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THRESHOLDS 40

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JOURNAL OF THE MIT DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE


Editorial Policy
Thresholds, Journal of the MIT Department
of Architecture, is an annual, blind peer-
reviewed publication produced by student
editors at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Opinions in Thresholds are those
of the contributors and do not necessarily
reflect those of the editors, the Department
of Architecture, or MIT.

Correspondence
Thresholds—MIT Architecture
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thresholds@mit.edu
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Published by SA+P Press


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Copyright © 2012
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The individual contributions are copyright
their respective authors.
Figures and images are copyright their
respective creators, as individually noted.

ISSN 1091-711X
ISBN 978-0-9835082-1-2

Book design and cover by Donnie Luu


www.donnieluu.com

Printed by Puritan Press, Hollis, NH

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Thresholds 40

Socio—

Edited by Jonathan Crisman

Cambridge, MA
Contents

5 Editorial: 67 Tuktoyaktuk: Offshore Oil


Socio-indemnity and and a New Arctic Urbanism
Other Motives
— Pamela Ritchot
— Jonathan Crisman
75 Boundary Line Infrastructure
11 Conjuring Utopia’s Ghost
— Ronald Rael
— Reinhold Martin
83 Dissolving the Grey Periphery
21 Le Corbusier, the Brise-Soleil,
— Neeraj Bhatia and
and the Socio-climatic Project
Alexander D’Hooghe
of Modern Architecture,
1929-1963
91 Park as Philanthropy:
— Daniel A. Barber Bow-Wow’s Redevelopment
thresholds 40

at Miyashita Koen
33 
Move Along!
— Yoshiharu Tsukamoto
There Is Nothing to See

— Rania Ghosn 99 Mussels in Concrete: A Social


Architectural Practice
39 Flow’s Socio-spatial
— Esen Gökçe Özdamar
Formation

— Nana Last 105 Participation and/or


Criticality? Thoughts on an
47 Collective Equipments of Architectural Practice for
Power: The Road and the City Urban Change

— Simone Brott — Kenny Cupers and


Markus Miessen
55 Collective Form:
The Status of Public The Sluipweg and
113 
Architecture the History of Death

— Dana Cuff — Mark Jarzombek


Contents

121 Extra Room: 217 Edens, Islands, Rooms


What if we lived in a
— Amrita Mahindroo
society where our every
thought was public?
225 The Prince:
— Gunnar Green Bjarke Ingels’s Social
and Bernhard Conspiracy
Hopfengärtner
— Justin Fowler
127 Sculpture Field: From the
233 Beyond Doing Good:
Symbolic to the Tectonic
Civil Disobedience as Design
— Dan Handel Pedagogy

— Hannah Rose Mendoza


135 On Radiation Burn

— Steve Kurtz 237 Aid, Capital, and the

socio—
Humanitarian Trap
163 Cairo di sopra in giù:
— Joseph M. Watson
Perspective, Photography,
and the “Everyday”
245 The End of Civilization
— Christian A. Hedrick
— Daniel Daou
175 Hush
255 Toward a Lake Ontario City
— Steven Beckly and
— Department of
Jonathan D. Katz
Unusual Certainties
189 NORCs in New York
263 Sociopaths
— Interboro Partners
— Jimenez Lai
209 Uncommon Ground:
Aether, Body, and Commons

— Zissis Kotionis
Participation
and/or
Criticality?
Thoughts on an
Architectural Practice
for Urban Change

Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen


Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen

Kenny Cupers this unquestioned mode of inclusion—used


If an increasing number of commentators by politicians as one of never-ending retail
declare both partici-pation and criticality as politics—that precludes critical results. I
having run out of steam, how then are we to am instead promoting a conflictual model
rethink social and political engagement in art of participation: one that opposes the herd
and architecture today? Public participation mentality of consensus and that has to
over the past half-century has been mobilized assume—at times—non-physical violence,
by ideals with almost universal attraction: dissensus, and singular, first-person decision-
democracy, social justice, self-determination. making in order to produce change. This is an
Who can claim to be against such basic ongoing project. I am attempting to open up
principles? But because of its apparent a new language of practice by essentially
universality, many have recently argued presenting architectural thinking as method.
that participation is acutely flawed—both
conceptually and practically. The “tyranny of KC
participation” has been critiqued in fields as In order to chart new ways of how
diverse as development studies and the visual participation can produce critical alternatives,
arts.1 In a similar way, the notion of criticality perhaps we should begin by asking how
has been found in crisis. With the demise of it became the new tyranny. Why can
the once fashionable Critical Theory in cultural participation be so easily explained as the
production, some have claimed that the oil of a democratic political machinery that
main tools of criticality have been crippled.2 also happens to work remarkably well with
The question, then, is how to harness the global capitalism? Are architects to blame,
concepts of participation and criticality in who sniff dismissively when they hear calls
thresholds 40

a contemporary practice that wishes to be for participation, pointing at the unimaginative


socially and politically engaged. architecture it has proven to produce?
I think it is a mistake to cast participation
Markus Miessen solely as the emancipating response “from
I propose a post-consensual practice— below” to the evils of authoritarianism. This
one that is no longer reliant on ill-defined myth overshadows the historical forces
modes of operating within politically that gave rise to participatory processes
complex and consensus-driven groups, but in architecture and urban planning. The
instead calls into question the innocence of rhetoric of participation was hardly born on
participation. The notion of participation is at the barricades of May 1968. By that time, it
a point of transition—within politics, within the had already become a mainstream political
Left, within spatial practices, and especially idea in the context of postwar economic
within architecture as its tangible and most development and of a budding consumer
clearly defined product. Participation has culture in the social-democratic West. It was
typically been read through romantic notions fostered “from above,” by state policy-
of negotiation, inclusion, and democratic makers and technocrats as much as by the
decision-making. However, it is precisely social movements subsequently idealized
by leftist intellectuals. If it is true that power
cannot be given, then the institution-alization
1 See Uma Kothari and Bill Cooke, Participation: The New
Tyranny? (New York: Zed Books, 2001). See also, Claire
of participation since the 1970s—certainly
Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” October 110 in the French context—hardly amounts to
(2004): 51-79. the distribution of power its advocates
2 See Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting, “Notes Around the
Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism,” Perspecta,
claim it to be. Yet, in architecture, calls for
no. 33 (2002): 72-77; Michael Speaks, “After Theory,” participation actually did correspond to a
Architectural Record (June 2005): 72-75; George Baird,
critical rethinking of the discipline. It was at
“‘Criticality’ and Its Discontents,” Harvard Design Magazine,
no. 21 (Fall 2004/Winter 2005): 16-21; and Reinhold Martin, a point in time when professional ideologies
“Critical of What? Toward a Utopian Realism,” Harvard Design and ruling beliefs were being dismantled and
Magazine, no. 22 (Spring/Summer 2005): 1-5.
architecture’s social and political role came

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Participation and/or Criticality?

to be fundamentally questioned. And it is


precisely at this opening up of architecture’s
critical potential where the importance of
participation lies today.

MM
This was one of the starting
points of my inquiry into contemporary forms
of participatory practice—and, especially,
politicians’ love affair with it. As demonstrated
by the UK’s New Labour and the Dutch Polder
Model, participation has produced a very
comfortable situation in which politicians have
FIG. 1 —
­ W
 ebsite of The Winter School Middle East, founded and
managed to withdraw from their responsibility directed by Markus Miessen with co-director Kuwait
as elected representatives of the general public. Zahra Ali Baba. See www.winterschoolmiddleeast.org.
I would call this process the outsourcing
of responsibility. I am not advocating for this I would also like to touch upon the
format of participation, based on the idea experience of institutionalizing myself in
of bottom-up democratic principles of an formal political settings on a governmental
all-inclusive congregation around a table. scale, through East Coast Europe,a project
Rather, I am trying to understand the opposite: commissioned by the Govern-ment of Slovenia
a first-person approach to critical engagement during Slovenia’s presidency of the European
in which the individual—in our case, the Council in 2008, and through a research project
architect—acts upon an urge for political and commissioned by the Dubai government

