full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Alejandro Aravena: My architectural philosophy? Bring the community into the process

Unscramble the Blue Letters

So it was pettry obvious after this process that, well, we chicken out here and go away because it's too tense, or we go even further in asking, what else is bothering you? What other problems do you have and you want us to take care of now that the city will have to be ruthgoeht from scratch? And what they said was, look, fine to protect the city against future tsunamis, we really appreciate, but the next one is going to come in, what, 20 years? But every single year, we have problems of flooding due to rain. In addition, we are in the middle of the forest region of the country, and our public space sucks. It's poor and it's srccae. And the oriign of the city, our identity, is not really connected to the bidlugins that fell, it is connected to the river, but the river cannot be accessed publicly, because its shores are privately owned. So we thhguot that we had to produce a third alternative, and our approach was against gcaroehaigpl threats, have geographical answers. What if, in between the city and the sea we have a foerst, a forest that doesn't try to rseist the energy of nature, but dissipates it by introducing friction? A forest that may be able to laminate the wetar and peernvt the flooding? That may pay the historical debt of public space, and that may provide, finally, democratic access to the reivr. So as a conclusion of the participatory design, the alternative was validated pcilotlilay and socially, but there was still the problem of the cost: 48 million dollars. So what we did was a svuery in the public investment system, and found out that there were three ministries with three projects in the ecxat same place, not knowing of the esnictexe of the other projects. The sum of them: 52 million dlrolas. So design's power of synthesis is trying to make a more efficient use of the scarcest resource in cities, which is not money but coordination. By doing so, we were able to save four million dollars, and that is why the forest is today under construction. (Applause)

Open Cloze

So it was ______ obvious after this process that, well, we chicken out here and go away because it's too tense, or we go even further in asking, what else is bothering you? What other problems do you have and you want us to take care of now that the city will have to be _________ from scratch? And what they said was, look, fine to protect the city against future tsunamis, we really appreciate, but the next one is going to come in, what, 20 years? But every single year, we have problems of flooding due to rain. In addition, we are in the middle of the forest region of the country, and our public space sucks. It's poor and it's ______. And the ______ of the city, our identity, is not really connected to the _________ that fell, it is connected to the river, but the river cannot be accessed publicly, because its shores are privately owned. So we _______ that we had to produce a third alternative, and our approach was against ____________ threats, have geographical answers. What if, in between the city and the sea we have a ______, a forest that doesn't try to ______ the energy of nature, but dissipates it by introducing friction? A forest that may be able to laminate the _____ and _______ the flooding? That may pay the historical debt of public space, and that may provide, finally, democratic access to the _____. So as a conclusion of the participatory design, the alternative was validated ___________ and socially, but there was still the problem of the cost: 48 million dollars. So what we did was a ______ in the public investment system, and found out that there were three ministries with three projects in the _____ same place, not knowing of the _________ of the other projects. The sum of them: 52 million _______. So design's power of synthesis is trying to make a more efficient use of the scarcest resource in cities, which is not money but coordination. By doing so, we were able to save four million dollars, and that is why the forest is today under construction. (Applause)

Solution

  1. forest
  2. prevent
  3. survey
  4. origin
  5. scarce
  6. rethought
  7. buildings
  8. dollars
  9. geographical
  10. water
  11. existence
  12. river
  13. politically
  14. pretty
  15. resist
  16. thought
  17. exact

Original Text

So it was pretty obvious after this process that, well, we chicken out here and go away because it's too tense, or we go even further in asking, what else is bothering you? What other problems do you have and you want us to take care of now that the city will have to be rethought from scratch? And what they said was, look, fine to protect the city against future tsunamis, we really appreciate, but the next one is going to come in, what, 20 years? But every single year, we have problems of flooding due to rain. In addition, we are in the middle of the forest region of the country, and our public space sucks. It's poor and it's scarce. And the origin of the city, our identity, is not really connected to the buildings that fell, it is connected to the river, but the river cannot be accessed publicly, because its shores are privately owned. So we thought that we had to produce a third alternative, and our approach was against geographical threats, have geographical answers. What if, in between the city and the sea we have a forest, a forest that doesn't try to resist the energy of nature, but dissipates it by introducing friction? A forest that may be able to laminate the water and prevent the flooding? That may pay the historical debt of public space, and that may provide, finally, democratic access to the river. So as a conclusion of the participatory design, the alternative was validated politically and socially, but there was still the problem of the cost: 48 million dollars. So what we did was a survey in the public investment system, and found out that there were three ministries with three projects in the exact same place, not knowing of the existence of the other projects. The sum of them: 52 million dollars. So design's power of synthesis is trying to make a more efficient use of the scarcest resource in cities, which is not money but coordination. By doing so, we were able to save four million dollars, and that is why the forest is today under construction. (Applause)

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
million dollars 4
square meters 3
participatory design 3
billion people 2
social housing 2
direct sun 2
square meter 2
land expropriation 2

Important Words

  1. access
  2. accessed
  3. addition
  4. alternative
  5. answers
  6. applause
  7. approach
  8. bothering
  9. buildings
  10. care
  11. chicken
  12. cities
  13. city
  14. conclusion
  15. connected
  16. construction
  17. coordination
  18. country
  19. debt
  20. democratic
  21. design
  22. dissipates
  23. dollars
  24. due
  25. efficient
  26. energy
  27. exact
  28. existence
  29. fell
  30. finally
  31. fine
  32. flooding
  33. forest
  34. friction
  35. future
  36. geographical
  37. historical
  38. identity
  39. introducing
  40. investment
  41. knowing
  42. laminate
  43. middle
  44. million
  45. ministries
  46. money
  47. nature
  48. obvious
  49. origin
  50. owned
  51. participatory
  52. pay
  53. place
  54. politically
  55. poor
  56. power
  57. pretty
  58. prevent
  59. privately
  60. problem
  61. problems
  62. process
  63. produce
  64. projects
  65. protect
  66. provide
  67. public
  68. publicly
  69. rain
  70. region
  71. resist
  72. resource
  73. rethought
  74. river
  75. save
  76. scarce
  77. scarcest
  78. scratch
  79. sea
  80. shores
  81. single
  82. socially
  83. space
  84. sucks
  85. sum
  86. survey
  87. synthesis
  88. system
  89. tense
  90. thought
  91. threats
  92. today
  93. tsunamis
  94. validated
  95. water
  96. year
  97. years