If someone were to study the architecture of the houses in southern Louisiana that Ben Brown talks about in "Unpredictable, High Risk, High Cost: Planning for the Worst is the Worst", they would find no substance most likely, only content, which could actually lead them in some interesting directions with their research.

In "Unpredictable, High Risk, High Cost: Planning for the Worst is the Worst", Ben Brown argues that natural disasters are going to start occurring more frequently, which means we'll need to start designing our buildings to protect ourselves, so how will a change in design reveal what our cultural values were to the people of the future? Perhaps, it will reveal that our own safety was most valued by us. Maybe we'll start to see more buildings being destroyed by natural disasters like in the case of Louisiana. In which case, the people of the future may not be as tied to history as we are now.

I would think that this makes culture extremely hard to study. It must be really hard to find hard, aboluste cultural evidence to use for research. All you can really do is observe people and read things that they've written, which would make your evidence really subjective to whoever made it.

In "Unpredictable, High Rise, High Cost...", Ben Brown argues that not only can we not simply live in nature, but we can't live beside it either. It attacks us, so we need to find ways to get around it. Could the study of vernacular architecture lead to any improvements in how we design buildings to withstand natural disasters?

Vernacular researchers are kind of half archeologists too.

I was part of a very small percentage of students who supported the transgender students that attended my High School, so it's not hard for me to believe that these prejudices will be passed down for many generations to come.

I don't think people will ever really reach a truce on anything. As Tick says in "His & Hers", we are on the move towards a time where post-gender will affect our designs, but I think that some people themselves will never truly be able to give up their natural hatreds. In fact, it may also be that we never reach an ethnical truce, a racial truce, a religions truce, or any kind of truce. Not until our history is able to vanish or our minds augmented and uploaded will we be able to drop our biases.

I've personally never really understood this argument. If a man really wanted to go into a woman's bathroom to sexually assault them, he'd just do it anyway.

There were only two transgender people in my graduating class, and they both had to go talk to the principle because of people complaining about them using the bathroom. After a month or two of parents constantly calling in to the school, complaining about the transgender students, and begging for them to be kicked out, things finally cooled down. However, the transgender students had to use the single stall bathrooms that were reserved for teachers for the rest of the year against their will. I've always thought that was extremely sad, and looking back "His & Hers", I'd argue that schools (at least in the south) still haven't caught up to the races in gender identities. They haven't even caught up to the workplace in my opinion.

This is exactly what I was talking about when I said that marriage has a biblical connotation.

With regards to race, there still isn't really absolute equality, so will gender equality take as long as racial equality has to come about.

It's really hard for me to grasp the notion that this legislation is like the Jim Crowe laws. I'm not saying that they aren't the same, but it's just really scary and sad to think that laws like that are still in place.

In "His & Hers", Tick argues that the spacial design of the workplace will change very soon to fit different peoples sexual and gender related identities, and she says that it all starts with the bathrooms. I person is very vulnerable in a bathroom, and unless they can feel comfortable, they won't be able to work at that place.

I think that the term "marriage" has a really religious connotation to it, which is maybe why its taken so long for same sex marriage to become a reality. In Christianity, homosexuality is considered absolute evil, and I think that the American definition of marriage is mostly associated with the Christian definition of marriage.

I've definitely heard this phrase said a lot where I'm from and in my own family. Some people, especially in the south, just can't come to terms with the changing sexual landscape of the American culture.

In "His & Hers", Tick argues that we are on the horizon of this conflict being solved and of a post-gender world. Based on the changes that I've seen through out the past few years, I'd say that I agree with her.

Tick, Suzanne. “His & Hers: Designing for a Post-Gender Society - Metropolis Magazine - March 2015.” Accessed October 31, 2016. http://www.metropolismag.com/March-2015/His-or-Hers-Designing-for-a-Post-Gender-Society/

In this article, Tick argues that the world of design is falling behind in the changing landscape of gender identity. She then points to how design is still under the influence of modernism, which was a movement shaped by predominately male perspectives, and she says that it wasn't until quite recently that we started to see a more feminine design coming into the workplace with windows and softer colors. She then goes on to compare the workplace to other areas of design like fashion, which she says is one of the most forerunners in gender evolution because of its rapid movement. She ends the article by addressing the problem of the transgender people and bathrooms by stating that in the near future, we should start to see design in the workplace that accommodates to all sexual orientations.

I've noticed that in Atlanta, not a lot of people park on the street compared to other cities. There does, however, seem to be more parking decks than any other city I've ever been in.

