VOL 1: Marginal Street
MARGINAL STREET, the first in the PLOT series, seeks to track emerging landscape phenomena as well as consider design thinking and the urban landscape. The theme Marginal Street is both an actual street name near our campus and a thematic metaphorical perspective; it is a space with which to frame dialogue and thoughts. Within urban areas there exist a number of streets, often extensions of off-ramps, former construction roads, or dead-end cul-de-sacs that are named Marginal Street. Discovering one such street while researching a particular Manhattan site, the student editors reflected on how often we investigate spaces and conditions that are dilapidated, in ruin, or somehow on the fringe. As students, we are determined to identify and explore these places as well as plot their significance.
VOL. 2: PATCHWORK
The second volume, PATCHWORK, addresses the “patchwork thinking” that creates ad-hoc assemblages of ideas, much as a quilt is a pragmatic act of joining disparate pieces in revelatory ways. Patchwork thinking is both innovative and precise: it solves specific problems and addresses specific needs. We also see patchwork thinking as particularly urban; it’s a useful way of fixing things that have gone wrong, or embracing conditions emanating from between the cracks. Contributors to this issue are thoughtful observers of change, fluidity, and emergent systems in the city. This issue of PLOT shapes new ways of collectively reconsidering the city and its patchwork logic.
VOL. 3: HUNTING GROUND
HUNTING GROUND, the third volume of PLOT, attempts to connect the search, or quest, to a terrain—what is the place of the hunt? Maps are invented and reinvented. Grounds are geocoded and often contested, by animals, humans, and machines, on digital screens and physical platforms. Here the notion of prey or capture is also explored. It is revealed in the collector’s obsession; whether soils, fossils, bodegas, or data, this gathering reveals a desire to contain and compress a fleeting moment. This issue of PLOT shapes new ways of collectively reconsidering the city, identifying its invented territories and considering its contested ground.