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Design Technology
and Digital Production
An Architecture Anthology

This book is a rigorous account of architecture’s theoretical and technological concerns over the last
decade. The anthology presents projects and essays produced at the end of the first digital turn and
the start of the second digital turn. This anthology engages and deploys a variety of discourses, topics,
criteria, pedagogies, and technologies, including some of today’s most influential architects, practitioners,
academics, and critics. It is an unflinchingly rigorous and unapologetic account of architecture’s
disciplinary concerns in the last decade. This is a story that has not been told; in recent years everything
has been refracted through the prism of the post-digital generation.
Design Technology and Digital Production illustrates the shift to an architectural world where
we can learn with and from each other, develop a community of new technologies and embrace a design
ecology that is inclusive, open, and visionary. This collection fosters a sense of shared experience and
common purpose, along with a collective responsibility for the well-being of the discipline of architecture
as a whole.

Gabriel Esquivel is an associate professor at Texas A&M University and the director of the T4T Lab and
AI Advanced Research Lab at Texas A&M University. Gabriel was born and educated as an architect in
Mexico City with a degree from the National University and received his master’s degree in Architecture
from The Ohio State University. He previously taught Architecture and Design at the Knowlton School
of Architecture and the Design Department at The Ohio State University. He is a founding partner of the
online magazine AGENCIA, a publication dedicated to problems about teaching theory, and technology
in Mexico.
Design Technology
and Digital Production
An Architecture Anthology

Edited by Gabriel Esquivel

Designed cover image: T4T Lab 2019: Garret Farmer, Andrew Atwood, Sephora Belizor, Maria Chapa,
and Julia Vasilyev. Graphic Design by Quinn McCormack.

First edition published 2023

by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158

and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Gabriel Esquivel; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Gabriel Esquivel to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors
for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

ISBN: 978-1-032-17069-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-17070-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-25167-5 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003251675

Publisher’s note: This book has been prepared from camera-ready copy provided by the authors.
 To all those who have believed in me.
A special thanks to Quinn McCormack and Paul McCoy.
Contents

Preface by Gabriel Esquivel xi

Introduction by Marjan Colletti 1

Chapter 1. Speculations

1.1. Interview with Hernán Díaz Alonso. 7

1.2. New Orders : The Digital Revolution, or Breaking Bad Habits by Elena Manferdini 11
and Jasmine Benyamin.

1.3. Use Your Illusion, and Other Advice by Dora Epstein Jones. 15

1.4. Phase Precession and Quantum Foam by Stephen Caffey. 21

Chapter 2. Hybrid Assemblies

2.1. Making Friends by Joseph Choma. 25

2.2. In-And Architecture of Gaps and Overlaps by Kory Bieg. 31

2.3. Borboletta: Co-optable Modules for Other Forms of Life by Eric Goldemberg. 37

2.4. No More Room: An Incomplete View by Kristy Baillet and Kelly Bair. 41
Chapter 3. Sofware and Social Interaction

3.1. Discrete: An Architecture in Large Numbers by Gilles Retsin. 45

3.2. Programmed Ruination: Hyper_Artifacts by Daniela Atencio and Claudio Rossi. 51

3.3. Mediated by Scarcity. Video game simulations at the intersection between systems and 55
narrative by José Sánchez.

3.4 Mereologies or Designing with Parts by Daniel Koehler. 59

Chapter 4. Agency and Artifcial Intelligence

4.1. Liminal Platforms by Casey Rehm. 63

4.2. Tings, Facts, and the Ontology of Neural Architecture and Artifcial Intelligence by 69
Matias Del Campo.

4.3. A Multifarious, Anisotropic, Material Agency: Speculations on Additive Manufactured 75

Architecture by Robert Stuart-Smith.

4.4 Architecture Trough the Formal Lens of the Machine Learning Apparutus by Benjamin 81
Ennemoser.

Chapter 5. Ofset Mediums

5.1. Tis Must Be the Place by Courtney Cofman. 87

5.2. Deep Vista by Viola Ago. 91

5.3. Triptychs, Domes + Still Life(s) by Perry Kulper. 97

5.4 Irradiated Histories, Irradiated Futures: Uncovering Subperceptual Exposures in the 101
Borderland by Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller.

Chapter 6. Objects, Aesthetics, and Reality

6.1. Architecture and Our Aesthetic Future by Graham Harman. 107

6.2. Te Young Adolescent’s Primer on Architectural Reality by Mark Foster Gage. 111

6.3. Miniature Architecture for a Miniature World by Ferda Kolatan. 115

6.4. Decadence Transition and Coexistence : From Baudelaire to Object-Oriented 119
Ontology by Niccolo Casas.

6.5. Background Concerns by Michael Young. 127

Chapter 7. Questioning Nature

7.1. Wilderness Ontology. Interview with Levi Bryant. 133

7.2. Ecocentrism & New Ancientness by Barry Wark. 137

7.3. Natural’s Not In It by Nate Hume. 141

7.4. Representations Of and In the American Purlieu by Clark Thenhaus. 147

Chapter 8. Open Hypothesis

8.1. Openness and Fragments by Gonzalo Vaillo. 153

8.2. Synesthesia by Joris Putteneers. 161

8.3. Anotherness: One Hypothesis and Four Keywords for a Poly-Plural Hospitality 165
by Jordi Vivaldi.

8.4. Architecture as Worldmaking by Denise Luna and Alex Santander. 171

Chapter 9. Multiple Practices

9.1. Ateljé Sotamaa. Interview with Kivi Sotamaa. 179

9.2. Tom Wiscombe Architecture. Interview with Tom Wiscombe. 187

9.3. P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S: Interview with Marcelo Spina and Georgina Huljich. 195

9.4. Oyler-Wu Collaborative. Interview with Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu. 201

References 209
Contributors 215
Index 223
 xi

Preface

Gabriel Esquivel

With the application of digital technologies, architecture has entered a period of transition from the
first to the second digital turn that encompasses the time required to translate the consequences of this
digital revolution of the late twentieth century and early 21st century into a new architectural reality.
In addition to the inclusion of new material production processes, automation, augmented reality,
and artificial intelligence (AI), this technological development entails changes in the processes and
concepts that determine both the design and the aesthetic regimes in architecture. This book explores
the importance of design research through projects executed by different architects deploying new
tools, mediums, and workflow modalities to construct, transform, and provoke new possibilities in
architecture.
New technologies are essential in our daily lives; the use of these tools as a working medium
for our diverse modes of expression has become inescapable. Today within architecture, digital tools—
from machine learning to fabrication technologies, from AI to Big Data—are becoming more and
more ubiquitous and pervasive. Architecture echoes innovation techniques in the matter of computer
programs with which to elaborate new projects in pioneering formats, components, and aesthetics, thus
setting the tone for the next future itineraries to follow. Digital is everywhere—from the infrastructure
we use to navigate the world to the objects we use to communicate (Claypool 2020).
This book, which I call an anthology, will be of great value as a set of projects and readings.
For all those interested in new explorations of architecture’s reality, it includes authoritative discussions
and conversations from architects, critics, and philosophers. The book is also about theoretical
reflection on the work, not reflection as an operative theory but as a search for the possibility of
discovering new arguments that emerge from within these projects. Architecture for a long time
has borrowed a series of terms and ideas directly from the philosophy that produces a very deep
argumentative rigor necessary to organize the mental processes of reasoning in architecture coherently
and validly. However, philosophy is not necessarily the only other discipline by which these projects
can be interpreted. The denomination of human or social sciences is also appropriate to define or
explain the function of architecture. When we speak about the past referring to the future, it may seem a
difcult paradox to explain. However, it is what emerges in the current state of architecture that takes digital
xii

sources for support, both at the creative/imaginative and formal/technical level. Tese computational tools
emerging from digital technology have diversifed and expanded the traditional resources of the architects.
Te pencil, the pen, the physical model, the sketch, compass, or triangles—that is, the common instruments
of architecture—are now combined, united, and sometimes replaced by an advanced suite of sofware and
applications that continually surpass themselves in innovation, capacity, resolution, and precision, thereby
providing us a fast and fertile ground in computational workfows.
In addition, the potential for using these tools is vast, immeasurably diferent from what could have
been imagined by any architect barely a generation ago. Almost at the same time these new technologies
emerge, they will be sooner rather than later afected by new challenges. Most of the projects shown in
this book are working with several of those challenges and have gone beyond their original premises, thus
acquiring new relevance and meaning. Tey are part of an active process of the universe of digital technology
in architecture, which no longer sees the need to describe the world only in materialized space but gives
agency to new areas of speculation, research, and innovation. Tis book aims to describe how innovations
in digital tools and speculation in architecture have contributed to the way that people can experience and
think of the built environment—both today and in the future. From parametricism to augmented reality
and AI, this anthology instigates a much-needed conversation about the future positive role of architectural
design, speculative theory, and digital technologies.
Some theorists, practitioners, and architecture academics question whether these new forms of the
discipline bring with them “the end of human agency,” which will be replaced by the intuitive nature and the
didactic formula of the tools’ interfaces, created so that those who handle them are not disadvantaged by the
complexities of conventional decisions. Indeed, the belief that computation is responsible for assessing the
viability of projects has become the most feared myth. Regardless, digital technology has certainly enriched
the spectrum of the architect, who no longer feels restricted by any kind of physical or spatial limitation
and can give authentic and complete freedom to architecture’s imagination. Terefore, digital architecture
is not less than the one we study as precedent, live, or see in the streets. Moreover, its tropes, speculations, or
even fantastic options share part of the constructive, operational, prosaic, and achievable reality that tries
to constantly actualize and situate what is being observed—that which seems unique, revealing, and breath-
taking on the computer screen—and if properly understood can become the future of the human agency.
Tis complicated scenario gives way to diferent conversations in architecture, some sharing commonalities
but some also exhibiting strong disparities. Tis book is a strong attempt to present those shared positions
that deal with architecture, technology, politics, and aesthetics under the umbrella of a decade in digital
history.
It is important to point out that at the academic level, these projects foster opportunities for
involvement that enhance the complex and everlasting relationship between architecture and technology.
To that end, architects serve the academic community as well as the practicing architecture community.
Tis service is achieved through active research within an interdisciplinary environment. Technology has
brought a new architecture paradigm that has blurred the boundaries of the disciplines into a world of
collaboration.
 1

0.1

Introduction

Marjan Colletti

FADE IN:
EXT. THE HOTEL - DAY
In front of the doors at the entrance of a grand hotel, a lobby
boy named 0 dressed in purple greets the arriving guests, almost
all dressed in black. ‘Woosh’. Doors open.

Welcome. Welcome to The Grand Digital Hotel.