In "Five Places in Manchester that Cater for Children with Autism", the author describes how the Jump Nation trampoline center gates off a part of the jumping arena for kids with special needs to jump every month. This shows that the placement of certain barriers isn't always a bad or inhibiting thing. In the case of the jumping arena, it gives the children a safer place to jump and have fun without their parents worrying about their safety.

In my hometown of Carrollton, GA, there were multiple very large gated communities, but the crime in Carrollton was very low. There were rarely any break-ins. In Carrollton, the train tracks separated the predominately white side from the predominately black side, and most of the gated communities were close to the train tracks. It just goes to show that segregation in the form of architectural exclusion does still exist.

For my first Built Environment Description, I walked from Downtown Atlanta to the other side of Old Fourth Ward, but while I was walking through the center section of Old Fourth Ward, I noticed that there weren't many sidewalks. However, there's always sidewalks in Downtown and near Ponce City Market on the other side of Old Fourth Ward.

In Atlanta, I've noticed that 75/85 acts as a barrier between downtown and the historically African American areas of Sweet Auburn and Old Fourth Ward.

I've noticed this a lot in Atlanta. In places like Sweet Auburn Ave. and Old Fourth Ward, which have historically been African American neighborhoods, it's easy to see how the community now has been shaped by the history. Along with that comes the historical architecture of the area.

I've never really thought of ghettos as spatial entities, but I guess they really are. I think that a ghetto implies that a culture of people is excluded from the rest of the world, so if everybody in that ghetto has similar beliefs, that makes it an entity.

This is a perfect example of exclusion as a positive. Because the junk food is in the back, it gives people more incentive to eat healthier in a very subtle way.

As opposed to Emma Gill, who acknowledges the role of physical architecture as an enabler.

I've never really thought about this before, and I completely agree with it. Since I moved to Atlanta, I've noticed how certain types of people all tend to live in the same place. When you visit a certain part of Atlanta, there's usually always a certain type of person that you'll expect to see.

So the problem is do to the fact that planers are mainly concerned about the efficiency of traffic control. Perhaps if we were able to get rid of barriers and have a naturally racially mixed population in a city, "traffic logic" would be acceptable to prioritize.

In my opinion, this is definitely a problem. If people are completely aware that architecture is being used to exclude, which is basically segregation, then why isn't it being fixed?

This article discusses how architectural is used as a form of regulation, which puts the observation of architectural exclusion into a legal context, but it's interesting to see how in the article "Five Places in Manchester that Cater for Children with Autism", the exclusion isn't legal at all. In fact, the architectural exclusion used in Manchester completely gets rid of the legal side of the argument by promoting equality, which I think is a step in the right direction.

It's been a really long time since I've seen a park bench without armrests dividing it. When I was little I thought that they just designed them that way to give people some personal space, but it's interesting to see how something as simple as an armrest is placed into the larger topic of gentrification.

This article, compared to "Five Places in Manchester that Cater for Children with Autism", focuses more on the negative side of architectural exclusion, which is understandable because I think that the word "exclusion" has historically had a very negative connotation. It's really great to see the city of Manchester turn exclusion into a positive thing.

This article describes the different techniques used by business's in Greater Manchester, England to cater to children with autism. There are five different examples that the articles uses, the first of which is the Jump Nation trampoline center. Jump Nation, like most of the other examples in the article, has autism friendly days or weekends once a month. At Jump Nation, during the autism friendly weekend, they close off half of the jumping arena and turn the music volume on soft for children with over-sensitivities. They also put up nets so the children don't fall off of something high and hurt themselves. Movie theaters are also trying to cater to children with autism. Most of the cinemas in Manchester have autism friendly movie days every month in which they keep the lights on low, the volume low, and completely get rid of the trailers before the movie. This also happens in most of Manchester's stage theaters. The Manchester museum also helps out. They'll do special labs for kids with autism in which they can come before the museum officially opens and learn from experts who cater to their learning disabilities. Finally, Manchester's Adventure Forest is an autism friendly play zone where kids can come and wonder around free without any worries of getting lost or hurt, and if the kids don't feel comfortable going off on their own, parents are more than welcome to come play with their children on the padded indoor playground. With all that said, it seems that Manchester is leading the way for other cities and countries to start looking out for the needs of children with disabilities.

Gill, Emma. “Five Places in Manchester That Cater for Children with Autism.” Men, September 19, 2016. http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/family-kids-news/five-places-manchester-cater-children-11906088.

