Alternatives Summary.

From reading Kacie's post on alternatives, she did an excellent job tying in the concepts from the unit and applying it to her personal life and the present day. Sometimes it can be easy to analyze past history, but being able to analyze how the past ties in with present day can be a little less obvious. Something else that I gained from her point was that designers can look to the past and create something new by altering, but even the alteration of the original design goes through alterations itself before the final product. So there is a continuous cycle of reflecting and altering. Her image of the walkman and present day ipod is a good illustration of reflection on a past design, but alternating it to better suit present day's societies' needs and wants.

Kayla also did a great job of using present day examples that tie in the idea with alterations. I also like the way she described how alternatives occur. Instead of intentionally altering something from the get go, she addressed that things eventually get altered across time when people copy something but tweak it just a tad. And if someone else copies the minor altered one, they too can alter it some, and eventually the alterations will be much different than the first. The image of the Digiorno's pizza is a great example of how pizza differs from its original form in Italy, and now how it has been altered as a frozen product made for convenience.

Blakeni does an excellent job summarizing the unit by showing how alterations occur over time by people manipulating the preexisting forms, and altering them to better suit the story they are trying to tell. She beautifully summarizes the alternatives units as she wrote, "And without rebellion and the option of other alternatives, architecture would not have evolved into what it is today." Her essay supports both the idea's of Kacie and Kayla that are without people taking risks and making alterations to tell a different story, we still would be stuck in the past and not have the technological advances that we do today.