Week 14_Photo Inspiration

Habitat Sky Hotel, Diagonal

Works of RCR, Girona

Stair Detail, Girona

Week 14_Back in Barca

Finally, a weekend without travel...and from here on out I will be spending my last few weeks in Barcelona discovering what more the city has to offer. This past Friday, our class ventured out to Rambla Poblenou. The area is an up and coming area filled with redevelopment projects and young people keeping the trendy Barcelona alive. The area of Poblenou is quite different from the Eixample, it does have the lay out of the Eixample, yet instead of dead and open intersections where the streets meet, Poblenou has elevated circles in the center of the intersections. This creates a nice progression of space and experiential walk as one walks up the street from the water toward Diagonal. The surrounding area of Diagonal, which use to be an industrial area of Barcelona is turning into an adaptive reuse area, where developers are turning these old industrial parks into new housing and office spaces, keeping much of what was left behind at the time of industry, but also introducing a great deal of new eye-catching architecture. This area will be an area to see and revisit in the next few years.

We also paid a visit to the Barcelona Botanic Gardens this weekend. Located on Montjuic, the Gardens offer a get-away from the chaos of the city life in Barcelona. The Gardens are filled with various tropical plant species laid out on a triangular grid to conform to the topography of the land. Thus, the architecture of the Gardens is informed by the topography and the triangular grid, which is imperative on a site such as Montjuic.

As our final weeks come upon us in Barcelona, its time to see what the city has to offer us. We will be out and about for the rest of our stay here in Barcelona - aiming to not regret one thing we do or leave one place in the city unvisited. We have a check list to accomplish and accomplish it we will. Barcelona is our home and we have to prove it to ourselves that we know it like the back of our hand.

Week 13_Valencia

The City of Calatrava. Well, it is the home town of the famous Calatrava and he sure is making quite a statement with his relatively new Cuidad de Arts y Sciences. The five building complex boasts soaring elegant forms that ignore any and all of the surrounding architecture. The complex puts a label on the city, a label of liberation from the rectangle and other monotonous forms that seems to define most of the architecture seen day after day. Calatrava is definitely a contemporary architect, yet he seems to more of an engineer as anyone who has visited any of his buildings can attest to. How? is usually the question that "pops" into mind when looking at one of his structures - How does this stand up? and that is the great question and element that makes Calatrava so famous. Even though the independent buildings within the Arts and Sciences Center do not coincide with each other, they are so individually intriguing and set on a "water based" grid they become the art and the science - they become the face of what they represent. Calatrava...how do you come up with these designs? we may never know...

As for Valencia, the city was beautiful. It is somewhat of a mix between Bilbao and Seville. And unlike Gerona where the city turned its back to the river, Valencia displays a new concept of the river, where a park winds through the city as a "living green river." (It may have been a river, which I'm assuming it was, and it was turned into a park that cuts through the city and connects to the Mediterranean). All in all, Valencia was worth the trip, from the quiet Old City to the Contemporary Calatrava City it was quite an amazing city.

Cool Architecture Note: the Valencia Roman Ruins are housed by a steel support structure, underground, and at grade level they are covered by a glass roof with a thin layer of water above the glass, which provides for a beautiful reflection of the surrounding buildings at night.

Week 11_Morocco

Manual Labor. Yep, that pretty much describes the people working in Morocco. By visiting Fez, I really fully appreciate everything that I have at my disposal in the US or even here in Spain. Morocco really is, as our tour guide Mo Mo said, "like going back in time for us." Everything is still done by hand - textiles, the leather tannery, the pottery and clay works, the hand carved bronze products, wood carpentry...etc...and this is what makes everything in Morocco so authentic. The tile work throughout the city (all hand placed and painted), the beautiful plaster carvings, and the amazing wood craftsmanship are all so awe inspiring because they are all done by the human hand. In terms of the culture, beware of the "Balecs" which translates to an oncoming donkey, yes they still use donkeys to transport goods around the city...and they are everywhere. The markets are all outdoors with meat hanging from the ceilings of the stands and chickens in cages waiting to reach the butcher block...yeah it was kind of eye opening to see that people actually still live like that...


With the "day to day" culture aside, the architecture of Morocco is definitely an agent of the culture and more importantly the religion. The Islamic style architecture found in Fez is based around the religious function of the society. The geometries used in the much of the designs are informed by the perfection of God and His pure state of being. Typically, the architecture is symmetrical and based around a similar plan that is repeated throughout Fez. This plan consisted of a portal entrance leading to a courtyard with a central fountain; the courtyard is, in most cases, surrounded by salons and/or a small mosque. The housing typologies within the city followed this same symmetrical style; the two main housing typologies we studied in Fez were that of a Dar and a Riad. We actually stayed in a Dar (Dar Al Andalous), as our hotel was a renovated Dar, and let me tell you it was like a Palace, it was beautiful. The center of a Riad or a Dar is usually occupied by a fountain; this architectural move may be symbolic of the idea that the human can never occupy the center of a space as the human is not perfect and thus the center is reserved for God alone. So as one can see, the architecture in the Islamic/Muslim World is very informative of their cultural practices and their strong religious following.


