Alternate Endings: A User's Manual for Unbuilding

• YEAR
  2017

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• DESCRIPTION
  Research Book

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• CO-AUTHORS
  Emily Cannon
  Yanqiu He
  Ezgi Nizamoglu
  John Rinaldi
  Angela Shi
  Danny Sweeney
  Kevin Tremblay
  Emily Weiser
  Karen Yeung

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• STUDIO INSTRUCTOR
  Ang Li

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• CATEGORIES
  Architecture
  Graphic Design
  Publication Design
  Research

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A collaborative research project undertaken by ten authors, Alternate Endings: A User's Manual for Unbuilding is a 200-page book investigating architecture's relationship to demolition. The book examines why buildings lose value, from social and cultural reasons to material failures; legislative fast-tracks and barriers to demolition; the evolution of demolition technology; the actors and interests behind the decision to demolish a given building; the ultimate fates of building materials; the spatial and programmatic qualities of material stockyards; and ways architects and designers can operate within and around the complicated and contradictory realm of unbuilding.

Along with spearheading the graphic standards, publication design, and front cover design of the book, I wrote the first section of Alternate Endings, which investigated the social and cultural reasons why a building loses value. Using specific case studies and typoloical categories, "Chapter One: Limited Shelf Life" sought to understand the prevalence of certain “risk factors” that lead to a building’s demolition — architectural aesthetics, political upheaval, bureaucratic networks. The research also incorporated case studies examining anomalous conditious which led to a specific building’s demolition or preservation.

"Chapter One: Limited Shelf Life" served as the research basis for Down Fall and Assembly.