Arch 471-Erick van Egeraat Paper

The firm philosophy page of Erick van Egeraat’s web page reads much as one would expect, with key phrases about “striving to be different” and “influenced by cultural and historical context as well as contemporary life.” The thing that stands out is a quote by George Stanishev from his book “World Architecture” that talks about Erick van Egeraat’s “use of consciously developed counterpositions is reminiscent of the principles of inversion in mannerism and baroque.” I find this comparison to be interesting because in a bizarre way it relates to my experiences of the five Erick van Egeraat buildings that I saw, as well as the photographs of the buildings that I have looked at in preparation for this study. George Stanishev goes on to say “most of EEA’s projects reveal a sense of rigorous contemporary architecture that has undergone a softening melting effect of a sensual attraction.” It is this sensual nature that comes out in EEA’s use of materials and color that are in my opinion deserving of comparisons to baroque architecture.
Starting with the earliest EEA building that I visited, a hotel addition in Rotterdam, which is Erick van Egeraats first building independent of the firm Mecanno, which he helped form before he had even graduated from the Technical University of Delft. This building was an extension onto an existing hotel building but it begins to set up some of the reoccurring themes that I found in the buildings that I visited. The hotel is conceptually divided into three volumes, a new tower, a vertical sliver of an atrium that brings light and vertical circulation to the lobby, and an older more squat volume of the existing building. These three volumes are layered vertically and stacked together like books in a bookcase. The new tower has an extruded curving freeform shape reminiscent of a piano. It is covered with metal scales, which along with inset horizontal windows accentuate the curving form and bring a strong sense of materiality that contrasts with the glass void of the atrium and the plain white volume of the earlier building.
Chronologically, the next building that I visited was the Inholland University building, also in Rotterdam, which was completed in 2000. This building continues to use the language of sandwiched vertical layers, this time reducing the material palate to glass of varying articulation and opacities. The south facing side of the building is clad in reflective glass articulated by staggered horizontal mullions, and houses the more public spaces of the building; a full height atrium lobby, meeting spaces, cafeteria and study areas below, with classrooms above. The center layer is a band of “cobalt blue screen processed glass” that represents the main horizontal circulation of the building. The north side of the building is covered in clear glass backed by white shades and houses the offices for the university. On the inside of this articulated box EEA freely places the public spaces on differing levels surrounding the huge full height atrium. In the openness of the interior the different spaces all seem to blend into one huge free flowing space that spans multiple levels. EEA’s use of materials inside is rather unexpected from the business like exterior. There is a giant brass “mural” wall adjoining the cafeteria dining/study area. The elevators are unfinished concrete shafts painted gold, and when you go into the staircase there is the surprising use of grey, pink, and peach stripes running down the stairway walls. These wall coverings contrast with the rich wood and slate floors, which are inlaid with wide stainless steel way finding lines.
EEA’s Popstage project of 2002 in Breda also makes use of large surfaces of warm toned surfaces of metal; in this case the entire building is clad in treated copper, juxtaposed not against glass and steel but a brick 1899 officer’s canteen on the former military base. The old building is restored and renovated, while a new windowless slug/seashell shape is added onto the building. The addition hides itself from the redeveloping military base but on the other hand it makes a very bold statement along the street side, which faces the entertainment district. Here EEA lets the free flowing interior space from the Inholland University building express itself in the exterior, all the while maintaining a balance and juxtaposition between regular and irregular forms. Where the old and the new building most visibly meet the free flowing form and copper material are carried inside the old building while at the same time the entire gable end wall is replaced with glass which exposes the blending the two forms. One other interesting thing to note is that on the form of the new building a lot of care is given to integrating the large vents on the roof, but it seems as if the doors for people and equipment were an afterthought and seemed as if they were cut in after the building was completed. Also the signage in front of the building uses a third completely different language of sharp angles and cor-ten steel. I cannot draw any significance or find any reasons for these last two moves.
