The following depicts the voyage of Iowa State University design students who were part of a performance in the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. Their task, to contribute in a three day workshop and colloquim, hosted by Iowa State University’s architecture program, at the ‘Arsenale’ grounds in Venice, Italy. During the workshop, the students were to study and explore ‘the floor’, one of the fundamental ‘elements of architecture’ proposed by Biennale curator and architect Rem Koolhaas.

As Aaron Betsky quoted so well in his article Uneternal City, "All roads lead to Rome, but once you get there they turn into spaghetti". The only way to understand this seemly tangled road system is by looking into Rome's past. What began as simple meandering paths along the seven hills transitioned into direct routes between important churches. Once Rome began to grow after its unification in the 1870's, residential grids were added to teh overlay of winding and straight routes. Knowing the layers of urban planning gives you onlya distant aerial view of the workings of this modern city. Walking trhough the streets reveals a completely different story. In the short time that I have lived in Rome, it has become clear that there is conflict between people and machines.

Being present in a design community, this word tends to be one of the many buzzwords that we are over-saturated with, in both the academic and professional world. Through the repetition of this and many other words, one notices that the word has been reduced to sounds, and therefore has lost its meaning. The effect is known as Semantic Satiation, first coined by psychologist Leon Jakobovits James in the 1960’s. Beyond a psychological theory, this idea hints at a far more serious issue plaguing the field of architecture. Those involved fall into the trap of using buzzwords. These words pollute our vocabulary due to their repetition, causing a total abstraction, divorcing themselves of meaning.

It may seem a redundant claim, but good buildings do not fail. If we strip away the cultural, social, and political roles of buildings, leaving behind only the object-ness, we would say that good buildings are made of materials joined in a thoughtful way, such that the building resists entropy (a natural and tumbling force which pulls order back down to disorder). There are, of course, other ways that buildings fail: some buildings leak, some buildings over­heat, some buildings endanger people, some provide places for people to do dangerous things, but all of these failures have two things in common: they were not designed, and they are decidedly bad things.`

When considering our greatest achievements, surely the crafting of civili7ation from the nature that surrounds us tops the list. We worked with the crust of ground that was broken, the water from the creek and rivers that separated, and we repaired the material by mixing to create our palette of making. Repair, regardless of its philosophy; always existed in our culture first as an inventor, and second as a preserver. Throughout the ages, we had many key moments that the essence of repair was able to birth the peace of soul, death, and even lies. Ultimately, whatever the intent, it always comes down to the need to savor our existence.