In Part three of the Countours features, What Should Architecture Occupy?, Part Three, Sherin Wing, attempts to summarize the responses to Archinect’s OWS poll and since OWS itself is about giving people a voice, she contends "the best way to encapsulate the results is to quote some responses". VanillaBrice quotes Sherin and asks for the raw data "Now, there are many different approaches to summarizing the responses. One is to rely solely on statistics, but since many of the answers cannot be meaningfully summarized this way..." Yes, but completely ignoring the statistics changes this from a poll to an edited forum. These anecdotes are interesting but where's the data? Please publish the results" and poche backs him up with a two word comment "Statistics please”

News
Students at UC Merced are participating in an interesting, but perhaps inverse form of occupation, where thousands of college students, facing a shortage of dorm space have moved into hundreds of luxurious homes in overbuilt planned communities. rotor.labs draws parrallels between the current reality and "William Gibson´s  sci-fi novel "The Bridge Trilogy" around 1995 - one of the main characters, bicycle courier Chevette Washington, lived together with some students in an abandoned luxury villa at Malibu beach".

The Guardian provides a great animation exploring the raw data behind the concept of 99% v 1%. As poverty and inequality reach record levels, how much richer have the rich got? The animation explains what the key data says about the state of America today. Liebchen quips "Why are the rich people stick figures fat and the poor thin in the video?  Should be the reverse: the poor have to eat McD's every day between their second and third job while the rich can be choosy about their lean, grass-fed artisan burgers" while Micah McKelvey, says "another thing telling us what we all should already know by now.  i appreciate the large 99.99% stick figure at the end.".

Also, Alexander Walter fills us in on the winners for the 2011  KRob Competition.

Schools/School Blogs
Michael Bergin, provides a roundup of some recent Occupy Cal events and Javier Arbona focuses in on the images of architectural students floating Tents in the Sky.

pkherron reports on their visit to the opening of Travulgar Square: Ben Nicholson Drawings at Banvard Gallery. Reflecting on the exhibit and an introduction by Jeff Kipnis pkherron writes: "it is difficult for me to understand what my personal investigation is seeking, or when it moves outside the realm of the metaphysical and into reality.  This work proves that the transition from the philosophy to a physical representation no longer needs to be coherent...Today, architecture can no longer live solely in the built work, it must also exist in the drawing, the written work, the investigation, the exploration, the discussion."

Jemuel Joseph, posts some photos from November 17th of the city-wide student protest that happened in New York City.
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Work Updates/Firm Updates/Blogs
Quilian Riano, recently worked on a ..#whOWNSpace Action in NYC: observing, diagramming and intervening.

Office Feuerman and Phu Hoang Office recently collaborated to redesign a four-story townhouse in Brooklyn New York, for which they developed the ‘Upside Down Wall,’ concept.

Ben Busch, posted in work and process images from his work, while at the Universität Stuttgart, on the ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion 2011.

Discussion Threads

smart cities started a discussion on the last mile problem in the area of public and multi-modal transportation. mantaray thinks "city bike-share is perfect for this" and MixmasterFestus comments "Your building falls outside of the 'walkable' radius for transit?  Either build transit there, or demolish it! I'm only half-joking" going on to note that in all seriousness "the 'last mile' isn't as much of an issue when 'all the other miles in between' are still issues."

For his part Phillip Crosby, agrees with won "The most important thing is a well-designed public realm (streets, sidewalks, etc.) that is consistently activated by street-level retail, cafes, etc. The perceived time difference between walking for a mile in a well-designed, active area versus a poorly-designed, desolate area is astonishing."

If you are looking for Green roof monitoring equipment/sensors, Barry Lehrman suggests "Campbell Scientific as they have a full range of sensors that can help collect post-occupancy data on all sorts of sustainable design projects."

Finally, sameolddoctor  wants to talk about architecture and the ethics of working in developing countries vs the ethics of vanity skyscraper projects. Citizen responds:

We don't have to go overseas for ethical dilemmas!  How about the shiny new project on theseshores...
whose architect uses unpaid intern labor?
with the bold, avante garde design that is opposed by all the neighbors?
whose objective is to make more profit for an already-wealthy developer?
which requires demolition of old apartment housing, where low rents are absolutely critical to seniors and other low-income folks?
whose owner manages to skirt environmental review, or get a big code variance, thanks to political connections?
whose owner is an oil company or other global corporation out for profit?  Or an institution whose mission you oppose?

We face these kinds of ethical questions every day (if we choose to acknowledge them), right here in the first world.

Additionally

Ana Maria Leon, reported from her summer travels to South America through brazil, argentina, and uruguay and her own experiences from Ecuador. She writes about slums and slum and farms. In the posts she attempts to problematize what she feels is a  misconception re: a tendency to generalize slums as sites of democracy and political horizontality. Ana Maria has one key and basic point re: lexicon : "let’s not call them favelas—they are favelas in brazil, villas miseria in argentina, pueblos jovenes in peru, invasiones in ecuador. the generalized use of the word favela is regrettable."