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WHY
The WHY pertains to the main issues you are tackling and resolving, the
problems you are confronting and transgressing, the agendas you are
questioning and proposing a solution to. Why is 'this' urgent today?
Problem (existing)
Opportunity (what if? scenario)
WHO
The WHO pertains to the main actors involved in the issue. Who is
responsible, who is affected and who can collaborate to transcend the
problem and share responsibilities and benefits? The who involves both
top-down institutions and bottom-up practices.
Problem (existing)
Opportunity (what if? scenario)
WHERE
The WHERE pertains to the urban context where the issue you are
engaging has the greatest impact. What are the spatial characteristics of
the problem, and in what ways is the urban conflict physicalized here?
Problem (existing)
Opportunity (what if? scenario)
WHEN
The WHEN pertains to the temporal framework of the problems and
opportunities. Scenarios that narrativize the impacts of problems and
opportunities across time (past, present and future)
Problem (existing)
Opportunity (what if? scenario)
WHAT
The WHAT pertains to the outputs, products, objects, effects, physical
impacts that the problem and the opportunities produce. What is being
made, produced?
Problem (existing)
Opportunity (what if? scenario)
HOW
The HOW pertains to your proposal. The design of a process through
which the 5-W's can be re-organized to produce a different paradigm,
and transcend the problem you have chosen. In other words, the
stitching together of the opportunities you have explored above into a
proposal for action
VIS-100-W21
MIDTERM PROMPT
Researching Best Models of Public Imagination
Based on the list of projects that was made available to you in the syllabus, now
you have to develop an investigative research about the project that you
selected. You will research the main civic, economic and political processes that
made this best model of public works possible.
Why is this project important? What problems it tackled? Who made it happen?
Who benefitted? What are the main policies, opportunities it produced to enact
social change ? What does the project achieve? Who were the artists, policy
makers, cultural producers, communities that led them? And most importantly
what were the main strategies, tactics and ideas? What can we learn from them
to tackle our own cultural and political crisis of the public today?
Often, when studying the legacy of interesting artistic, architectural, urban
projects we only focus on the end results, the final images or projects, this class,
instead, is about exposing the actual processes, tools and procedures embedded
in the stories, so we are required to ask many questions! to include many issues!
To help you study the process itself, each student will receive a set of tables, that
I call the 5W's. These are spreadsheets to account for a variety of issues,
conditions, topics, that often remain off our radar.
Each of you will be given 5 tables (spread-sheets) to fill in, with a list of short
statements, quotes, bullet points, etc. Each table pertains to a particular area of
research. The fragments of text should summarize the issues you are
investigating in creative and synthetic ways. In addition to these summarized
fragments of texts, you will respond to 5 questions that can narrativize these
fragments into a story about the project.
5W's TABLES
As a research tool, the 5-W's address 5 different questions: Why? Who? Where?
When? What? Below there is more information about what you should consider,
as you develop your research through each of these questions. For each of these
W's there are two columns: Problems and Opportunities. Insert information on
both of them. Obviously, problems refer to the main conflicts, crises, issues the
project confronted, and the opportunities to the sense of possibility, the
strategies, ideas, actions that took place to transcend the problem.
WHY
The WHY pertains to the main critical issues that the project tackled, the reasons,
the urgencies, the conflicts; Why this project emerged as a possibility, including
the supporting data and information that is evidence to back up the necessity for
this project to exist. The problems this project is confronting and transgressing,
the agendas it is questioning and proposing. Why is 'this' project, this agenda
urgent today? Why pertains to the main provocations the project or initiative
open.
WHO
The WHO pertains to the main stakeholders involved in the project, in the
process. Who was summoned? Also, Who is responsible for and Who is affected
by the problem? And Who collaborated to tackle the problem? Who shares
responsibilities and benefits? The Who also involves the institutions,
communities and individuals involved; who are the demographics, the cultures,
the social strata etc?
WHERE
The WHERE pertains to the physical or non-physical context where the project
happens, whether an urban site, or a policy, or website, etc. The nature of such
location, the sites of investigation, urban borders, particular communities, places,
geographies or even institutions? What are the spatial or social characteristics of
the site, and in what ways is the urban conflict physicalized there? Or what is it
about this location (the Where) that enables a particular approach to the solution,
etc.
WHEN
The WHEN pertains to the temporal framework of the project. The When
addresses issues of time (past, present and future); The lineages that precede
the project (precedent?); the time it took for the project to be enacted? And how
the strategies that enable this project or policy are or not anticipatory of possible
futures? The When considers the viability and vulnerability of the project across
time, the way time was taken into account in the process.
WHAT
The WHAT pertains to the things themselves that the project produces, the
outputs, the products, objects, effects, physical impacts that the project makes
possible. The What relates the physical typologies, the spatial logics, the policy
conditions, the actions and programs? What is being made, produced?