I’m 0, your porter. Monsieur Gabriel E., the
concierge, will be able to further assist you
if you have any questions.

In the following paragraphs, I will be 0, your porter, your doorman, partly lobby boy, partly lift boy,
and even your fire marshal. I will be your Zero Moustafa of the situation – as in the 2014 comedy-
drama film written and directed by Wes Anderson The Grand Budapest Hotel1 (and Gustave H. being
the concierge), which some readers may be familiar with. The usage of this reference may somehow be
random, yet this association has helped to structure this text. When asked to pen the Introduction to
this book, I was conscious that writing an introduction to someone else’s book is a whole different ball
game than writing one for one’s own book. The analogy of an introduction is reminiscent of the lobby
DOI: 10.4324/9781003251675-1
2 Introduction

of a public building – that space that greets visitors first – grew on me. I confided in such correlation
and began writing/designing one that would hopefully greet you, the reader, adequately.
Moreover, a line in Gabriel’s Preface – ‘in recent years everything has been refracted through
the prism of the post-digital generation’ – also helped provide the chosen movie reference with further
context. Undoubtedly, the aesthetics of The Grand Budapest Hotel, in particular the animated scene
that introduces the building and its fictitious site, could certainly be described as quintessentially
post-digital: flat and two-dimensional, retro and romantic, pastiche and pink. Yet this book, and its
doppelgänger hotel (in my imagination), have thankfully little to do with this post-digital canon, a
self-indulgent condition of disciplinary implosion that neglects (-, minus) the digital. On the contrary,
in my opinion, it deals with a developing idea of a trans-disciplinary post+digital state of mind that
endeavours to evolve the digital (+, plus) to the benefit of the built, and the natural environments, as
well as virtual domains. I may suggest: postdigital!
Nonetheless, I named this place only The Grand Digital Hotel, not to upset Monsieur
Gabriel E. and the guests – they may not like being labelled as being postdigital. Not yet.

You know. This is not a luxury hotel for

extravagant clients, but more of a Hôtel
Industriel for start-ups.

CUT TO:
INT. THE LOBBY - DAY
Muzak playing
0

May I have your name, please? Are you a member

of the club? Terms and conditions apply.

In general terms, a lobby, or foyer, is a semi-public space (one almost always gets admission
into the lobby of a theatre, cinema, museum, station, airport, etc. without a ticket) and therefore
should be designed to be fully accessible, open and airy, of easy navigation, and arranged to control,
direct, and/or block the flow of people entering and exiting the building. It is usually granted higher
design attention in terms of surface treatment, furniture selection, and décor than more pragmatic
spaces further in, as it is intended to reveal, and sometimes fake, the aesthetics, the quality, and the
mood of the rest of the spaces. It appears to me that the same rules apply to an introduction: it is the
‘space’ that readers enter first, that provides refuge and relief from the ‘outside’ world, and that invites
visitors to look around and consider the topics of the book, eventually to check-in. Concepts and
ideas can be placed here as single pieces of selected furniture; hopefully nicely arranged and ready to
embrace visitors. A few cosy couches here, a few designer chairs there; ideally some plants, and good
lighting to create a nice and relaxing atmosphere for both day and night.
Yet there were huge caveats. Firstly, would this lobby be fit for purpose, with very little insight
into the programmes and functions of the inner parts? After all, John Portman’s Hyatt Regency Atlanta
lobby would not make much sense for an airport. Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center atrium would
not be appropriate for a museum. Coop Himmelb(l)au’s MOCAPE foyer would not suit a town hall!
And then, would I overly misuse my own lobby to lobby for my own interests, and influence the reader
in ways that were never intended? I set out not to do so. I also decided to be the porter, and not a
rough, black-dressed muscle-packed bouncer, making sure inappropriate, or unsuspecting, visitors are
made aware, explicitly, of the exclusivity of the club (only digital, please), nor a Court Marshal – those
 Introduction 3

stiff, rather snobbishly and over-dressed announcers of guests at formal audiences, balls, and dinners
(enter so-and-so, welcome so-and-so). Both associations have to do with exclusivity, and surely this was
not Monsieur Gabriel E.’s intention at all. Neither is mine.
On the contrary. I am confident that the ‘construct’ that lies behind this lobby space is very
inclusive. I state this without really knowing what lies behind it but being acquainted with several of
the people – friends, students, peers, references – who go in and out here. They are young, fresh, vital,
optimistic, techno-savvy, and dedicated people working on progressing, improving, and changing
architecture. So, what is inside The Grand Digital Hotel now? Word analysis of the book’s draft
manuscript reveals the main terms used throughout 1) ‘architecture’, 2) ‘design’, and 3) novelty. Per se,
the first two are rather conservative, disciplinary terms, whilst ‘new’ is simply overused – seductive, but
skin-deep, and does not age well. Then, we can find the very tangible ‘objects’, ‘things’, and ‘parts’, and
the more intangible ‘human’, ‘nature’, ‘technology’, and ‘time’, too. This list seems to disclose that the
book vacillates between an early and a late digital stance.

CUT TO:
INT. THE LIFT-DAY
Muzak playing
0

Can I tell you a secret? It wasn’t murder,

after all.

In the movie, the police wrongly accuse Monsieur Gustave H. of having murdered Madame
D., a wealthy dowager. Equally, we would be wrong to believe that Monsieur Gabriel E. assassinated
Madame Digital, here, with this project. This is not the case. She was revolutionary but also became
ill (we all knew it) even before Mario Carpo diagnosed her with a fatal disease in 2017 in The Second
Digital Turn3, based on earlier aging symptoms detected by Greg Lynn in his Archaeology of the
Digital4 exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in 2013. The first pathologies even date
back to 1998, when Nicholas Negroponte’s unambiguously stated in his ‘Beyond Digital’ article in
Wired magazine that ‘Face it – the Digital Revolution is over’5. Her death was hence a slow, gradual,
and continuous process, not a murder. But she was very beautiful, agile, an icon of elegance, smoothness,
modulation, our dear Madame Digital, yet fragile. She passed away on 31 March 2016, on the very
same date as British Iraqi starchitect Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid unexpectedly deceased at the
Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Florida, United States. Not a coincidence. On this very
date, the era of what I call ‘The High Digital’ died with her.

Which Floor? 1: Speculations, 2: Hybrid

Assemblies, 3: Software and Social Interaction,
4: Agency and Artificial Intelligence, 5: Offset
Mediums, 6: Objects/Aesthetics/Reality, 7:
Questioning Nature, 8: Open Hypothesis, 9:
Multiple Practices?

CUT TO:
INT. ONE OF THE CORRIDORS - DAY
A Siren howling in the background. O is wearing a high-visibility
vest. From the speakers, we hear repeatedly several pre-recorded
4 Introduction

announcements: ‘Fire Alarm. Please remain calm and evacuate the

building by the nearest exit.’

Fire Alarm. Please make your way out of the

building, promptly.

At this very moment, more than the death of the digital, we have another emergency to deal with… I
was and still am a committed advocate, like most of the users here at The Grand Digital Hotel, of how
digitality has positively affected the design, the making, and the inhabitation of buildings. However,
there is a globally howling siren droning in everybody’s ears, which can no longer be disregarded as a
regular drill. It is not: the ecological crisis has reached a point of no return.

Please leave your belongings behind.

Please, leave your disciplinary dogmas behind. As fre marshal of the situation, I may risk coming across
as moralising and sermonising, but it would be irresponsible not to mention how the economic recession,
warmongery, pandemics, and growing lists of environmental and climatic catastrophes are ruling present
times. Tis is not the present the digital was working on, not the future it attempted to shape.

Please find your nearest exit.

My personal exit from the digital was the postdigital: an evolution, the development, extrapolation,
translation, and application of the challenging, intelligent, and beautiful ideas of the digital together with
non-digital design technologies and other digital production methods (yes, the way the terms are ordered
here, is correct). However, there is no time to discuss this, here. We must keep going.

CUT TO:
EXT. THE HOTEL - NIGHT
In front of the doors at the entrance of a grand hotel. The façade
is on fire.

Te building is on fre. Or, more precisely: the façade is on fre; the fat and two-dimensional, retro and
romantic, pastiche and pink post-digital façade described in the frst paragraphs. We already can see
through and understand how complex the bowels of Te Grand Digital Hotel are. By the way, the name is
a shortened version, but I believe that it sufces; everybody knows that digital equals design, and industry,
these days. It once was called Te Grand Digital Technology and Design Production Hotel Industriel. It
was a huge fab lab for CAD and CAD/CAM folks, the space flled with small desktop 3D printers, a CNC
router, a laser cutter, and half-used flament rolls stacked up in every corner. Now, it is called Te Grand
Design Technology and Digital Production Hotel Industriel. Te diference between the two may be
disregarded as whimsical wordplay, but it denotes a clear and essential distinction: the frst was a brainchild
of the frst digital turn, and this, is one of the second digital turn. Tat digital, technology, design, and
production can be used interchangeably, tells you that this metaphorical hotel, and the book, are of this very
 Introduction 5

period between the turns. Personally, more than a turn I consider this most recent phase to be a transition
of the digital from being a technology to being production, and the reversal of design not to be merely the
creation of ‘objects’, ‘things’, and ‘parts’ but an agency system intertwined with technology; a transition to
the postdigitality mentioned earlier. Now, we will rebuild this façade! Diferently! Te old façade made
people believe that architecture was unfamiliar with and unaware of, the grand challenges we all face, from
ecology to energy to automation, from economy to migration to climate. We will build a postdigital façade
and a new lobby: beautifully fabricated out of sustainable materials, responsive and intelligent, porous and
in dialogue with nature. Tis may be then the frst, but I am sure there will be many more Grand Postdigital
Hotels around the world. Why not join the new loyalty programme!?

FADE OUT:
EXT. THE HOTEL - DAY
Years later, in front of the doors at the entrance of a grand
hotel, now with a new design. 0 is now the concierge, older and
dressed in purple and black. ‘Woosh’. Doors open.

Welcome. Welcome to The Grand Postdigital

Hotel. I’m 0, your concierge.

Notes
1 Wes Anderson (director, screenplay, story, production). Te Grand Budapest Hotel. Fox Searchlight Pictures,
TSG Entertainment, Indian Paintbrush, Studio Babelsberg, American Empirical Pictures. 2014.
2 Online at databasic.io. Accessed 04.08.2022.
3 Mario Carpo. Te Second Digital Turn: Design Beyond Intelligence. Cambridge, United States: MIT Press,
2017.
4 Greg Lynn. Archaeology of the Digital. New York, United States: Sternberg Press, 2013.
5 Nicholas Negroponte. ‘Beyond Digital’. In Wired magazine, Issue 6.12, December 1998. Online at https://web.
media.mit.edu/~nicholas/Wired/WIRED6-12.html. Accessed 04.08.2022.

