Heavy Metal: Harbinger of Death?

On the twelfth of December 1996, Raymond Kuntz’s wife woke up early to wake her son Richard. She went to his bathroom to turn on the shower for him, and then proceeded to his room. She nudged him to realize that he was not breathing; Richard Kuntz had killed himself. Shortly after discovering Richard’s body, Raymond Kuntz, Richard’s father realized that his son was listening to the heavy metal singer Marilyn Manson’s “The Reflecting God” from the album “Antichrist Superstar”. Richard’s friends told his father that the song was the only thing he was listening to, whenever they were over, and the lyrics of that song read as an unequivocally direct inducement to take one’s own life. There are many of children like Richard Kuntz who have considered suicide after listening and interpreting heavy metal lyrics in such a way. Raymond Kuntz, along with the several other parents in similar situations blame heavy metal music to promote suicide and contradicts community values that people of good will and of any race, ideology, economic or social position share.

Raymond Kuntz and the other families, however, misunderstand heavy metal music. Heavy metal music was admittedly created to express anger and frustration about cultural issues in a non-harmful method. However, the connection that has been made between heavy metal and teenage suicide is really unfounded.

Heavy metal bands use such music as a way of expressing their anger and frustrations about cultural issues through loud music and screaming, which have been well known forms of relieving frustration. These cultural issues include anything from wars to global warming. Such issues clearly indicate that heavy metal music is a form of cultural resistance, which is described by Stephen Duncombe as “culture that is used, consciously or unconsciously, effectively or not, to resist and /or change the dominant social structure ”. For example, the lyrics to the Black Sabbath song “Wicked World” are as follows:

The world today is such a wicked thing

Fighting going on between the human race

People give good wishes to all their friends

While people just across the sea are counting the dead…

Reading these lyrics, we see how the singer has tried to personify the world as wicked, which is a term one would refer to a witch or an evil person. The singer also sings about the wars are going on between brothers and sisters all born on the same planet, and that people on one land are happy and peaceful, whereas the country across the sea are at a constant war. The singer is trying to emphasize great forms of contrast by using words such as “wicked”, which is also noticeable in the last two lines. It is interesting to notice how the song emphasizes extreme contrasts, which is what the teenagers’ emotions are like. When one is a teenager, they are either extremely happy, or extremely sad.

What is also most important to address is the fact that teenage suicide is rarely about one thing. There are several factors that make a teenager want to commit suicide – Depression, domestic violence, divorce of parents, the feeling of worthlessness, rejection by the “cool kids”, substance abuse or death of a loved one. Teenagers are at a certain stage in their life where their hormones are all over the place – they have extreme emotions, or none at all, there are several ups and an equal number of downs. It is these ups and downs in a teenager’s life that give peers the feeling that they are “all over the place”. And in a way, it is also the partial fault of the parents, who must notice whether their teenage child shows signs of depression, and should take care of it as soon as possible. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, approximately nineteen percent of high school children have considered killing themselves. It is this music that gets teenagers to realize that they are not the only ones with unique problems. Just like Stephen Duncombe’s experience with punk rock. He felt alone, until he found others who shared the same problems as he did.

Teenagers are at a certain stage in their life where they go through various ups and downs. Sometimes, when a teenager is at a low point in their life, they would hear a heavy metal song while surfing through the Internet. It is not only the music that captures them, but it is the lyrics that prevents them from going to another website. They hear this song on a radio channel and stop. After hearing this song, they realize that they aren’t the only ones with such thoughts.

The idea that all teenagers who listen to heavy metal music commit suicide is not true. As found out by Deena Weinstein, author of the book “Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture”, she says “For every heavy metal fan who commits suicide, there are hundreds who claim that heavy metal music saved them from killing themselves.” For example, a letter published in the heavy metal magazine Hit Parader describes the use of heavy metal music “to forget my problems!” Heavy metal music was created in order to let out ones problems and frustrations in a non-harmful way – by playing extremely loud music and screaming about how its not worth depressing oneself over such trifle matters. It is not a major percentage of teenagers committing suicide, it is only imagined that way. Quoting Deena Weinstein, “associating particular cases of suicide to heavy metal makes all heavy metal fans seem suicidal.” (Weinstein 254).

