A Tour of Washington D.C.
	by Maiko Muranaka MArchII student project Instructors: John Zissovici and Paul Soulellis Cornell Department of Architecture
	This city exists because of five monuments—the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the White House, the Lincoln Memorial and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial—and the tourists who visit the monuments. Google Earth presents a very singular experience of the monuments determined by their fragmented construction and the particular modes of navigation it offers. The combined experience of movement in time determines the new boundary of the Monument City. Successful tourist hotels act as entrances to the Monument City. They attract tourists by giving a glimpse of monuments through a window of their hotel, a view that lures the tourist into the city. Each hotel is the starting point of a tour of the monuments and determines the path of the tour. The travel path of each tourist becomes the core of the city. Like branches extending from a trunk of a tree, tourists create trails to digress from the core to other elements of the city.  Restaurants are one of those elements, and they create a surface around the travel path to draw tourists into them. Like a fishing net wrapping around the core of the city, the structure of the restaurants capture tourists whenever they feel hungry for food or thirsty for a cup of coffee.  ATMs act as support satellites of restaurants, satisfying the tourists’ endless desire for cash.