socio—
social responsibility in one’s practice. think tank Moutamarat that resulted in the
Nothing confounds me more than publication With/Without: Spatial Products,
that over the last decade everyone started Politics and Practices in the Middle East. Both
claiming to be some sort of participatory of these projects attempted to understand
architectural social worker. There are, space as something that is inherently
however, a few examples that demonstrate imagined and, consequently, produced and
this critical participation that interests me. acted upon as a result of this imaginary. In the
There is the Winter School Middle East and the case of East Coast Europe, this was proposed
European Kunsthalle, which serve as de facto through a fictional territorial shift, and in the
cases in which some of these issues have case of With/Without, it was through producing
been scrutinized in their respective a counter-reading of spatial practices in the
contexts. These cases exemplify a mode Middle East to that of Al Manakh. We were
of practice with an end toward the build- interested in a narrative approach on the scale
ing up of independent, small-scale institutions and level of the street, to understand everyday
as alternatives to public art institutions and practices and how they formulate and shape
franchised regional academies Fig. 1 . change. Rather than prescribing a recipe,
this opens up a field of potential departures
for participants. Indeed, this is what sets the
architect’s approach apart from other fields of
knowledge: models are seen to be a platform
for operation, for moving beyond those very
3 For more on these interventions, see The Winter School Middle
East, http://www.winterschoolmiddleeast.org; Vanessa Joan
models, rather than findings or truths in and
Müller and Astrid Wege, European Kunsthalle 2005 2006 2007 of themselves. We are providing a common
(Cologne: European Kunsthalle, 2007); Markus Miessen, East
starting point from where we can begin to
Coast Europe (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2008); Shumon Basar,
Antonia Carver, and Markus Miessen, eds., With/Without: disagree —a theory of how to participate,
Spatial Products, Politics and Practices in the Middle East without squinting at constituencies or voters
(New York: Bidoun, 2007).
but, rather, instigating critical change.3

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Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen

KC agency can be involved, in what quality,


Both as a political theory and a spatial and to what effect. In the context of widely
practice, participation implies a series of accepted xenophobia and increasing
fundamental preconditions: a neutral ground economic precariousness, the design of new
for participants to meet; the definition of a vending carts—which has been architects’
community, constituents, or interest groups; first instinctive response—appears as an
a shared place; a common project. None of almost laughably impotent gesture.5 A better
these apply in the volatility of contemporary response is to ask where design should enter
urban space. Take for instance the mundane into such contested spatial conditions.
case of street vending Fig. 2 . In cities like Meanwhile, a new generation of middle-
Los Angeles, where street sales are banned class entrepreneurs and gourmet chefs
outright and the majority of the more than have begun to alter the dominant cultural
ten thousand vendors are Central- and perception of street vending with their
upscale treats—from organic
ice cream to Korean-Mexican
fusion. In the same way,
the arrival of New York’s
“Vendy Awards”—a yearly
awards event for street
food—in Los Angeles is
another occasion promising
to lift some of the stigma that
tends to categorize Latino
thresholds 40

food vending as dirty or


poor. By developing forms
of cultural production and
consumption that creatively
destroy the dominant public
perceptions of street vending
as “out of place,” designers
might locate openings for
transforming vendors’ urban
FIG. 2 — S
 treet vending in Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of and copyright Kenny Cupers.
imaginary altogether. This
fundamentally superficial
Latin-American, this everyday urban practice approach, ironically, is able to cut across the
is as much about the “right to the city” very core of some of the city’s social issues.
as it is about the contested nature of the It is at once aesthetic and political, superficial
city’s identity.4 Compared to the organized and transformative, critical and participatory.
regulation of vending in New York City, LA
vendors’ exceptional mobility—at once MM
urban and transnational—renders traditional I absolutely agree with you. When it
notions of engagement, such as stable comes to participatory approaches, one needs
community organization or struggle based on to be aware that they are often based in a
conventional notions of citizenship, largely certain romanticism. Such nostalgic longing
obsolete. Not surprisingly, participatory is very dangerous as it is neither pro-active
planning attempts have thus far failed to nor propositional. It does not produce or make
free vendors from the plight of enforcement.
Vendors’ mobility makes it impossible
to assume an a priori political project or
4 See Henri Lefebvre, Le droit à la ville (Paris: Anthropos, 1968).
participatory process in which design can 5 See John Chase, Margaret Crawford, and John Kaliski,
be involved. We need to first ask whose Everyday Urbanism (New York: Monacelli, 1999).