In contradiction to the popular belief that heavy metal is based on a lot of negative issues, it is extremely interesting, and perhaps shocking to notice that some metal music songs take up resistance for the purpose of positive change in the world. These songs address issues of global concern and, in fact, address it in such a way that they would make anyone want to listen to them. For example, the song “Global Warming”, by the heavy metal band ‘Gojira’ has a song addressing the idea of a world without the worldwide concern of global warming:

A world is down

And none can rebuild it

Disabled lands are evolving

My eyes are shut, a vision is dying

My head explodes

And I fall in disgrace

I hold my inner child within

And tell him not to cry

"Don’t fear the living"

One day you will stand as a king

And now fear can erase

This light below us

Each one of us is now engaged

This secret we all have

This truth is growing

And as a warrior I have to fight

I can already feel

The love I'll discover…

These lyrics clearly explain that the singer in this band is concerned of global warming. He claims that the world is “down”, personifying the world to be a wounded soldier, and no one can fix it. The singer, as a citizen of the planet Earth, feels ashamed of the way the world is being treated and ‘falls in disgrace’. He then proceeds to personify his conscience as a child, and tells “him” not to be distraught, for one day “he” will stand tall and proud of this world he lives in. The singer goes on by stating that everyone is now involved in taking care of the Earth and in doing so, performs the act of a warrior, and will discover a newfound love for the world he lives in. On understanding these lyrics, it is noticeable that heavy metal composers tend to use a lot of personification in their music, in order to make the public understand the feelings, which is the main intention of heavy metal bands.

It is well known to the world that teenagers go through a great emotional change during adolescence, and most of the time, have no one to talk to. At such a stage in life, talking to one’s parents about such changes is considered “weird” among a teenager’s peers. At such a time, the teenager would turn to music for help. According to The Academy of child and Adolescent Psychiatry, “Music is often a major part of a teenager’s separate world.” Heavy metal music has a wide variety of themes to match the issues that occur during adolescence. For example, the song titled “Welcome to my Life” by Simple Plan clearly gives listeners the idea that there is someone feeling the same way as they are:

Do you ever feel like breaking down?

Do you ever feel out of place?

Like somehow you just don't belong

And no one understands you

Do you ever wanna runaway?

Do you lock yourself in your room?

With the radio on turned up so loud

That no one hears you screaming…

…To be left out in the dark

To be kicked when you're down

To feel like you've been pushed around…

No you don't know what it's like

Welcome to my life…

These lyrics clearly show that the singer is inquiring whether the listener feels like they feel like an outcast, alone, that they do not belong, and feel like they deserve to be alone, with loud music on so that no one hears them screaming their pain away. The singer then goes on by saying that the listener does not know what it is like, to live his life. Finally, the singer ends by saying “Welcome to my Life”, which indicates that the singer ‘welcomes’ listeners to his life. What he really means when he says those words is that people are practically living the same life as the singer. This feeling the singer gives the listeners makes them want to listen to more such music, which is what turns the listener into a fan. If there were someone feeling alone and depressed, they would not kill themselves over this song. On the contrary, it would make the person feel quite the opposite; that there is someone with the same feeling. That small feeling would prevent them from killing themselves.

I myself have had a positive reaction from heavy metal. At times during early adolescence, there were several moments where I was depressed and felt completely alone. After being introduced to heavy metal music, I was given a second chance, and realized that being constantly depressed is not the way out. It was not only the intensity and type of music of the music that captured me, but it was the lyrics that really related to me. Heavy metal music helped me through the low points of my teenage years, and I am certain it could help all other teenagers going through tough times as well.

An Act of Desperation Implies a Dead End?