>We will distribute PDF's / Word-docs with the 8-1/2" x 11" 5-W's tables.
>More information will be shared in class.
ORGANIZING QUESTIONS
After the tables are filled, helping you to gain an integrated and holistic
perspective of the process, you need to use these questions below to stitch a
narrative, connecting many of the fragments of your tables into paragraphs,
telling us how the process worked, How the project unfolded, etc.
You can answer each of this questions with a minimum of 300 words each. Or
feel free to writing a 2,000 word continuous paper, addressing each of these
questions through the narrative. Please be as concise and provocative with your
answers.
1. What are the main crises that prompted the creation of this project? Who
produced the problem, who was most affected by it? Add evidence, etc.
2. What is the main site of intervention? What are the physical and spatial
characteristics of the project, the context? In what ways was the place
transformed? A sort of before and after scenario?
3. Who are the main stakeholders, the institutions, the agencies that need to
collaborate to achieve this? What is the role of artists here, or of politicians, or
community activists? How does this inspire you to activate your own role as
researcher, and enact social change?
4. What are the creative strategies that were conceptualized to tackle these
crises? What were the main steps that were taken to produce the project?
5. In what ways does this project benefit the larger public? In what way does this
project challenge the status quo? Why is this project unique, and instrumental to
reconstructing public thinking?
6. What is the main idea here that can be replicated, in other places? at different
scales? How would you propose to use the lessons of this project to challenge
existing policies, societal, environmental problems, etc.?
Format: 12 pt, double spaced
Midterm Due on Tuesday Feb 9 at 11:59 PM
VIS-100-MIDTERM
Extra information
5W's TABLE + 6 Questions
Based on the list of projects that was made available to you in the syllabus, you have been
developing an investigative research about the project that you selected. You are researching
the main civic, economic and political processes that made this best model of public works
possible.
Often, when studying the legacy of interesting artistic, architectural, urban projects we only
focus on the end results, the final images or projects, this class, instead, is about exposing the
actual processes, tools and procedures embedded in the stories, so we are required to ask
many questions! to include many issues!
Please remember that what we are looking for in these projects is the process itself. What
are the main procedures that made each of these projects possible? You are researching
and collecting concepts, ideas, strategies, initiatives, the entire way of thinking and doing
that resulted in their succesful results. This includes the conflicts and controversies the
projects confronted, and the opportunities they opened up.
So, The 5W's table is a tool that faciliates the collection of such critical issues that are part of
these case study's processes. The table contains 5 categories. We want to make sure you
are comprehensive: Understanding location, issues, people, institutions, temporalities,
products, policies and attitudes involved throughout the process:
Why is this project important? What problems it tackled? Who made it happen? Who
benefitted? What are the main policies, opportunities it produced to enact social change ?
What does the project achieve? Who were the artists, policy makers, cultural producers,
communities that led them? And most importantly what were the main strategies, tactics and
ideas? What can we learn from them to tackle our own cultural and political crisis of the public
today?
The 5W's tables are composed of fragments of text, data, quotes, etc., even images and
diagrams that are important to the process. As you research on-line, you will select the main
ideas and evidences you find, and translate them into small paragraphs, senteces,
information, etc.
You have received these tables, they are posted on the firts module on CANVAS. There is a
template for each of the 5 categories:
WHERE
WHY
WHAT
WHO
WHEN
Even though you have received one page per category, please use as many of these pages
as needed to fill in information.
The 5W's table will be part of the grade, and should be understood as a conceptual and
research tool to capture the essence of the case study process. Then you will use the
content of these tables in order to answer 6 main questions we have given you on the
midterm prompt! 300 words per question.
With the critical information that ou have collected on your 5W's tables, you will compose
your responses to these questions in well structured and provocative ways.
Thanks everyone for following this process. As we discuss ways to intervene into public
space and culture, we also need to design process itself, and be impossibly comprehensive.
Thinking in multi-laterla ways, to manage the complexity across these categories, so that we
can think about them in integrative ways is an essential part of this experiment!
5W's: We are incluidng some provocative language here, for each of these 5W's to inspire
you to 'look' deeper into the questions they suggest.
WHERE is the space, site, zone, geography of investigation and intervention. Narrativize the
conditions, the context. As much as this has to do with physical place, it also has to do with
non-place. WHERE must engage the geography itself, but also, more critically, the power
dynamics inscribed in that geography: the allegorical and metaphorical meanings (and for
whom), the institutional entanglements, the regulatory frameworks, the jurisdictional
designations, the economic interests, the cultural meanings, and networks of control. What
are the visible and invisible conditions that constitute the location - conceptual, material,
infrastructural, environmental, institutional, political, jurisdictional, regulatory, economic,
historical, cultural and social forces that define the territory and the objects it contains?
