I wanted to start our conversation tonight around some of the ideas that actually Caroline had brought up with the design triangle, which as she mentioned we just announced it in the press today. We're looking in exploring nature in contemporary design and everyone who is sitting up here, their work touches on nature in some way. So it's something I've been thinking about quite a bit I think many of us have and I know each of you have in your own way and so actually Ann I wanted to start with you and ask you what nature means to you in your work. Okay well I distinguished between nature and landscape so nature is an idea not a place. A lot of people say I'm gonna go out into nature but to me that means they probably are going out into a landscape where the touch of the human hand isn't so obvious but for me nature as an idea is the physical chemical and biological processes that sustain life and so working with landscape design and planning it's important to me to work with both these physical chemical and biological processes or natural processes as well as social and cultural processes because landscape is a mutual shaping of people in place to express ideas and to create a habitat for us and for the living organisms with which we inhabit the earth. So does that do it? Yeah absolutely you know and I think you actually touched on something which is quite interesting that to many people when they think about the concept of nature you think about going someplace else that at some place it's not the built environment somehow or the city I mean can you comment more on? No interesting yeah. Right so I was very frustrated in as a young professional working in a landscape architecture and planning firm that Ian McCarg was a partner in. Ian McCarg wrote a book called Design with Nature that was published in 1969 and the frustrating thing to me was we were working on in the office on projects for ecologically designed resort developments and new towns and meanwhile I was living in West Philadelphia and taking the bus every day down into the city and watching the city crumbling and it really bothered me that we weren't looking to apply these ideas of ecological planning and design to designing cities and making them more livable more beautiful more ecologically sustainable so I decided to write Design with Nature for the city which was my first book the Granite Garden urban nature and human design so for me the city is not separate from nature and I think that is really it is so ingrained in society to think of city and nature as separate but natural processes don't stop operating at city limits so if you think of nature as processes as opposed to a place then it opens up all kinds of opportunities for design and for thinking about how you can design with these ecological processes to create a more resilient more sustainable more economical city to build and sustain and more beautiful I love that idea about nature as processes there's something that's very powerful and potent about that and a Sunanda thinking about your work at the mediated matter group can you talk to that about nature as processes is that a way that you approach nature yeah definitely so I think in our group we tend to not just think about products but definitely how processes happen and how you can design with them over time and talking about what's nature and what's not one of the questions that comes up with us a lot is what is natural versus synthetic because right now we're in the age of synthetic biology so we are able now to edit genomes edit genes and then start working with those engineered systems you can basically design how a living organism interacts with its environment and that's sort of what I'm working on in particular in our group and when you think about that tiny level of a of a bacterium for example you can expand the same thinking across scales to how a large scale piece a printed piece a 3d printed piece for instance can interact with the environment around it and I just started reading in mccargs books actually and we were looking at if we're creating something that is biological and large scale in an environment that's changing of course all the time and it's exposed to sunlight to win patterns things like that what are all the different pieces of information we need to make this piece of architecture work with the environment around so one of the things we want to do is start looking at environmental DNA and look at the different species that exists there and see if instead of introducing entirely new species we can take those ones that already exist in the area and engineer them to work in a specific way so not just looking at GIS data or GPS data or win patterns but also what is already living there and really looking at sequencing that environmental DNA is that like microbiomes or is that like what is that yeah it's sort of the microbiome of an area yeah so there's a bunch of different techniques you can do to sample soil or water and look at all the different DNA fragments that exist and so you can have an idea of what different species are there and then hopefully in the future what different enzymes so specific patterns of DNA or RNA that you find no it's interesting you know and I mean so much of you know the work that you guys are doing for instance coming out of the mediated matter group is so interesting I mean thinking around materials and systems and ways of building that enable a structure to vary its properties based upon external environmental conditions I mean that's something that you know I feel very much like we you know are still living with you know these these principles of modernism right and these materials of concrete and steel and we very much kind of eschewed growth and change in the built environment in a way using these materials so it's interesting thinking about how a material could degrade perhaps in response to environmental conditions I love that you know nary always points out like our skin for instance can certainly vary its properties it can become more porous it can change its melanin content it can become more stiff you know all in response to to the environment and so how could our built environment potentially respond and replicate to some of that so it's it's exciting and for you Mikiang I mean you know kind of going back to this idea as well of nature and situating it within your work I mean what does it mean to you I think I think people use the word nature and it's there's a kind of romantic quality to it it's like this distant dream of something and I think it's a very dangerous position that we've taken that we are as human beings not part of the natural system and I think that's why we find ourselves where we are today that we are when we when we see something that's so distant and separated from us I think we can then do things that we do to the natural world we can pollute the environment we can and I think that that is really clear here in the United States where we have these national parks which are pristine they're perfect and we gate them off and and then we when we live in the city we don't really fully understand a lot of the systems there are some people who talk about how the the kind of little pieces of nature that we have in our backyard our gardens are the place where we learn about what our place is in the natural world but I think one plate one example that we found through our practice is that it's where young people play they understand I think from a very very young age when they're in diapers still they see a dandelion and then it's turns into kind of seeds and there's a way in which young children teach us about being in awe of that process but I'm always wanting to be very careful about being too I can't think of a better word than romantic because I think it's it makes it like a dream but it's it's real you know we don't take care of we're not resilient an example I can give is we're doing a project in a botanic garden and Charlottesville of Virginia and we showed the client this map of they were insisting on they only want native plant materials but if you look at a map of showing those plant zones in 2050 and then 2070 it's like completely different you know and I think it's a very for me it's like this question of like what is natural how can we be more nurturing to the environment that we live within and how can we also have a kind of more flexible definition of what that is because it's changing at a rapid pace and so it's it's a very complex question I think in nature is a word we don't actually use very often because it's too difficult to talk it's like beauty it's a very difficult world yeah yeah no it's and it's very loaded I mean there are certainly traditions that we're coming out of with very much a romantic idea around nature which I think is you know very rooted in like 19th century philosophy and theorists and think about like Walden you know in this very kind of romantic vision of you know living in with nature and whatnot that to a way it hasn't served us well I mean there there are some horticulturalists who talk about the city beautiful movement and that it actually has a kind of racist edge because it was defined the kind of beauty and the nature and bring that into the city was a way of actually pushing out underserved populations from the city and so I think that it's a word that's so loaded because some African-American communities look at it with suspicion almost but in other ways there's a lot of research which shows that even just one tree or even a painting of nature can make us feel just a little bit better you know physiologically so it's yeah you know and that's a thing I mean it seems like there certainly is a connection with health I mean do you find that in your work you've done work like with the Chicago Hospital I mean how does that factor in it's a huge sea change in the last there's some people in audience who I've worked with on a project here in Boston I'd say even 10 years ago there was this real sense with these kind of clinical environments every square footage every square foot matters you know and there's always this discussion of you spend five million dollars on a garden not that we've spent five million dollars on a garden here but five million dollars on a garden and then how many MRI machines can you purchase for that you're taking over 5,000 square feet in the city but there's a lot of research out there which which shows that within three to five minutes engagement with the natural world actually regularizes our heart rate normalizes our brain function everything in the body and it's something that we all know intuitively you walk along the beach and you suddenly it's something kind of transforms in your body but it took a lot of kind of psychological research to allow for because there's always a financial impact in the work we do you know how do you make that decision and for you I mean a lot of the work that you're doing in Philadelphia for instance right now you were just mentioning to me before the panel that you're about to begin writing a book I hope I can say that kind of summarizing the 30 years of the work that you've been doing with this river that's been covered over and what not and I can't help it even think about health in particular within that project I don't know if that's something that you're dealing with in particular absolutely I'm starting the book a couple hundred years before I entered the scene so it's it's important to think of places as it being in the process of becoming there they're they're not static and they're being shaped by natural processes and interplay with economic and social and cultural processes so in order to bring people into this 30-year project and reflect myself on what I've learned over that period of time I found I needed to go back a couple hundred years and talk about the processes that shaped this place over time that both it was West Philadelphia as an inner-city neighborhood there was a river that flowed through it that drained two thirds of West Philly that was buried in a sewer in the mid 19th century and over the course of the 20th century particularly post 1950s it became increasingly segregated racially to the point where it's extremely segregated racially but people today don't don't perceive that as having placed today having been it's the result of all of these things that have across time decisions that have been made I think this this this particular microphone