In "Five Places in Manchester that Cater for Children with Autism", Emma Gill describes ways that architectural exclusion can be a good thing, such as the Jump Nation trampoline center hosting monthly autism friendly jump weekends in which they turn the music volume down for children with over-sensitivities and put nets around the jump areas.

Once I visited the house that "The House of Seven Gables" by Nathaniel Hawthorne was based on, so maybe that novel could be used as valid research for the actual house. And, yes, the house did have seven gables.

If they were studying the houses knocked over due to natural disasters, most of their evidence would be unknown. They would have to find documents and research the sights where the buildings used to be. It would be interesting to study the architecture that arose after the natural disasters, and compare the architecture before and after. It's probably too soon to study that though.

If a vernacular researcher only had two of those three, would their findings be as stable?

Extrinsic: not part of the essential nature of someone or something; coming or operating from outside.

This would definitely be the case for studying early 21st century southern Louisiana architecture.

You can't do this if you're studying older architecture because the people who lived there are all dead...

Exactly the case for the architecture of certain areas after a natural disaster has struck.

How much of history is made up?

If somebody were comparing the architecture before and after a natural disaster, I think it would be very clear where the old ideas are washed away and the new ideas arose. I mean if a flood wipes away a bunch of old houses, people are probably going to seize that opportunity to build new living complexes or even industrial areas.

Exegesis: critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture.

If you stuck to the usual documents, then vernacular architecture wouldn't exist. It would just be archeology.

So most of the vernacular architecture research isn't going to be ethnographic because they mostly study old buildings where nobody lives anymore.

This is the case for all of history, but I think that architecture is probably the most effective way to find out more about a certain historical culture. People poor themselves into their living areas. I mean, not only are certain types of architecture representative of a culture as a whole, but each individual structure will have a little bit of a distinct person in it, which not only gives you insight into culture, but also into individual human nature.

What about traces of natural disasters? The study of vernacular architecture has to take in a lot of things when doing research.

You can only recover their stories through the eyes of the people who knew them. An indirect reference is that great for research though.

So material culture is a slightly more objective manner of research than an individuals recordings.

Nothing shows class better than a person's living space, so vernacular architecture can sometimes show, more accurately than written history, class differences and how people in certain classes actually lived.

How will the vernacular researchers of the future show how the people of southern Louisiana lived by there aesthetic preferences? Will there be enough buildings left to research this?

Will the vernacular researchers of the future be able to see how the natural disaster brought the people of different classes together? I think that the only thing that would be able to show that would be written history.

I think it will be interesting to see how vernacular architecture is used in the future to study the sites of natural disasters. Will they use it to explore how people came together? Or will they use it to come up with a better plan to be prepared for natural disasters? Personally, I think that they won't be using architecture to study it. I think that in the internet age, vernacular archicture is only good for researching cultures and people that we don't have access to anymore, or who weren't around for the invention of the internet.

I wonder what kind of techniques a vernacular researcher would use to study a building. I imagine they'd be able to tell what period a building was from or what the decoration is based off of. Would they use chemicals to study the actual materials used to make the house?

I would say that, yes.

Even though all of these documents could be classified as archeological findings or show the subjective view of one of the buildings inhabitants, vernacular researchers are able to relate them all back to the structure itself.

This answers my question about ordinary buildings. I was right, art architecture and sculptures are not included.

Axiom: a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true.

In Dr. Fernandez's class we had a discussion that ties in very closely with this. We discussed how different cultures view personal space. We found that in America, private space is valued more than public space, but in a place like Africa, public space is valued because they share a lot of things like their places of residence and the very ground below their feet.

What do they mean by "ordinary buildings"? I'm assuming they're referring to buildings with an actual use as opposed to more abstract art architecture.

In "Unpredictable, High Risk, High Cost: Planning for the Worst is the Worst", Ben Brown argues that the way we prepare for natural disasters is extremely inefficient. He argues that instead of being a political matter wherein pointless grants are being thrown around all over the place, it should be dealt with by non-profit organizations, local businesses, and scientists. According to Brown, the constant interference by the government into the matter is slowly nudging out scientific practice and discovery. Scientists have found that the probability of natural disasters is slowly on the rise, and we need to find a more efficient way of dealing with them in order to survive the coming years. Even the mass displacement of people in the effected area is more efficient than what we're doing right now.

Brown, Ben. "Unpredictable, High Risk, High Cost: Planning for the Worst is the Worst." Place Makers, 23 Aug. 2016,http://www.placemakers.com/2016/08/23/planning-for-the-worst-is-the-worst/. Accessed 5 Sep. 2016.

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