Images
0.1 20th Century Fox, Te Grand Budapest Hotel.
 7

Chapter 1. Speculations
We build with ideas. Unfortunately, there is a part of the practice that is built not only of concrete and
steel but greedily disregarding society at large; however, architecture rises above thought. Contemporary
architectural discourse has been more concerned with its position within culture in general and thought
in particular. Terefore, university courses in architectural theory ofen spend as much time discussing
philosophy, cultural studies, and their connection with the architectural humanities.
Te theoretical world of contemporary architecture is plural and multicolored. Tere are diferent
dominant schools of architectural theory that are based on speculative realism, post-structuralism, or cultural
theory to mention a few. For example, there is an emerging interest in the rediscovery of the postmodernist
in the defnition of new radical tendencies in architecture and their implication in the development of cities
embracing the idea of discipline, or in new aesthetic and formal approaches to architecture through the
appropriation of concepts from Object-Oriented Ontology. However, it is hard to say whether any of these
explorations will have a widespread or lasting impact on architecture.
Some forms of architecture theory take the shape of a conference or a conversation, a treatise,
an anthology, a competition, or a book. Architectural theory is ofen didactic, and theorists tend to stay
close to or work from academia. Tese types of theoretical publications became more common in the 20th
century and architectural theory gained considerable richness. As a result, styles and movements formed
and dissolved much more rapidly than the relatively enduring modes of earlier history. Tere is the hope that
in the second digital turn, the use of technology and social media will further the discourse on architecture
in the 21st century.

Interview with Hernán Díaz Alonso

Gabriel Esquivel: Tank you so much for doing this. A few days ago, I was looking at those pictures that we
had taken from Azul Rey Conference in Mexico City 15 years ago. Whatever was important for you then, is
it still important for you now, or what has dramatically changed?
Hernan Diaz-Alonso: Talking about the past is never easy because I live in the now. I don’t tend
to look back much. I went through a bit of that process a year and a half ago when we had to fnish the
book and the monograph, which is always annoying. I think a lot of things have changed but a lot of things
remain the same. So, it depends on how you see it. On one hand, you are always doing the same thing with
diferent iterations. On the other hand, sometimes you would like to think that a lot of things have changed,
but then it is not so evident in the world. What changed for me had to do with how to separate the human
being from the architect. At a human level, many things happen, when you get older, you become more
literal and more straightforward. You feel less pressure to ornament things with words, and you become
more aware of the reality of your work. You can select the kind of work you are interested in doing, it would
probably have many chances to survive in the real world, it depends on the choices. But there is that level of
being surprised by the fact that the work is still there. As you mature, the work is diferent, at the same time
the context has changed. If we go back 15 years ago, maybe not just me but all of us were trying to be more
provocative, today you cannot think in those terms anymore. I’m more interested in being literal, I’m way
more interested in being straightforward about what I think and how it became part of the work. Along the
way, you lose your own ability to work with the tools, with the computer, and then you start to work a lot
more with other people. You become more like a creative director than a designer, there is a certain distance,
and in that sense, things have changed. I think the spirit of what interests me is still there, the obsessions

DOI: 10.4324/9781003251675-2
8 Interview with Hernán Díaz Alonso

remain similar, but the vehicles of transformation are diferent. As you evolve, you tend to get rid of a lot of
noise, things become much more essential.
My role as SCI-Arc director takes a huge amount of time in my life. In the last four or fve years,
my activity as a designer got much more sporadic. I’m not as productive as I used to be, I used to be working
all the time. We still design, we still produce stuf, but it has been in a diferent way, there is much more
time between things, but when there is a lot of time in between, you lose the rhythm. I’m a very primitive
designer, applying a lot of instinct but that is something you must cultivate. I’m not a conceptual designer,
I’m just more emotional, and I need to be like that all the time, but that is changing too. I feel like every time
that we work on something, it is almost like we start from scratch, which was not the feeling I had before,
it was constant, like a bundle of stuf. I think that is not the case anymore, however, I’m looking forward to
when I can do that again.
GE: You have been and still are an important fgure in architecture, a game-changer in terms of
your discourse, aesthetics, and the use of digital technology. Do you feel that there is a huge pressure to be
in that role, you were the guy that was changing things, a disruptor?
HD-A: First of all, the things that you are saying are stuf that other people label you with. I have
never labeled myself under any of those things. I design what I design because that is the way I see the world.
If it is disturbing, disgusting, or insulting to many people like it has been in the past, I understand why,
and I respect that. Even today there are people who get really worked up with the work, they think it is not
architecture. I never get afected by that because I think architecture is a subjective feld that everybody is
entitled to have their opinion on. Some of the criticism is also fair. I never feel that pressure because it is like
breathing, I don’t know any other way. Tis is what comes out of my brain and my guts, and I don’t know
how to do anything else. I think the pressure will come depending on what you measure as success. I’m
still very immature or very childlike when I’m working. It has to be exciting for me, the other stuf remains
secondary to me. I never thought of myself in those terms, I think there are other people who are truly game
changers, I consider myself more of a designer.
GE: When your frst book about Xefrotarch was published, it became an item to have because
it described an important radical period of architecture. When your book Surreal Visions was published,
the message in the introduction was that you are a visionary. Do you think that today there is still room for
being radical or visionary?
HD-A: I have never considered myself a visionary, I have always operated in the present. When
you ask somebody to write an introduction or a comment about you or your book, it is hard for me to believe
what they say. I don’t read what they wrote until the book is published because I don’t want to censor it or
edit it. Probably there is room for people to be visionary, I’m not so sure that architecture, which is such a
slow-burning feld, is the right vehicle for visionary work. I think it is very difcult for architecture to break
away from the past and the pressures of whatever that means. I think there is room to be visionary maybe in
other felds, I don’t know what it will take for somebody to be a visionary architect. To produce something
radical, a disruption, nobody knows what that is. To be radical, there must be something established that
we could rebel from. Tere are so many established things, so you are being radical against which one? And
we’ve seen so many options in the feld for the last 15 years. Tere are people being theoretically radical but
are very conservative in terms of design and vice versa, I don’t know what the rule is. Maybe at the risk of
being simplistic, I think it is much more interesting to try to do something good rather than radical, try to
do something interesting, try to do something stimulating. I think there is still some room to be somewhat
provocative. I think some words got distorted over the years, and people have misunderstood the terms.
When you say provocative, people assume radical.
GE: People have recently been looking at your work but not in the way it was originally seen, they
are looking at it with a diferent lens, more openly and less biased as well, is that important for you?
HD-A: First of all, I was not aware of any rebirth of interest. As you get older, you can’t be seen
as radical anymore. Also, I think the lack of success relaxed everybody, comments like this guy didn’t build
this insanity, so, they are fne. I have always been immune to those things because, over the years, I have
 Interview with Hernán Díaz Alonso 9

this insanity, so, they are fne. I have always been immune to those things because, over the years, I have
become less feisty than I used to be because you come to terms with the realization this is what you do, and
it is not the truth of anything. I think architecture or design at large, is still defned by this kind of moral
understanding, that there is some perfect truth. I have always said that architecture is like a religious war in
that everybody is fghting for their own version of God, which one is the right one or the wrong one? I also
think everything is cyclical. If things hang around, if you hang around, eventually people go back to it, but it
will be abandoned again. I’m fully aware that the level of infuence that any of us have is very little, and that
is fne. I always think that the work of many of us is a little bit like jazz, it is music for other musicians. You
go to jazz in a club and 80% of the audience are musicians. Recently somebody sent me a very critical review
of my book, and I thought what they were saying about the book is actually 75% right. Tey were saying
that I should go into art and objects or whatever. Yes, I’m doing that. Te only thing I thought was unfair is
when they were talking about SCI-Arc being a program, it is not a program, this is a school with almost 50
people teaching design, and everybody has a diferent date, a diferent view, or whatever. I don’t understand
why we are in the feld where everybody is so invested in attacking or destroying what somebody else does.
GE: Can you describe why SCI-Arc has always been kind of a thermometer? People come here to
see what’s new, what’s happening right now, it has always played that role. What has been your role and how
has it been diferent from, let’s say, Eric Owen Moss’s role when he was here?
HD-A: Te role has already changed even during the time I have been doing this. Look, in these
kinds of jobs, the circumstances dictate many of the changes. I think there is a misconception about how
much the leadership of an institution can infuence the curriculum. As a leader, you have infuence, of
course, but the times are constantly changing. When I started six and a half years ago, I came from inside
of the school, I was the graduate chair before this job. So, I was part of it in one way or another of things
that were happening. My frst thing was, that I don’t want to start from scratch, I don’t want to destroy what
has been achieved. Tere are certain things that make sense, and they are already working fne, the question
was, how can we expand those? My main goal was to understand that there is a particular way architects
think which can be applied to many things, and this is something that SCI-Arc has always done. I wanted
to work with the existing great team, our design drive, and the digital expertise for sure, all these aspects are
at the core of what the school is. Trough new tools of communication, social media, and so on, we need
to keep expanding to produce change beyond the walls and engage in a much larger cultural conversation.
Speculation became the keyword, more than radical, more than experimental because we are in a position
where we have achieved an important maturity level. Tere are also things that happened and forced us to
change. Climate change, the pandemic of course, but also the problem of racism in the country, have become
important discussions that we must deal with. I have started to think about what the social agenda is, and
how this agenda intersects with a speculative design agenda. I think this is a challenge and a fundamental
change for us. You try to focus on expansion and global interaction for the school, and then something else
happens. Academia is the place to push forward because pulling back is way easier than pushing forward.
Our role is to keep pushing, and not accept reality as it is.
Te job is not about being a visionary, it is about the fundamental question I ask myself every
week, what is next? If this is not working, let’s break it down, let’s start again, or let’s keep pushing. Tat
comes with criticism because architecture is the elephant in the jungle, it is slow, it is big, and it does not like
to run. Tere is a level of uncertainty that you need to learn to be uncomfortable with. I think an institution
should always be uncomfortable, not complaisant in a positive way. Your leadership role is to stimulate
that discomfort, to support and push the people to do that. I have always told everybody, the faculty, and
students, that what we always expect from them is to be and do the most extreme version of who they are,
not to change who they are, but to be the most extreme version of themselves because this is the place for it.
I think it is our job to make sure that SCI-Arc should keep reinventing itself all the time.
GE: What do you think will happen in the next ten years, when a student comes to an institution,
should that student start looking for things that he or she is familiar with, or should he or she be open to
experimenting, with whatever is being ofered?
10 Interview with Hernán Díaz Alonso

