Lorem Ipsum: Narratives of Architecture is the first studio to be subjected to the experimental format of a jury presented in Pedagogies, the Public & Juries. The third round of Lorem Ipsum focuses on bringing the processes and products from the previous stages together, presented here as Constructs of Memory.

This round focuses on bringing the process together. Here, the students digested and assembled from the previous stages. Each student having produced ten transcripts, spawned from stills of their films, were then tasked with making composite scenes. One drawing to be constructed from their transcripts. By taking pieces of the events they had witnessed and translated as spacial diagrams, and composing them as one, the students made a scene of recollection, richer than their singular elements.

Each drawing then served as a piece of a new map. This map is a recomposition of Downtown LA. A map which no longer simply evokes daydreams, but one which is constructed from memory, experience, reality.

Questions regarding each stage of the studio were posed to the students prior to posting. What follows is the students’ experience of this studio as expressed through their answers, diagrams and constructed memories.

 How do you judge it? 

• Ordaz
  •  There is no scale or rule of thumb to judge the work we produced. The work can be interpreted in many ways, leaving us to judge so many aspects of our drawings. I judged my own work through the amount of effort I put in it. That effort should be looked after in all our work. What techniques were used to create our drawings? How much effort was put into the graphics? And how is the overall composition of each individual assignment related to one another? Putting our experiences and memories already requires a lot of effort into a drawing, but who is to say that the work is no good or great? We all created something that differs from each other, so on what basis can we compare our work to other than to each other? On our first assignment, we had to trace all aspects of the city as well as the life that exists in it. Where would one begin to judge the work? This brings me back to my argument. What can be judged, not what should be judge, is something I cannot fully have an opinion on. There is no formal way to measure its success or failure. When the viewer or reader sees the work for themselves, our intentions and motivations are left out, leaving the viewer to make judgements on their own terms. 
• Liu
  • I judge it in terms of how the drawings set up a new system to say an old story of everyday life. The project portrays scenes of daily life happen in downtown LA, trying to rebuild an abstract world of Los Angeles: railways go into the downtown area; large number of factories and construction sits occupy large areas; no far from the factories are quiet residential area, adults and children live a peaceful life. All these typical and contradict scenes go together and happen the same time in one frame, showing the complexity and different hierarchy of a city.  
• Peng
  • I judge it by its spatial connection and visual spatial connection between each building and objects. Where does the object define the building or the building is defined by the object’s blurred lines. 
• Pierandozzi
  • I judge it on whether or not it delivers on the juxtaposition I observed in the Fashion district in Los Angeles. During the day it is colorful and lively, but during the night it is nearly a ghost town. In that ghost town there are activities allocated to the night that cannot be seen. This new city can be judged on whether or not we can see what is happening without further thought or observation, just as we cannot see all the activities of the night. 
• Rose
  • The essential goal of this project is to make viewers want to take a closer look at it.

What is architecture? 

• Ordaz
  • Architecture is defined by the author and the viewer. Architecture can be understood as a building, infrastructure or objects that are tangible. To others, it can be understood as something intangible. How people use any space that they can inhabit or how society and culture move across the globe are valid arguments that constitute something as architecture. This question seems to be asked over and over again, and I cannot see it ever be legally defined or culturally accepted as a universal definition. 
• Pierandozzi
  • Architecture is how space comes together. Space is not just “the built environment”. This project has proven to me that Architecture is occurring organically through activity. People are creating architecture in spaces with nothing built, simply by using it for different and specific purposes.
• Liu
  • Architecture is a sequence/collection of space where contain people’s life, recall people’s memory, create people’s activities. Architecture at first proposes people’s activity intentionally, and as people in turn make use of architecture, the spaces change, the sequences change. In this way people create their new memory of architecture and architecture receive its own peculiarity.
• Duncan
  • Architecture, from microscopic to macroscopic view, can be small structures or complexes designed for specific goals. In my opinion, Architecture is not an anemic sculpture but a “short fuse” to human sociality. In other words, people working or living in a single place can meet others by coincidence. 
    
• Peng
  • Architecture can be sum up in all aspects of our lives. It is a form of art and tectonics. Moreover, architecture defines our daily living, it captures our characters, identities, social issues, and other problems in the world. In a visual artistic way, architecture is seen as something special more than just an average building. It is well designed to accommodate living for humans, sometimes animals. 
• Wei
  • For me architecture could accommodate memories and emotions.
• Alhomaidah
  • An underrated science and a forgotten art.

What would you change?

• Wei
  • I changed how I think architecture and city. I always thought how to abstract physical things in site, but don’t know how to transfer those moments happened in site. But now I think what happens in the site is more important.

• Ordaz
  • There isn’t that many things I would change about the work that was produced. I would change my work flow and how the work needed to be completed. I was open to the idea when we were briefed about the topic and I accepted the terms that were noted.