on ARCH Modes & Mediums

“25 F e student work on an accessible and personal scale. We are un-official, unpolished, non-bureaucratic, and off Higgins. The book’s title acknowledges that Higgins is where we emerged and where we were originally from. However, we must stay away from its jurisdiction. 25 feet from Higgins is where students are allowed to smoke. “25 FEET Off Higgins” is where students are allowed to express themselves freely while having proximity to their base. It is a discussion from beyond Higgins; to be brought back into Higgins. “

Metropolitan lifestyle transcends national borders, if not straight out eliminates them.

In a world where urban dwellers are in the majority, city culture has replaced folk culture in every regional civilization, morphing and merging into one world culture. Pre-industrial history created a diversity of civilizations, but bred homogeneity in each of them; post-industrial history promotes diversity within a civilization, but turns the world into a homogeneous one. The end result of post-industrialism is a global culture of cosmopolitanism with local characteristics.

Our urban arts and dances dominate the world as the common popular culture. Our modern Architecture has become the standardized product on this planet. Our identities may be different, but we come to share the same essence as citizens of this ecumenopolis. This zine crowd-sourced ideas across cultures and reflect back to one of the world’s cultural capital of NYC. It gives us readers a sense of universality, though what we see as “universality” is just the “universality” of urban dwellers.

“Traditional”, “backward” cultures are left forgotten, before being encroached on by our very own superior civilization and lost permanently. We have crossed the tipping point and come to embrace the age of super gentrification. In this ecumenopolis we built, we can walk out 25 feet off a building anytime we like, but we can never leave. We are locked in the universal city, or, university.