Parsons
21st Century Mussels
So when the Spanish vessels arrived in America, they brought conquer, civilization, new ideas, cruelty, power, progress… and, new species. Mussels (and other little and microscopic ways of life) that were not originally from America, arrived sticked on the hulls of the ships. The fact that this living beings were attached to this crafts and travelled thousands of miles was an unperceived fact until some biologists and experts started studying the origins and development of some species. But isn´t it amazing how this little creatures got so strongly attached to the structure that not even years of travel and miles of distance made them let go?, Isn´t it amazing how strong their capacity of attachment and will is?
Designs for the Aging
don’t forget the monkey.
Object, Body, Behavior
A big fat Gulab Jamun
As you can see, India’s like a big fat gulab jamun. It’s fried, it’s sugary, its loaded with calories, and the after effects of eating one are more complex than you might imagine. Infographics and systems diagramming allow us to take a fresh look at these statistics and cultural values so that we may draw new connections we didn’t think existed before.
You, Me, and Everything We Know
“If you understand something in only one way, then you don’t really understand it at all. The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we’ve connected it to all other things we know.” – AI researcher Marvin Minsky
Mediatropolis
Diving into Transdisciplinary Design
A couple of weeks ago, we were given the task to map out a complex system of our own choice. A small side effect of Donella Meadow’s ”Thinking in Systems” is that you start to think of everything around you as a system. Excited by this thought I set out to map the system of love between two people. When I was finished, I looked at the result thinking that it looked too simple and too clean. And a similar feeling came over me when I saw the systems that my classmates had made. Certainly, these system diagrams where only models but I still could not help but feeling that they were deceiving everyone that looked at them.
Trap of the nighthawks.
In an attempt to explain Beirut city trends from a system thinking perspective, I bow to the nighthawks of the city and to Gregory Buchakjian (my inspiration for the title).