HD-A: I think anybody who can predict what will happen in the next 10 years, should be taken
with a grain of salt. Architects like science fction but we shouldn’t confuse science fction with fantasy
which is very diferent. Science fction basically is to use the future as speculation about the present. But
you are really talking about the present, you are not talking about the future. Architecture as such is always
in speculation because any architecture project is going to take about 4, 5, 6, or 7 years to be fnished.
So, this is what we do on a regular basis. An event like the pandemic happens once every hundred years.
So, things don’t change as much as we think they do. We’re going to see more and more architects and
architecture students with an entrepreneurial spirit. We are going to see more invasions of new professionals
or new business models or new ways of production. Tese things are set in motion in which architects act
as communicators and as infuencers. I think there are still going to be many architects who want to build
because that has such an afnity, is seductive, is powerful, you want to put your footprint in the city, on
a place that’s not going to disappear. Architects are general experts, when most of the world is working
towards specifcity, we are kind of resisting that. I see a diversifcation of the capacity of architects to operate
in other forms of architecture and not just buildings. I may be wrong, but that’s what I see as a pattern. We’re
going to see an entire generation of thinkers that are going to develop multiple careers in their lifetime.
As an architect, you have to be like a sponge and absorb as much as you can, and whatever you
think you know is never going to be enough. I don’t think that’s diferent, that has always been the case.
I think people in our generation come from a culture of what I call depth of knowledge. We went to the
library and spent hours there. We all knew about architects, and we all had our heroes. Young architects
don’t think that way, they come from the density of knowledge. Tey know a little about a lot, and that has
changed the rules in how you build and accumulate knowledge in a productive way. We must be able to
adapt and accept it without getting stuck in something that happens to all of us from time to time; claiming
that our times were better. We come from a culture where we were taught to repress, and now we are moving
past that, but we also must be careful that we maintain certain values of specifcity, sophistication and many
other things that you need to learn to be able to navigate in architecture. At the end of the day, who knows
what is the right answer? You have to navigate to the best of your ability and try to put your best intention,
put your heart into it, and hope for the best.
GE: Tank you. I think you are still the one who says it like it is and puts things in a very
straightforward way. Tis is what I was still anticipating.
 11

1.1

New Orders
Te Digital Revolution, or Breaking Bad Habits

Elena Manferdini and Jasmine Benyamin

I certainly would not venture to defne the concept of order…but I trust it will bring out the feature which
interests me in decorative design. Te arrangement of elements according to similarity and diference and the
enjoyment of repetition and symmetry extend fom the string of beads to the layout of the page in font of the
reader, and, of course, beyond to the rhythms of movement, speech and music, not to mention the structures of
society and the systems of thought.
-E. H. Gombrich

Te Golden Section, the raumplan, the nine-square grid, modeling algorithms – geometrical orders and
their afnity to aesthetic and spatial experience are enduring themes in architecture in both its visual
and material manifestations. Why are we drawn to geometrical rules? Why do we lean on them as short
hands to formalize the built environment? Why do we fnd them pleasing? According to cultural theorist
and art historian E.H. Gombrich, this tendency to seek order is seated in our universal human impulse
to fnd predictable rhythms in space and time. In his celebrated tour of ornament from 1979 entitled “A
Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art” Gombrich makes a case that all decorative
arts are the expression of an innate “sense of order”; since the beginning of time, ordering logics have
assisted human existence in adjusting to complex, not to mention dangerous, external triggers. For their
part, architects leverage their multifarious tools to create environments, and along the way, try to make
sense of the world around them. Tis ‘making sense’ invokes other words that encircle rationalization,
rules and control. Tese centuries-old pathologies refect our shared instinct to seek dominion over
space and time. Tis essay harnesses Gombrich’s expansive framework by casting a wider perceptual
12 New Orders: Digital Revolution, or Breaking Bad Habits

and formal net, to provide a more robust accounting of the role of order in contemporary architecture,
whereby emergent computational tools have drastically expanded the possibilities of geometrical orders.
Since human development has always required orientation in space and anticipation of time,
orders have always been aligned to the perception of meaning. Te lasting link between order and meaning is
deeply rooted in our biological heritage. Te formal characteristics of a variety of human artifacts, buildings
included, can be seen as manifestations of that psychological predilection for order. We, as humans, like
what we can control. Terefore, the harmony of parts constitutes a way of being psychologically afected, of
being moved emotionally. For centuries architects have adopted these guiding principles as frameworks to
design space. Recurring fgures in architecture – the arch, the column, a mold, or a square grid – are at their
core, manifestations of harmony. Simplest of all is the formal dialog between part to whole, or between
colors and their complementary hues. Over time, these ordering afliations have become primordial drivers
of classifcation.
Te conventional narrative on orders where Western architecture is concerned begins with the
Greeks and Romans and centers on the column.
At the onset of their Vitruvian (if not earlier) theorization in de Architectura, columns begin
to carry a double load: as part of a larger set of supportive building elements, but also in their symbolic
afnities with the human body. No bodies, no columns, no order. It stands to reason then that the enduring
triad of frmitas, utilitas, venustas is the frst conceptualization of ‘order’ as constitutive of a larger system of
rationalization. For thousands of years, the Golden Section has been used in art, architecture, and design as
a way to produce visually satisfying geometric forms. Alberti’s de re aedifctoria conceives buildings as bodies
whose forms are produced via mental perception and materials derived from nature. He mobilizes Euclidean
mathematics as a vehicle for visualizing ideas into ordered formal propositions. In Vers une architecture, Le
Corbusier’s invocation of ‘regulating lines’ grounds his early 20th-century theory on proportional systems.
In so doing, he formalizes an intuitive sense of grid-based aesthetics into a comprehensive architectural
language.
Going beyond the western canons, one can fnd similar tendencies towards an order in Islamic
ornament, whose geometrical patterns have been deployed as decorative elements and have come to
delineate specifc stylistic guidelines for architecture. In Chinese domestic architecture, walls and their
ordered sequences not only delineate architectural spaces or courtyards; they also index a strict social
hierarchy that dominates programs and structures. In short, the armature of an ordering logic has always
underpinned space making, as syntax does in any language. In most cultures and civilizations, order and
proportion have acted as powerful agents within which form, composition, and spatial organization could
fourish.
As these and many other examples illustrate, ordering systems have come to constitute a catalog of
canonical attributes, and a manual for the creation, evaluation, and analysis of architecture. Te architect’s
instinct to seek dominion over space is manifested in generations of sanctioned rules that have rationalized
our aesthetic experience of the built environment. Naturally, these ordering systems have delineated the
limits of architectural qualities we have considered fundamental for the canon for centuries because they
exemplifed our visual and material culture more precisely than other structures. It is important to note that
the process of canonization has been essential to the autonomy of the feld and its discourse. Without these
rule-based notions, it would be hard to formalize a method of making or engaging in fruitful conversation
around buildings that best defne our culture at any given time.
On the other hand, when the rulebooks fail to be updated and expanded along to mirror shifs
in our culture, orders calcify into doctrine. Geometry runs the risk of losing its innocence and becomes a
prisoner of a dominant idea. Canons have stunted our inherent cultural diversity and rather reinforced a
singular interpretation of what architecture should look like. In fact, it has become apparent that the canon
has – willingly or not – excluded from the disciplinary discourse a variety of stakeholders that did not
fall within accepted norms. And while the desire for order is here to stay, it is time to expand our shared
institutional memories, decolonize architecture and open the feld to a more inclusive worldview.
 New Orders: Digital Revolution, or Breaking Bad Habits 13

1.2

In order to produce new, unexpected geometrical orders that break bad habits, architecture needs
to refect on our epistemological and disciplinary limits, and look forward to the adoption of new tools.
What better than computers can fulfll these two tasks? Computers are both the repositories and generators
of new knowledge. Tey can follow defned sets of instructions and execute them, they can process big data
and fnd invisible orders. Over the course of the past thirty years in particular, computer technology has
facilitated thinking, learning and making with hitherto unimaginable speed.
Te frst digital turn presented a paradigm shif in our understanding and leveraging of complex
geometrical order. In the intervening decades, the growth and breadth of computational tools have expanded
the mathematical space of architects’ formal imagination and inadvertently mined the old doctrines.
Looking back at this fertile point of origin, it is impossible to dismiss that computation has played a central
role in dismantling formal dogmas and their myriad architectural associations. From folding to cyberspace,
from hypersurfaces to parametrics, from scripting to large data, digital tools have disrupted the doctrines
that we commonly associate with the canon. Tey promise new primary orders, syntaxes, and imaginaries.
Technology ofers increased access, and democratization of aesthetics, and opens the possibilities
for unprecedented access to the design process and its outcomes. Disciplinary hard lines have gone by
the wayside as the dissemination of open-source sofware platforms have amplifed numerous stylistic
sensibilities that now fnd new homes in architecture. Tis coupled with the ubiquitous trafcking of
architectural images on social media has drastically broadened the visual language of our feld beyond the
archive, the museum, and the library. We can no longer rest on grand narratives.
While in recent years some post-digital practitioners and academics have manifested an
anachronistic longing for canons, it is clear that the digital is here to stay and that its powers go well beyond
virtuosity and formalism; computation is at the core of the contemporary mandate for design inclusivity
and equity. Innovation and novelty usher in new experiences and perspectives, and ultimately give voice to
ever-expanding audiences. Alongside precision, current trends in computation have introduced degrees of
contamination, imperfection, and indetermination – all necessary ingredients for our architectural present.
14 New Orders: Digital Revolution, or Breaking Bad Habits

1.3

Images
1.1 Living Picture: Interactive wall design by Atelier Manferdini for Kaida Center of Science and Design.
Location: Kaida Center of Science and Design, Dongguan (China) 2019. Courtesy of UAP.
1.2 Urban Fabric Rugs: Model A3, one of 12 hand tufed, hand-carved 100% New Zealand virgin wool rugs
designed by Elena Manferdini and produced in limited edition by Urban Fabric Rugs.
Shanghai (China) 2018. Courtesy of UFR.
1.3 Hibiscus: Shading panels by Atelier Manferdini for Alexander Montessori School front facades
Miami, Florida, USA 2016. Courtesy of Atelier Manferdini. Photo by Artofmart.
 15