108
Participation and/or Criticality?

decisions, but simply reflects the status quo. participation as the redeeming element in
While we still need critical reflection, I strongly such a practice, we need to come up with
believe that in order to practice, one also alternative ways of doing and thinking about
needs to be projective. architecture. As much as the past generation
My proposed model of the “crossbench has theorized architectural autonomy—the
practitioner” encourages an uncalled ghost of which is more than alive in the
participator who is not limited by existing elite academic institutions of the Northeast
protocols, and who enters the arena with US—current architectural thinkers should
nothing but creative intellect and the will theorize conflict, mediation, negotiation, and
to generate change.6 I am arguing here compromise. That said, I am not proposing
for an inversion of participation, a model to replace outright the architect-as-form-
beyond modes of consensus. Instead of maker with the architect-as-mediator. We
reading participation as the charitable need to ask how experimentation is both
savior of political struggle, I prefer to reflect an architectural and a social process. It
and act upon the limits and traps of its real is remarkable how little the discipline is
motivations. Rather than breeding the next currently interested in the interrelations of
generation of consensual facilitators and spatial form and social dynamics. My current
mediators, I argue for allowing conflict as an research attempts to provide a historical and
enabling force. Through a conflictual mode, theoretical perspective to such concerns by
participation is no longer a process by which looking at architecture’s encounter with the
others are invited “in,” but becomes a means social sciences in the construction of mass
of acting without mandate, as an uninvited housing and new towns, and the emergence
irritant, a forced entry into fields of knowledge of paradigms such as programming,
that might benefit from exterior thinking. Some- participatory planning, and user-oriented

socio—
times democracy must be avoided at all costs. design in the era of the postwar welfare state.9
I think we can change architectural production
KC today by offering tools for rethinking archi-
I would not characterize our tecture’s historically situated social agency.
current condition at all as “Harmonistan.”7 What we have not touched upon so far is
In any newspaper on any given day, I see the distinction between architecture and art
extremes of confict and opposition—the in this critical and projective practice. Art is
only exception is the culture section. It is often said to offer more potential for criticality
disappointing to see how pacified cultural as it seems more free than architecture from
production is today in the face of global the depend-encies and compromises of
conflict and catastrophe, and in this sense, intervention. At the same time, some strands
I do agree with you about the need for of socially engaged or political art today
dissensus. I am still surprised at how inviting offer little more than a set of allusions whose
your friends for pad thai in an art gallery ultimate effect is a surplus of art market
has been celebrated as a participatory, capital. Markus, your practice inscribes itself
progressive, or critical form of art.8 This in what has been called “critical spatial
retreat from the social world by mimicking it practice”—which is neither easily subsumed
in the art gallery has parallels in architectural within the categories of art or architecture,
production. Despite the rise of sustainability
as a new promise for architecture’s societal
relevance, architecture culture continues to
shy away from negotiation with complex 6 See Markus Miessen, The Nightmare of Participation:
Crossbench Praxis as A Mode of Criticality (Berlin: Sternberg
realities for, instead, the solitary games Press, 2010).
of form. This threatens to perpetuate the 7 Ibid.
8 See Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics.”
fallacies of architectural autonomy while
9 See Kenny Cupers, “Designing Social Life: The Urbanism of
undoing it of even the last remnants of the Grands Ensembles,” Positions: On Modern Architecture and
critique. Rather than simply inserting Urbanism/Histories and Theories, no. 1 (Spring 2010).