It is perhaps ironic that even as deregulation and free-market ideology have swept through Latin America, the region's most successful export 
remains the target of the most extreme government intervention: illicit drugs. As Latin American drug 
exports (primarily cocaine but also heroin and marijuana) have rapidly increased, so have government efforts to suppress them. The United States has led the punitive offensive, providing aid and training to those Latin American security forces charged with waging
"war" on the drug supply, but, strangely enough, it is the United States that let their guard down on a “poor” girl, and let Maria go through, in the movie, Maria Full of Grace (2004), written and directed by Joshua Marston, and produced by Paul S. Mezey.

What is interesting, as shown in Tracy Huling’s article entitled “Drug Couriers”, is that there are reports of a significant increase in the number of women arrested and receiving lengthy prison sentences for acting as drug couriers, or mules. It appears that women’s participation in such drug activity may be rising faster than men’s. National sentencing policies that tie sanctions to drug amounts sometimes affect women too, who play small roles in the dug trafficking industry, and have little or no former criminal activities, and they are almost always sole caretakers of children. They claim to have been tricked by people who planted drugs in their belongings; their lives, as well as their families’ lives are at a risk of dying.

In Maria, Full of Grace, Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) has an extremely complicated relationship with the United States of America. On one hand it offers a lot more choices for her to work. But, on the other hand, it is the very structure that is set up to arrest people like Maria. Maria seems to be escaping poverty via the promise of what the United States of America has to offer, but she actually ends up in a similar situation within that country’s structure, as portrayed in the movie, Maria Full of Grace (2004), which was written and directed by Joshua Marston, and produced by Paul S. Mezey.

Maria Álvarez (Moreno) is a 17-year-old Colombian girl who works in sweatshop-like conditions at a flower plantation to help support her family. However, after finding herself pregnant by a boyfriend whom she does not love, forced to bring in the money for her unemployed sister (a single mother) and being unjustly treated by her boss, she quits and decides to find another job, despite her family's vehement disapproval. On her way to Bogotá to find a new job, she is offered a position as a mule — one who smuggles drugs by swallowing drug-filled pellets. Desperate, she accepts the risky offer, swallows 62 wrapped pellets of cocaine and flies to New York City. After a close call at the US Customs (she was about to be X-rayed, until customs found out she was pregnant), she is set free and sent to a hotel where she is to remove the pellets from her body. The traffickers arrive to take the drugs. To retrieve the pellets from Lucy, a fellow mule who died when one of them ruptured inside of her, the traffickers cut open her stomach, then disposed of her body. After seeing this ruthless world firsthand, Maria decides to escape the drug-trafficking cartel.

As we go through the scene where Maria is at home with her family after work, we notice that her dining room and kitchen and living room are all practically in one room. What is even more interesting is that there are some clothes as well in the background, making it seem to be some sort of closet. She gets into a heated argument with her sister, who is a single mother with a sick child, and cannot go work, because of her responsibilities as a mother. Maria is young and rebellious, and wants to know why her sister cannot just work while her mother, who has a lot more experience in handling children. Coming from a family where she is the sole “bread-winner” at the age of seventeen; an age when she should be in high school. In the end, Maria’s mother intervenes and commands Maria to give her monthly salary for the family’s well being, giving viewers the idea that people like Maria have no control over their lives; they do what their families tell them to.

Maria has heard about captured mules on the news and is wary, but according to Franklin, a smart girl like Maria will have no problem. The decisive factor for Maria is the money: up to $5,000 for one trip, an amount that would forever change Maria’s life. Ángel Páez writes in her article, about how “Poverty creates a fertile recruiting ground”. It is, in fact, the assumption people in poverty tend to make about the money that they sign up for such life-threatening deeds. They believe these deeds will get them enough money to live a better life, but they are sadly mistaken.