Completed in 2002 the Mauritskade Apartment Building in Amsterdam is less radical and seemingly more in line with the firm’s progression than the Popstage. The building is meant to fit into its context by presenting a vertically articulated façade at the ends nearest the adjacent 19th century buildings, but it transforms itself along its façade to become horizontal as it wraps around the sharp corner of the site than transforms back again. In addition to playing with the façade and staggering the floors at the corner of the building EEA also creates a rising sensation by pitching the roof upwards to the corner and following that slope with the header of the windows on the first floor, rising from the parking to the café that occupies the corner of the building. Perhaps this is one of those historical context references to Amsterdam’s past, evoking the prow of a ship as does the nearby NEMO performing arts center. EEA again makes use of very sensuous materials this time using deep brownish-red wood framed windows against two tones of stone and the reflective metal panels that wrap the curve on the corner.
The last EEA project that I visited was completed in 2005 and houses offices, classrooms and study areas as well as a restaurant, while forming a new entrance to the hospital portion of the University of Utrecht campus. This building continues the use of a strongly articulated façade, this time using vertical bands with a seemingly random distribution of clear glass, reflective metal, and black stone. The exterior of the building maintains a uniform monolithic square form until one gets to the corner facing the university, where a huge curved chunk has been removed to emphasize that this building is a gateway from the university to the hospital. On the inside though all of the regularity disappears, with the free flowing space shown in the Inholland University building manifests itself in two floors of sloping warped planes, or as the architects refer to it on their website, the “study landscapes.” Above these two floors of public space are offices and classrooms, this time the spaces are layered horizontally. The whole building is penetrated by three cones of glass that allow light to penetrate into the interior of the building. These cones of glass also serve to connect the different levels of the building housing stairways and meeting spaces. I particularly appreciated how the venting was treated in this building with panels of glass, metal or slate tilting out of the façade independently and adding a little more chaos to the façade.
I think that over time EEA’s buildings have become clearer and more refined in their ability to translate free flowing space into form. This is especially evident on the leap from the Inholland University building to the ABC Faculty building at the University of Utrecht. The “everything is one” approach of the Inholland building has been refined and channeled so that space flows exactly where the architects direct it with their glass cones. I think that their ability to juxtapose regular and irregular forms has also progressed, from the Hotel expansion in Rotterdam to the Popstage to the Utrecht building the dialogue between the two kinds of forms has become interconnected until they fully interpenetrate each other rather than being separated by an atrium, or jut being joined at the hip. This free flowing or interpenetrating space is also considered one of the tenants of Baroque architecture. When complemented by sensuous materials of wood, stone, brass and copper, a new twist on using color, and the incorporation of the almost stained glass effects of highly pattered facades and cobalt glass it seems as if Erick van Egeraat is drawing on discarded ideas from the past and finding ways to make them new again.
From visiting these buildings and experiencing there sensual qualities first hand I think that I have learned a new appreciation for the job that materials have in making our buildings warm, which is often one of the largest criticisms of modern architecture. I would like eventually incorporate the rigor of strongly articulated facades without feeling the need to make the entire building reflect that decision. There is no reason why irregular or organic forms cannot be combined with modernism, as we have been shown going all the way back to le Corbusier, yet I still often make that assumption. Why not combine and juxtapose forms? Why not make steel and glass warm? I hope that someday I can incorporate these kinds of things within my own architecture, and still have the daring to take a risk and paint the elevators gold. And hey, if that fails you could just hang some chandeliers in the lobby, such as the ones at the University of Utrecht if that doesn’t prove your baroque than what does?