1.4

Use your Illusion, and Other Advice

Dora Epstein Jones

Like a funhouse mirror, a basic premise of parametrics and AI is to weird the normative – to defamiliarize,
to cause a perceptual and psychological ficker between what we understand as reality, the normal, and what
is not. In the funhouse mirror, we have normative expectations of seeing our bodies; and whether we like the
view or not, we tend to associate that perception with our identity (“yep, that’s me”). Seeing our bodies in
the funhouse mirror, however stretched or compressed, disproportionate and alien, for a brief moment, and
knowing that this is a trick of the mirror, brings delight. We laugh, in part, because we know the illusion is
temporary. We laugh because we know, we know (we hope), that the normative body will be stable despite
the illusion.
With parametric sofware and AI in architecture, the task of weirding the normative is also
delightful. But, to paraphrase Dave Hickey poorly, what starts as a momentary “ha” can shif fairly quickly to
a more lasting critical assessment.1 Of course, the algorithmic path provides plenty of small giggles along the
way – funny little machine takes on cornices, humorous computational versions of mouldings, almost naïve
and adorable versions of so many architectural tropes. But, afer the initial chortle, the real intention sets
in. Te architectural weird asks us to question the normative – a normal column, a normal arch, a normal
angle. Like the convex mirror, we measure the alternative according to the expectation – the window that is
no longer exactly parallel to the architrave, the roof line that does not form a complete horizontal ray, and so
on. However, unlike the funhouse mirror, the sof manipulation of forms in architecture does not stop at an
ontological limit of identity, like the body does. Instead, and in every case, we stand huddled on the border
of many more provocative sets of questions for the feld of knowledge that we call architecture. Strangeness
invites the idea of possibility – windows shaped like pears, roofines melting like ice cream – as new forms,
16 Use your Illusion, and Other Advice

and even, new norms. Architecture, being the generous discipline that it is, invites these possibilities. We
can comfortably ask, “what would a world of these architectures be like?” And, we should.
Te Serlio Code is certainly a delightful set of investigations, exercises, fabrications, and
outcomes. Te folds and glitches confound. Te colors astound. But, weirding the normative, especially
in architecture, should be more than a matter of delight. We should take weirding as a very serious critical
provocation, and ultimately, as a key responsibility in architecture today. First, we must recognize and
acknowledge the intense intellectual scrutiny required for the success of sofware-driven architecture and
fabrication. Second, we must continuously engage the work with the understanding that norms established
within architecture are NOT stable entities. Te discipline of architecture wants us to continuously re-
examine it. Te Serlio Code lays this all before us.

More Tan Sensorial

AI certainly is not the frst instance of architectural strangeness. Prior to our generation, there is a concept
of architectural strangeness derived from Gestalt psychology, in particular, that of the cognitive psychology
used by Richard Neutra in the mid-20th century.2 In this formulation, architectural strangeness is caused
by a cognitive dysfunction. Te brain is unable to grasp a proper or correct perception because of some past
trauma. In the cases of Gestalt, the onus is on the designer to clarify his/her intentions in the design act, or
to resolve or ameliorate the trauma through design afects.
Preceding generations also had their avant-gardes, from Superstudio through to Sant’Elia, and
then further back to Soane, Ledoux, and Boullee. For these, we ofen refer to Fried’s Art and Objecthood.
Michael Fried had defnitively described the efect of strangeness as a form of bad object perception.3 Like
the architectural solution to resolve trauma, the architect understands their objective as transportative, an
agency to create feelings beyond literalism, and for Fried, beyond semiosis. And, while Fried’s world had
resulted in “good and bad” valences for art and art criticism, the idea that architecture should be “absorptive,”
and even “beyond words,” and especially as a matter of its “greatness,” has not at all disappeared.
Our very generation shares a basic sensibility derived from Anthony Vidler’s descriptions of the
“uncanny,” the evocation of a feeling of dissimilarity.4 In many ways, like the funhouse mirror, the uncanny,
or unheimlichkeit to be more precise, evokes the sense of a proper home, literally translating to “feel
unhomely.” Te formation of strangeness in the uncanny is that of a Freudian unconscious, hovering above
and below consciousness. Te unconscious is as a spectre that fogs the view of conscious and clear object
relations. In the architectural uncanny, it is a feeling of alienation, and hence, a detachment. Te “uncanny”
was a very popular term in architectural postmodernism, both as a strategy and a tactic, especially as an
intentional act of disruption.
Te accepted explanation of alienation, of strangeness, of weirding, therefore is as a sensory
experience, one that destabilizes (as in postmodernism) or must be harnessed to potentially soothe
(modernism). Aligning with post-criticality in the later postmodernist period has further buried strangeness
into a tangle of afects and efects. Tus, by the time that formal computing, such as the use of Maya, was
being advocated, it was doing so on the proviso that architecture should just be felt and enjoyed.5 And,
while that sounds buzzy and pleasurable, like an architectural pharmaceutical, the entire premise belies the
power of architecture and the capabilities of the human brain. I claim that architectural strangeness is not
merely a feeling, it is ofen also a rather precise and almost always instantaneous calculation.
Of course, not all feelings of unheimlichkeit are semiotic or intellectual or critical. Not to
mention, not all architectural sensations are conscious ones. To be fair, I am not a cognitive psychologist,
nor am I engaged in sensory research. I am, however, deeply, deeply interested and invested in the idea that
we all seem to “recognize” architectural tropes within the world of artifcial intelligence. In many ways,
we approach AI as if in a funhouse mirror, and for me, this activity of object recognition that we perform
within AI, such as with the Serlio Code, provokes important disciplinary realities, ones that operate at the
level of the establishment of architectural norms.
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occasion. Jennie was not long in making up her mind that Eloise
should be the name of her doll.
"I have always thought it such a lovely name," she said, "and Miss
Eloise will be so pleased, I know," as indeed she was.
Mrs. Morrison and Louis had gone home just before the bazar
came off, as they were to stop on the way to see Mrs. Morrison's
sister, but Louis told Edna that his Uncle Justus had persuaded his
mother to send him to boarding-school the next year, and strange to
say he liked the idea, so it will be seen that Uncle Justus did have
the talk he had in mind that evening of the sailing party. Edna was
not allowed to go away without having the sail to Gosling Island,
and this time there was no headache to interfere, but all went
smoothly, and the sail home by moonlight was something to be
156remembered. It was decided that the Ramseys should go as far
as Boston with the little girls when they were ready to go home, and
that a stop of a couple days should be made. Miss Newman and Miss
Eloise closed the little bungalow, but hoped to return to it another
year.
"I never dreamed of such a wonderful summer," Miss Eloise told
her three little friends as they were taking that moonlight sail. "To
think that I, poor invalid I, should actually have earned some money,
and am so much better that I may be able to earn more. Oh, my
dears, you don't know what it means to me to help sister who has
sacrificed her life to me. I am going to tell you that she gave up her
lover and all her dream of a happy home, such as other women
have, because I must be her first care. I want you to know how dear
and good she is, for I don't think people always appreciate her. I
have found that out since I have been more in the world and have
seen more people."
This little group was to itself, Miss Eloise lying on a pile of rugs
and the children around her. The others were in another part of the
vessel.
"I am glad you told us," said Edna, "for now we shall always
remember how good she is, and we shall love her more than ever,
but we can't help loving you best, Miss Eloise."
"Oh, my dear, don't say that. I don't deserve half as much love as
sister."
157 However this might be, it was a fact that no one could help
loving Miss Eloise the best, though the little girls said to one another
that night, "We must try to be extra nice to Miss Newman next year,
because Miss Eloise wants us to."
It seemed quite as if it were time to go when the little bungalow
was closed and the cottages, one after another, showed no sign of
lights at night. There was a sound of hammers over on the point
where the new house was going up for Cap'n Si, and it was expected
the family would move in by Christmas. The children wondered what
kind of furniture would be bought with the two hundred dollars, but
this they could not know till next year. However, Amelia told Jennie
that her ma rather guessed they'd have a parlor organ if they didn't
have anything else, and Amelia was much set up in consequence.
"Dear me," said Mrs. Ramsey when she was told this, "I was afraid
of that. It is just like these people. But what is one to do?"
The days were growing shorter and September was well on its
way when the trunks were packed ready for the start for home. "I
should feel dreadfully about your going if I didn't expect to see you
so soon," said Jennie the night before her friends were to leave.
"We have had the loveliest time," Edna told her, "and we're such
intimate friends now that I am 158sure we shall never be anything
else, even when we are very old."
But here Mrs. Ramsey appeared to say that if all three were to
sleep in one bed, as they had begged to be allowed to do this last
night, they must stop chattering and go to sleep. So there were only
faint whispers for a little while after that and then these ceased.
 159CHAPTER XI
OLD NORTH CHURCH