The money factor is of big importance to people like Maria, who would do anything to get their hands on such a huge sum of money. If mules are sent to the United States, Europe or Asia, where the drugs have higher value, they can be paid anything between 2,000 and 3,000 dollars. The more the courier travels, the more he/she is paid. Sometimes, the amount that can be earned can even go from US $1,000 to $15,000. One then cannot entirely blame them for entering this kind of business, especially when traffickers usually promise huge amounts of money. The sad part is, at times, it is the traffickers themselves who tip the police about a drug mule to make a smoother way for another one in the same area. A shocking story about Evelyn Changra, who attempted to travel to Buenos Aires with one kilogram of cocaine in her stomach, together with her children, aged 15 and 17, who had also swallowed drugs. She had accepted to perform such a horrifying feat because she had never been offered so much money in her life.

This is not an uncommon situation in the drug industry; at the women’s jail on Riker Island in 1991, the women who were arrested at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport for smuggling drugs into the United States, they were several who came clean and presented evidence of hard times such as a small business folding, a husband who left with the money and without the children, or as the “duties” as the sister, daughter or wife of a drug dealer (Huling 15).

Sister Marion Defeis, the Catholic chaplain at Riker’s Island women’s facility, found that there was some sympathy for street dealers who had to take the rap for major traffickers, and for people in poor economic circumstances who voluntarily smuggle drugs in exchange for paltry sums of money. No one connected with law enforcement, however, would acknowledge the possibility that a person could be duped or coerced into carrying drugs across an international border. They wanted to work as a drug courier, for the money.

The Correctional Association study taken in 1992 found out that 96 percent of woman arrested at JFK Airport for drug smuggling, charged with A-I drug felonies and sentenced to life terms in prison under New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws, had no prior criminal record.

Maria seeks out and befriends another mule, Lucy (Guilied Lopez), who tells her everything she needs to know: how to prepare herself physically, how to dress and how to act. She also learns that if even one pellet breaks inside her, she’ll die Lucy has traveled as a mule twice before, and those jobs appear to have given her an economic independence, with an airy, uncluttered home all to herself. However, when Lucy talks about her trips to New York, she sadly confides that she hadn’t the nerve to see her older sister, who lives in Queens. Lucy is shown here teaching Maria (Moreno) the ropes to the life of a drug courier, which in such a profession is absolutely necessary. . According to police sources in Peru, "Those we catch tend to be people who stand out because they are obviously nervous, behave suspiciously, or don’t look as if they could afford a plane ticket. But many do manage to leave the country. It’s impossible to take X-rays of everybody, and it’s also impossible to search all the baggage and every object that could potentially be hiding cocaine."

Maria is alarmed and angry when Blanca (Vega) announces that she, too, is going to be a mule. Blanca, however, will not and cannot backtrack; she’s already taken the money. Although Maria is enraged by Blanca’s decision, it is not uncommon for people in poverty to make such drastic choices. Of the 721 drug smugglers arrested in 2007, 62.4 percent (453) were Peruvian and the rest were foreigners, particularly from Spain (45), the Netherlands (29) and Brazil (18). Over three-quarters of the Peruvian "mules" were poor or unemployed. This tells us how far the drug industry has spread all over the world, addressing the different levels of poverty in South America and Europe. Tracy Huling interviewed several women, the interviews of whom were posted in her article on “Women Drug Couriers”, who had been entered into plea bargains, and were convicted of drug smuggling, and received sentences ranging from three to eight-and-one-third years to life in New York prisons.

According to Ángel Páez’s article entitled “Poverty Provides Growing Number of ‘Drug Mules’” by the number of people willing to take the risk is increasing. In 2007, 452 drug smugglers were arrested, compared to 193 in 2006.

