week 14 - presenting your work

1.     tufte shares and example of louis gerstner (then president of IBM) shutting down a slide based presentation being given by employees of IBM. displeased, tufte recalls "indeed, gerstner later asked IBM executives to write out their business strategies in longhand using the presentation methodology of sentence, with subjects and predicates, nouns and verbs, which then combine sequentially to form paragraphs, an analytical tool demonstratively better than slideware bullet lists." has peoples dependence on presentation tools such as power point hindered their ability to write analytically, or even structurally sound?

2.     over and over again tufte expresses his disapproval of power point presentations because of their tendencies to stack information in a way that does not allow for people to learn and draw connection , giving the content a surface level, almost vain quality. he gives a few options that in his opinion enhances the viewers experience, one being "high resolution handout allow viewers to contextualize, compare, narrate, and recast evidence." how do we as architecture students utilize this, and do you think it is as successful as tufte believes it to be.

3.     recount a presentation you have given (slide based or otherwise), how do the tools and methods you used to present your content/work were effective or ineffective?

4.     agrest states "...the understanding of the world based on establishing similarities between things, images, and words-in short, representation worked by establishing analogies." she goes on to give alberti's definition of beauty "...for example, a chain of signifiers that goes from nature to the human body, to proportion, and then to geometry allows for a particular concept of beauty to be transposed to architecture." as designers, how do we use analogies to help us today?

5.     "the representation of the gothic, classical, and beaux arts styles serve to link the old and the new, imposing the new by representing the familiar. architecture becomes self-referential and buildings are representing other buildings, thus transferring their history and myths to the new." what are some examples of modern buildings being represented by other contemporary buildings and why do we do this?