Due: Tuesday, April 21 (class time)

Assignment: A project, accompanied by an “interview with the creator” and class presentation.

1. The project: The project should respond in a fairly obvious way to the readings of the second half of the semester—Tuan, Auster, Frazier, and Whitehead. Note that it doesn't have to deal with all of these readings (one is enough) or even mention any of them.  It can involve photographs, maps, drawings, a video, an architectural model, a personal essay, a research paper, an article about a museum exhibit or public lecture or interview, etc.  See the suggestions below, and check with me if you’re not sure your idea fits the assignment.

Length: If the project is a written work (an essay, article, or research paper), it should be about 1500-2000 words. If the project is primarily visual (photos, drawings, maps, etc.), there should also be some text (for example, notes on the individual photos, or a short research paper on the same subject matter as the images); the length will be up to you, but figure around 500-1000 words.

2. The interview: Write an interview with yourself as the writer, artist, or creator of the project. Pose and answer questions about how you came to do the project, what you were trying to say, how long you worked on it, what problems you ran into, how the project changed it evolved, what materials you used, what artistic works influenced you, how the project relates to specifics in the readings, etc.—whatever will help understand and evaluate the project. The interview should be 500 words.  Don’t repeat what you wrote in the project paper.

3. The presentation: Plan a five-minute presentation for class. You may only have time to present a part of what you’ve done, so figure it out in advance.

Posting the project: Post the project paper and the interview on your blog as two separate posts (#13: Final and #14: Interview). If you’ve made something by hand (a model, a hand-made book, drawings), take some digital photographs and post these.

Advice: Get started early, so there’s time to modify your project if things aren’t working out. Don’t build anything too big to carry easily to class. Be creative about materials and don’t spend a lot of money. Have fun and take risks—do something that you wouldn’t normally do, or work in a medium that’s new to you. Email me with questions.

Documentation: For both the project and the essay, be sure to document all of your sources, including where photographs came from, books you used, web sites consulted, etc. See the course website on citing sources. Be sure you understand what plagiarism is—ignorance is no excuse.

Suggestions:

1. Write a personal essay, something in the style of Frazier’s Gone to New York, about a place (not necessarily in New York).  You might incorporate an interview with someone associated with the place (like Gary on Canal Street), a description of a walk or drive through the place (like Route 3), some historical background (like the Holland Tunnel), or a personal anecdote (like about grabbing bags).

2. Go someplace that relates to our “sense of place” themes and write about what happens.  Check out the Place Studies page on “places to go,” and check out the links to the event calendars (on the left) for ideas about exhibits, lectures, etc., at AIA, the Museum of the City of New York, etc.  Here's a list of some possible events & exhibits.

3. Take a tour of the city and make a slide show, e.g., some famous NYC architectural monuments, the squares on Broadway, the old fading signs on buildings, etc.  Post a few of the image in your blog post, and put the rest in a slide show (in Fickr or Slide).  Write something about the subject matter of the photos.

4. Create a digital map project.  For example, check out this walking tour of NYC book stores.  You can make the map in Google maps, complete with images, text, etc., and then embed the map in your blog.  You can also move the map over to Map Channels, and customize it.  Or see what you can do with Google Earth (here’s an introduction to Google Earth).

5. Do a digital project. For ideas, check out the the Walking Projects page, the Columbia University architecture projects page, Arcades project, the genius loci lab, etc.

6. Make a video, post it to You-Tube, and embed it in your blog post. Just for some ideas, take a look at the Place Studies page on Sense of Place videos.  Also, check out the videos about New York City on Travelistic, here’s a link to “sense of place” videos on You-Tube, and see this weblog of videos about the New York City "street renaissance."

7. Learn SketchUp and make a drawing of a house, your dorm, a little town. Write about your goals, your concept, your process, the elements of the place, the relationship of the project to the readings.

8. Build a model of a house or a building. Use inexpensive materials, and make sure the model is very small and not too delicate. Here’s a website about how to make models using paper cut-outs (like the Chrysler Building), and here’s a site about making a model using a thin sheet of wood (available at modeling stores); but it doesn’t have to be this complicated—use ready at-hand materials (cardboard, popsicle sticks, bottle caps, etc.). Or just take a box and paint it, like these box paintings.

9. Make an online guidebook to a neighborhood or a particular kind of place in the city (e.g., quiet places to read in the Village, sacred spaces, great unknown corners of the city). Take a look at Forgotten New York.

10. Write a research paper using electronic sources. See Place Studies’ page on doing research using electronic sources.

11. Make an annotated bibliography, complete with links, of websites, articles, books, movies, photographs, paintings, etc., on a subject relevant to the “sense of place” theme as developed in the readings.