BRIDGE 5

Where are we going?

Studio Deliverables

Major projects produced during the semester,
Briefly reflect on the skills you have learned from them.
Successes & Failures
Ted Talks & Reflection
Research Methods & Documentary
Ideas Timeline

The easy aspect to explain how Studio 2 felt like was through one of the first assignments we had to do: the walking tour. It quickly showed me the repercussions of an indulgent society and its effect on the city by walking around the city. I started building my ideas by taking action, I had to move to make my project work, Studio 2 made me wonder many days if I was losing my time, it forces you to face your potential.

Instead of looking at charts or percentages, it’s more shocking when all of your senses are affected by it. By walking through it, you can smell it, see it, and hear it making it easy to feel overwhelmed by it. By doing a walking tour, we can notice not only the physical effects but also identify how indulgence, in general, affects the city’s population and its lifestyle. We can see indulgence in people’s extravagant clothing, high-end clothing brands, and the contrast between homelessness and expensive, rich housings.
In a way its more difficult to see indulgence if we walk bypass it every day, or if we are born on a generation that doesn’t know anything else than it. Big food, brands, or clothing posters not only shows big commercialization but shows how dependent we are to it. If we can afford it we will buy it. Yet, this is more of a psychological part of indulgence, shopping addiction, technological addiction, even fast food addiction, it all falls into the excess of indulgence. Excess of waste is what we see, yet this topic is not only how the city gets affected but also how our mindset has changed as a generation to a more consumeristic and selfish place.

Interview different people from different economic backgrounds and also different states of mind, even under other influences, it gives the movie multiple different perspectives.
They followed the route of where the selling book movement started.
Filmed documentary on a historical moment, gives a completely different outlook to the main characters.
This film, instead of being more of art is more of a work of social science. It played its own methodological assumptions where you can be in a position to judge for yourself whether or not to believe what you see on the streets.
A documentary made by an Ethnographer, taking on a role as a part of that community

It’s astounding the things that can be accomplished when people take risks and invest in community development. Its also worth noticing how we sometimes take for granted the link between things and people, a connection that only humans have. 

This Ted talk makes one realize how everyone has the responsibility to prevent disuse and the decay of the city, The artists showcased in the video outlines the importance of collaboration and the necessary skill which a designer has to have in order to re-energize the community and build connections for people voices to be heard and ideas to move forward. 

Design is a complicated process as its larger contexts surrounding their work is affecting them.
Through questioning your own research you are able to determine the key aspects of what your design process taught you.
Ethics on design helps both parties to remain on good terms by a clear description of how the information collected is going to be used and valued.

The passion and innovation William McDonough put on his work and planned projects are very inspiring. Not only he proposes sustainable buildings but he is already working on them, buildings that just because of him, they come with imagery of a powered tree rather than “just one more green construction”. In other words, his buildings, ideas, and goals are all working together, one unified philosophy: changing the design of the world.

Bridge 3 helped me understand and how challenging is to design a plaza, near the train station, and still make it available for everyone, safe, and familiar. It helped me realize how the culture of the residents at Jackson Heights is not celebrated or acknowledge, even though traditions, folklore, and cultural events are very popular amongst their countries. As a possible solution, I want to emphasize the diversity of language Jackson Heights carries amongst their people and emphasize it on a space, where they can share, talk, eat, and remember their identity, something that is lost with the transit noise and their fast-paced life.

Bridge 4 helped me gather all the information I researched and collected from Jackson Heights and redirect it on a way where design can improve and develop a certain element of my borough assigned;  Jackson Heights. To think the overall process of my design I choose one of the biggest potential and challenge of the neighborhood, the lack of public trust and commercialized public spaces, on the other hand, the already strong but segregated communities are strong, stable, and influential. When I put together, all of my findings in order to design the perfect public space I realized how complex it would be to plan a plaza or park that could be duplicated on different parts of the borough, therefor I design a concept and a bench, a concrete bench that carries within the culture that is being lost, the culture that made New York today. A bench that can be put on any area with large communities, an activity, a place, and a design that can develop and push the youth to showcase culturally rich. A public space that feels more private and safe, a station where communities can speak for themselves.

My future plan based on this project is to create a community-run, organic structure made out of concrete that can uphold small plantations, occupying the smallest space possible.
It has different levels and would be located on plazas and parks, it is designed for crowded areas such as NY, it is a structure that can uphold many plants, solar panels would be located on the outside areas.