109
Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen

nor within social or cultural activism. Would post-disciplinary form of spatial practice,
you agree that it is more fruitful to position one which no longer understands itself as
yourself still more in the visual arts and new a form of cultural activism as in the ‘60s or
cultural industries, than in the traditional ‘70s, but also one which understands the
outlets of architectural production? Do plethora of tools available in order to apply
these more fluid realms have more critical them in an appropriate context. What you are
potential than that of architectural culture? describing here is precisely the conservative
Or is “critical spatial practice” ultimately view of architecture that often prevents it
less powerful than architecture because it from generating change: that architecture, by
is often more about media than about actual default, is understood as a physical practice.
intervention in the spaces of everyday life? I do not believe this holds true—I actually
think it never did. An alternative practice must
MM acknowledge this—and this is, for the lack of
I would not position myself more in the a better word or term, what I would call critical
visual arts than in architecture. I find this spatial practice Fig. 3 .
distinction fairly problematic. It raises the Architecture is not a discipline that
issue of interdisciplinary or “transdisciplinary” necessarily has a scale or professional body
approaches, which I think, by now, we are but, rather, is something that one does—it is
beyond.10 We should think about architecture a practice. Most architects, from my point of
more as an open field or a territory of tools view, do not produce architecture at all.
which one can access through collaborative They produce buildings, sometime lame,
practice. We are facing what I would call a sometimes otherwise.
thresholds 40

 arkus Miessen, The Nightmare of Participation: Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticality (Berlin: Sternberg
FIG. 3 — M
Press, 2010). Photo by Hannes Grassegger.

110
Participation and/or Criticality?

KC within the territory of the production of


I agree with the need to move beyond space—it is just that it is transgressing
these often outmoded distinctions, but it its former professional borders. In fact,
is wishful thinking to generally say we are this act of opening up practice beyond
facing a post-disciplinary form of practice. artificial borders may be the very essence
Rather than dividing these realms in a of critical participation.
normative way, I am interested in under-
standing the mechanisms of distinction that
actually exist and the politics they set up.
Divisions between art and architecture—
and between architecture and the built
environment—continue to structure not only
our ways of thinking but also practice itself.
Who benefits from these distinctions, or
benefits from transgressing them? There
seems to be an inherent ambiguity in what
you call critical spatial practice, which on
the onehand opens up architecture to the
multitude of social or spatial practices that
make up people’s lives, while on the other
hand continues to celebrate authorship and
intentionality in a neoliberal and entrepre-
neurial manner. While it threatensto dress
these conservative notions in a more

socio—
fashionable cloak, this notion of critical spatial
practice is most promising when it is able
to allow new forms of collectivity to emerge.
This is where the real politics of contemporary
practice lie—not in the mimicry of the political
served up by the Biennale industry, but in the
messiness of the contemporary city.

MM
Sure, at the end of the day, critical
spatial practice is simply acknowledging the
fact that architects are not the only actors
or protagonists in a vast territory called
“the production of space.” 11 Critical spatial
practice attempts to undo this myth and tries
to open up a field for debate, which hopefully
will unpack different sets of knowledge.
To be honest, I don’t think that this way of
working is any more individualist, neoliberal, or
entrepreneurial than any other job-description

10 See, for example, Mark Linder, “TRANSdisciplinarity,” Hunch,


no. 9 (2005).
11 See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, UK:
Blackwell, 1991).

111
Kenny Cupers and Markus Miessen
thresholds 40

Markus Miessen with Kenny Cupers conducting the Urban States “The Space of Politics”
workshop and symposium at USC, Los Angeles, August 2011.

***
Kenny Cupers teaches architectural history, theory, and urban
studies at the University at Buffalo, where he was the 2010-
11 Reyner Banham Fellow. He received his PhD from Harvard
University. Forthcoming books include The Social Project:
Modern Architecture, Social Science, and the Postwar Suburbs in
France, Paris: Life Forms, and Use Matters: An Alternative History
of Architecture (Routledge, 2013).

Markus Miessen is an architect, spatial consultant, and writer,


operating from his practice Studio Miessen. He is also Visiting
Professor of Critical Spatial Practice at Staatliche Hochschule
für Bildende Künste, Städelschule. He received his BArch
from Glasgow School of Art, DiplHons from the Architectural
Association, MRes from the London Consortium, and is currently
a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths College.

Both have been published in collaboration and individually in


numerous journals and books.