Arch 428-Housing Paper

Housing in Europe seems to defy categorization; however I am going to attempt just that in order to try to make sense of all of the things that I saw. I would say that the main housing types that I saw were the block, the tower, row housing, courtyard housing and what I will call core housing. Although all of these types have there own varieties and subtypes I will broadly define them here. Block housing refers to long, tall narrow volumes with either double or single loaded corridors. I found this typology to be the most common in Germany and in the Netherlands. Tower housing consists of tall, upwards of twenty stories, square buildings centered around a large central mechanical and circulation core with units on all sides. These were especially prevalent in Italy and Spain. Row housing is typically narrow, 3-5 stories tall and is generally smaller in character, likely built for a single family and having just a few units. Courtyard housing can be either C-shaped housing wrapped around an open courtyard or larger square shaped buildings with an open courtyard on the center. This seemed to be most prevalent in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and some parts of Spain. Central core housing is made up of very compactly built buildings similar to row housing but distinguished by having mixed use ground floors. These were typically older and could be found in the urban core of almost all the cities that we visited. Other notable but less significant typologies were canal houses, a variation of row houses found in the Netherlands, student housing and what I will call the mini-block present a smaller scale, more clustered approach, 3-5 stories tall with approximately 2-4 units per floor. One particularly interesting hybrid manifestation of these types was the housing for the upper class in Barcelona. Located in Cerga’s grid, in which each block centers around a central courtyard, this typology adds large central light wells and servants’ quarters. In the case of Casa Mila, and a project by Ferrater these central courtyards provided light deep within the buildings and the servants quarters were often clustered around them to provide emergency escape windows deep within the large floor plate. It was interesting to learn upon visiting the contemporary firm of Carlos Ferrater that this was not considered an outdated relic of Gaudi’s time, as is seen in the Casa Mila and Casa Batlio, but it was still being constructed today.
One way housing differs is the way in which it is entered. This can be split up into public, semi-public, and private realms. For example in housing blocks there were usually several vertical circulation corridors distributed along the length of the block. These were usually accessed by a long corridor from the street, between ground floor retail spaces. In some cases, such as less dense areas the ground floor was left open as a kind of lobby and space for uses such as bicycle parking. These paths to the vertical circulation were often controlled by a key/door buzzer system, making them into semi-public space, however sometimes they were left open and were essentially public space. The same was generally true of tower housing typologies, however, in the more suburban areas, especially in Spain these were also commonly accessed from underground parking areas. In row houses the entrances were often removed from the street level by a short stairway but the units are almost always accessed individually, as well as providing individual vertical circulation for every unit. Courtyard housing had small public lobbies with vertical circulation, often the hallways to the units were separated from the stairway creating a semi-private space shared by a few units. Sometimes in a courtyard house there would be a passage from the street into the courtyard with the vertical circulation and entrances centered in the courtyard.
One particularly interesting solution I found was in some family/grad housing at the University of Utrecht. Here there was a central elevated public spine above some shared spaces such as storage, bike parking and laundry facilities. On one side of the spine there were perpendicular bars of row housing, with a one level unit stacked above two level units, each accessed from a single loaded exterior corridor. These corridors were separated from the circulation spine by a freestanding locked door and buzzer system. This allowed for a semiprivate, more secure access to units while preserving the feel of individual row house entries. On the other side of the circulation spine was a parallel bar of stacked single floor units, which were separated from the spine by bridges with vertical circulation towers placed on them. Access to go up the stairs, or through to the other side of the bridge was similarly restricted. This allowed for a secure separation from the circulation without the visual separation, as there was just a small “moat” to separate the two spaces.
Another important issue in housing is how to deal with the distribution of daylight and therefore the massing of the building/buildings. This can mean the difference between humane large scale housing and “filing cabinets” for people. In block style housing this is dealt with by opening up one full wall of every unit, often with an accompanying small outdoor balcony. The narrow nature of these buildings for the most part allows light to penetrate into the units. The major problem with this typology arises on the inside, in the long dark corridors placed down the center of the building. One interesting solution to this problem is to completely eliminate the corridor, as Le Corbusier does in his la Clarete housing in Geneva. By wrapping units around regularly spaced circulation shafts with full skylights he removed the problem of the corridor. Corbu also opened up his units by making some of them double height to further allow light to penetrate into the narrow floor plates.
In the tower typology the problem of light is dealt with in what I think is a less than ideal manner. All of the circulation and mechanical space is tucked away in the center of the tower, leaving all of the exterior walls open to allow in light. However this makes for a great inequality of light for the occupants on different sides of the building. This is compounded by the fact that these towers are often lumped closely together with sometimes only the width of a narrow street between them. Because of the height and spacing of these towers the amount of light reaching a north facing unit near the bottom of the tower may be very small.
Courtyards are used to bring light into both row housing as well as the courtyard typology. In row housing this allows for a much deeper building and makes up for the narrowness and lack of windows on the two side walls. In courtyard housing the central courtyard either allows for units with light on two sides or allows for front and rear facing units and thus higher densities for the amount of street frontage. These types of housing tend to be older than either block or tower typologies, and they often predate electrical lighting. They therefore tend to have higher ceilings, up to 12-15 ft tall to allow for high clerestory windows to bring light deeper into space that couldn’t otherwise be lit.