In the final scene, we see that Maria decides to stay in The United States of America instead of leaving with Blanca back to Mexico. She understands that by going back to Mexico, she would get into trouble with the drug traffickers who could kill her. Maria therefore decides to stay in the United States of America and hope to look for a different outlet, where she could earn money to start a new living. She (Maria) is smart enough to realize that being the person that she is, she would not be able to lower her penalty. "Mules" who are willing to cooperate with the justice system can reduce their sentences by up to seven years. But if they refuse to cooperate, they risk being accused of belonging to an international drug trafficking organization, a crime that carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

No matter how positive she may be about starting a new life in USA, she has a very limited range of choices of jobs to choose from. But even if she took a job as a maid, a waitress, or even a cashier at a fast food restaurant, it would not provide enough money to have a better living. She would be living a life slightly better, if not as bad, as back home.

Due to extreme poverty, many are being driven to do things that a person can hardly even imagine. They agree to do certain tasks, despite the countless risks these bring to other people and to themselves, just to be able to earn money. There are several people in this world, like Maria (Moreno), who would give anything to escape poverty, but would never make so drastic a choice so as to put their life in danger. They are the smarter ones, for living a life of poverty is better than living a life of crime.

Poverty: A Humongous Distortion

The photograph on the last page of this essay is the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken in 1994 during the Sudan famine. The picture depicts a poverty-stricken child crawling towards a United Nations Food Camp, located a kilometer away.

The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat it. this picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, not even the photographer Kevin Carter, who left the seen right after taking the photograph.

Three months later, Kevin Carter committed suicide due to depression ¹.

When I think of poverty, I instantly imagine a child from Africa or India, so skinny you could see his ribs, ready and willing to do ANYTHING for even a morsel of raw food, let alone cooked food. I have even seen photographs of children in African countries using plastic bottles as slippers, the ground as their writing board, and sitting with bowls that have been empty for days. Truly, poverty is extremely rampant around the world. However, this is not actually how poverty actually is thought of in today’s world. Diana George noticed that.

In Diana George's essay, titled "Changing the Face of Poverty", we read about how the media influences the public by misrepresenting poverty. This essay shows the different levels of poverty and what kind of problems each level goes through. At first, we see a few images that "represent poverty". I use the quotes because being in torn clothes and starving is just an extreme form of poverty. It's just the media that shows us only the worst cases of poverty, which led to the formation of the "haves" and "have-nots". The "haves" are people living in developed and forward countries that get through a regular day easily, by working, relaxing and even eating proper food. The "have-nots", on the other hand, are people who live in developing countries and live in a spectrum on getting through a day, varying from "just getting through a day", to "surviving on garbage. According to Diana George, we have to actually see the people in bad situations before considering them to be poor. But then a question arises. Who decides who is a have or a have-not? The public cannot certainly decide on that ; we do not have that high a level of authority.

One of the major topics of discussion in this reading is the organization called "Habitat for Humanity". According to Habitat for Humanity's official website, we (the public) would be "helping families break the cycle of poverty and build long-term financial security." ² George accuses this organization for giving itself the power to choose which "have-not" deserves shelter or not; a power that they this organization clearly should not have.

Moving on to the next reading, which was a poem composed by Maggie Anderson, it depicts how Walker Evans, the photographer known for documenting The Great Depression, shows a family that has been living a life of poverty. While reading the poem, one notices how Evans did not want to take pictures of the family, but was more focused on taking pictures of objects that represented poverty, such as "clapboard houses, meshed roofs, and slanted gables" ³. Evans focused on the bad parts in and around the family's house, and not the cheerful and content personality of the family, despite the fact that they were living in a state of poverty.

The next readings, articles written by Anna Deavere Smith and Barbara Ehrenreich focus on two different aspects of poverty. Barbara Ehrenreich's article tells us about how the increase in poverty has lead to an increase of violence and criminalization. Anna Deavere Smith, on the other hand, tells us about how she had interviewed a majority of women in the Maryland Correctional Institute, which was a sort of penitentiary for women who have committed a crime. However, it was sad to read that a majority of them were convicted for a crime they did not commit.