doesn't really like me so there I'll back up and say that I mean it's it's it's a I discovered in and and I discovered this river I'll tell you how I discovered this river so I was a first-year graduate student in landscape architecture and I went to the supermarket one day and there was a huge hole that stretched for an entire block from building wall to building wall and I looked down and there was this big brown rushing river and I said whoa there are rivers underground we're walking on rivers and we don't know it we're literally walking on rivers that was in West Philly where I'm now working so I came back when I went to Penn to start working at teaching at Penn I took up the study of this buried river and noticed that there was a high correlation in low-income neighborhoods between vacant land and the buried floodplain the buried valley bottoms of this of this river so there's an association which I'm telling the story in my book there's an association between low-income people and particularly low-income people of pot of color and these buried valley bottoms which have a higher water table which if you go into the basements there are there's there's mold in the basements so you have these associated health issues and for the past 30 years I've been working with various people in these neighborhoods to study how it developed over time and to develop ideas about how to rebuild the neighborhoods and the vacant lands that exist in these neighborhoods while addressing restoring the the urban natural environment like the water quality that's the the city's rivers are polluted by combined sewer overflows so I've made some proposals about how to detain stormwater on these low-lying vacant lands in order to reduce combined sewer overflows and rebuild communities at the same time but but it's and this has resulted in policy changes in Philadelphia with their adoption of green infrastructure to deal with their combined sewer overflow problem but this this I found that over the 30 years this issue of people separating city and nature has been an obstacle to get through to persuade people to take these this approach to ecological design in the city and to solve multiple challenges with single solutions and I think that idea again of like a process of place being something that's constantly becoming and I love the idea that your your starting point for your book is in that moment when you saw this rushing river under the street you know it's looking back a hundred two hundred years you know that ultimately there are all these incremental decisions and choices that are made along the way which end up resulting in the current state of things well actually it does start with me looking down and then everyone my readers go down into the wormhole and travel back in time to discover a man named John Guy who was an African American dump master who was charged with filling in superintending the fill to fill in the valley bottom after the sewer had been buried so that brings race and race and river together I hope that's gonna be a part of your book you know there's just connecting with that there's a project that we're working on Richmond which is the lumpkin jail and it is was one of the primary locations where African slaves abducted African slaves were detained and sold and they they have the foundation and so they found that actually the slaves were detained in the lowest part in the Chaco Valley region and so when they were they just projecting the like 20 year 50 year storm they were in these prisons but they were also the water level was kind of a chest high and then people who were running this system were okay maybe he's just telling me I've spoken but I do think like there maybe there is a common interest that we hold in the the relationship the cultural relationship with the natural world and that the separation or the romanticism of that has led us to where we are today another interesting story that we just read about last month is when African women were abducted in Africa in South Africa and they were brought here they actually hid seeds in their hair so that they could prepare to grow rice when they came here to Virginia and so there's a very powerful narrative that all plants have and all systems have and I'm fascinated by that you know and Sunanda what do you think about this idea of you know this the separation of you know the human and the natural world how do we bring that together how does design work to bring that together yeah I think hmm okay I think right now I've been focusing a lot on not the human because so much of nature is not human or not human shaped so I think it is really interesting to think about social dynamics and all the things that humans have created in human history but I've been sort of stuck in this place right now to thinking about earth history so billions of years and humans have just come in the last sort of second of that and there's so many things that talk about what you're saying about you know even how seeds travel from continent to continent that are really interesting to see and humans are definitely impacting environment really fast and that's something to be aware of and I think that's where design starts to come in so in the work that we're doing right now we take a lot of inspiration from what's been happening over the last hundreds or thousands or even millions of years and then see what does that mean in the context of design today so we're doing a project right now looking at natural pigments so like melanin for instance and melanin has existed for millions and millions of years and it's been found in you know squid ink sacks from the Jurassic period for instance and it's the exact same chemical structure that exists today in squid ink sacks and melanin is so related to personal identity and racial identity and things like that that sometimes it's easy to think about it as a human thing but really it exists in all the kingdoms of life so I think when I think about issues like this I take a step back away from the human away from our species our kingdom or everything and then see what unites across all of biodiversity and how can we think of design looking across biodiversity I love that so I'm very excited for this project I look forward to reading seeing what comes out of your thesis you know and thinking of this idea of biodiversity and whatnot I mean of course I think all of us were perhaps unsurprised but a bit jarred by the IPCC report that just came out in October telling us that you know in 20 years time or so there could potentially be very systemic and catastrophic changes to the world as we know it so thinking about this idea of climate change where does design fit into this and I'm gonna leave that open to any of you you know I mean what is design's role within where you know where we find ourselves currently I think design has the capacity to teach us to be better stewards of the environment and we haven't been very good and that catastrophic thing is actually happening now you know it's just so incremental that we don't notice it it's sort of like you know I look in the mirror and I every day and I don't notice the new wrinkles that show up on my face as I age and I kind of equate that with the environment that we slowly accept these unbelievable things that are happening to the environment because they are happening so slowly and you know I really believe although I think there it's important to have a kind of big vision and big plans but that a lot of cities are doing this now they are legislating ways of integrating at the more granular level ways of kind of trying to rectify some of the some of the resiliency issues that we have not been paying attention to and so it's it's just like block by block every project to try to understand where is water coming from how does the wind move through the site and and then I think tying that that's separating that investigation and that design strategy from people but understanding kind of teaching people not only you a part of the environment are you responsible for taking care of the environment but you are part of this whole system and there's an integration yeah but you have to tell it as a story it can't be an academic thing or you know I was just reading I used to be a musician and I was trying to figure out I was just reading some medical papers about this I might blow your mind which is that sound in you probably already know this sound does not exist except in your brain it's just molecules moving around and it's not until it enters your brain that it becomes those sound waves become meaningful and it's not even just entering your brain it has to get to this part of your brain called the amygdala it's like going around and I feel like our job as landscape architects is to not just teach people because that doesn't get into the amygdala it's kind of making meaningful connections and that that's what design has a capacity to do at all levels I mean Christina Kim who is not here tonight because she's in LA but she is a person who understands the natural processes and her work even though it's fashion design kind of connects us with her with with our bodies with the natural world and then with the people who make the clothing and I just think it's so wonderful that there are three women sitting here and I think that that is if we can say anything I think women are capable of think doing three things at once we're constantly doing that I think design has a lot to offer in terms of mitigation and adaptation to climate change but one of the big challenges is making adaptation and mitigation to climate change pleasurable right because I think just putting on a hair shirt is not you know it's not gonna get everybody's buy-in but designers should really put their minds to what you were just talking about about making these natural processes and social and cultural processes that contribute to climate change tangible and then also to find ways on all levels from product design to landscape architecture architecture all the various different design fields have their own contribution to making the public aware of climate change and and action being action-oriented but also making it pleasurable I love that idea of pleasure you know and and and kind of picking up on a bit of even what both of you were talking about you know of all these different design disciplines and us as humans really you know integrating and being a part of it I keep thinking and coming back to even this idea of collaboration you know of course it's collaboration with one another and it's collaboration with nature and that obviously you know we're all a part of this and we're all in it together how does collaboration for instance work with you guys it mediated matter you know within your practice you know thinking about approaching some of these really salient issues yeah I think we so we think about collaboration all the time every single day and also one area always calls productive tension so in our group we're like the rest of our department we're very interdisciplinary so my background personally is in biology if you couldn't tell and neuroscience and I joined nary's group was the first biologist there but before then there were mechanical engineers computer scientists and computational designers product designers and architects so already there was quite a large array of people of different backgrounds and I think every single project we do we try to figure out every single aspect of it so that there needs to be novelty or some sort of complexity coming from biology from mechanical engineering from design but I think design is generally the umbrella under which we think of everything else and so I wasn't trained as a designer so I'm sort of learning as I go over the last four years but one thing that I've noticed that design really has to offer in terms of making change not just for climate change but also to address many many other issues is designers seem to be very good at making frameworks and synthesizing things so you can put on different hats and you can see where paths are going and where they intersect and without committing to only one type of technique technology approach or mindset you can sort of move in between recruit people from different fields and start to work to a common design goal so I've seen a lot of how design can really make people come together and make people come together to address complexity in a lot of ways so I want to