Another idea which seems to be gaining ground in newer developments is the idea of cluster housing. In this massing scheme smaller floor plates and smaller buildings (around 5 stories), are grouped together in either circular or perhaps checkerboard layouts to allow light to reach more of the units. An example of this kind of layout was the Olympic village in Turino where a checkerboard arrangement created open public spaces around the buildings in an attempt to foster community among the athletes. Unfortunately, the village was being “decommissioned” during the time that we were in Turino and therefore wasn’t occupied, so it is hard to say how effective this strategy is. I saw a similar layout used in Frankfurt along the river Main which allowed for more porous access through the development to the riverfront park than larger buildings would have.
The predominant form of housing in a given era is a complex product of that era’s current social, economic, and political factors, among other influences. While it is easy to sort out housing into old and new it is much harder to discover the true reasons for the forms of housing in a given place or era. With my limited knowledge of the history of these European countries I will briefly attempt to speculate on the development of the housing there. Obviously, early housing in the core of cities grew as the cities themselves did, and for the most part these buildings are small, compact and very organic, adapting to the irregular street grids and intricacies of their climate and location. A large portion of these were built by merchants and other well to do businessmen above their stores or offices. It is not until the industrial revolution and the movement of people to the cities that the problem of housing large amounts of people begins to occur. The industrial revolution begins to produce housing as a business, creating tenements and hotels, for example much of the buildings in central Paris fit this type, as Paris was among the first industrialized cities. These buildings loose their connection with the local environment and traditional building techniques in favor of imitating popular styles. The Weisenhofsiedlung is an enlightened proposal for how to deal with this new era of production and materials, it begins to take advantage of steel construction, as well as electric lighting. The promise shown here was soon ended by the rise of socialism which in the end tried to bring new efficiencies demanded by state sponsored and subsidized housing. This resulted in the block housing visible in East Berlin and the mid century tower housing that dominates Italy and Spain. It seems that only very recently have these influences begun to break down, if only in the more progressive countries. In the Netherlands for example there seems to be a willingness to mesh and warp typologies, twisting a housing block into a circle to create a courtyard for example. MVRDV re-imagines the block typology in the WoCoZo housing by breaking volumes free of the narrow rectangular block.
Barcelona makes an interesting case study for the change in housing over time. Beginning in the organic, dense, old city with smaller individually built buildings pilled one upon each other, and later moving to Cerga’s grid and the predominant courtyards that it creates. Farther east between the Torre Agbar and the new Forum is a whole series of Franco era towers, some of which are already being torn down. The current era seems to split between new towers that are more varied in form and materials and a kind of “new urbanism” promoted by EMBT. In their housing around the Santa Catriana Market EMBT updates, renovates, and grafts new unique housing into the old.
In the Netherlands and especially in Germany there seems to be a trend toward making housing more sustainable, whether incorporating solar panels and dealing with proper orientation, using double skins and exterior shading devices, or by transforming old underutilized buildings into new homes. I think that this is where there is the most potential for new ideas and new forms to take place, and it is therefore a likely candidate for my thesis exploration. I think that some of the most important things I observed are also some of the most basic, which for some reason do not get a chance to happen in America. It was obvious to me that there is a need for variety of housing in all places, housing shouldn’t be separated by demographics into places for singles or families, young versus old. Diversity isn’t fostered in subdivisions where every house looks the same but are even differentiated into neighborhoods based on price variations of as little as ten thousand dollars. This variety also seems to allow multiple generations of people to grow up in the same place and create community.
Housing should be pedestrian and transit oriented, not only to be more sustainable but to create the opportunities for chance meetings, not the isolation of private vehicles. It also seems to be more economically profitable as pedestrians are much more likely to take a second to stop and buy something or grab a bite to eat. All of these needs also require density, which in America seems to be cursed as a bad thing. In the Netherlands however because of the density of cities and even small communities one could ride a train out of even the biggest cities in less than ten minutes, this seemed to be a much better use of open space than dividing it up into half-acre parcels that no one really gets to enjoy. Another interesting product of higher density living is that it creates the need for large public open spaces, which seem to be a forgotten idea in America. These spaces seem to get much greater amounts of use than the average suburban backyard, and help to create and define a sense of place. The most successful housing that I saw also seemed to be of smaller scales, rather than massive towers or housing blocks. I think in America we still have the room to allow building at these scales which would still be of much higher densities than current developments. I would like to incorporate these kinds of ideas into my future work, as well as much simpler ideas such as higher ceilings to allow in more light. I particularly think that the opportunities offered by courtyard spaces have yet to be fully explored. I would also like to explore the use of exterior shading devices to further refine our buildings. It is more evident to me now than ever before that housing needs to be designed and judged successful on more factors than just economic gain, housing can and should do so much more if we are willing to try new ideas.