In a way, I feel that the essays and articles of George, Smith and Ehrenreich are sequential. Diana George opens up the topic of how poverty is misrepresented by the media. Poverty leads to violence and criminalization, which is the topic of Barbara Ehrenreich's article. Due to violence and criminalization, a majority of the poverty-stricken population is sent to prisons and correctional institutes, some of them women, which is the basis of Anna Deavere Smith's article.

In order to help the needy, we must stop segregating people into haves and have-nots. Another unconventional method of helping was to literally experience what these people have to go through to make it through a day, which would help us understand that these people really need a lot more help than we actually believe. A third option to help reduce poverty would be talking to the people, and understanding a personal view of how they got into such a situation, and what provisions and requirements they would need to just live a daily life.

One method of helping the poor would be to literally experience what these people have to go through to make it through a day, which would help us understand that these people really need a lot more help than we actually believe. However, one of the most important ways to help the needy would be to be compassionate and caring, as well as understanding. As Mother Teresa said, "We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.” ⁴

ARC 141 Paper 03

Stephen Kieran, in his essay, The Architecture of Plenty describes how architects in the present century are considered to be a commodity; they are known for their special skills, which come of great use when designing buildings.[i] People prefer branded items because they expect a certain style or feature from it. Similarly, people in professions that are criticized by the public need to have their own personal style, in order to call it theirs. According to Kieran, there are certain special features and styles each architect has and portrays in their work, which makes their work a “brand” for that specific type of building ⁱ. For example, The Renzo Piano Building Workshop has been transformed into a brand for designing art museums because of its special style in lighting and green architecture.

Renzo Piano, founder of The Renzo Piano Building Workshop, claims to “love working with light elements, transparency and natural light”[ii]. He has also been implementing green architecture in a majority of his buildings, which has earned him the title of “The World’s Best Friend”[iii].

It is this certain style that compels him to implement particular special features in his designs, most of them being art museums- structures that call for a great deal of light and transparency. His buildings, such as the Zentrum Paul Klee, the Tjibaou Cultural centre, and California Academy of

sciences have given The Renzo Piano Building Workshop a brand name as a firm that specializes in designing unique and ‘light’ art museums. One of the buildings designed by Renzo Piano that plays with light is the Tjibaou Cultural Centre (see figs.1 and 2) in New Caledonia, a French territory in the South Pacific. Not only is this structure constructed of bamboo, a rapidly regenerating plant, there are several ventilators in the building that help regulate the temperature (see fig. 3). The Tjibaou Cultural Centre takes the shape of ten cone-shaped wooden huts surrounded by the pine trees, referring to the culture of the Kanaks of New Caledonia.

An interesting structure by Piano would be the environmental changes for the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, CA, which won several Urban Land Design awards (see figs. 4). By placing several solar panels on the roof, and planting over a million species of plants on it, this Academy is now the world’s greenest museum[iv].

A third example of how Piano seems to easily balance the two categories of cultures would be The Zentrum Paul Klee, a museum dedicated to the artist Paul Klee. Klee’s artwork (see fig. 5) had a slight stillness to it, which Piano used to his advantage. By comparing Klee’s ‘silence’ that was implemented in his artwork (see fig. 6) to the ‘silent’ waves of the sea and adding a touch of his personal style, he adds skylights and green roofs all over this museum, thus creating another architectural work of art [v].

Through his buildings, not only does Renzo Piano ingeniously create an appropriate mixture of mass culture and high culture, thus trying to bridge the gap between the two, as Andreas Huyssen writes in his essay After The Great Divide[vi], he subtly adds his personal style to every one of his buildings, each making it his own masterpiece, and thus popularizing his firm, creating the “brand” for art museums all over the world.

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[i] Kieran, Stephen (1987) The Architecture of Plenty: Theory and Design in the Marketing Age, Harvard Architecture Review 6: 103-113

[ii] Piano, Renzo. Interview by Liz Martin. Personal interview. 16 Jan. 2006.

[iii] Ouroussof, Nicolai (May 13, 2009). "Renzo Piano Embraces Chicago". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-05-13.