Summary: The WHERE is really about understanding the place(s) where the case study takes
place, the context. Please reflect on this deeply, what is it about the location? Why was this
important for this project?
WHY pertains to the critical issues, questions, challenges, conflicts, controversies,
provocations, violations, injustices and indignities that arise in the case study, sometimes
visibly, sometimes invisibly. WHY motivates the particular initaitive, the main issues that
mobilized action? WHY do you care? WHY should others care? WHY will you propose
what you propose? And WHY should others support it? WHY refers to the issues of
concern - political, ethical, social, cultural, economic, environmental - embedded in your
case, the fire behind your investigation and the particular case study.
Summary: The WHY is really about listing the main critical issues that prompted the process.
The unjust policies, the inequalities, the main problematics that were tackled and the
opportunities that were opened up.
WHAT refers to the impacts of the WHY, on real people, on communities, on the
environment, on the public. If the WHY is racial injustice, for example, the WHAT refers to
the impacts of this: perhaps higher rates of disease and mortality, poorly funded schools,
neighborhood divestment, decay, abandoned buildings, homelessness, gentrification,
perhaps despair, loss of hope. The WHAT is your evidence of the WHY. The WHAT is the
causal output or detritus of the WHY that animates your interest in the case study, and the
possible propositions that were proposed to transcend the problems. The WHAT can be
about visible material things, objects, but also about invisible ephemeral, emotional, or
aspirational things.
Summary: The WHAT is really about listing the main impacts of the problem your case study
tackled. This includes the physical and emotional impacts? The things and the attititudes that
were shaped by the problem, but also the products, outputs that were produced to address
the problem.
WHO pertains to the people and groups invested in the site, who are impacted by its
evolution over time, who have capacities to alter the conditions, and who are the potential
audiences as part of the case study and proposal. WHO is harmed and WHO benefits from
the status quo, and from a change in the status quo? WHO must be negotiated with,
exchanged with, persuaded, infiltrated? WHO are the institutions you must 'deal' with, learn
from, utilize, disrupt, encroach into? WHO must be engaged in any potential proposition?
There may be people / institutions / stakeholders that don't yet exist. Sometimes WHO
needs to be imagined, narrativized, designed, created, incubated, choreographed,
manipulated. Remember too that we as architects and urbanists are part of the WHO: How
can we identify, understand, translate, communicate, narrativize, visualize, represent the
impacts, if we are newcomers to the contested site? WHO is best situated to represent the
WHAT? WHO narrates the city?
Summary: The WHO is really about listing the main critical actors who are part of the story,
the process. The top-down (insititutions, etc.) and bottom-up (actors, etc.) who were part of
the process, both in terms of producing the problems and actually tackling them.
WHEN pertains to the temporal dimensions of the condition -- the histories, sequences,
durations, rhythms, processes, that constitute the condition, and must drive any potential
urban / architectural proposition. Characteristics of slow, “laggy”, early, late, rapid, urgent,
regressive, progressive, incremental and gradual, anticipatory, innovative, reactionary,
revolutionary are all examples of temporal descriptors. The temporalization of space is
necessary understand the WHY and ultimately to manifest your vision.
Summary: The WHEN is maybe the most complex of these categories, as it involves issues of
time. In essence think about this in terms of the temporal aspects of the case study. How
long did it take to mobilize the process, why was time a factor; also the lineages, the histories,
pre-case study, during the project, and also after the project.
ORGANIZING QUESTIONS
After the tables are filled, helping you to gain an integrated and holistic perspective of the
process, you need to use these questions below to stitch a narrative, connecting many of the
fragments of your tables into paragraphs, telling us how the process worked, How the project
unfolded, etc.
You can answer each of this questions with a minimum of 300 words each. Or feel free to
write a 2,000 word continuous paper, addressing each of these questions through the
narrative. Please be as concise and provocative with your answers.
1. What are the main crises that prompted the creation of this project? Who produced the
problem, who was most affected by it? Add evidence, etc.
2. What is the main site of intervention? What are the physical and spatial characteristics of
the project, the context? In what ways was the place transformed? A sort of before and after
scenario?
3. Who are the main stakeholders, the institutions, the agencies that need to collaborate to
achieve this? What is the role of artists here, or of politicians, or community activists? How
does this inspire you to activate your own role as researcher, and enact social change?
4. What are the creative strategies that were conceptualized to tackle these crises? What
were the main steps that were taken to produce the project?
5. In what ways does this project benefit the larger public? In what way does this project
challenge the status quo? Why is this project unique, and instrumental to reconstructing public
thinking?
6. What is the main idea here that can be replicated, in other places? at different scales? How
would you propose to use the lessons of this project to challenge existing policies, societal,
environmental problems, etc.?
Format: 12 pt, double spaced
Midterm Due on Tuesday Feb 9 at 11:59 PM