Hello all -
So as you have probably realized, I'm about two months behind on blog posting. Since things continue to get busier and busier here in Rome, I'm thinking of temporarily discontinuing this blog stream. I feel I should give a brief summary of the rest of my summer adventures and then refer you to the webpage for my class in Rome. There, I'll post occasional pictures of my adventures, respond to a weekly blog question, and collect all of my projects digitally. So I'll say au revoir to this blog for now. But fear not, the future of the blog continues on through the Rome program page:
didascalo.com
Okay, I'll give you an update on my travels:
After the site visit, we went on our ten-day field trip around Switzerland. We spent our first day in Zurich and managed to see work from major architects like Santiago Calatrava and Le Corbusier. The next day, we headed west to Luzern and Bern. Luzern was beautiful, but Bern held an even more stunning marvel - the Paul Klee Museum by Renzo Piano. Only one of my favorite buildings by one of my favorite architects, housing one of my favorite artists (refering to Picasso, who had an exhibit), the trip blew my mind. The next day we traveled even further west to Lausanne and Montreaux. I was excited for this trip because, unlike Scudellate where I struggled with italian and Zurich, Bern, and Luzern where I was completly lost with german, I could actually communicate with the french-speaking swiss! Yay! After seeing the new Rolex center at the Polytechnic University of Lausanne, we headed to Montreaux to enjoy some music and a refreshing dip in the lake. Ronchamp was the goal of our next day. Though to get there we needed to take four trains through two countries and hike up a steep hill, the journey was worth it. Ronchamp is this amazing chapel designed by Le Corbusier. We had all day to sketch his masterful use of light and materials. The fifth day we took another train-jumping journey into the alps to check out a couple works of the swiss architect Olgiati. The buildings were interesting, but not nearly as engaging as the stunning landscape around. Definitely worth the trek.
The sixth day was a bit different, as we went from the Alps up north just over the German border to the Vitra Design Museum. A bit like an architect's disneyland, Vitra is a bizzare and eclectic collection of architectural jems designed by starchitects such as Zaha Haddid, Tado Ando, and Herzog & De Meuron. We spent that night in a hostel in Basel where one of my colleagues managed to save some money by convincing one of my intended roomates to crowd 6 people into his room instead of 5 and 5, like planned. Neadless to say paying almost 20 franci for the night did not make me like spending the next day together in the group very easy. However, between seeing another Renzo Piano museum in Basel and experiencing my first Richard Serra sculpture, I was able to forget the conflict a little.
That night, to make up for the extra charge from the night before, one of my classmates and I decided to spend the night on the trains, which are usually comfortable, warm, and free because of our swiss passes. After going for a swim in the river at Bern and not able to meet up with our other classmates staying there, we decided to start our night on a train heading to Zurich. Assuming that because of it's size, Zurich would have plenty of trains late at night, we didn't worry about our night until we got off in Zurich into an empty train station. We had taken the last train in or out of Zurich and we were stuck. We searched out a bench in the station to sleep on, only to be awoken half an hour later by a guard telling us the station was closing. Kicked out into the streets of Zurich, we befriended a Hungarian, eastern Orthodox christian composer who was about our age and in our same predicament. We all made our way near the river to find three empty benches. Each of us pick our luxurious bed and managed to get an hour or two of sleep before returning to the train station for its opening and grabbing a train back to Basel to meet up with our class for our trip into Austria to see the Kuntshaus museum by the god-architect Peter Zumthor. After our fill of the museum, we made our way towards the swiss architectural mecca - Therme Vals - also by Zumthor, managing to also see his archeological museum in Chur on the way.
Let me tell you now, the two days we spent rejuvenating in Vals made up for any of the other hardships of the trip. Between enjoying the baths and amazing breakfast buffet, I spent my time just soaking in the surrounding Alpen landscape. Green hills, dotted with small abandoned sheep huts, filled my mind with wonder and spoke deeply to me. Vals was amazing and two days in the baths felt sooooo good! On our way out of Vals, we took another small sidetrack to see a beautiful small Zumthor chapel. This one involved quite a hike, especially because I had our teacher's fiver year old daughter on my back the whole way. But that made getting to the top and seeing the chapel all the more rewarding. It was absolutely spectacular and had views out into the alps. Amazing!
When we finally made it home, it was design crunch time. We had lots of work to do for our projects and on top of that had watercolor classes, Italian lessons, a couple metal sculpting workshops (which were really cool!), and a hand full of other day trips. One of the day trips was to Como, were we saw some interesting fascist architecture and took a boat to the real Bellagio, which is actually a quaint little lake town. Another trip was to Locarno for Swiss independence day, a fun night of fireworks and wine which ended with us sleeping in a park...good times. The last trip we took was to two Botta projects up in the hills around Ticino. Now, normally Botta projects are kinda...well bad. He uses very strict geometries and often repeats (inappropriatly so) many of his designs. But these two projects were something very special. They were both chapels, though very different. The first was of beautiful red stone and had a long ramp that stretched out towards the horizon off of the mountain side. With great billowy clouds and misty conditions, the scene was spectacular. The other chapel was a little further out of the way (you know, one of those train to a bus to another bus sorta places). But it was worth it. At one of our stops, we had enough time to go for a dip in the river, which was cold and super fresh and delicious. The chapel was the original (and most fitting) botta truncated cylinder and was equally amazing to the first. After almost missing the bus (as in I, alone, distracted by the landscape, had to run after the bus everyone else was already in, oops) we made home and continued to crank out our project.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Catch up time!