[iv] About the Building." California Academy Of Sciences. www.calacademy.org/academy/building/

[v] Hui, Calvin. "Paul Klee Center Bern by Renzo Piano." Galinsky: People Enjoying Buildings Worldwide. www.galinsky.com/buildings/paulkleecenter/index.html

[vi] Huyssen, Andreas. After the great divide: modernism, mass culture, postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986.

ARC 141 Paper 02

Jeremy Bentham, the original designer for the Panopticon, uses his creation to induce a sense of permanent visibility that ensures the functioning of power. He also decreed that power should be visible yet unverifiable. In the present times we have a more modern version of Panopticon. One such example is the Syracuse University Quad, an area that a majority of Syracuse University students walk through everyday.

Enclosed by several buildings such as Link Hall, H.B.C. Hall, Carnegie Library, Hendricks Chapel and Hinds Hall, the Syracuse University Quadrangle performs the functions of both a Panopticon as well as an Inverse Panopticon at night.

The several windows of Link Hall and Hinds Hall give people inside the structures the ‘power of invisibility’; they can see everyone but no one can see them. This phenomenon gives students walking through or in the quad the feeling of being watched whenever they stay or pass through it. What is even more interesting to note is that when the lights in the rooms of Link Hall are on, it gives students in the quad the ‘power of invisibility’, without the people inside to know who may be watching them– forming the original idea of the Panopticon.

The particular geometry of the quad and small size of the pathways through it define movement through it. The particular lines formed by these pathways, in plan, give passer-through the idea that they should move only on that particular walkway. The grass lawns, in contrast with the stone pathways make the lawns seem like a boundary, as if inaccessible to walkers. This enforces the idea to students that they should follow a norm – some areas are not accessible to students.

At the same time, the buildings act as a blockade, and the tiny spaces in between the buildings make the students want to move into the quad, it being a more open area. The open area in the quad, which is used for public gathering, gives the student the feeling of staying in such an area for a longer period of time than usual.

Looking at the quad as a whole, there is a very thin blurry line between the observer and the observed. A person becomes an observer as soon as they enter the quad and see everyone in it, not to mention the views they get from the various windows and apertures in and through the surrounding buildings.

A person become one of the observed as soon as they notice someone entering the quad or notice someone watching them through a window. As soon as the student notices someone, he/she tends to act disciplined and orderly, this enforcing the norms of social behavior and discipline Michel Foucault writes about in the article entitled “Panopticism”.

These situations show how the Syracuse University Quad is designed to enforce social controlamong the people in that area, showing the concept of the Panopticon and how at night, people in the Quad are able to view others without being noticed, forming the concept of an Inverse Panopticon. It is also interesting to know that how at any point in the Quad, students take the form of both an observer and as one of the observed.

ARC 141 Paper 01

The sketch quality, referred to Frank Gehry, as “the tentativeness and messiness” should be clung to as a way of guarding against repetition.

According to Frank Gehry, “ We constantly go back and forth between models and drawings, because if one thing does not work, something else ends up working instead!”

Frank Gehry’s “untidy” designs depict some forms and structures, which translate from art, into architecture.

Looking at the sketch of the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, one can clearly state that these drawings by Frank Gehry are exactly what Michael Graves calls “a referential sketch”, which is one of primary themes of architectural drawing.

There is a common misconception about Gehry’s work – they are built for the sake of their form. The truth is that these forms are built inside out. Frank Gehry also works a lot on Deconstructivism, which is the ability to propose a different view, a view that flaws are intrinsic to the structure.

What I noticed about Frank Gehry’s sketches is the fact that when I applied his method of sketching, I noticed that the structures in the sketches all seem to have a function, and are not, as some may say “a bunch of confusing squiggly lines”.

From the diagrams given and from the words of Gehry himself, we can clearly realize that we must not use the idea of “messiness” in any sketch. However, at the same time, we must not let it go, for it gives us a broader area to improve on creativity.