take a step back for a moment and shared with us that fantastic story of you seeing the river that kind of seeded this whole project now that you've dedicated yourself to for 30 years or so and Mckyoung you mentioned that you used to be a musician so what where was the spark for landscape architecture does music play a part in any of this yeah I think it's really I mean there's the obvious connection between music and designing the environment where music is an immersive experience it's you can it's I think I entered design thinking about it design in a different way because in music you can close your eyes and enjoy the music more when I was in design school which was a long time ago visual visualization and I think it still is was so important but in landscape it's a multi-sensory experience you smell things it's constantly evolving experience I think one of the things that we do when we teach we try to teach through pleasure or what is to redefine what beauty means in the natural world in the landscapes that surround us whether it's an urban plaza it's a university quadrangle or its botanic gardens we still battle a little bit of this kind of picturesque notion of beauty in the landscape which is so and then we also have a very old-fashioned view of what landscape architecture should be today and I would say it frustrates me a little bit because if architects were still holding up other historical architects from the early 20th century as we do with Frederick Lohmstead we would just kind of look look a scans at them and so I think there is this kind of resistance to looking forward but in our landscape we try to teach our clients the importance of process so that the trees start small and then it grows larger it doesn't start large or that grasses turn brown in the winter and some things actually die and don't come back or we design playgrounds that degrade and don't come back and and just I think that's an important lesson about our own bodies the environment the natural world is that it's not permanent it's not the I think this new notion of beauty is the imperfection itself and we all learn that as we get older that it's not that kind of perfection that that makes the beauty but it's the complexity as you had said earlier yeah you know there's God there's so much that you just said that I wanted I know I'm like how do I pick one I mean you know for one and I think just you know coming off the heels of this exhibition that I'd worked on thinking about sensory design and and multi-sensory experience I mean it's interesting even when you just mentioned that and thinking about being out in the landscape immediately I sort of close my eyes because there is something that we live in such an ocular centric world that everything is so everything is so based on the visual you know and we have our social media feeds and we're constantly snacking on images and you know and whatnot but there is something that is so ultimately human about our senses and particularly about being I hate to say it out in nature but honestly anywhere you know being aware of sounds and smells and and whatnot and you know and I think that all of that is a part of what we potentially experience is beautiful I think beauty is incredibly important within all of this work is even an entry point I mean when you talk and about this need to make mitigation and adaptation pleasurable for instance there's something about beauty enabling that at least providing an entry point into some of that I think often about a lot of the work that the media and matter group is doing and oh my god I mean so much of what you guys put out is unbelievably beautiful so I mean immediately you're drawn to it but then all of a sudden it opens up all of these other ideas which is what's fascinating so I don't really have a question I'm just I think that's a really good point because there are some in landscape architecture we we walk this fine line and I remember there's a landscape architect who slipped my name a slit my mind but he said to me when I was much younger he said as landscape architect you have to choose if you're gonna be a human are you gonna try to be like God you're gonna try to make nature and you'll never win but I think you know it's the natural world is everywhere around us and it's I think that the idea of beauty is another word it's like takes will take us like three weeks to to unpack that word but it's it's it's what designers do they bring this kind of tapestry the and I think when you work in the civic realm and bringing the resiliency the the cultural the social you know our social infrastructure is crumbling in America we're not connecting with each other and I don't I think that they're all interconnected you can heal the environment you can heal people's minds and then you can actually get people strangers to start talking to each other all in one that's what design is it's that layered approach yeah of conversation of dialogue of framing of synthesizing ideas oftentimes I even think of design as an interface or as a bridge of you know with very complicated ideas let's say in translating revolutions that are happening in you know the scientific realm or whatnot and they make a much you know they make all of it much more approachable for us but taking a step back sorry did you want to say something yeah I mean just our mics yeah related to that I just wanted to say that there is a certain amount of urgency that I I feel when designers speak listening to all of you really there's sort of the there's a lot of responsibility and urgency that some change needs to be made and designers will be part of that solution or be part of the change in some way and I find that super admirable because a lot of the work that is done in different realms of science or engineering even are kept within labs or within certain environments they don't necessarily get out and a lot of what I've seen designers do is bringing things that are being being made now different revolutions that are happening and bringing them into the rest of the public context and so that starts to really shape what happens in the future and I yeah I was agreeing also with the idea of pleasure and beauty as well I think in a lot of the videos that you that you see of our work there's things like cells growing or there's a plate changing color and a lot of these of biologists would look at and be like well that looks really weird but then you tell them what it is and it's a simple blue-white screen or something like that so it's something that biologists do every day but a designer looking at it made it look something totally different and it made people want to engage with it and learn more about it and start to think about it as something that can actually be a tool and that I think is cannot be understated how important that is and that's interesting too I mean for you as a trained biologist and neuroscientist I mean coming into this space and now thinking about designs much more you know I really I think that so much of it really even I'm constantly reminded of E.O. Wilson's book Conceliants which is this idea of kind of this integration of of disciplines if you will and I really feel like we're beginning to even see some of this Conceliants between like biology and design and engineering and you know things really are coming together and are you know they're no longer things that are existing in these silos that's right I think that that the research that's being done is so important because it gives us both the information we need to do our work more effectively but it also empowers the design because it you know a lot of the people that who are our clients you know there it's a financial decision for them many times that's the foundation of how they make decisions and when there's scientific information that tells us about how our neurological systems are working and how it's actually strengthened by something that we've done in the design and that's kind of proven through research that supports what we do and what we can do and expands are the way we can empower people and even and touching on something that you mentioned of and this was in our earlier conversation of even thinking of design almost as a research process you know thinking of it as kind of a form of research can you talk about that a little bit for you and your practice and you can use my mic for me design is a form of research I do what I call action research which is it's important to say that I don't just test ideas in practice I generate ideas through practice because it's through design practice so design is a is a verb as well as a noun and and it's yeah I can't imagine I'm not an armchair theorist I can't imagine my my my work in practice drives what I write about the five years I spent in practice before I started teaching really has shaped the kinds of research questions I ask because the the work I'm that I do the research I do and the writing I do are to facilitate to to make it easier for practitioners to practice but also to reach the general public about what's possible through through design and I love that idea of generating ideas through design and design is being a verb there's something very active oh that's really important because it's I think that a lot of theorists don't think of design is generating ideas it's and putting yourself it's more like well for me West Philadelphia in my work in West Philadelphia has been a laboratory for sure I hope that I've made the place better has a result of my work and my research there too but it is a laboratory and I am testing ideas but I find that more times the majority of time it's the generation of ideas it's not just the testing I may start out by wanting to test some ideas through practice and then I discover something even more interesting than whatever it was I set out to test do you do that in your practice I mean do you find that ideas are generated through your practice yeah I mean I when I first started my practice I I was able to do that financially because I got a teaching job and so there was a kind of blurring of those I was living in Providence I had a little garage studios students would come over and do things and so I think our practice was built on that kind of the studio model and so I've always called our practice a kind of multifaceted collaborative but it's it's we're put to shame by the kind of range but we do have architects graphic designers industrial designers and landscape architects in our practice and we do believe in this kind of smaller pool that that creates more innovative results because people we we argue a lot and it's a it's a kind of like it's not we're working with somebody who I won't I probably shouldn't say this in public but it's really on the back of my mind who's you know has a very top-down structure to their office and it's so strange to me that everyone's like yes yes yes that's right to this one person and to me that feels so dangerous because I don't know if one person can innovate for 50 60 years and I certainly don't know if I can but you know I think that it is this kind of intertwining it is a dangerous place when academics the the kind of pursuit of ideas and the pursuit of making real places are so separated should be the same because in the sciences and medical practices they would never separate those things and so I see him coming closer together I see the most interesting designers actually through their work they're not necessarily writing white papers but they are through their work research and post occupancy report reports understanding how to make the world a better place to live well I saw in when I was in in graduate school that Ian McCargs he was the chairman of the department but he also had a firm and that I later came to appreciate when I started working in the firm how ideas were were explored in the studios at the school and in courses and then taken and put into practice and and worked on further in the office and there are firms that many of them National Design Award winners where the principles are both their academic practitioners so they are both they're both teaching and there and there's an intimate connection between their teaching and what they're doing in the and the ideas that they're exploring in the office because the teaching and it allows them to explore ideas that you're just too constrained in a practice so when I left practice and decided to start teaching I wrote my first book The