Alright folks, its story time!
So, leaving off from our one short, relaxing week in Scudellate, we journeyed into Ticino that weekend, seeing our site for the first time and finally getting a full introduction to our project. We journeyed into Locarno, a near by (relatively close, only four train/bus transfers...haha) city that boasts an active cultural scene fueled by the city's music festival and cinema festival that take place each summer. Before leaving, we were given two things - one was the floor plans for our site, which turn out to be quite minimal and very confusing, and the other was the general vision that this was to become some sort of cultural/art center. Arriving in Locarno, it was hard to know what to expect, so when we approached the site and saw the castello (castle), we got really excited and started snapping photos, following the crumbling wall under an nearby underpass and into a grand circular plaza. It turned out as we finally gathered from our photo splurge that what we'd just photographed, the main castello, the old wall, the underpass, and the big circular piazza, we not part of our site at all. Go figure.
Our site was, as a matter of fact, much more complex regardless of its smaller scale. The owners, two affluent intellectuals, brothers from Locarno, owned three buildings on the block next to the castle. To give you some perspective, the piece of the castle they owned is a small triangular, underground chunk that used to be an old battlement against invaders and used to be completely above ground before the city grew around it. So standing on the top of it to begin with was very misleading. From the top, you can see the courtyard below where the gabled building that they own (which at first seems to be one story) goes four stories down to meet the cobblestones of the courtyard. They also owned another building, fairly plain from the courtyard side, that actually has a decorative, curved, and historical street facade. The actual castle chunk, named Il Rivellino, was supposedly designed by Leonardo Da Vinci and was commissioned by the Duke of Milano back in the early 16th century. Access into the large stone walls that rise to a sharp point on the corner is from the courtyard below. Inside is a series of cave-like chambers, which appears a little bizarre when so surrounded by an eclectic mix of bland-looking buildings around, almost a secret urban grotto. Going inside was like stepping into another time and place, dark, gloomy, damp, and thrilling. After our brief site visit through the courtyard, the Rivellino, and the gabled building, called The Vernacular, we met with our clients again, but this time over risotto, to discuss what they envisioned. The brothers were very excited to have us working on this project, a dream they've had for some time now. Currently they'd been using the largest room in the Rivellino and three of the stories in the Vernacular as Gallery space for both local and famous artists (one of whom, Peter Greenway, a famous cinematographer, we would latter meet). So they wanted to expand the project they'd begun to include some sort of student studio and housing complex, preferably with the use of the existing built infrastructure. It turns out this program was actually geared towards supporting a group of architecture students, like use, to use the site as a home base to study abroad. The tables had turned, making use the end users - a very unique possibility indeed. Along with viewing the site, we got a brief overview of what issues Locarno faced, including social class divide and a cultural monopoly so to speak by the cinema festival.
After our visit, the brothers turned over the Vernacular building to use as a place to crash so that we could stay in Locarno for the night and get a taste of the culture firsthand. And, of course, as proper American college student, Locarno Culture meant finding cheap wine, and lots of it. Which we did. Quite successfully actually. Its amazing to think that for about 4 franci (about 3.75 ish dollars) we could buy a bottle of Italian wine that actually tasted good - even better than two-buck chuck (not hard to do I guess). The group of 23 of us split into a few fractions, two groups on a quest to find a good bar to watch the world cup match that was on, a group bent on finding a good meal, and then my group, three lone students stuck back at the Vernacular watch the bags. Good times. Soon though, we were relieved to go get dinner, which included of such exquisite fare as a cheap block of cheese, a loaf of bread, and bargain bologna. Yum (don't worry, i was getting quite used to it after our Italy trip). But at any rate, one of the groups soon returned to the vernacular and we joined forces and bottles of wine to find a good place on the lake (Locarno is along the bank of Lago Maggorie) to go skinny dipping. Wine in hand and gathered together, we set forth, leaving our valubles in the hands of a few more timid classmates. After an adventurous walk (aka semi-drunken stubble), we found a good spot and all hopped into the cool water sans clothes. It was great fun! Of course, returning to the vernacular wet as the buzz of the wine and cold water wore off wasn't as much fun and I soon was very much ready for bed. Getting back to the building, I managed to pull together my bag and a random drop cloth for a bed over the hard tile and fell asleep right away.
The next morning, I woke around four, to find myself sore from the tile, surrounded by people sleeping away - on mattresses none the less (where they found them was in the next room I found out later) - and urgently craving a way to get comfortable. After several positions and re-layering of the drop cloth, the most comfortable position I managed to find was sitting up against the wall. But by that point I was too sore and too awake to fall asleep again, so pulling myself up, I wandered about the town, managed to scrounge some breakfast up from a near by convenience store, and return to the Vernacular a little loosened up. We were asked to help set up for the Peter Greenway exhibit that was going on the following week, so the morning meant painting, lifting, moving, ect. After which we got another healthy dose of risotto and were sent off back to Scudellate.
