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sP: Describe your project.

erin CUEVAS & john FARRACE: The project operates on the assumption of a new government policy, where Juarez has been allocated money to reconstruct the economy and infrastructure within the city. The drug cartels, with their strong presence in Juarez, inevitably contribute to this development, generating spaces for their use. Both the government and cartels support the rebuilding of shanty towns, to provide better living conditions for poor communities. The new developments in Juarez directly affect the city’s neighborhoods themselves, but also indirectly affect America—in terms of shifting perceptions of the city, and of Mexico in general.

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suckerPUNCH: Describe your project.

jili HUANG, lan CHEN, anirudh DHAWAN: Para[lyze + Metric] / USC Lab M4 (Mind + Machine + Material + Manufacture). The project is a fabrication facility developed within the confines of a system of order and within University of Southern California’s School of Architecture to be used by architecture and fine arts students. We want to materialize the flowing forces and creative energy of the student body which resists this imposed, predictable grid and manifest an unnerving, chaotic, and psychotropic space for building knowledge and control upon what we are uncertain of which we feel is what being an architecture student is all about.

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MOON

USC Professors Behrokh Khoshnevis (Engineering), Anders Carlson (Architecture), Neil Leach (Architecture) and Madhu Thangavelu (Astronautics) have been awarded a NASA research grant into the potential use of Contour Crafting robotic fabrication technology to build structures on the Moon. The grant was one of only 30 awarded to over 700 applicants by the NASA Innovation Advanced Concepts Program (NIAC). The title of their research proposal is: Contour Crafting Simulation Plan for Lunar Settlement Infrastructure Build Up. The poster shows a storage space being constructed by a Contour Crafting robot housed on a version of the Athlete rover developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Los Angeles. The robot prints the structure layer by layer using lunar concrete composed of regolith from the surface of the Moon. Contour Crafting was voted recently as one of the top 15 innovations that will change the World. The question now being addressed is how it will change the Moon. Image credits: Behnaz Farahi + Connor Wingfield

los angeles CALIFORNIA

suckerPUNCH: describe your project.

joey SARAFIAN: This design for a research institute in Downtown Los Angeles (where Grand Ave meets the 101 Freeway) looks at an operable skin with pyramidal apertures that open and close due to proximity to freeway noise and solar gain. The result featured a skin that becomes aware of its surroundings, and can perpetually adapt to them. The project site is adjacent to varying freeway noise depending on the amount of traffic, which will also influence the skin.

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usc school of architecture is pleased to announce the launch of PARAsite. this blog has been set up as a forum for debate about recent developments within the usc school of architecture in the area of parametric and algorithmic design. parasite also serves as a repository of records of past events, such as the intensive fields conference held on 12 december 2009. full video documentation of this conference is now available.

image credit: casey REAS, process 14 (image 3) 2008