full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Joshua Prince-Ramus: Behind the design of Seattle's library

Unscramble the Blue Letters

And what we saw were buildings that were very genreic, and worse — not only were they very generic — so, not only does the reading room look like the copy room look like the manzagie area — but it meant that whatever issue was troubling the library at that moment was starting to engulf every other activity that was happening in it. And in this case, what was getting engulfed were these scaiol responsibilities by the expansion of the book. And so we psoeoprd what's at the lower diagram. Very dumb approach: simply cattonrpiemlzmae. Put those things whose evolution we could predict — and I don't mean that we could say what would actually happen in the future, but we have some ceriatnty of the spectrum of what would happen in the future — put those in boxes dgesneid specifically for it, and put the things that we can't predict on the rooftops. So that was the core idea.

Open Cloze

And what we saw were buildings that were very _______, and worse — not only were they very generic — so, not only does the reading room look like the copy room look like the ________ area — but it meant that whatever issue was troubling the library at that moment was starting to engulf every other activity that was happening in it. And in this case, what was getting engulfed were these ______ responsibilities by the expansion of the book. And so we ________ what's at the lower diagram. Very dumb approach: simply ________________. Put those things whose evolution we could predict — and I don't mean that we could say what would actually happen in the future, but we have some _________ of the spectrum of what would happen in the future — put those in boxes ________ specifically for it, and put the things that we can't predict on the rooftops. So that was the core idea.

Solution

  1. designed
  2. certainty
  3. social
  4. compartmentalize
  5. generic
  6. proposed
  7. magazine

Original Text

And what we saw were buildings that were very generic, and worse — not only were they very generic — so, not only does the reading room look like the copy room look like the magazine area — but it meant that whatever issue was troubling the library at that moment was starting to engulf every other activity that was happening in it. And in this case, what was getting engulfed were these social responsibilities by the expansion of the book. And so we proposed what's at the lower diagram. Very dumb approach: simply compartmentalize. Put those things whose evolution we could predict — and I don't mean that we could say what would actually happen in the future, but we have some certainty of the spectrum of what would happen in the future — put those in boxes designed specifically for it, and put the things that we can't predict on the rooftops. So that was the core idea.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
contemporary art 4
art museum 4
high modernist 3
reading room 3
dallas theater 3
artistic director 3
social roles 2
book spiral 2
public libraries 2
unusual client 2
theater company 2
light enclosure 2
million square 2
square feet 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
contemporary art museum 4
million square feet 2

Important Words

  1. activity
  2. area
  3. book
  4. boxes
  5. buildings
  6. case
  7. certainty
  8. compartmentalize
  9. copy
  10. core
  11. designed
  12. diagram
  13. dumb
  14. engulf
  15. engulfed
  16. evolution
  17. expansion
  18. future
  19. generic
  20. happen
  21. happening
  22. idea
  23. issue
  24. library
  25. magazine
  26. meant
  27. moment
  28. predict
  29. proposed
  30. put
  31. reading
  32. responsibilities
  33. rooftops
  34. room
  35. simply
  36. social
  37. specifically
  38. spectrum
  39. starting
  40. troubling
  41. worse