Overall, I have to say, despite Morocco being so different from anything I have seen thus far, it was probably one of my favorite trips since I've been in Europe. It's definitely something everyone should experience at least once in their lives.

Selected Sketchbook Pages

Week 10_Bilbao + Wine Tasting

I can honestly say that when I saw Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, it was the first building that I have ever thought of as a"beautiful" piece of architecture. The building is so elegantly constructed and the materiality of the building only adds to its contemporary elegance. The circulation through the museum as seen in the initial lobby space flows through the structure like "major arteries through the heart," symbolic to a living and working body. The building really is Bilbao's claim to fame, it's a must see...

As for our wine tasting travels in the La Rioja, we saw works by three of the most famous names in architecture - Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Santiago Calatrava. Each building, regardless of size, made a marketing statement for each of the wineries. The most impressive, for me, was Calatrava's sweeping wavy structure, not because the building was the most impressive I have ever seen nor was it extremely detailed, but because he paid clear attention to the landscape and the building mimics the enormous mountain range in the background of the building; and with the sweeping angles of the roof, the mountains are replicated in the roof structure. The scenery was awe inspiring for the architect and I don't think anyone would argue with that.

Week 9_Post Spring Break

So it has been a couple weeks since Spring Break, and let me tell you it was quite the trip. In all we visited Paris, London, and Rome all in 10 days - 3 of the largest and most expensive cities in Europe in 10 days...that's an accomplishment or should we say a "power trip." It was interesting from the architectural stand point in that each city had a different urban fabric, and in my eyes the urban fabric of each city informed how the culture was defined. As each city was built around a major river; the river became a reference point and a standard for mapping oneself around the urban jungle.

Paris is definitely a city of liberation. The urban fabric is free flowing as is their culture. The people are very open as one can imagine, although the city is very dense, the flow of the streets is more medieval and organic in nature thus relating to the culture of the people. With Paris comes the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Villa Savoye, the Pompidou Center, Notre Dame, and St. Denis...and much more. Of course we visited each site and all of them were absolutely out of this world. Like I've said before, its hard to believe that you are actually seeing the places you usually only see in magazines and online photos. The Pompidou Center, or the "inside out building," really is a building that breaks all the rules in regards to relating to common site context and adjacent buildings. Paris certainly made a statement in constructing such a building and now it is seemingly stuck with it. As a museum of contemporary art, the building itself becomes a show piece - its one of those buildings that you love and love to hate because it is just so "out there." It's symbolic of Paris' free and liberating culture.

Villa Savoye, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of Pompidou as it follows the "5 rules of a new architecture." These rules follow a free flowing plan and a strict emphasis on the horizontal and linear elements. Villa Savoye is an architect's playground - it is a perfect example of a free and open plan and the simplicity of the structure is truly beautiful. To this day, Villa Savoye still serves as a precedent on many contemporary buildings.

London, even though it was cold and rainy, was the "New York City" of the UK/Europe. The nature of the city is very proper and strictly ordered, which again reflects the people who inhabit the city, even though London is mainly a commuter city as there are only roughly 3,000 people who live in the actual city and about 5,000 people travel to the city on a daily basis. Of course we saw Big Ben, Parliament, the Tower of London, and Buckingham Place which were all beautiful buildings with breath-taking ornamentation. However, we spent much of our time in one of the largest contemporary art museums in Europe - Tate Modern designed by the famous Herzog & deMeuron. The building use to be an old electric industry building, yet with the idea of adaptive reuse and the design skills of Herzog & deMeuron the old industrial dump turned into one of the most impressive museum I have ever seen. Although the building is simple, its elegance is shown through its adaptive reuse design which emphasizes horizontal volumes within a large rectangular space. The collection itself is makes the trip to the museum a must; with 5 floors of crazy contemporary design, modern design ideals and inspiration is floating all throughout the building.

Rome - a city stuck in Roman times, and this isn't a bad thing. Coming from London, which is mainly a contemporary city, Rome offered a history lesson wherever you were in the city. In seeing the Colosseum and the Pantheon, I felt myself in a true sense of awe. I keep thinking to myself...how did they ever build these massive structures? The Romans were really an amazing and intelligent civilization, once you see the Roman Forum, the Markets of Trajan, and all of the Roman ruin scatter across the city, you truly see how vast their empire really was and how advanced they were for their time. I was extremely impressed with the city. In terms of the urban fabric of Rome, for one there are no straight streets in the entire city. Secondly, the city is connected through a web of plazas and small squares which offers a number of places to rest from all the sightseeing and to eat some of their amazing gelato. All in all, Rome (the city, the food, and the culture) was definitely one of my favorite cities.

Well I can honestly say that this past Spring Break was one of my best Spring Breaks, if not the best. I have come out with a better sense of different urban conditions and how culture play a significant role in formulating these vast cities.