"I am so mixed up in my feelings," said Edna in confidence to

Dorothy when they were seated in the train. "I want awfully to see
them all at home, but yet I hate to leave here."
"I feel exactly that way myself," Dorothy confessed. "But even if
we weren't going to-day we couldn't stay very long, for the house
will be closed next week, and we shouldn't want to stay there
alone."
Edna admitted that this was true, and then Jennie came over to sit
with them and they talked of the things they were to see and the
places they were to go in the next two days.
"I think we will go to the Old North Church first," said Mrs.
Ramsey as they left the train. "We will send the baggage to the
hotel, then we will not have to come to this part of the city again."
"Oh, what a funny place," said Jennie, as they took their way
through streets where queer-looking foreigners congregated.
"I think the people are funnier than the place," remarked Edna.
160 "They are mostly Polish or Russian Jews," Mrs. Ramsey told
her. "It is not the neighborhood it was in Paul Revere's day. Here is
the old church."
The children looked with awe and reverence at the ancient edifice,
and, going inside, were shown some of the Revolutionary relics
which were there on exhibition. Just as they were coming out they
met a young man coming in.
"Hallo!" he cried in surprise.
 "Why if it isn't Ben," cried Edna delightedly. "Why Ben Barker how
did you get here?"
"I might ask you the same question," he replied.
"We came by train."
"And I came by boat. I thought it was a shame to be so near this
city and not stop off to see a few things, so I got my friends to let
me off and left the yacht to go on to New York while I should stop
here for couple of days."
"That is just what we are going to do."
"Good! then maybe we can join forces."
"That would suit me nicely," put in Mrs. Ramsey. "My husband will
not be down till to-morrow evening in time to take the train for Fall
River, and meantime I have these three little girls on my hands and
no man to look after us, so if you will come along to see about
tickets and things I should be pleased."
161 So Ben fell into line to the great satisfaction of all. "Where
were you going next?" he asked.
"As long as it is such a pleasant day I thought we'd better make
sure of Lexington and Concord, and leave the places nearer at hand
till to-morrow. Of course you will want to visit Harvard, and the
children have talked of the glass flowers so much that they must see
them. While you are visiting other points more interesting to you, we
will look at the flowers."
"Then, ho, for Lexington! We must take a subway car, and seek
the 'rude bridge' where 'the embattled farmers stood to fire the shot
heard 'round the world.'"
The little girls did not quite understand this till Emerson's poem
was explained to them.
"Oh, I do want to see the place where the British general said:
'Disperse, ye rebels,'" cried Dorothy.
"Then we'd better trot right along," said Ben. "You and I will go
ahead, Mrs. Ramsey, and lead the way."
 But Jennie wanted to walk with her mother too, and so the other
two little girls dropped behind to pursue their way through the
crooked streets where odd sights met their eyes; queerly dressed
women and children jostled them; at the doors of houses swarthy
faces and strange forms appeared. The shop windows held many
things the children had never seen before, and once or twice they
stopped to see what these very unusual articles could be. 162 "Do
look here, Edna," said Dorothy as they were passing one particularly
foreign looking place. "I must see what those funny things are," and
she turned back, Edna following her.
"We mustn't stop," said Edna, "for we might lose the others."
"Oh, just for a second. They are right ahead and we can't miss
them." But they could not decide what the funny things were and so
went on.
"Why, where are Ben and Mrs. Ramsey?" said Edna in alarm. "I
saw them a minute ago."
"They were right ahead of us when we stopped," said Dorothy,
hastening her steps. "They must have turned the corner."
They hurried along as fast as possible, turning the corner and
looking around. But there was no sign of their friends, and after they
had gone a short distance, "we'd better go back," Dorothy said.
They tried to retrace their steps, but it was a very crooked street
with others leading from it, and in their bewilderment they took the
wrong turning, so that in a few minutes they were hopelessly
beyond any possibility of finding their companions. They looked at
one another confronted by a problem.
"What shall we do?" at last said Edna in a weak voice.
With one consent they stood still and looked around as if hoping
to see a familiar face, but here 163was a denser crowd of foreigners
and only the dark eyes of Russians and Poles met theirs.
"I don't like it a bit here," said Dorothy as a hideous old woman
leered down at them.
 "Neither do I," quavered Edna. "I think we'd better ask our way
back to the church and start from there."
They accosted the first person they saw, who happened to be a
young girl, but at their question she shook her head. "No unnystan,"
she replied.
The next one questioned nodded and began to jabber something
in a foreign language, so it was the children's turn to say, "No
unnystan." The next of whom they inquired the way spoke brokenly,
but said he would put them on the right track, and under his
guidance they managed to reach the church, and here they met a
man in clerical dress who looked down at them with a smile. "Did
you come to see the old church?" he asked. "I am going in, and
perhaps you would like to come with me."
"We have been here once this morning," Dorothy told him, "but
we have lost our friends and don't know which way to go."
"Where were they going?"
"Why, I don't know, I think to the subway."
"Oh, that is easy to find. I will call a policeman and he will take
you along and show you." He looked up and down the street and
finally saw a 164policeman in the distance, and he was coming
toward them.
"There he is," said the man. "Just wait till he comes up. I say,
Mike," he called to the policeman, "just show these little girls the
way to the subway, won't you? They have turned the wrong way and
are out of their bearings." He smiled down on the children, lifted his
hat and passed into the church, leaving the children with the
policeman.
"Which way was you going?" asked the policeman pleasantly.
"We were going to Lexington," Edna told him.
"Then I'll go with you to the end of my beat and pass you along,
so's you'll get on at the right place."
 They walked quietly along wondering a little, as passers-by looked
at them curiously, if it was supposed they were under arrest. They
felt a good deal worried, but had a vague idea that the others would
wait for them at the subway, wherever that might be.
True to his word the policeman turned them over to another of his
order when they had reached the end of his beat, and this one
piloted them safely to the entrance of the subway. They had said so
confidently that they were going to Lexington that neither man
questioned, but that they knew the way once they had reached the
proper station.
They descended the steps with some misgivings, for if Mrs.
Ramsey and Ben were not there what 165was to be done next? They
had never been in the subway before for Mrs. Ramsey had wanted
them to see the city streets when they had visited the city in the
summer, and had taken a taxicab to go up town. Mr. Ramsey had
done the same when they arrived on their journey in his company. A
most bewildering place they found this same subway to be, full of
people rushing for trains, noisy from the whizzing of cars from out of
cavernous dark places and departing into equally unknown darkness.
It seemed terrible to the two little girls and they were on the verge
of tears. Impossible to find anyone in such a place as this. Best to
get out of it as speedily as they could. The roaring of passing trains
was so confusing, the jostling of the crowd was so unpleasant that
the children held fast to one another and hurried up the steps and
into the open air.
"Oh, dear," sighed Edna.
"Oh, dear," echoed Dorothy. "Wasn't it terrible? I felt as if I were
having a dreadful nightmare."
"I felt as if my head had been taken off and they were rolling it up
and down the car tracks." This relieved the tension a little and they
both laughed. "Now what are we going to do?" said Dorothy.
They stood on the sidewalk looking this way and that, uncertain
what would be the best move. Presently a lady who had just come
out of the subway, paused and looked at them. "Have you lost
anything, little girls?" she asked kindly.
166 "We've lost our way and our friends," Edna told her.
"My, my, that is a great deal to lose. Where do you want to go?"
"We were going to Lexington, but it was so awful down there,"
Edna nodded toward the door through which they had just come,
"and we would not go back for the world."
The lady smiled. "But what about your friends? Do they live in
Lexington?"
"Oh, no, we are all staying at the Parker House. We went to see
the Old North Church, and we were going to Lexington and Concord,
all of us, but somehow we got separated from them, and we
couldn't find them anywhere."
"We knew they were coming to the subway, for Ben said so,"
Dorothy chimed in, "and we thought we might find them there. A
policeman showed us the way."
"That was like looking for a needle in a haystack," said the lady,
"for you didn't know which of the subway stations they meant, did
you? There are a great many, you know."
"We didn't know, for we never went down there before. We
thought the subway was just one station, like the one we came into
from the shore."
"Oh, I see. Well, I am a stranger in town too, that is, I don't live
here, although I know Boston pretty well. I am staying at the Parker
House, and 167as it isn't so very far from here, I think your best plan
will be to go to the Parker House with me and wait there. I am sure
your friends will think that is what you would be likely to do, and will
make inquiries there before starting up an alarm for you."
"Oh, do you think they would do that? Do you mean they would
ring bells or anything?" Dorothy asked with a vague idea of what
might be done in the case of lost children.
 "They mightn't ring bells," said their friend with a smile, "but they
would notify all the police stations."
Edna nodded. "That's what papa did when I was lost. I wasn't
really lost, only I was afraid of the cattle and I went up the steps so
fast I fell and Mrs. Porter lived there; she was a friend of mine, you
know." Dorothy had heard all about this adventure before, and their
new friend did not press inquiries. She felt sure the children would
be anxiously looked for and that it was best to get them to their
hotel as soon as could be.
It gave the two little girls a great sense of security to enter the
place from which they had departed that morning, and they were
heartily glad to reach the building. They found out that their kind
acquaintance was named Mrs. Cox, and that she was from
Washington. She told the clerk, at the desk, that if Mrs. Ramsey or
any of her party came in or telephoned inquiries, that they were to
be told instantly the little girls were there.
168 "I am always getting lost, it seems to me," said Edna
plaintively, "and yet I am never really lost, or I wasn't before this
time, only people will keep thinking I am. You know, Dorothy, I was
perfectly safe at the bungalow when Louis thought I was lost, and I
was perfectly safe at Mrs. Porter's when papa and mamma thought I
was lost."
"And you are perfectly safe now when Mrs. Ramsey thinks you are
lost," added Dorothy in a somewhat aggrieved tone. She felt a little
conscience-stricken, knowing she was to blame in this instance, for it
was she who insisted upon stopping to look in at the shop window.
They had not very long to wait, for from their place in the
reception room, where Mrs. Cox told them it would be best to sit,
they presently saw Ben hurrying along, a worried look on his face.
The two children sprang out. "Here we are," they cried.
Ben rushed over and grabbed them both. "You young lunatics," he
exclaimed, "don't you know better than to get yourselves lost in a
city like Boston?"
 "We didn't mean to, Ben," said Dorothy meekly.
"You didn't mean to," mimicked Ben in a mocking voice. "Well, you
have scared us nearly to death, if that is any consolation to you."
"Where are Mrs. Ramsey and Jennie?" asked Edna, fearing one or
the other might be in hysterics for Ben's manner was anything but
reassuring.
169 "They are in a cab trying to follow you up. Mrs. Ramsey said
she would go over the ground we had just left when we missed you,
and in the meantime I was to come here, if by any chance you had
sense enough to come straight back to the hotel."
The children looked at each other with rather abashed faces, for
they had not had sense enough to do that, and might not have
thought of it but for Mrs. Cox.
"Before you give an account of yourselves," Ben went on, "I must
telephone to Mrs. Ramsey and relieve her mind. We agreed that I
was to do that and settled on a drug store where she would go to
get any message I might have." He rushed off, leaving the little girls
feeling very guilty. After all that Mrs. Ramsey had done for them to
give her so much uneasiness, struck them both as being very
heartless.
"I wish that old window was in the bottom of the sea before I ever
stopped to look in," presently said Dorothy vindictively.
Edna made no reply. She knew that it was not the fault of the
window, but of their own curiosity and heedlessness. They should
have kept directly behind their friends, she well knew. Her mother
had told her times enough that it was cowardly to blame inanimate
objects for things which we were to blame for ourselves, and Aunt
Elizabeth went further and said no one but a person without any
170wits would abuse a senseless thing for what was his own
thoughtlessness or carelessness.
But she was spared moralizing upon this to Dorothy, for Ben
returned saying that Mrs. Ramsey would be here in a few moments
and that the expedition to Lexington and Concord would be given up
for the day, as it was too late now to undertake so long a trip. He
was quite grumpy about it and the little girls were most unhappy at
being under his displeasure, for Ben was usually the sunniest of
persons and rarely gave them a cross look. He did not stay to talk to
them now, but went to the door to meet Mrs. Ramsey when she
should return and the children sat one at either end of the sofa,
silent and downcast.
Mrs. Cox had not waited for further developments once she had
seen that her charges were safe, and had gone out again. After
what was a long time to the two culprits they saw Mrs. Ramsey and
Ben approaching with Jennie. At sight of them Edna could no longer
restrain her tears, but burst into a noiseless fit of weeping, and
Dorothy, seeing this, began to do the same.
This was too much for Ben. He was very fond of his little cousin
and hated to see her cry. "Here, here," he cried, "don't do that. Why,
Ande, you are safe now. What's the use of crying when it's all over?"
He sat down beside her and began to wipe away the tears. "I say,
Mrs. Ramsey," he went on, looking up, "it is really my fault as much
as theirs. 171In that thickly settled part of the city, among all those
crooked streets, I ought to have kept a better lookout for these
children, and we don't know yet how it happened, anyhow. I haven't
even asked them. They may have been knocked down or anything
else may have happened for all we know."
The two felt that this was very generous of Ben, and their tears
flowed less plentifully. Mrs. Ramsey drew up a chair and said in a
pleasant, confidential tone, "Now tell us all about it. How did it
happen?"
The children faltered out an explanation in which the queer things
in the shop-window, the hideous old woman, the man at the church
and the subway all figured. Once or twice Mrs. Ramsey repressed a
smile, though for the most part she listened very soberly. At the
close of the narrative she turned to Ben. "It is just as you said; we
ought to have kept better watch upon them. One of us should have
walked with them instead of leaving them to follow alone."
 Ben nodded. "That's just what I think. Now, chicks, dry your eyes.
We are going to have an early lunch and go somewhere, to see the
glass flowers, very likely."
"Yes," put in Jennie, "please don't cry any more, girls. It makes
me so miserable to see you. I might have done the same thing if I
had been with you."
Thus comforted, the girls dried their eyes and followed Jennie and
Mrs. Ramsey upstairs to bathe 172their faces and get ready for lunch.
It was too bad to have lost a whole morning, but there could be a
great deal crowded into an afternoon, and, by the time the glass
flowers had been found, peace reigned and everyone was happy.
There was a drive around the beautiful parkway that evening and
a visit to the splendid library that night. "We shall have to leave
Plymouth Rock till another year," Mrs. Ramsey remarked as they set
out for their trip the next morning. "I think you will enjoy Lexington
and Concord more than a rather longer journey by water as you
have just come from the seashore." This time there was no delay
and there was plenty of time to visit the old battle-field, to see the
brown house where dear Louisa Alcott used to live, to hunt up
Emerson's home and the spot endeared by memories of Hawthorne.
Ben was intensely interested in it all and told the girls many things
which made them understand much better what they were seeing.
They must return in time to meet Mr. Ramsey at the Parker House,
and to get ready for their journey home, but there was a chance to
walk through the botanical gardens and the Commons, to look
across at the gilded dome of the State House, and to see the church
where the great Phillips Brooks had preached.
It was hard to part with Jennie and her mother, but the thought of
home and the dear ones there 173was too happy an anticipation to
cause any tears to be shed, and the little girls went off with a
memory of Boston marred only by that unfortunate shop window in
the foreign quarter.
 174CHAPTER XII
HOME AGAIN