Granite Garden Urban Nature and Human Design inspired by McCargs book Design with Nature which generated a practice for him so he already had his practice and some of the chapters in the book take work that was being done in the office as part of the check but some of the chapters are studio projects that were being done in the school and when he published that book he opened up a whole new word of world of practice for himself and had clients coming who wanted who were pre-selecting themselves to come to him and say I want to I want ecological design you know I want to do design with developers I said you know I want to build a new town that's that will grow up in this in this woodlands and and be an ecological city so when I started when I wrote The Granite Garden I was thinking of how to write a book that would create a clientele who wanted to hire me to work I wanted to do which was to design to do urban ecological design and I had to decide I wrote the book while I was started as a young assistant professor and when it came out it was reviewed in the New York Times book review and people started saying so do you have a practice and I had to make a decision about whether to open an office or or not and I decided that I could that I wanted to pursue an academically based practice where my salary at the university would support the kinds of projects I wanted to do where I I didn't have to find a client to support those projects so my teaching my research is was very much practice-based as well as theoretically based but there are a number I mean I just can just go down the list of so many firms that are really academic practices where they're their teacher practitioners they may not have time to also write but there's this generative energy that goes between the university and the continual meeting and dialogue with young people and their ideas I remember Lori Olan told me once it's Lori Olan a National Design Award you should be okay Lori Olan told me once that when he taught a posed a problem in for a studio class that he already knew there were the a solutions the B and I don't mean a B like a is better than B but as different so there's the a type solution there's the B type solution there's a C type solution and then there's the X which comes out of you know some way out of some students mind which is totally different than anything that he could have imagined and that this was really kept him on his toes and regenerated him and he'd go back into the office and take these ideas with it yeah so keeping us on our toes I want to throw it out to our audience members does anyone have a question for our panelists this evening yep we have a question over here hi and I'm again thanks for sharing in terms of urban design this kind of area so Kevin heatherton his article talking about the rhythm and noise he views that the city is an archive archive so the derelict of the city is kind of the city of the rhythm and it is encouraged people to visit the derelict of the cities so I want to know how your view about the derelicts of the cities and if there is if there is a derelict where you change it and how you evaluate the value of it thanks so you mean derelict yeah derelicts oh well I'll answer the first I'll speak to the first part of your question which is about the soundscape of the city which I think is extraordinarily important and there's a man named Murray Schaefer who wrote a book called the tuning of the world that was first published in I think it was the early 80s and he then went on to found a soundscape Institute and studied the soundscape of various cities it was really important work and there's an ecological acoustical ecology association so I had an experience once in Paris in Park de la Vallette where they had the sound installation and I was walking through the park I absolutely agree with you that the city is an archive of sound no question it's an archive period but certainly of sound and I was walking through these sound and various sound installations and I got to this one part of the park and I heard birds chirping I looked around I didn't see any birds and I realized there were speakers in the shrubs that were projecting this the sounds of birds and I kept walking down the path and I noticed that there were these these speakers that were like triangular so that it came you got the sound from in front and then as you pass by you got it coming from back down in this place we've got it down now we sat down in this place I sat down in this place and and I was listening and I realized I couldn't distinguish between what I was hearing from the speakers and what I was hearing from the environment around me and part of la Vallette is right by the boulevard Paris Frick which is the belt highway that goes around Paris and so there was the sound of trucks and cars and nearby and but my ear got tuned in listening I must have sat there for about 15 minutes then I got up and left and I walked out of the park into the city and I heard the city in an entirely different way this soundscape within the park the sound installation had tuned to my ear and I began to hear the city the base rhythm of that neighborhood and then I began to hear the syncopation and then I began to hear other melodies coming in and out like they're not really melody but they were whatever you could call them I don't know I'm not a musician but it lasted for about a day and then it dissipated but I've always wanted to get it back I don't know how to get back that tuning that occurred as a result of this of this design of the sound installation in this park and I think this is the kind of thing that also mcyoung was talking about earlier about the power of design to heighten our sense of the perception of our senses to hear and see things that were otherwise invisible or in audible to us and through design one can can can really tap into the potential for human for human perception that we don't we don't have ordinarily so anyways that wasn't about derelict maybe somebody else can pick up about the derelict I don't really know how to answer your question either but I do it I don't know if it's connected somehow in my brain it feels somewhat connected that my son is a music composer he's studying to do that so he's really it's very abstract and he showed me the difference between sounds that surround us now which are pretty much digitized and when you actually see what they look like they're actually digital digitized images because they simplify the sound waves whereas sounds that come from directly from an instrument or from my voice coming to yours and they are actually these curved shapes and I would love to have somebody do a study to see how that's affecting our bodies and our our minds that we're more the sounds that we hear in the city are these kind of stepped shaped sounds when you visualize it versus the sounds that that may be coming from nature or more direct connections to each other that are actually you know I didn't believe it when I saw it and I saw my son let's zoom in a little bit more to that curved those curved shapes but there is a difference that there's this kind of simplification of sound in the city which is probably different I mean I don't know if you know the composer John Cage and so since him there are all these other young composers nowadays if you're interested in learning look at who's won the Rome Prize in music composition the last four or five years and you'll see they're also crossing a lot of boundaries but they're interested in some of the questions you've asked and probably be able to answer it a little bit better than me any other questions yeah I'm wondering if any of the panelists would be able to talk about a nice panelist I've been talking about so yeah just the dynamic whether it's a project or an idea so could you expand on that a little bit the historical landscape so whether it's to say a historic landscape that was designed by a significant designer or specific occurred in this place or a group of people that that occupied this place whatever it may be versus the tension of a Danish colleague of mine spinning var Anderson has written a very interesting article about this and if you go to a website Marna's garden calm and one of the on the website that I have a bunch of publications that he wrote that have been translated into English and one of them is on preservation where he distinguishes between many different several different kinds of approaches to dealing with historical landscapes one is reconstruction where you try to I'm not going to get it exactly right where the idea is that it's it's an exact reconstruction and there's not much room for design because he says this is the task of the technician you know the historic preservationist technician the next is restoration where he says design begins to come in to play and he's got one more and then the final one is he what he calls free renewal where there's it may be a new place within a historical landscape where the designer works within the spirit of the original but with a sense of freedom and renewal and in dialogue with contemporary design but it's a really it's I didn't do justice to his article I would I highly recommend it you know I think all lands for preservation all landscapes are historical and so our work is about uncovering that history and interpreting it and abstracting it and that that's another level of education want to teach people I think that's a whole other kind of panel but it's I think the more we know about history more politicians would know about history the better off we would be and the history is like ecology it's not fixed right it's a constantly evolving moment it's very artificial when you learn history you know and this year I just think how long a year is even this month or a day right so it has kind of artificial slice to it and I we always try to think of our work as uncovering current current cultural conditions and how it relates to the history of the place because there's always a connection but I don't believe that I do believe that you look forward you know that that creativity is about understanding what that means to look forward that and that always is about honoring the place and where it was before yeah just to underscore that the landscape architect Ian McCargg said every place is in the process of becoming that is actually that is a great way to end so if we have one more question we do have time for one final question yeah yeah I have a question to the panelist about in practice of landscape handcraft plays an important role and computer techniques plays another important role if we look at the picture of 50 years ago when architects and landscape architects work they draw the drawings by hand they build clay models but nowadays people will like to see and the fancy digital renderings cool digital modeling that's the tendency of the techniques so I want to hear your visions about in the future in the practice of design what kind of role handcraft versus computer technique I think it's both I think young people have a tall challenge in front of them because you have to learn both it's a kind of intertwining and learning which tools are most effective for what because digital digital technology is still not good enough in certain things there the kind of manual technology still trumps digital technology but I love digital technology it lets us build in ways that we never could build before and it also coming from music to design I think I just learned last year how to make that translation a little clearer in my mind because when you play music you are making decisions live you know you're playing the note you can change it as you're performing it and in design it's often there's like six degrees of separation till you've actually gotten the project built and there is something very nice about Rhino grasshopper technology is that we actually send that file directly we bypass a lot of middle people middlemen and we're able to actually get as close it's like playing music is as close to the material and the fundamentals of making it and so I think eventually those two technologies will come together but I don't see why it has to be neither or you know I think they're both amazing and there's a way that they can interface with each other or at least that's what we do yeah I can attest to that in school right now we're definitely doing both and there's the added challenge of or added opportunity rather