I think I found what I have to do in Queens West both in Studio work and RDNY class after reading the “epilogue” of the book, ‘Site matters.’ That is, why Kaja decided this area to be one of the 5 sites.

As part of a bid by New York City to host the 2012 Olympic Games, five multidisciplinary teams of architects, landscape architects, and urban designers and planners were invited to offer design ideas for an Olympic Village… Each team conformed to established presentation requirements, yet each nonetheless depicted their project and its urban surroundings in notably different ways. Despite common constraints regarding scale and size, the models varied widely in extent and character. One team focused on local edge conditions, conceiving the site in terms of immediate physical surroundings. In contrast, another treated the site strictly as conceptual terrain, using the proposals to engage the history of ideas about the area. Some teams viewed it as belongings to the city at large, “opening the site as a New York City attraction” or “creating the largest urban waterfront park in New York City.” ………. the other depicted a large swath of Manhattan Island, from the East River to the Hudson, situating the Olympic Village in relation to mid-town. The diffrent physical areas identified as relaaevant to each prohect and the distinct strategies used to see and understand these areas prompt the question : What constitutes a site in design? from ‘Site Matters‘

Yes. This idea of “definition of site” is nothing new. I already know, maybe every architectural students learn it from the beginning of the first time studio. However, “site matters” really comes to my mind, after the “real” example.