In stock. Out of stock. Take stock, trade stock. What is stock? On one hand: a tangible, commonplace commodity (“The peanut butter is out of stock”). Yet simultaneously, a nebulous, highly potent economic system (“Billions lost as stocks crash”). Some stock is mutable: able to be inventoried and liable to change (“We have five size four jeans in backstock”). Other stock is factual, perhaps inescapable (“She comes from hearty German stock”). Further yet, other stock is actually capable of escape (“Livestock”). The word “stock” is itself highly temperamental: its meaning is a condition of syntax. Putting stock in someone is not equivalent to putting someone in the stocks.

Paprika! is taking stock, in all of its strange and lively connotations. Who are we, as students of the Yale School of Architecture, and what are we about? What is our métier, our mode of creating, shaping, and exchanging value? Paprika! posits these findings as a means to promote conversation, pique interest, and spark a few heated debates. Welcome to a new semester, YSoA. Start stocking up.