of when you find a technology that isn't working the way you want it to work you can write something new and especially at MIT I mean you obviously know this there's a lot of opportunity to have the freedom to do that and all the tools are available so some of what we're doing right now is modeling not just you know a structure and how it responds to sunlight for instance but can you model a single cell and how that goes into a colony of cells and how that colony of cells could grow into a living material so there's many different scales you can look at there's different sorts of you know you can use Rhino grasshopper you can just start writing things in Python there's a lot of different ways to go about it but at the end of the day I think every time we're in a meeting we always have paper and pens because that gets everything across fastest you know I think the digital technology that the paper and pen is a more collaborative tool making physical models that's a way in which everyone at the table can actually draw something where's a computer is scaleless it's you know it's one person and so there's strengths to both the motto of MIT is meant at Manus mind and hand and there is something really important about discovering through that relationship between manipulation and practice and thinking that's very generative and I don't see really I didn't grow up in with computers I didn't it wasn't until I was well into my career that I began working with digital with the digital and I still you know mainly I imagine things and I work with my research assistants who actually implement and implement them but but I do use I do do photography and I do use Photoshop and it's extraordinary some things that you can do with the digital and so I echo my co-panelists here and it all depends and we are just so lucky to have that range of things to work with from the digital to the pencil but also it's you know the digital involves the hand too and with that we will call it a night thank you to everyone for joining us this evening thank you to our fantastic panelists


What's going on guys? It's your boy DPJ here today with another Destiny video and in today's Destiny video I'm going to attempt to solo this week's weekly nightfall and we have Void, we have Solar and we have GuruRanjit and it is Taniks the motherfucking sky.  I mean yesterday I ran it with two of my friends and it was a pain in the arse with one. What did I get? I got the 55A All Fate Vanguard Pulse Rifle and I also got the Funderlord. Would you believe it? After Zerbalty I got it crazy. Now I kept dying because, well I'm getting shot by certain enemies. I jump backwards and because Grand is on you will get one shot in midair by absolutely everything so I just kept dying and dying and dying. I felt like I literally, I don't even know I was talking about my team.  I really am. I really am. Now I'll show you guys my class setup. What we have here. I'm using the Vision of Confluence because I love it. It's Solar and it's a beast but I also have my Skylar which you can see there which is Void. My only Void scout rifle. I've also got my Fang of Eeyout. I'm using my Effedict Spear and my Gallagalla Gallagallahorn. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Stop him from stealing the tar. And the Vision of Confluence is probably my favourite scout in the game and because it's Solar, Fully Auto, I absolutely love it.  They're going to kill me. They're going to get me. They're going to get me. Run away, run away, run away. That's close. But yeah, my Solar scout rifle. Scout rifle to me is probably the best all round PvE weapons in the game. And I wanted one of every burn. I've got my Vision which is Solar. I've got my Fang of Eeyout which is Arc and I also have my Skylar.  Yeah, I've got that which is Void. Now I've got that from the Lighthouse, from the Lighthouse Chest. In the first few weeks trials have started to come. I knew you could get the weapons, a depth version of the weapons with Void or Solar or Arc with burn types really. And I always wanted a scout rifle with Void and that was my chance. And I think I got that in the second week. I also wanted as well, I wanted a Solar Handcannon because I've got my Word of Claw out which is Void. I've got my Fatebring which is Arc. I wanted a Solar Handcannon. I knew the dual of Osiris. It was a chance. I just couldn't get it. I kept getting it but I kept getting the Void.  So keep up. And now trials like every other PVP type it's just all over. PVP now is, it's Blinky Shark on it. It's Void. It's Void. It's the Fawn. Oh it's the last word. That's what it is. That is what it is. There's nothing else. Hardly anyone uses any of the weapons. To be honest I played Skirmish last night and me and my buddies, none of us were using Fawns or last words. And none of you are the team mate. None of you are the team mate. And it was the best, the best PVP's been for me in so long. It's unbelievable. And I just cannot wait for 2.0 patch to drop the Handcannon's Fawn.  But yeah. When that happens, when 2.0 drops I will be doing plenty more PVP. Just going to get rid of that dude because he's a beast. Yeah I'll be doing plenty more PVP when that happens. So stay tuned for that. Now if you guys do like live gameplay so let me know down below and if you could drop a like. I would have probably, she hates support. Even though I'm not allowed to ask for likes. I mean like I don't know why.  That's what you're saying.  You didn't get hate.  It's as simple as that. Shit.  I was thinking yeah. Now listen to this. Listen to this theory. Now we all know the Galarhorn is getting a nerf. Wolfpack rounds or whatever it is is getting a nerf in the 2.0 patch. Basically drops week before. Probably the same week the Taken King comes out. We all know this. We all also know about upgrading or updating yeah one exotic weapons.  You'll get weapons in the game which you'll find which are pretty much more powerful than them straight away. After that as soon as you get into the Taken King. If this is the case and we can find Rocket Launcher's more powerful than the Galarhorn or when we first get into the game which is what we're going to need to carry progress with destroy story and shit. What was the point in nerfing the Galarhorn? You know it's going to be pointless and useless without. It's going to be what is it going to be pointless and useless without the update. I mean it's attack values are going to be weak. There ain't going to be completely pointless but it's going to be weak so there's going to be no need for you to use it. I mean it's not going to deal as much damage to enemies as what other weapons you can get. So why why nerf it if they don't plan on updating its 2.0 later? Why nerf the wolf at once if they don't plan on updating its 2.0 later? That doesn't make sense to me. That doesn't make sense to me but who knows I could be a billion miles off. I'm normally correct. Don't mean to blow my own trunk people. I am but not always sometimes. I mean I was right about upgrading all the exotics. I mean I was right about the exotic vaults and so many people said it wouldn't happen. So yeah we'll see.  Obviously Scorch kind of got you.  That's where my Scorch kind of bitched and motherfucking Gala horn.  You need to teleport. Well that went that far though.  There you go. That's one there. Shit I'm good. Wow I'm getting pumped here. You know what?   And if you want some tea you can have some. There you go. They gave me a dog probably yapping in the background someone walking past my door.  It's dog so lad. That's what you know I had a massive dog. I mean like a full black German shepherd. He looked like a wolf. I loved him. He died September of last year. He died here a lot. He was really old.   But we got rid of that. That's why we died.  No I'll be getting a cat. I've seen cats twice the size of him and all he does is he yaps.  Dying into animal cruelty at all.  Not really but yeah. All he does is he yaps. Anyone comes to the door? Yelp. Yelp.  Couldn't do nothing.    Playing about. Any heavy drop there? No I didn't. No heavy drops here. Here are these guys. 20 drops. And the lowest one across the other side of the room. I'm gonna use that other Gallivanan that was coming down. I'm gonna use my Gallivanan on these. Fucking. There's that guy there which I will need to use a Gallivanan too because he's just an absolute animal. Where is he? Where is he?   Okay I might do something here. I've got Gallies. I've got synths. I've got plenty of them. I'm not gonna use them unless I have to. Don't move your legs man.  You hear something coming? There we are. There we are.  Every angle here.   Woo. See what we can do now. Plenty of special ammo over there. So that ain't gonna be a problem. I'm wasting final round bullets here.  I'll get one now. I might have to drop my bubble here. I might have to drop my bubble here.  Got a bit of him. Drop it.   My shield. That was close. That was super close.  See what? I got two fucking. Anyone dropping this special here? Indeed they did. Nice. Might be able to take out this fucker and we might be able to see. I dropped that bubble in the whole of a place to be honest. All over place.   That fail. What a fail. What a fail.     I had to start. It's a nice little heavy ammo now.  Bitch. Somebody even missed him three shots though. It was open for the killing.   He's dead now. No way to go from that. I've got three rockets for him when he spawns in the end of the tunnel. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna switch to a shotgun. I'm gonna switch to a shotgun. Just because there's more close water battles in this final room than news. Anything else? Let's get rid of that. Let's get rid of that.  I had to get rid of them. Have to. Anything else? No. Okay. So I've been recording for 12 minutes. I'm actually getting through it faster than I thought we were gonna, to be honest. To be honest, I didn't, I never thought I was gonna make it this far. I mean I was failing so hard just now. I mean I was tired.   Oh my controller weren't working properly. I was lagging. I don't know what the exclusive did we use nowadays. There, what were happening to me.    So I landed my Galahorn shot and it was somehow. Did he move straight away? Wow. They're hitting me hard.  She's gonna be around this corner. I think he might be. See him up here. This is around that corner. Let's see. He's in here.  Okay, so I've got three Galahorn shots. What do I do here? Do I fight these three? Then re-symph. That's what I'm gonna do. I've got my bubble. It should be okay. I've got my shotgun to sit inside my bubble. I should be okay.   I dropped my bubble when I need to. I know he spawns here. Still got my bubble. Wow, I think I might die if I pop it. He's teleported down there. See if he has. You know what I'm just gonna quickly symph. See what I can do. I mean I ain't gonna use my bubble here until I really have to because where's he going? Where'd he go? He's got around here. He's got my bubble. Where is he? Is he behind there?  Dammit, I dropped that. Right there.  One shot. He absolutely destroyed me. Three Galahorn's are shuffling. What do you think? He's dead. Simple as that. I got plan C. See it again. Now you guys know. If you guys have been watching my night full rewards or results. I get that weapon every time. You know what? I ain't gonna dismantle it. I'm not gonna.  I mean I'm gonna have about, I've got two then. I'll have two. I'll keep two. This game's gonna stop giving them me.  I mean like how many, how many plan C's does one need? How many plan C's does one motherfucking need? See all my band is there.  Don't seem to want to drop for me. Plan C again man. I've had this now. I'm not kidding. At least 15 times in the past few months. I mean every time I get it I add a couple of digits down to that but yeah. Guys that is it. That is what I got from the night full this week soloing it. If you guys soloed it let me know down below in that comment section. Also let me know what you got. If you guys like this live PVP or PvE gameplays let me know. I do plan doing plenty of PVP when the 2.0 patch comes. I probably do one or two more exotic wager bounty thingy things where I put my exotics under the line for a challenge put forth to me by you guys but we're just going to have to wait and see. But guys I hope you enjoyed the video. Do drop a like. I'd appreciate the support. Thanks for stopping by as always and peace out until next time. Peace!