So, leaving off from our one short, relaxing week in Scudellate, we journeyed into Ticino that weekend, seeing our site for the first time and finally getting a full introduction to our project. We journeyed into Locarno, a near by (relatively close, only four train/bus transfers...haha) city that boasts an active cultural scene fueled by the city's music festival and cinema festival that take place each summer. Before leaving, we were given two things - one was the floor plans for our site, which turn out to be quite minimal and very confusing, and the other was the general vision that this was to become some sort of cultural/art center. Arriving in Locarno, it was hard to know what to expect, so when we approached the site and saw the castello (castle), we got really excited and started snapping photos, following the crumbling wall under an nearby underpass and into a grand circular plaza. It turned out as we finally gathered from our photo splurge that what we'd just photographed, the main castello, the old wall, the underpass, and the big circular piazza, we not part of our site at all. Go figure.
Our site was, as a matter of fact, much more complex regardless of its smaller scale. The owners, two affluent intellectuals, brothers from Locarno, owned three buildings on the block next to the castle. To give you some perspective, the piece of the castle they owned is a small triangular, underground chunk that used to be an old battlement against invaders and used to be completely above ground before the city grew around it. So standing on the top of it to begin with was very misleading. From the top, you can see the courtyard below where the gabled building that they own (which at first seems to be one story) goes four stories down to meet the cobblestones of the courtyard. They also owned another building, fairly plain from the courtyard side, that actually has a decorative, curved, and historical street facade. The actual castle chunk, named Il Rivellino, was supposedly designed by Leonardo Da Vinci and was commissioned by the Duke of Milano back in the early 16th century. Access into the large stone walls that rise to a sharp point on the corner is from the courtyard below. Inside is a series of cave-like chambers, which appears a little bizarre when so surrounded by an eclectic mix of bland-looking buildings around, almost a secret urban grotto. Going inside was like stepping into another time and place, dark, gloomy, damp, and thrilling. After our brief site visit through the courtyard, the Rivellino, and the gabled building, called The Vernacular, we met with our clients again, but this time over risotto, to discuss what they envisioned. The brothers were very excited to have us working on this project, a dream they've had for some time now. Currently they'd been using the largest room in the Rivellino and three of the stories in the Vernacular as Gallery space for both local and famous artists (one of whom, Peter Greenway, a famous cinematographer, we would latter meet). So they wanted to expand the project they'd begun to include some sort of student studio and housing complex, preferably with the use of the existing built infrastructure. It turns out this program was actually geared towards supporting a group of architecture students, like use, to use the site as a home base to study abroad. The tables had turned, making use the end users - a very unique possibility indeed. Along with viewing the site, we got a brief overview of what issues Locarno faced, including social class divide and a cultural monopoly so to speak by the cinema festival.
After our visit, the brothers turned over the Vernacular building to use as a place to crash so that we could stay in Locarno for the night and get a taste of the culture firsthand. And, of course, as proper American college student, Locarno Culture meant finding cheap wine, and lots of it. Which we did. Quite successfully actually. Its amazing to think that for about 4 franci (about 3.75 ish dollars) we could buy a bottle of Italian wine that actually tasted good - even better than two-buck chuck (not hard to do I guess). The group of 23 of us split into a few fractions, two groups on a quest to find a good bar to watch the world cup match that was on, a group bent on finding a good meal, and then my group, three lone students stuck back at the Vernacular watch the bags. Good times. Soon though, we were relieved to go get dinner, which included of such exquisite fare as a cheap block of cheese, a loaf of bread, and bargain bologna. Yum (don't worry, i was getting quite used to it after our Italy trip). But at any rate, one of the groups soon returned to the vernacular and we joined forces and bottles of wine to find a good place on the lake (Locarno is along the bank of Lago Maggorie) to go skinny dipping. Wine in hand and gathered together, we set forth, leaving our valubles in the hands of a few more timid classmates. After an adventurous walk (aka semi-drunken stubble), we found a good spot and all hopped into the cool water sans clothes. It was great fun! Of course, returning to the vernacular wet as the buzz of the wine and cold water wore off wasn't as much fun and I soon was very much ready for bed. Getting back to the building, I managed to pull together my bag and a random drop cloth for a bed over the hard tile and fell asleep right away.
The next morning, I woke around four, to find myself sore from the tile, surrounded by people sleeping away - on mattresses none the less (where they found them was in the next room I found out later) - and urgently craving a way to get comfortable. After several positions and re-layering of the drop cloth, the most comfortable position I managed to find was sitting up against the wall. But by that point I was too sore and too awake to fall asleep again, so pulling myself up, I wandered about the town, managed to scrounge some breakfast up from a near by convenience store, and return to the Vernacular a little loosened up. We were asked to help set up for the Peter Greenway exhibit that was going on the following week, so the morning meant painting, lifting, moving, ect. After which we got another healthy dose of risotto and were sent off back to Scudellate.
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