Project 1

An Impossible Balance: Regionalism at The Village in Breckenridge

Workshop Draft: Writing 5 Project 1 Workshop Draft

Peer Commentary: comments in green are from Emma and comments in blue are from Mike

  • Does this introductory sentence effectively frame the [second] paragraph? It doesn’t quite give me insight as to what you will be discussing in the paragraph, and I think it would be a more effective quote if the preceding sentence was your own
  • Very clear explanation of regionalism for the audience
  • You have the motive of knocking critical regionalist analysis in your paper due to the impossible balance and you advance it and stay focused throughout, which I admire
  • I love this [second] paragraph but I think you could eliminate some unnecessary injections of “however” and “without a doubt”, etc. Not all together but in some places you have a really well-crafted sentence that is sort of diluted by these unnecessary words
  • Love all this evidence, provides you with a lot of material to draw on for your arguments
  • [The discussion of the bathroom] seems a little out of place
  • This [fourth] paragraph speaks to the exterior and I especially like the thing you said about it being in Boston and you have a good counter argument
  • Are there Native Americans in the region? I think you could keep going with this a little more
  • [The opening of the fifth paragraph] sums up your argument well, the two forces needed to created effective regionalism are hard to balance
  • Odd analogy
  • This is a really focused paper, it is strong in the way that it says something and defends it vigorously. At some times it even seems too narrow minded and detail oriented but that is just an opinion of mine

Post-Workshop Revision Plan:

The plan was to create a more streamlined essay with a more focused argument and less extraneous information. I also wanted to improve the clarity of my essay by removing difficult-to-understand wording and change analogies.

Conference Draft: Writing 5 Project 1 Conference Draft with comments

Draft Commentary: comments are in the order of the markers on the page

  • OK. all good goals, I think.
  • The argument you advance here is compellingly motivated, I think.This introduction probably has a couple of issues to resolve, though.1. consider re-working the early part of the introduction2. You’ll want to acknowledge that your audience doesn’t know what CR is. (example of an architectural style known as…)

    What is especially successful about the introduction, though, is that you offer a motivated claim before gesturing toward a significance or payoff in the final sentence. That’s a great way to help your audience see that a limited claim might have a broader significance without getting too side-tracked in explaining in detail what that significance is.

  • very well described.
  • by gimmick you mean something like “postmodernism”? That’s different than the trap of banal modernism, right?
  • The difficulty of the balance and the danger of imposition…are those different objections?
  • I would cut this, if i were you.The introduction you offer should allow us to see the overall connection between the method (the use of a conceptual lens) and the archive. That should allow you to simply describe the conceptual lens in detail before moving on to interpret the case. A re-statement of the thesis claim just here seems redundant and a bit distracting from the goal of the paragraph.
  • very clear, argumentative topic sentence.
  • very useful evidence here. Try to make concrete reference to your figures in your prose. (as seen in the foreground of figure 1…)
  • are skiis native american innovations?
  • OK. again, very clear.
  • OK. Should this be a new paragraph?It sounds like you’re offering a lengthy caveat. That’s a valid approach, but it would seem misplaced in a paragraph that’s exploring evidence to support the opposing argument.
  • can you give us a piece of evidence to support this?
  • I’m concerned that the early part of this paragraph might be redundant. You’re restating key claims here without offering a new perspective or new perspective.You might not be best served by this analogy, either
  • very interesting. Perhaps this passage about the bathroom might become a separate idea?Why do you think the bathroom in particular feels at odds with the rest of the interior?
  • OK. the argument here is that both the interior and exterior should be moved closer to the middle, so to speak.But really, your point is that any attempt to bridge this rift will likely lead to a loss of regionalism and/or a loss of modern progressivism. Could you do more to help your audience anticipate that conclusion at the outset of this paragraph?
  • I’m having a bit of a hard time following how this paragraph relates to the paragraph that precedes it.
  • You’ll need to cite the source of your photographs, as well.

Conference General Commentary:

  • You could do a bit more to produce an accessible, motivating tension in your introduction.
  • Use your figures more explicitly; they’re well designed!
  • Your paragraphing has me a little bit confused on pages 5-7 in places. This likely indicates there needs to be some additional work with topic sentences, with re-structuring contents, and with trimming distracting content.
  • The penultimate paragraph seems the most difficult to follow; I’d like to hear you talk about your intentions there.
  • Do you have any further thoughts on the social function of the building? It’s connection to local culture?

Final Draft: Writing 5 Project 1 Final with comments

Project Post-Mortem:

The writing concept that I found the most useful for this project was the logical construction of an essay. It was very useful for building up my argument, as it needed lots of background for it to work properly. Any other construction would have seemed like a jumble of unrelated claims or not to the point. I was also really helped by the idea of the motive statement, with the starting position and then the challenge of that starting position. It made it very easy to organize my essay and gather my thoughts into one cohesive argument. It was also best suited for my essay, allowing me to provide an implicit road map of the essay without losing my thesis at the end of the introduction. Although it may not count as a “writing process” in the strictest sense, actually having been to The Village multiple times and staying in multiple buildings helped to shape my argument a lot. Not only could I draw information from the photos on the internet, but I could also draw information from my own memory and describe (to a degree) how the design actually made me feel.