingly easy-going.

Upon his arrival, he congratulated us on attending the #1 architecture school in the world and suggested with a smile that we might even be the best architecture students. We laughed – awkwardly — to avoid any misplaced vanity that his comment might have provoked. After the ice-breaker and a few words from the organizers, the evening proceeded informally with ample quantities of food, song, and conversation.

After conducting a proper survey of the buffet table, I landed myself in front of Richard Meier and tossed him my first piece of conversational bait. He eagerly spoke about the Ara Pacis museum in Rome and the adjacent (and neglected) Mausoleum of Augustus. This led to a conversation about Cornell’s Rome program and the comparative merits of that versus “AAP in NYC”.

Along with newly appointed chair of architecture Dagmar Richter, we engaged in an interesting discussion about the future of architecture courses and coops in New York City. Meier offered plenty of advice and we brainstormed various ways that the program might be improved or expanded in the coming years.

As the evening wore on, Richard Meier and the other mature folk parted ways, leaving us with left-overs to eat, a sound system to pump, and projectors on which to play an assortment of youtube videos. It goes without saying that an impromptu dance party commenced. My only regret? That Richard Meier never showed us his moves.

This Tuesday I experienced the first MRI scan of my life at the Citigroup Biomedical Imaging Center. The entire procedure and follow-up survey took less than two hours and I earned $70 in cold hard cash. This proves that selling one’s body to science is a much more lucrative pastime than blogging for Cornell, but for the time being I will continue to do both.

The MRI came on the heels of another research session where I answered questions and played a series of simple video games. This time I played video games in the machine with little buttons and sensors attached to my hands. The experience had the surreal and futuristic qualities that I generally associate with Star Wars. They laid me down on a plank, wrapped me up in blankets, and stabilized my head inside a plastic cage. As I lay in the enormous cyclone of machinery, they watched my vital signs and spoke to me reassuringly through a raspy headset. The scan progressed and James Earl Jones spoke to me about the wonders of Madagascar.

In the adjacent room, two researchers and a technician analyzed digital renderings of my head as I reacted to various types of stimulation. They promised to send me a video of my brain in the next few days, but in the meantime I have included this picture (of someone else) for effect. It looks pretty cool, right?

This past weekend, I succeeded in checking three major activities off my New York City To-Do list. To be completely honest, I only did one thing that had been on my list. I did the other two things sporadically and subsequently added them to my list and crossed them off. Sometimes I question the purpose of lists. Anyway, it was a great Fall Break and I thought I’d give you the run-down:

>> Modern Art at the Whitney Museum

The Whitney Museum is located just up the street from my dorm room on the southeast corner of 75^th and Madison. I’ve noticed the granite façade of the Marcel Breuer building a couple times before but never managed to step inside and pay the $12 dollar student fee. On Friday, however, I mustered the energy to check it out—just in time to catch the end of the Dan Graham exhibition “Beyond.” The temporary shows, permanent collection, and building itself were substantially cooler than I had expected, and—whereas most museums systematically put me to sleep—I left the Whitney feeling good about life and art and Modernism and expensive New York museums.

I especially enjoyed seeing/experiencing Dan Graham’s reflective glass structures in the temporary show “Beyond”. That has unfortunately already come to an end, but there are two other exhibitions worth checking out that will be up through the end of the year: Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction and A few Frames: Photography and the Contact Sheet. The works in the later exhibition explore issues of time and space through multiplicity and sequencing—very cool for the architecturally or cinematically minded visitor.

>> Still Life at the MCC Theater

On Saturday night, a few friends and I went downtown to see the Off-Broadway play “Still Life” currently showing at the MCC Theater. The lights dimmed before I could read the Playbill, leaving me unprepared for the tragic plot that would quickly unfold on stage.  Still Life recounts the uneventful but emotionally charged story of Generation X, the generation that was promised the world but couldn’t decide what to do with it. The play addresses fear and death and insecurities — typical fodder for playwrights but well crafted and relevant.

To keep this story short, the play got under my skin. I bought into the actors and fell for them harder than I have for anyone on the silver screen; there emotion was as tangible as that of a friend or family member. It was good theater. If you’re exhausted by the song and dance of Broadway but still interested in quality acting, I recommend checking this play out before it ends on November 1^st.

>> The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

On Tuesday, I met my friend in line to see a taping of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Feeling lucky to have pinned down two free tickets for the show, we waited eagerly alongside families that had booked their tickets six months in advance.

After a long wait and some coaching from interns and security personnel, we entered the studios and took our seats in front of the radiating blue and orange stage set that has become synonymous with quality news casting. A comedian came out to greet us, explain the routine, and crack a few of his own jokes. Jon Stewart arrived shortly thereafter and fielded a few questions from the crowd. His comedic chops were equally impressive on and off script.

Within minutes of Jon Stewart’s arrival, overhead screens lit up, crewmembers swarmed, lights flared, and cameras started flying. The show progressed at the same pace that it does on television with only brief pauses for commercial breaks and a special correspondent segment with John Oliver. After 30 minutes, everyone promptly dispersed and we shuffled back out into the daylight. A highly anticipated, extremely amusing, and surprisingly abrupt afternoon spent in New York.