Hey fellow buddies. Thanks for watching. Okay. I mentioned secret in the title Not clickbait. All right. I really have something that I was like should I share this or should I keep it to myself? And I'm like, I'm gonna share it. Of course. I share everything with you guys. So I had a listing on eBay I had it listed on Mercari and it's kind of been sitting and I've been getting all kinds of messages from People on Mercari saying I just want one doll And I'm like, well, I don't want to list them separately like how much could I really get for one doll? And I'm like, well, what would you give me for one doll?  It's just not worth it And then I thought After I got I don't know Probably five to ten different messages asking for different dolls from this lot I thought, you know what? I'm just gonna separate them I'm gonna put my price on them where I think that I could make a little money and still be happy and Just kind of see where it goes. It's kind of going to be a test and It was a success. So I'm gonna share that with you guys I'm also gonna share with you what sold on Mercari for the week second week of lockdown. Um, I Just did my video of eBay and Poshmark. What sold the first week of Or I'm sorry the second week of lockdown and I'm doing these a little bit differently I'm showing you everything that I sold just because I kind of want to Give you guys an idea of how things are a little bit different right now With everything that's going on but I sold an item auction style for over $400 So go check out that video if you want to see what it is. Alright, so I'm gonna show you a few items that I sold on Mercari Every item was a toy Every item was a toy toys sell on Mercari And then I'm gonna show you my little secret of what I did. It's not really a secret But I guess I could call it a trick or a tip that I kind of caught myself off guard and learned by Just trying something new and I'm so glad I did because brage sale season this summer I'm gonna show you guys what I'm gonna be looking for. All right. Let's look All right This is not the secret. This is just a bow. Well this shopkins. Oh, let me make sure that I put it on screen share I did not Whoo, I'm glad I checked you guys would have just seen my face for 10 minutes And then I would have been like, oh no, I got to do the video over Okay, so this shopkins items these are shopkins happy family Playset lot and they're just like little shopkins like there's a bed a little like a stove with the accessories And some of these are hard to find I picked these up at a garage sale And you can see like there's little Like little teeny ones. I don't know what those are But there's a toilet. They're so fun.  They're super cute Garage sale it was a bulk buy So I probably got this for a couple bucks and I sold it for 45 dollars and I did offer free shipping on this most of my items on Mercari I do and Build the shipping into the price and then I offer free shipping and I ship my items from pirate ship The next item I sold was this Ideal toys doll. I wasn't sure if this was Tammy or who it was So I just put ideal toys doll and she sold within a day for $19 and free shipping Maybe I underpriced her. I don't know she had three likes But sold in a day I got her at a garage sale in a bulk buy of Barbies and stuff like this and so I had less than a buck in her So I was happy with that The next item is this vintage Sungold Malibu skipper. I had Quite a few of these this one sold again Within a day for $17 and free shipping. I think I had an offer within an hour and I Think I accepted it the next day because I wanted to see if anything else came in overnight and She had five watchers. So Yeah, and she's in pretty good condition.  Here's my secret This lot I had listed for $88. I had it for 100, but I was running a 12% off sale So $88 and the buyer paid shipping on eBay Now I think on Mercari. I had it for $100 with free shipping But you can see I had all these brass dolls and everybody's like I just want the fourth one over in the silver outfit Or I just want the cheerleader or I want the one with the angel shirt and I'm like, oh my goodness I don't want to separate them They're like well you could just put an X through the one that sold and I'm like yeah but then I got to change the listing and basically I was just too lazy to do it and It's been listed for a while and I just kept getting these People on Mercari not eBay on Mercari asking me to do this So I was like, okay, you know what? I'm just gonna take the time and I'm just gonna separate them and Basically, I took each doll and I listed it separately on Mercari and then I cross posted them to eBay They are selling faster on Mercari So I have sold within like an hour I think two of them sold within an hour and the one had sold the next day So I sold three super fast So the first one I sold is this one I thought since they didn't have clothes and you know, they are from 2001 But they don't have any clothes So I didn't think that they had that much value Individually, but I was like, you know, I'll slap $15 with free shipping and just see what happens. This one sold super fast This one sold for 14 with free shipping she had some like weird stuff on her scalp Right here, I don't know if they like put baby powder on it or what but I I did list her a little bit lower for that reason Maybe it's paint. I have no idea, but these were in played with conditions. So $14 Free shipping so basically what it cost me is 10% goes to Mercari and Then it cost me about three dollars and fifty cents to ship and I have less than a dollar in each item so I'm looking at between eight and twelve dollars profit on each one of these dolls This one sold for 18 with free shipping. So already I've made over $30 on just three of the dolls. That's profit guys And I had it listed for 88 and the buyer paid shipping but eBay fees are a little more and there's 15 dolls So if I can average $10 profit per doll That's going to be a hundred and fifty dollars and some of them like this this wrestling girl I have her listed for like 20 something.  So definitely be on the lookout for brats. These are bread and butter items Not gonna be like huge huge money, but I picked these all of these up I think for like five to seven dollars for all of them. So You know, what's that make like 50 cents a doll Maybe less less than 50 cents a doll So definitely be on the lookout great items to pick up at garage sales and even the naked ones sell guys All right, then next stop I know I Took this lot apart also. I'm like, okay, I'm doing the brats I might as well do my monster high dolls. So I went ahead and I separated them out There's ten dolls in the lot. So I listed them individually, I think this one's an ever after high doll this one on the end and then this second one is Still in really the the next two really have their complete outfits and are still in pretty good shape So I listed those a little bit higher, but again, I've got this for 61 dollars on eBay with free shipping So I I'm sorry with the buyer paying shipping I removed that listing and I listed them in my Mercari store And then I went in and cross posted them with list perfectly over to my eBay store, which is super easy So if you have items on Mercari, you can cross post them to eBay from list perfect or with list perfectly super easy almost easier than Going from eBay to Mercari So definitely check out list perfectly if you have not there's a link down in the description of This video if you guys want to see how it works. I walk you through how to list On list perfectly. It's definitely worth every penny in my opinion. It saves so much time. I love it There is a coupon code in my my video my tutorial like how to video of how to use it It's 30% off your first month. So try it for a month. See what you think But yeah that coupons in the description of that video Okay, so I already sold this one and again, she's naked. She's got these hearts on her hand I don't know if she's like a harder to find one her hair is in pretty good shape Mean it needs maybe brushed out a little. I don't know. I didn't brush their hair or clean them up I just listed them as is. I did put messy hair and This sold for $14 and free shipping. So again, I probably made like eight or nine bucks on this doll Here's another Bolo. I picked these up at the same garage sale that I got these Again, I probably had a couple bucks in all of them. I sold them for 48 dollars and the buyer paid shipping So toys are hot during lockdown because people want stuff to entertain their kids So the next thing I did is I took apart this mixed lot of 28 Barbies and Disney princesses and I listed those separately on Mercari also I did do small lots of some of them But some of them like this I think his name is John Smith and Pocahontas and the Mulan I did list those separately and I'll go into my store and show you guys here So this is my Mercari closet so you can see I have listed each One of these dolls like some of them are lots of two, you know, there's a five here You can see here the ones that have sold and Yeah, I'll keep you guys posted on how it goes. I did have some really quick sales This one somebody made me an offer. So I took a 12% discount on that one So it sold for 14 Um, here's some more that I have listed that one sold and That one sold and those are the ones I showed you guys So Yeah, I mean not too shabby if you can pick a doll up for 50 cents and sell it for 15 and Make a profit of like eight to ten dollars to me. I'm I'm good with that So I've got this one listed for 20 this one for 27 this one for 22 and those are like the higher Dollar ones I've been a little busy bee. I listed some of this stuff today and last night, but here's some more of the dolls And this one sold for full asking they didn't even make me an offer So, yeah this one I've got This is a larger lot that I kept together. It's nine Skipper dolls And I've got $90 and free shipping on this. I didn't I just didn't feel like separating them out I don't know. Maybe somebody's gonna say, hey, will you sell me the fourth one over and you know, what if they ask me that? I may just think about it given What I've learned from this experience but For now, I'm just gonna leave it as is and again everything is cross-posted to eBay So both items are in eBay and Mercari so far with the dolls I'm doing better on Mercari. So if you guys have a lot of Barbies or Brats and stuff on eBay, you may consider Transferring some of those to Mercari and just see if you can make the sale eBay I charge shipping to the buyer Mercari I Increase the price of the item and do free shipping because Mercari only takes 10% and then I ship using pirate ship So what do you guys think? Do you like my secret? I Don't know it kind of happened by accident, you know, and it's working out and I Don't know I sold three and 24 hours of the Brats dolls to me I'm like that is crazy like they sold like that and Again, people are buying toys right now. So maybe that has something to do with it But this is what sold on Mercari week two of lockdown Every single item was a toy and I have lots of stuff on Mercari And every single item was a toy. So if I were you and you have toys get those toys listed I love sourcing for toys at garage sales It's one of my favorite things to sell and a lot of people skip over them because they're bread and butter, but I Don't know I like them. They're easy to list and fun to sell So for those of you that have kids and you guys are at home and you're just hanging out because there's no school Maybe you can talk your kids into selling some of their toys I don't know everybody's looking for inventory because you can't go out and source Ask your kids. Hey, can I sell that Bratz doll? I'll give you half the money. I don't know I'm just trying to think outside the box because I know everybody's looking for inventory All right, you guys thanks for watching. Let me know what you think about my tip or my trick or my secret Whatever you want to call it comment below. Thanks for watching. Be sure to like comment subscribe and share and I'll see you guys real soon