Day 100

Day 100
Monday, November 20, 2006
Frankfurt/Charlotte/Denver

Day 96

Day 96
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Berlin, Germany

Day 94

Day 94
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Hamburg, Germany

Day 92

Day 92
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Berlin, Germany

Day 89

Day 89
Thursday, November 9, 2006
Amsterdam/Breda/Rotterdam, Netherlands

We had breakfast at the hostel and then packed up our things to go to the train station. I said goodbye to Kent and Cheddar who went to Hanover and I waited around for a train to Rotterdam. The train ended up being a sneltrain, a slow commuter train but because everything in the Netherlands is so close anyways it didn’t matter too much. I decided to go past Rotterdam to Breda, a small town with an Erick van Egeraat project in it. I wondered around the town for a while and sketched the project. There was a huge open park and plaza there that was so big that it could probably hold three times the population of the town. It was dotted around the edges with new housing developments which were pretty cool. There was also a huge theater/casino combo with a large undulating roof over it. I took the train back to Rotterdam and found some hostels at the tourist information office. My hostel turned out to be right next to an Erick van Egeraat hotel renovation, as well as right next to a museum, which had a Lebbeus Woods sculpture hanging off the side of it. It got dark early and I walked around the city at night for a while, before getting a falafel pita for dinner and going back to the hostel. At the hostel I had a few beers and read my book in the bar for a few hours. I looked at a newspaper and realized that Tool was playing there that night, but it was probably almost over because it was so late. It was too bad I didn’t know earlier, Josh would have been jealous if I had gone.

Day 86

Day 86
Monday, November 6, 2006
Amsterdam, Netherlands

We slept in too late to catch dinner at the hostel and so we wondered around Amsterdam until we found a place that served bacon and eggs. I decided to get an egg hamburger for breakfast/lunch. We walked along the canals Out towards NEMO the giant copper covered performing arts center in Amsterdam. We found that little architecture museum made up of twisted metal decking, but it was closed because it was Monday. Near NEMO was a little gatehouse for the bridge over the canal. It was tiny but still a really cool building. We sketched there for a while but didn’t get to see the bridge move. It was a center pivoting bridge that would have been really cool to see. We walked under the train tracks and checked out the inside of a new concert hall, which hand an exhibit about a Dutch guy who had ridden his bike around he world for six years. We spent awhile wandering around Borneo/Sporenburg which was a new huge housing development on the site of some old docklands. It seemed to be too residential to me, with not enough commercial space for its isolated location, however it was still a good model of how to make a huge new development with a varied and dense housing style.
We walked back into the center of town and saw an Erick van Egeraat housing project that had staggered floors wrapping around the corner. Another block down was a copper covered project by Steven Holl. We went to a coffee shop to warm up and then went back to the hostel for a siesta. I got some ideas for my Venice bridge project and sketched for a little while. We had dinner at a Chinese place and we were again the only ones in the restaurant. We went back to the hostel and caught the happy hour and played some pool for a while. We met a guy from New York and another guy from Chili, who went back out to the coffee shop with us.