Lately my eyes have been peeled for flyers offering free food or drinks to medical students—but rather than discovering another surgical keg party, I came upon an invitation to participate in a medical study conducted by researchers at Cornell University. Instead of free booze, the flyers in our elevator offered volunteers cold, hard cash. If the study caused any emotional or physical harm, I figured I could use the money to buy booze.  Otherwise, I would treat myself to some good food on the town.  It was a win-win situation.

I emailed the coordinator yesterday and answered a few questions over the phone about my relatively uneventful health history.  I qualified for two separate studies and scheduled the appointments for earlier today.  The studies were expected to take about three hours and I would be paid a total of $75.

I have never been paid so well for a small sample of saliva and a cup of urine—in fact I have never been paid at all for those things.  Aside from these samples (for genetic and drug testing), I completed a series of cognitive tests, computer games, and questionnaires. The computer games were the hardest for me, seeing as my gaming skills never developed much beyond Tetris. They required the player to recognize an expression, shape, or color and press the associated key on the keyboard. I would have done alright if not for a strange digital dyslexia that has not affected my hands since piano lessons as a child. Luckily, no one but the researchers will ever see my results.

In a couple weeks, I plan to return for a follow up session with one of the psychiatric researchers.  It involves an MRI test and a curious social experiment to see if I can make friends with other participants by writing “notes” to them. This time, they are offering cash AND a free picture of my brain. I can’t wait.

A few weeks ago, I traveled downtown to see and explore the empty site of the World Trade Centers—now commonly referred to as Ground Zero. I heard that they had built a viewing platform near the site but discovered a situation of disorder and ambiguity.  The pit (a description that remains accurate eight years after-the-fact) is entirely wrapped in chain link fence and canvas, blocking all but slivers of activity from sight. Signs led me around the construction to the Battery Park City sky-walk where views were tangential at best.

In the end, the thing that affected me most during my brief visit to Ground Zero was not the site itself.  Rather, I was moved by the actions of a silent Asian woman selling an ensemble of books and brochures with charged images of the twin towers before their collapse.  Bold letters across each cover spelled out a single, marketable word: T R A G E D Y.

After this first scattered and unnerving encounter with ground zero, I jumped at the opportunity to visit the site—and hear about its future—from two Cornell architecture alumni in a more organized format.  A trip was arranged by Stephanie Goto for all interested students at the AAP in NYC program. We gathered at the newly constructed WTC 7 where we met Osamu Sassa, an architect who works with the Japanese firm of Fumihiko Maki.

Mr. Sassa brought us up to the tenth floor of Tower 7 where the World Trade Center design teams have been pooled together. From the higher vantage point, we were able to see and delineate the newly formed footprints of towers, museum, and memorial. In the Image above (click to enlarge), it is possible to see the new “spine” crossing what was once a mega-block.  This is the nascent Greenwich Street which will eventually be flanked on the left by towers and on the right by the park and memorial fountains. The far right of the image shows the initial steel members of the Freedom Tower, which is expected to rise over the next four years to the symbolic height of 1,776 ft.

Turning away from this panorama, we focused in on Maki’s design of Tower 4. Mr. Sassa explained its sculptural qualities, its engagement with the ground plane, and its subtle reflection of the adjacent memorial. The building is undeniably simple—but in the thoughtful and precise manner characteristic of Japanese design.  This simplicity may prove to be Tower 4’s saving grace as construction begins under financial pressure; the more complex buildings of Richard Rogers and Norman Foster appear to be on hold.

Many of the architects, engineers, and consultants who had been working collaboratively on the tenth floor of Tower 7 have retreated back to their own turf to weather the economic storm. While construction teams work furiously to build massive foundations, no one is completely sure what will appear above.  If lending remains tight, towers face a literal (and figurative) chopping block.

More information regarding the World Trade Center site can be found online at wtc.com

Living here at Cornell’s medical campus offers an interesting perspective into the lives of med students. Our kitchen functions as the main social hub in the dorm and bears witness to a host of communal and culinary activities. Study sessions one night are followed by celebrations the next — the intensity of both activities being directly proportional to the difficulty of the intervening exam.

I glanced at notes on the table and remembered how much I dislike molecular science. Chemical structures never seemed quite as interesting to me as inhabitable ones. Studying architecture, however, doesn’t prevent me from flirting with the idea of becoming a doctor.  I live in a med-school dormitory and have a bona fide identification card — I just need to start attending classes and I will be on the fast track to success.

With this in mind, I have been keeping my eye out for information regarding my future, hypothetical career.  Medical flyers litter the bulletin boards on each floor. One poster encouraged students to attend a lecture concerning H1N1, another invited us to a special conference about healthcare. But one flyer, in particular, caught my attention:

“Interested in surgery? Love beer? You just hit the jackpot!” At the bottom of the page, after some further details, they offer a convincing — if not simplistic – reason to attend the event:  “Surgery is awesome (and there will be a keg. Seriously.)”

I’ve always been intrigued by surgery and I do like beer.  Joining the the Stimson Surgical Society suddenly seemed like a good idea.  Then I remembered my best friend talking about anatomy class and the gruesome dissection videos that he sent me. Cutting up bodies for a living is a gory business. Maybe that’s where the beer comes into play — it calms the nerves.

But consider the implications of this poster.  Do all beer-lovers become surgeons?  If so, it’s likely that other medical specialties have their own drink-of-choice.  Wine for cardiologists, jungle juice for pediatricians, gin and tonic for dermatologists, daiquiris for family practitioners — the list could go on and on.  An entire healthcare system consuming and consumed by alcohol.