"Are you going all the way home with us?" Edna asked Ben as
they left the boat at the wharf.
"Yes, Mr. Ramsey thinks he should stay in New York for the day,
and has handed you over to my tender mercies, so if we can get a
good train you will be at home in a very few hours."
"Now that we are so near I'm just crazy to get there," said
Dorothy. "Will they know exactly when we are coming, Ben?"
"We can easily let them know either by telephone or telegraph."
"I think I'd rather surprise them, wouldn't you, Edna?"
"It won't be such a big surprise, for mother knows we are coming
some time to-day."
"Then there is no use in sending word ahead," decided Dorothy.
"They will be looking for us anyway."
Just here Mr. Ramsey came up. "Well, young ladies," he said, "so
you are going to leave me. I think this young man can be trusted to
take care of you the rest of the way, and I hope as soon as 175Jennie
gets back you will come in to see her. We have all enjoyed having
you with us, and I hope you will feel perfectly at home in our house
always."
The little girls thanked him and said they had had a very happy
time and wouldn't he tell Jennie to come out to see them as soon as
she returned. So they parted, and then there was the rush of getting
to the train and the pleasant sense of knowing this was the last
stage of their journey. Ben whiled away the time by asking them
ridiculous conundrums which made them so hilarious that more than
one fellow traveller smiled in sympathy with their merry laughs.
The more absurd the conundrums the better the children liked
them, and those that Ben made up as they went along pleased them
best of all. "When is a fence not a fence?" asked Ben and the
answer was, "when it's an advertisement." "What would you do if
company came and there were no more tea in the teapot?" was the
next question.
"I'd send out for more tea," responded Dorothy.
"What would you do, Ande?"
"I don't know. What would you?"
"I'd add hot water and serve just as the sign tells you to do."
"But that means for soup."
"Well, but it answers just as well for tea. Now, here is another one
for you. Suppose you couldn't get tea, what would you do?
176 "I'd go without."
"I wouldn't; I'd use Horlick's malted milk."
"Oh, that is the sign just over there, isn't it? Too late, Dorothy,
we've passed it."
"Make up another, Ben," urged Dorothy.
"Well, here goes. If I wanted to be sure of an intellectual meal,
what would I do?"
They guessed several things, but Ben shook his head at each
answer. "I think it is a very hard one," declared Edna. "Intellectual is
a hard word anyhow. You will have to tell us, Ben."
"Give it up?"
"Yes, I do; don't you, Dorrie?"
"Yes, it is too hard for me."
"Then this is the answer: I'd put my roasts through a course of
Browning. I think that's pretty good myself. I shall have to salt it
down to ask your elders. I'll give you an easy one now. Why do they
call the man who drives the locomotive an engineer?"
Edna finally guessed this. "Because he is near the engine," she
said.
"Good girl; go up head," cried Ben. "You seem to be improving.
Now each of you try to make up a limerick and I'll do the same."
"Oh, we can't do that," objected Dorothy.
"Yes, you can if you try. I will give you a model.
177

There was a young person named Dorrie

Who said to her comrade, 'I'm sorry
I came on the train,
But I'll do it again
When Ben isn't with us to worry.'"

The girls laughed at this and set themselves to work to produce

something of the same kind. After many attempts Edna gave this:

"There was a young man named Benny

Who said, 'Please give me a penny.
Some peanuts I'll buy
All nice and dry,'
But he didn't give us children any."

"That's not bad at all," said Ben laughing. "Did you mean that for
a hint, and do you think I'd buy peanuts and keep them all to
myself?"
"Oh, no." Edna was shocked that he should think she really
intended a hint. "I just had to make up something and that was the
best I could do."
"Oh, dear, I can't get my last line," complained Dorothy. "I've tried
and tried and I can't find a rhyme for Barker and Parker. This as far
as I can get:
 There was a young man named Barker
Who stayed at the Hotel Parker
And ate lots of rolls
And drank from the bowls—

I had to say bowls to make it rhyme, though I really meant cups,

and there I am stuck."
Here Ben came to her rescue.

178
"And drank from the bowls
Until his complexion grew darker,"

he added to the amusement of the girls.