112
THRESHOLDS 40
SOCIO—

Editor Patrons
Jonathan Crisman James Ackerman
Imran Ahmed
Designer Mark and Elaine Beck
Donnie Luu Tom Beischer
Yung Ho Chang
Assistant Editors Robert F. Drum
Ana María León Gail Fenske
Jennifer Chuong Liminal Projects, Inc.
Antonio Furgiuele Rod Freebairn-Smith
Irina Chernyakova Nancy Stieber
Robert A. Gonzales
Advisory Board Jorge Otero-Pailos
Mark Jarzombek, Chair Annie Pedret
Stanford Anderson Vikram Prakash
Dennis Adams Joseph M. Siry
Martin Bressani Richard Skendzel
Jean-Louis Cohen
Charles Correa Special Thanks
Arindam Dutta To my family,
Diane Ghirardo Mark Jarzombek,
Ellen Dunham-Jones Sarah Hirschman,
Robert Haywood Adam Johnson,
Hassan-Uddin Khan Donnie Luu,
Rodolphe el-Khoury Nader Tehrani,
Leo Marx Adèle Santos,
Mary McLeod Rebecca Chamberlain,
Ikem Okoye Jack Valleli,
Vikram Prakash Anne Deveau,
Kazys Varnelis Kate Brearley,
Cherie Wendelken Deborah Puleo,
Gwendolyn Wright Michael Ames,
J. Meejin Yoon and all of the authors, the
editorial team, the advisory
board, and the patrons.
This issue would not have
been possible without you.

Opposite: Intergalactic Sculpture, 1994.


Copyright Ezra Orion.
5 SOCIO-INDEMNITY 127 SCULPTURE FIELD
AND OTHER MOTIVES — DAN HANDEL
— JONATHAN CRISMAN
135 ON RADIATION BURN
11 CONJURING UTOPIA’S GHOST — STEVE KURTZ
— REINHOLD MARTIN
163 CAIRO DI SOPRA IN GIÙ
21 LE CORBUSIER, THE BRISE-SOLEIL, — CHRISTIAN A. HEDRICK
AND THE SOCIO-CLIMATIC PROJECT
175 HUSH
— DANIEL A. BARBER
— STEVEN BECKLY AND
33 MOVE ALONG! JONATHAN D. KATZ
THERE IS NOTHING TO SEE
189 NORCS IN NEW YORK
— RANIA GHOSN
— INTERBORO PARTNERS
39 FLOW’S SOCIO-SPATIAL FORMATION
209 UNCOMMON GROUND
— NANA LAST
— ZISSIS KOTIONIS
47 COLLECTIVE EQUIPMENTS OF POWER
217 EDENS, ISLANDS, ROOMS
— SIMONE BROTT
— AMRITA MAHINDROO
55 COLLECTIVE FORM
225 THE PRINCE
— DANA CUFF
— JUSTIN FOWLER
67 TUKTOYAKTUK
233 BEYOND DOING GOOD
— PAMELA RITCHOT
— HANNAH ROSE MENDOZA
75 BOUNDARY LINE INFRASTRUCTURE
237 AID, CAPITAL, AND THE
— RONALD RAEL
HUMANITARIAN TRAP
83 DISSOLVING THE GREY PERIPHERY — JOSEPH M. WATSON
— NEERAJ BHATIA AND
245 THE END OF CIVILIZATION
ALEXANDER D’HOOGHE
— DANIEL DAOU
91 PARK AS PHILANTHROPY
255 TOWARD A LAKE ONTARIO CITY
— YOSHIHARU TSUKAMOTO
— DEPARTMENT OF
99 MUSSELS IN CONCRETE UNUSUAL CERTAINTIES
— ESEN GÖKÇE ÖZDAMAR
263 SOCIOPATHS
105 PARTICIPATION AND/OR CRITICALITY? — JIMENEZ LAI
— KENNY CUPERS AND
MARKUS MIESSEN
113 THE SLUIPWEG AND THE
HISTORY OF DEATH
— MARK JARZOMBEK

121 EXTRA ROOM


— GUNNAR GREEN AND
BERNHARD HOPFENGÄRTNER

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