This is your week when it comes to money. There's always someone there to tell you what you want to hear They want to motivate you by greed Blessing if you're in Christ Jesus, you're born again blessing belongs to you Yes, it does and they want to make it sound convincing that you deserve it This is my blessed season when you get home. This is my blessed season I want you to convince yourself that you are supposed to be wealthy rich blessed And nothing helps like a catchy greedy mantra And go ahead and decree that the money that you have is going to be multiplied by the power of your words Forget the fact that you don't have that kind of power. You just want the money to come to you. We don't got rich I'm so close to filthy Very close to filthy. I agree with Jesse.  How do you go about getting it in Philippians 4 11? Paul says that not that I speak from want for I've learned to be Content in whatever the circumstances I am I know how to get along with humble means and I know how to get along in Prosperity the issue is that many of us don't know how or we've just grown tired of not having what we want what we dreamt about because we see other people who have things we want those things and Sure as your heart's desire is to have these things the enemy is going to send somebody someone's going to show up Not get your door or on your phone or on your computer on your television screen Telling you that you can have those things as a matter of fact You have a biblical requirement to have those things and how do they do so they entice you by Telling you that they have things and you could also have those things as a matter of fact You should want those things and claim those that the holy ghost train you to ask for the right thing Lord, I want a two story house. What is that? My house almost 25,000s graphy you can get lost in it. I had to get some speakers in there. So I can find my wife Yeah, I live in it. I drive it. I drive it. I live in it.  I don't care if it's the car. I should have those things I'm gonna go after those things. I call my son. I said listen go find that rose Royce. He said how I said go find it I don't care what you gotta do score around the nation in every state you got to but you find that rose Royce That was God's love that he was trying to show on me and I left people by this problem And that was the deal. I got free from people free from color folks free from church folks I got free from white folks. I got free from everybody praise God Hallelujah My God wants to bless you I'm sorry. You don't want to receive it. I apologize that you hate the prosperity gospel The lie is that God wants to bless you not that he wants to bless you a lot No, the lie is that he wants to bless you financially Jesus himself even says the Porsche you had with you always if it was an issue of being poor Then certainly he would have said I want to eradicate that I want I want you to get past that There's no pastor says that he wants you to not be poor Nor is there a pastor says he doesn't want you to be rich. That's not the issue But it's the desire to become rich Paul says in 1st Timothy 16 He says if we have food and covering with these we shall be content Unfortunately, many people are not content with that and then the next verse comes and he says but those who want to get rich Fall in into a temptation and a snare and many foolish harmful desires Which plunge men into ruin and destruction because you want these things so bad. It's your desire It's your focus that being content with what you have a roof over your head That's not issue now. You want the things that you see other people have Well, brother corporate you you own a forty five million dollar airplane. Yeah, but you don't know what I paid for Know where near that Sonny boy A lot of you partners Put us in it. It's almost that they're shaming us for not wanting those things and so myself They're gonna brag about what they have in it. You ought to have the same things. You should want the same things You'll have jewelry costs more in your house Well, I'm telling you listen to me. I'm telling you my first house costs 14,700.  He didn't care Why because the material that he has as a result of you paying for it as a result of you sowing a seed into His ministry he didn't care because one outweighs the other his material wealth his gain outweighs Your need your desire to want to stay to the scriptures She was give a shot of this boys Get close come on man. Look, I paid a fortune for this thing sucking that man See that gold and so he doesn't mind about bragging about it As a matter of fact again He doesn't mind about bragging about it even if it causes you to write an ugly letter I expect to make money every day and I do It's coming to me. It's on me. Don't get mad at me. It ain't my fault How about people so I'm telling you one thing? I don't say I can you can boss up man One of my shambles cost more than most people's house I got 22 chandeliers in the house and so where is an example of that anywhere in the scripture where someone is flaunting their Well, but listen to him even more as he says he is that he's the king of wealth He's a king of flaunting and as he says he's the king of bling I have some friends of mine. They don't wear their jewelry when they're ministering a little nervous Might hurt the offer Not Jesse boy. I'm king of bling.  I'm saying I like I like bling Jesus king of bling to tell you got a crown of gold Well a couple things one There's a big difference between the king Jesus and us and he's not flaunting He is as a way of saying you should have these same things too And then you've got those that do so who try to give a justification because they probably understand how it looks But they're not going to give up the wealth for it and again There's nothing wrong with having wealth But if you say that you've got to have wealth as a matter of fact There's a new way of doing it now to say that if you want to have wealth It's a good thing because then you can take that wealth that you amass from other people and then use it for ministry See that God came to you know Jesus died that we might live an abundant life and to be a blessing to others I can't be a big blessing to people if I'm poor and broke and depressed and I don't feel good about myself They'll tell you things like the more money you have the more that you can serve God Money is for the purpose of God more purpose that you have and that's more money. That's required I want you to believe in the purpose of gospel more money more purpose when I have more money Because my money is directed by God More money means more what purpose and again you don't have to be ashamed because You're blessed because God wants to be blessed.  You're blessed because of who? Now if you believe that if you believe that you are blessed because of Jesus lift your hands up right quick I believe I'm blessed because of Jesus One of the things now you hear people kind of declaring it stating as though with the power of persuasion If you persuade yourself by just repeating it over and over again, then you can convince yourself And so we are gonna decree and we're gonna declare that God is going to bless my almost though You're obligating God to do something you've got to believe it You've got to get up every day and say I receive my word. This is my blessed season This is my blessed season when you get into the parking lot in your car Get in your car. This is my blessed season when you get home This is my blessed season now None of this is biblical because you cannot obligate God to do anything God has not even stated once that he is obligated himself to bless you 100-fold financially your blessings might be something that has nothing to do with money It might be health, but then again more folk would rather have the finances than the health They would rather live 40 years wealthy than a hundred years poor They would rather be able to have the things and live a what they consider an abundant life Going places buying things seeing things that are life where you are living for Christ where you are sharing the gospel And you are in turn building up a reward in heaven. That's not important because here and now is what's important It becomes a psychological thing because now they've got to convince you to buy into what they're selling I can promise you they are selling something and you are going to have to give Financially monetarily to succeed the way they wanted to succeed you're gonna have to give to them and they can do so by Convincing you psychologically not spiritually but psychologically that if you just confess these things if you just state these things if you just live These things out. It's gonna happen. Those of you are watching from home Stand up in that room. This is my blessed season Get to the job tomorrow the place of business and you prophesy Into the atmosphere and you tell that atmosphere. This is my blessed season And again, you can't say what is your season was not your season God determines that the Bible says that do not get weary in well-doing and in due season at the right season The point time that God has you shall reap a reward. However, the reward would have to be blessings Financially God says I will supply all of your needs according to my riches in glory in Christ Jesus Good news today. God wants to supply your needs. The problem is what are your needs? There aren't always finances a matter of fact most cases than I financial most people on the planet Don't live half as good as people here in America do or in most Western cultures What we would consider to be below the poverty line, they will consider to be well off well to do They have learned to be content. We have not we've had plenty and so our having Only caused us to want to have even more and so will God supply our need sure he says so But he didn't say he's going to supply our once come on and give God praise our God's a good God He heals hearts gives new beginnings He furnishes your house and so God is a good guy because he furnishes our houses because he does things for us No, he's a good guy because he's got if he never does anything I think that's the problem that many people don't want to accept or they want to say God is good No matter what he does Peter says in 2 Peter chapter 2 verse 3 he says many will follow their Sensuality and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned. There are those that wants that feel stuff We operate too often by the things that we want by our senses And so we'll we'll follow folks that are just like that and he says an in their greed They will exploit you with false words and why that's important is because notice he says in their greed, but it's not just their greed It's also your agree. We'll talk more about that, but it's their greed They flaunt their greed and you don't even care. We don't got rich I'm so close to filthy Very close to filthy When a man can brag about how rich he is about how big his houses are His chandeliers things like even his his steps that they are like the steps of what is it the ones in the movie going with the wind I have the biggest house of any preacher in America I don't mean that arrogantly a pride for it. I Have a name in my house. La maison de la vie the house of dreams. You like going with the wind My house has that same Staircase that Scarlet O'Hara walked up. Oh, I paid cash for the home You want to know how big it is? It's 40,000 square foot to brag about that to have the largest house of all all the preachers Well, what are you gonna do with that when you die? But of course too many simply don't care. They just want to have things they want to have money So much so that you'll even twist scriptures to make you think that God is your business partner that you can convince him that you can cause him To owe you money because again, we want to get money And so if I say something that's not biblical doesn't matter because your desire your own greedy desire Causes you to follow what they're saying.  