They kept up the limericks for some time, though Dorothy found it
such hard work that she finally refused to try any more, and Ben
looking at his watch decided it was time to go into the dining-car for
dinner. This was a new experience and made a pleasant break in the
monotony of the journey. By the time the meal was finished they
were so near their own station that the rest of the way seemed
nothing at all. At the station they had to change cars or else make
the trip by the trolley.
"Which shall we do?" asked Ben.
"Which will get us there first?" asked Edna.
"Let me see." Ben pulled out a time table. "There will be a train in
half an hour. It is a pretty good one, and I think will get us there
about five minutes ahead of the trolley. It's a choice between sitting
in the station or going ahead on the trolley."
"Which would you rather do?" Dorothy asked him.
"I think perhaps the train will be better on account of the baggage
which can go right through with us." So they sat down to wait till
their train should be called and found enough to amuse them in
watching the people go and come.
 "It does look so natural," remarked Dorothy, when the train began
to move. "Just think, Edna, 179in a few days we shall be starting to
school again, and be coming this way every day."
"And we shall be seeing Uncle Justus and Aunt Elizabeth and all
the girls. I wonder if we shall have as good times at the G. R. Club
as we did last year. We must go to see Margaret and Nettie very
soon, Dorothy, for we shall have such heaps to tell them."
"We shall want to tell our own families first."
"Oh, of course. I wonder if Uncle Justus is still with the others on
the yacht. I never thought to ask Ben." She leaned over to speak to
her cousin who was sitting directly in front and learned that Mr.
Horner had left the yacht at Portland and had come home by rail
from that city.
"The old chap had a good time while he was with us," Ben told
her, "and I think it limbered him up a lot."
"Why, was he stiff from rheumatism like Cap'n Si?" asked Edna
innocently.
Ben laughed. "No, he was stiff from eating too many ramrods."
Edna knew this wasn't true, but she didn't ask any more questions
just then. The train was nearing the familiar station where they were
to get off. She wondered if Celia and the boys, or Celia and Agnes
would be there to meet them. She thought it very likely, as the
family must know they would arrive about this time.
180 But as the train moved off there was no sign of any of their
friends. "They didn't come after all," said Edna to Dorothy. "I wonder
if they know Ben is with us?"
"Why, how could they know. Did you tell them on the post-card
you wrote from Boston, or the one you sent Celia from Concord?"
"No. Did you say anything about it?"
"Not a word."
"Then that will be a sort of surprise, for even if they expect us
they won't expect Ben."
 It was not a very long walk from the station to the home of either
little girl, though it had appeared long enough to Edna one evening
the winter before when she had been caught in a snow-storm.
"I won't stop," said Dorothy, when they had reached Edna's gate.
"I can scarcely wait to see mother."
"I feel just that way," said Edna. "Will you come over this
evening?"
"Maybe. I can't promise, for I shall hate to leave them all. You
come over."
"But I shan't want to leave them all either. I reckon we'd better
wait till to-morrow."
"All right. Good-bye till then." And Dorothy started off at a run
while Edna and Ben turned in at the gate.
181 How quiet it seemed! No one was on the porch, and the sound
of their voices did not bring anyone down from upstairs. "I wonder
where they all are. I'll go up very softly and s'prise them," whispered
Edna to Ben, "and in a little while you come up and have another
s'prise." Ben nodded understandingly and Edna crept softly up the
stairs. There was no sound of voices anywhere. "They must all be
asleep," the child murmured, but as it was just about lunch time,
that seemed to be rather an unusual state of things. She went from
room to room. Not a soul was to be seen.
"That is the funniest thing," said Edna disappointedly. "I wonder
where in the world everybody can be. Surely they could not be
hiding," but to make sure she looked in closets and even under the
beds, then she went slowly downstairs to Ben.
"There isn't a soul anywhere," she told him. "Oh, Ben, I am so
dreadfully disappointed. What do you suppose has become of
everybody?"
"Can't say, my dear. Have you interviewed the cook? I thought I
heard sounds of life in the kitchen."
 "Why, of course I can ask her. I never thought of that." She flew
to the kitchen. "Oh, Lizzie," she cried, "where is everybody?"
"Saints above!" cried Lizzie, "and where did ye come from all of a
suddint like this?"
"Why, we came out on the train!"
182 "Not by yerself?"
"No, Dorothy and Cousin Ben came with me."
"Hear to that now. And didn't ye see the mother nor none of thim
that's gone to meet ye?"
"Why, no! When did they go to meet us?"
"This morning. Sure it was your mother that said, 'Thim children
will be gettin' in fair and airly and I'll just be goin' in to Misther
Ramsey's office and meet thim when they git there and bring thim
right along with me.' Thin Miss Ceely speaks up and says, 'I'll be
goin,' too.'"
"But we didn't go to Mr. Ramsey's office. We left him in New York
and Cousin Ben Barker brought us on from there."
"Did ye ever hear the likes of that now? She'll be as disappinted as
yerself when she gets there and doesn't find ye."
"Where are the boys?"
"They're off too. When they learns that their mother was going to
town they says we'll go to one of the neighbors, I disremember
which one it was, but they says they won't be back to lunch, bein' as
they don't like to ate without the ithers. Have ye had any lunch
yerself, child?"
"No, and neither has Cousin Ben."
"Then, jest you kape quiet and I'll have ye a bite in three shakes.
Run along in and tell Mr. Barker 183not to be oneasy, that he shall
have something right away."
Edna returned to Ben with her tale of cross purposes. "Do you
suppose mother will be worried when she gets to Mr. Ramsey's office
and finds we haven't come?"
"It is possible she might be. I reckon I'd better telephone in and
tell them that we have arrived and if Mrs. Conway comes to tell her
we are here. I'll call up your father, too."
"Oh, that will be the very best thing to do."
But Ben learned that Mrs. Conway had been to Mr. Ramsey's
office, and not finding her daughter had gone at once to her
husband's office. From this latter point it was learned that Mr. and
Mrs. Conway and their daughter had just gone out to lunch. "Haven't
been gone five minutes," Ben was told. "Say to Mr. Conway when he
comes in that his daughter Edna is at home," said Ben and then he
hung up the receiver. "Can't get anyone of them," he told Edna, "but
your father will hear where you are as soon as he gets back. In the
meantime we'll have to make the best of it."
They made the best of it by eating the very good lunch which
Lizzie prepared, and then Edna's trunk having arrived she set to
work to unpack it, being glad to release Virginia from her long
confinement. Next it seemed a good plan to hunt up her old dolls
and introduce them to this lovely new sister.
184 Ben, who had grown tired of waiting for his aunt and cousin,
went to the house of one of his friends, and after Edna had seen
that all her children were in good condition she seated herself at one
of the front windows to watch for her mother. It seemed very funny
that it should be she who was watching for someone to come
instead of someone watching for her. She would not go to Dorothy's
for fear she should miss her mother and sister, and likewise for the
reason that she felt it would be a very flat report she would have to
make to Dorothy of her homecoming.
She sat for what seemed a long time, but at last her patience was
rewarded by seeing a group of four coming up the road, and as they
drew near she saw that it was not only her own mother and sister,
but Dorothy's likewise who had gone to town to meet the travelers.
 She could hardly wait to get down stairs, and she heard Celia's
surprised voice say, "Why there she is now," and in another minute
she was in her mother's arms.
"Why, you little rogue," cried Mrs. Conway, when the hugging and
kissing had ceased. "You have certainly stolen a march on us all.
How did you get here?"
"Is Dorothy with you?" asked Mrs. Evans anxiously.
"She isn't here with me, but she is at home," Edna made reply.
185 "Oh, then, we must hurry along," said Mrs. Evans, and without
waiting to hear more particulars she and her daughter Agnes
hastened away.
Then Mrs. Conway sat down and gathered Edna to her. "It is so
nice to have my baby again," she said. "I don't believe I can ever
consent to let her stay so long away another time. Now tell me all
about it. How did you happen to get here so early and why didn't I
find you at Mr. Ramsey's office as I expected?"
"Did you expect to find us there?"
"Why, certainly, Mrs. Ramsey wrote that you would come back
with her husband, and that you would arrive at about noon, so
naturally I didn't expect Mr. Ramsey to bring you all the way out
here, besides his clerks told me that he had not returned, but had
telephoned from New York that he would arrive this evening. So of
course I thought you would not get here till then."
"And were you disappointed?"
"Oh, I was indeed; but you haven't told me how you did get here."
"Ben brought us."
"Ben? Where is he?"
"Oh, he was around a little while ago, but I reckon he got tired of
waiting and went off somewhere; he will be back after a while."
186 "But I don't understand yet. Where did you come across Ben?"
 "In Boston at the Old North Church; he was going in just as we
were going out, and he stayed with us the rest of the time and we
all came on together; then when Mr. Ramsey found that Ben could
come with us he said he thought he might as well stay in New York
and attend to some business and let us come on. Ben was going to
telephone, but it was just as well he didn't."
"It is all very clear now, and I can see that no one was to blame,
for of course no one knew that we were going to meet you."
"But, oh, Mother, it is so good to have you again," said Edna,
giving her mother another squeeze. "I haven't kissed sister half
enough either." There was another season of hugging and kissing,
and then all went upstairs that Edna might show her new doll and
present the little gifts she had bought at the bazar. Then Ben came
in and there were more explanations, and next the boys came
rushing upstairs to give boisterous bearlike hugs and to tell Edna she
looked fine as silk, and so the hours went on till it was time for Mr.
Conway to come and that gave a new excitement and questioning
and explaining.
After all had been smoothed out Mr. Conway made the remark, "I
saw Uncle Justus this afternoon. He came into the office to ask if
Edna had arrived. He certainly is fond of the child."
187Then Edna told of how Uncle Justus gave up the sailing party
on her account and of how gentle and kind he was.
"Gee!" cried Charlie, "I should think you'd rather he would have
gone." For Uncle Justus had never shown the boys his gentler side
and they stood in great awe of him, scuttling out of sight whenever
they saw him coming.
Everyone smiled at Charlie's speech, but Edna said gravely, "I
loved to have him stay. He took me in his lap and rocked me and we
had a lovely time."
Charlie could scarcely believe this, but he said nothing and the talk
went on to other things. Edna and Ben were the center of interest
that evening, for when Edna was not telling something that went on
at Ramsey's, Ben was relating some of his yachting experiences. He
would leave for his own home the next day, but would return later to
take up his studies at college, and, as last year, to spend the winter
with his aunt and cousins.
It seemed warm and murky after the sharp fresh from the sea,
and Edna, for all her excitement, was ready for bed early. Just as
she was going upstairs the telephone rang, and Celia answered.
"Someone for you, Edna," she said, and Edna went to the 'phone.
"Hallo, Edna," came Dorothy's familiar voice "I couldn't go to sleep
without saying good-night 188to you. I thought I could but I couldn't.
Are you all right?"
"Yes. Are you? Wasn't it funny that we didn't find anyone home
when we got here. Why didn't you come over?"
"Why didn't you?" Then each heard a little giggle, for the same
reason was in the mind of each.
"Well, good-night. I kind of miss you, Edna," came Dorothy's final
words.
"And I kind of miss you. Good-night."
There was no sound of murmuring waves on the beach, no Jennie
in the next room, and no Dorothy as bed-fellow, but instead there
was the murmur of leaves making a pleasant song, there was Celia
playing softly on the piano, and best of all there was mother very
near; so Edna turned over with a sigh of content, glad that she was
in her own home.

THE END.

Transcriber's note:
The following corrections have been made:

p. 13: "mother take things so coolly." Period changed to question mark;

p. 15: "Edna, "and I am" removed the double quotation mark before and; "an she is just
crazy" an changed to and;
p. 24: "have another." a double quotation mark was added after another;
p. 26: "At last the good-bys" good-bys changed to good-byes;
p. 36: ""I didn't at first," she answered, but I do now. "Is it time to get up, Dorothy?""
Double quotation mark moved: "I didn't at first," she answered, "but I do now. Is it time
to get up, Dorothy?";
p. 47: "two. "Well, run along and" Double quotation mark removed before Well;
p. 48: "ocean till now?" Question mark changed to period;
p. 50: ""They soon found that" Double quotation mark removed;
p. 55: "have a bazaar for her" bazaar changed to bazar;
p. 56: "I know that, "but the doctor" Double quotation mark removed;
p. 57: "with her two children a little girl" Comma added after children;
p. 59: "remarked Dorothy;"I don't" Added space between comma and double quotation
mark;
p. 63: "Cape, any you can" any corrected to and;
p. 64: "all the time'" Single quotation mark changed to double quotation mark;
p. 65: "for a porch-party and let" Hyphen omitted;
p. 69: ""However, they were" Double quotation mark ommited;
p. 71: "she said. "House-hunting" Inserted paragraph break after said.; "until Mrs.
Ramsey cried." Period changed to comma;
p. 73: "myself, "Why shouldn't Miss" Double quotation mark removed;
p. 94: "boat belongs to, you know," Comma changed to period;
p. 104: "It's body was reared" It's changed to Its;
p. 108: "say. Why all this" Period changed to comma;
p. 109: "for the sailing party?" Question mark changed to period;
p. 111: "Please, dear Mr. Ramsey, go." Mr. changed to Mrs.;
p. 112: "and one in a while" one changed to once;
p. 118: "has something proper." Double quotation mark added after proper.; "heard Mr.
Ramsey say." Period changed to comma;
p. 125: "Pippin. Nobody knows how much" Added double quotation mark before Nobody;
p. 131: ""show as she woul" woul changed to would;
p. 133: "we are getting today" today changed to to-day; ""Some day," she said "" Added
comma after said;
p. 135: "Mrs Ramsey had telephoned" Added period after Mrs;
p. 140: "thought of if if Miss" First if changed to it;
p. 145: "give to Miss Eloise?" Why" Double quotation mark removed;
p. 148: ""Mother," what shall" Double quotation mark after the comma removed;
p. 149: "The fish pond was" fish pond changed to fishpond;
p. 153: "said Curley-Head holding" Curley changed to Curly;
p. 154: "hundred dollars, Mother?'" Single quotation mark changed to double quotation
mark; "not carry for enough" for changed to far;
p. 157: "the the little girls said" Ommited superfluous the;
p. 164: "reached the proper station."" Double quotation mark removed;
p. 172: "from the seashore." Added double quotation mark after period;
p. 177: "with us to worry." Single and double quotation mark added after worry.;
p. 180: "better wait till tomorrow" tomorrow changed to to-morrow;
p. 186: "fine as silk, "" Double quotation mark removed;
p. 187: "was not telling somthing" somthing changed to something; "Some of his
yatching experiences" yatching changed to yachting;

There are some words at line-breaks in the original where it is not clear if they should be
hyphenated or not: woe-begone, vouchsafe, fireplace, lobster-pots, tip-toeing, homeless,
haystack, homecoming;

Everything else has been retained as printed.

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