Whtye v. Norman

1) From the installments by Gibbs and Whyte, I feel there is one distinct difference between the two- organization. It is Whyte’s thinking that a street should slow down its pedestrians and allow more time for them to browse their surroundings. On the other hand, Gibbs would see this strategy as being overly manipulative. These thoughts cultivate many different ideas towards the design of the city street. In my opinion I think it really comes down to how you organize the clutter. In Gibbs’ writing he thought of clutter as tables and chairs placed inefficiently down the street, but Whyte based his opinions on things like book kiosks and other smaller venders. So it all comes down to what objects will be slowing the customers down. Of course tables and chairs will in fact detract from pedestrians traffic, thus decreasing sales. On the other hand, when people are forced to maneuver through venders’ stands to get down the street they are less likely to feel manipulated. They can casually stroll down the street while browsing stands and noticing shops without their attention being captured by any useless objects such as benches and tables.
2) To me, I think I can really relate to the ideas behind a nice design but not an overly attractive design. Thinking back to experiences with different shopping streets, I was able to remember specific places where I either felt comfortable, uncomfortable, distracted, not distracted, or a combination of two. Two examples are downtown Traverse City and downtown Holland. First of all, downtown Holland is a much newer with a very attractive design while Traverse City relies on simple, historic designs. But what seems like positives can turn to negatives very fast. Recalling my experience in Holland, I remember spending my time admiring the beauty of my surroundings and enjoying my time just walking around and appreciating the architecture. Not even once did I step foot inside a store. Downtown Holland is just such a beautiful design that its architecture takes the pedestrians’ attention from the stores. Downtown Traverse City on the other hand is a place that I frequently visit, but I still find myself going into stores and making purchases every time I’m there. What’s the difference? Traverse City has a beautiful downtown and is a great place to be, but when you’re on foot your attention is more often than not drawn to the stores. Window designs are equally or more attractive than the surrounding landscape and it can be as enjoyable to look at the stores as it is to take in the natural and architectural beauty of the city.
Egg Drop- Dave and I came into the designing process having some basic ideas. First we thought we would attempt to devise some sort of suspension system but seemed to be too complicated. As we brainstormed ideas I mentioned that I had read somewhere an idea about using the cardboard center from toilet paper. I brought a roll of paper towels with me and we decided to use that. We thought of different ways to put the egg in the roll and ended up cutting a small slit at one end to fit the egg in. Our next dilemma was with the cardboard part of the roll hitting the ground too hard and breaking the egg. To solve this we decided to cut the bottom half of the cardboard out of the roll to soften the impact. We then worked the paper towel a bit to further pad the fall. Dave then suggested weighting the bottom of the roll with the duct tape in order to make the roll fall straight with the egg at the top. Lastly we attached a parachute to further soften the impact with the ground.
Dave's Blog- http://davemenoian.blogspot.com/