Design Approach A:

An additive system of components that are linked by individual spaces.

Spatial Qualities:

Follows the occupant’s oscillating action by allowing movement from the outside to inside of the existing site and the new structure.

Sits up against a wall in the site and overhangs the existing entranceway to occupy spaces around site elements.

These components create static spaces that suggest room-like enclosures while remaining open to public circulation. Each component remains a sovereign entity even in the group.

Design Approach B:

A Subtractive system that carves voids into the elements created by the component system.

Spatial Qualities:

Follows the levering and prying actions to remove pieces if the component model and reinforces rotational movement.

Improves accessibility from ground level of the site to the spaces created in the component system to allow occupation.

Carved passageways link spaces to joins formerly isolated components into a continuous publicly accessible space. Alters the separation of spaces created with the components.

Soiled and neglected industrial sites provide Smithson with an allegory to the city that is not as regulated. These structures are obviously of human creation and meant to perform a set of functions, much like a city is organized. However, these spaces differ drastically in that they are not meant for habitation. The human factor is left unconsidered, the priority of the structures being some industrial process that need not interact with humans except for their operators. Thus, these become realms of machines, expanses populated not by humans but by hulking masses of masonry and metal, blind to the human cities they surround and serve. Cities differ only in that the hunks of masonry are tuned to human interaction and as a result are molded and maintained by their constant visibility. A city must look the part up to the expectations of its inhabitants. It is a groomed space, organized and dressed up for show solely because of its constant audience. Industrial spaces lack the formality. They remain functional just as a city, but are just that, functional, not tied up in ribbon for constant display to a judgmental populace. Both spaces perform their service regardless of outward appearance, which upsets the superiority of cities to the industrial complexes that support them. If both spaces are working properly, why should the prim and proper city be any more important than the disheveled factory? This division stems from the visibility of the two sites, as a densely populated city is under constant scrutiny, industrial centers are kept out of sight and out of mind of the wider world, to the point of outsourcing to other countries. A desire for a clean beautiful city or pristine suburbs has created an unsustainable "not in my backyard" effect, where the consumers of industrial products are so distant from industry that they cannot know how or where things are manufactured. This hinders the improvement of industry, because it is near impossible to enforce labor or sustainability regulations from such a distance.

Monuments of Passaic New Jersey

This functions as a tour itinerary because of Smithson's diction and movement from one place to another. He writes as if dictating details of each monument to an audience while touring each area.
Smithson tells stories of open spaces populated by objects. These entities mark areas and conform to landscapes that give them living qualities. He further personifies structures and objects by noting their actions as human. The spatial practices dominant in the narrative are ones of roaming, meandering and observing the environment around these monuments. This is meant to look at these structures and discuss them as monuments even though they appear ordinary. Using careful observation and spatial language transforms the blighted landscape into noteworthy monuments.
The places created in Smithson's essay are ordinary spaces that he provides imaginative descriptions of in order to transform the meaning of the space. He demonstrates that spaces are not simply static arrangements of objects, but able to be altered by various descriptive techniques. This effectively brings new meaning to a seemingly ordinary space.
These monuments mark boundaries such as the physical crossing of a river or the division between structured and chaotic land. He spends time on roads which are deliberately structured and in muddy fields that are emblematic of disorder. These disheveled spaces lend themselves to otherworldly description, appearing absolutely ordinary yet eerie simultaneously. Such landscapes of noisy rubble and decrepit industry stir thoughts of the "other side" of our world, as such spaces are so obvious and omnipresent yet are not often parts of daily life.
The spaces Smithson describes are made legible by describing the monuments in them, but left ambiguous as to its purpose, origin, or exact context. The structures appear to be regulated objects, erected for specific purposes and maintained to that end, but in the context of the landscape are disorderly and unregulated.
The tour suggests observation and analysis of these structures as monuments, which establishes a way of understanding these objects and spaces. This allows some kind of understanding, but remains a prescribed and set system of analysis.

In the shot where Levitch discusses the phallic nature of the Empire State Building there are many frames interacting. One frame is the bus windows behind Levitch as he talks to the passengers, giving us a vague understanding of the street the passengers are witness to. This frame shifts in the next shot to looking up between the buildings, eradicating the ground plane from our understanding of the scene. The streets are not seen but implied by the canyons made by the buildings. These canyons extend upwards and flank the looming presence of the ESB, creating a narrow frame that accentuates the vertical dimensions of the city.  An imposing silhouette of the ESB itself creates yet another frame that shapes what little patches of sky remain visible into the negative space, a perfect compliment, to the solid structure of the architecture.
How is Levitch's description of the ESB compare to his view of the grid plan? Are they both regulating anti-cruises as he defines the grid plan to be, or does he empathize with the Empire State as much as he does with the Brooklyn Bridge?
How does such a physical connection to New York differ from our conventional experience?

Relevant Quotes:

"The violence that my brother (didn't quite know he) saw in the figures of squatters has been re-choreographed in the ensuing fifteen or 50 years"

"The squatter is already on his feet, ready for hire, at your service."

"The bodies of obsequious squatters on the other hand, have always figured the abjection of those who must wait."

"Seen as a trace of the primitive, the servile, the alien, the homeless, the fecal, a squatting body does not cite an authority that is recognized..."

"...The city has drove into a massive physical reconstruction in seeking to rehabilitate its identity through architecture."