I start giving on that level so that God would owe me Oh, y'all don't hear what I'm saying. You can't handle that I started giving on the level where I put God in debt and God said I'll hold no man I start giving on the money that I wanted to make I start giving on a deal that hadn't closed yet And that God had to open up the windows of heaven and pull me out of blessing because he wasn't gonna be in debt In no way can you cause God to owe you anything so matter of fact We are indebted to him more than we could ever imagine and there's no scripture that tells us that by giving is gonna Cause God to be in debt to us by giving then he's gonna owe us back He's not obligated to give us anything back. Even if we give our lives for him He's not obligated to do anything But if you twist the scriptures it still tickles the ears of those that want to hear it, you know, the tithe is the Lord I know there's a lot of questions about the tithe out there because they say it's Old Testament No, it's Bible and someone said well, it's it's the law No, no the tithe came before the law give to the Lord 10 percent of our income He will bless us way beyond our ability to receive.  He said I heard you as a millionaire I said that's not right That's not true. He said yes it I said no, it's not Multi now add that to it. You'll be all right. Oh, he couldn't handle that He'd like to have had a fit and I said you mess with me. I buy this station I fire you know that was a little fleshy, but it felt good Well, it wasn't a little fleshy it is flesh but then again, that's him so that's why I felt good because What can make you feel good? Well, if you're just in the plans one of the people Flawing your will matter of fact getting more well and even to lie and convince you how to give saying Outrageous things if you give the more you give we all keep giving that will hurry Jesus up in his return That the reason why Jesus hadn't come is because people are not giving the way God told him to give You see what I'm saying? I mean when you understand it you can speed up the time again That's why Peter says they will exploit you or another version that King James was saying they would make Merchandise of you.  You are their source. You are their source their resource not God What is a man in mindset it manifests in two different ways? First of all is a poverty spirit and as a materialism spirit It's both so what is the spirit of man? Let's talk about poverty mentality just for a second a poverty spirit look in your notes poverty spirit Thinks it is wrong to have a lot of money or things again.  You've got some things that you need But then also some things that you want and so maybe I just need to change my mind set about money and about God Yeah, and people don't quote it too much, but the Bible also it says that money is the answer to all things It's the answer to all things if it's a thing money can buy it There are there are some issues that cannot be resolved by things, but money answers all Things well does money really answer all things? Well, this passage that he's quoting and he's twisting is coming out of Ecclesiast 10 19 He says a feast is made for laughter and wine is made and wine makes merry, but money answers everything This is not to say that money is going to be the solution if I were the case There'd be no need for God. There'd be no need for the cross Clearly he's speaking kind of in terms of folly and it's not to be taken that you need to get money to be the answer Everything why is that not the case? Well, think about it. No other prophet No other apostle Jesus didn't say so and so he's mistaking this passage Why to get you to think differently about money in relation to God and your walk with Christ Estates and inheritance if you want your life just to stay the same way It's always been just give tonight the way you've always given But if you want your life to be a little different in the future then lead tonight with your seed and watch what God does God wants you to have all those things and he's getting ready to give them So you just got to be on board be ready for those things Lead with your seed you're gonna have to sow a seed and so again The Bible talks about how they're gonna exploit you and notice what he says is that but these people who suppose verse 5 of 1st Timothy chapter 6 says they suppose that godliness is a means of gain not realizing that Godliness is the actual means for gain and so they want you to give so a seed Play on your emotions play on your lack of understanding with the scriptures so that you can give a seed a big seed as a matter of fact $5 $10 $20 seed $100 seed $50 seed $1000 seed $10,000 seed and Lord help you if you happen to go to one of their meetings And there's one of these charlatans one of these filthy rich people that are there that are trying to Gain the system so to speak they're trying to play on your emotions trying to guilt you trying to intimidate you to give You'll never be on the side where God is asking something from you as though he needs something but then again This is just taking people who don't understand the scriptures Causing them to play into their need or I'm sorry play into their greed and get on that If you know the scriptures number one, you wouldn't be listener in first place number two Once you heard something that doesn't jive with what you know the scriptures say you would turn around and walk away and probably lead Others away, but so they are depending upon you not knowing the word of God Which is why Jesus makes a statement. He says that no, we don't live by bread alone But what do we live by we live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God not money But his word but that's not enough for some people know what's worth even more than guys word is money I can't go to the bank and tell some and tell the banker what the say the Lord I can't go to my bill collectors and say what the say the Lord I need some money because it would let's just be practical to be practical I've got to have something tangible that's been love God, but I need the money Breakthrough don't come you can call me So she's gonna guilt you and I'm pretty sure no one had a breakthrough and but then again Did she leave her phone number? No one's gonna call her back This doesn't happen, but you're gonna play into it and buy into this over and over again Not you but those that are greedy. They'll keep doing it. Why because they keep flashing their wealth If it worked for them, it'll work for me.  I want your money. Why are you out of debt? You just want to talk to me about scripture I'm talking about manifestation and demonstration. So don't talk to me about scriptures I'm talking about the money that I got you see the cars that I got you see how I'm living Don't come to me talk to me about scriptures. You want it's caught the scripture back to me I know that scripture. No, you don't know it. You don't know it till you're wearing it Until you're wearing it really so unless you're wearing it unless you're driving it unless you're living in it That's how you know the scriptures And if you know, I know I know what he's talking about. No, you don't know what I'm talking about. You have my ride yet We'll set you in doesn't know Bob a court and committee This ain't no Bible quote with me that should tell you really where their heart is in this particular person He's been doing this for a long time the good apostle Leroy Thompson But again, this is the person at the beginning where we saw this money coming to me He's been doing this for a long time and been getting away with it off of your money I Again, this has been going on for some time not just with him, but with other people even Creflo dollar And so after he's amassed his fortune Then he's gonna say I've been wrong about my about my calling out the title and so forth Well, has he given the money back? No, has he has he redirected the funds? No But it's time that I go ahead and pull back. No, because he's still saying the same thing He still wants people to give to give an offering a great offering. Why because he still needs it.  Uh-huh. You agree there's foolishness in it. Yes Foolishness is modern wisdom. So are you foolish? Of course The only reason these people can even be prosperous in what they're doing The only reason they can be successful is because it takes people who don't care Look what the bible says. Hey guy in chapter one verse five He says now therefore thus says the lord of hosts consider your waste think about how you're going about things Think about your attitude.  There's a sucker born every minute Well, he probably had a lot of christians in mind a lot of professed christians who are greedy And the best thing that could ever happen to some of these people is if they lose what they're trying to get So then they can turn around and see the true god I pray that more and more people stop listening to them. They've repackaged this prosperity gospel They call it the anti poverty gospel It's now the purpose gospels that god wants you to have things God wants you to so that you can declare things that you can be like everyone else Healthy wealthy Prosperous that's a new goal. That's been the old goal. Just repackage. But remember Paul tells us Peter tells us the scriptures tell us godliness is our means of gain not a means of gains By using godly means by using the scriptures by using church people know Being closer to him. That's how we gain and we're not trying to build a future here on this earth We're trying to build a future For heaven for eternity and the money that we amass here can be helpful can be beneficial as we live But we can't take it with us and because of that it doesn't matter as much as they want you to