Day 84

Day 84
Saturday, November 4, 2006
Utrecht, Netherlands

Today I woke up and took a shower, before going downstairs to discover that Cheddar had made eggs for breakfast. After eating and then helping Kent with the dishes I talked to some British animation students who were there to go to an animation festival that weekend. We confirmed the location of some buildings on the internet and then took a bus out to the University of Utrecht. It was like an architectural wonderland, almost every time we went around a corner I recognized another building from a magazine, but even the ones that I didn’t recognize were really cool. The whole university transitioned from huge buildings to farmland even faster than at Montana State. We took a walk out along one of the paths next to a canal and found some huge (Clydesdale?) horses. A lot of the farmhouses around there still had thatched roofs, and almost all of them were accompanied by Concrete WWII bomb shelters that had iron hooks sticking out of the roofs, probably to hold thatch to disguise them we speculated. There were buildings by UN Studio, Erick van Egeraat, Rem Koolhaus, Wiel Arets, as well as some cool prefab student housing. We took a bus back into the city and hit up a coffee shop before we went to the train station. Cheddar and I tried to take a train south a couple of kilometers to find the Aluminum Forest building but the tracks were under construction, and we couldn’t locate the bus that the sign said to use. We bought some french fries with mayo from a fry stand and then went and ate them on a bench by the canal where Kent was sketching. We hung out at the hostel where some African musicians were staying and they played on the instruments. Kent made dinner that night, and we watched South Park on TV with the animation students. We got our fill of the free internet before going to bed.

Day 81

Day 81
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Paris, France

We woke up and ate breakfast in the hostel, and went outside to find that it was a brisk fall day, my favorite kind. Today it was clear though which meant that it would be much colder than yesterday. We walked about 5 blocks to the Pompidou, which was interesting too look at, however it didn’t open for another hour and there was already a big line of people waiting to get in. We continued walking to the Ile-de-la-Cité where we went to Notre Dame. It had obviously been cleaned in the last few years and the façade was all white and sparkly, with so scaffolding to be seen. There was a church service going on but they still let in the tourists. On the inside it immediately blew away all of the other cathedrals that we had been in, with amazing stained glass and soaring ceiling. After the Notre Dame we made another stop on the island at the church of Saint-Chapelle, which was built to house the relic of Jesus’ crown of thorns. The walls of the cathedral seemed to be made of nothing but glass with no hint of the large buttresses that were visible outside. We finally left the island by way of the Pont-Neuf with the intention of walking through the large park from the Louvre towards the Eiffel tower. We checked the times at the Louvre and discovered however that this particular Wednesday they were not going to be open late at a discounted price as we had planed.
We bought seven tickets for the six of us, as the lady behind the counter didn’t understand Cheddar, so we ended up selling one to the next person in line. Sky, Jake, Kent and I grabbed a quick lunch at the café and I finally got to try a croque monsieur which I had learned about in seventh grade French class, it turned out to basically just be a monte cristo. I.M. Pei’s additions to the Louvre were really cool spaces, especially in the Richeliu Wing where he had covered some sculpture courtyards with glass roofs. The only part I didn’t really like was the shopping mall on the way out to the metro stop. The Louvre blew away the Prado and the Uffizi, the other two of the supposed top three museums in the world, both in its collection and its building. We of course saw the Mona Lisa, but I was more impressed by the Venus de Milo, which Ali kept calling the Athena. The ancient collections ere really cool as well, especially the Egyptian and Islamic parts. We took the metro to the Eiffel tower with Jake and I missing the first transfer but actually taking a more direct route in the long run. We bought some cotton candy at the base of the tower and split the huge portion, which was equal in size to some of the toddlers around us who were eating it. Because of the cold and the long lines we decided not to go up the tower and as we walked away in the dark the tower suddenly exploded with thousands of flash bulbs, it was really cool and something that I had never heard about before. We went to the train station so that Jake could get reservations to Frankfurt for the next day and then we ate a duck dinner at a restaurant near the train station. We bought some beer and tried to play P and A at the hostel but Jake was too stubborn to learn the game because he said there were too many rules. About that time two Russian girls showed up to stay in our room for the night and that pretty much finished the game off. One of the girls had worked in Jackson Hole as a nanny, but she didn’t seem to know where Bozeman was. Kent tried to talk to them for a little while longer in his broken English that he always used when talking to someone who didn’t know English very well. I thought it was pretty funny. I read my book for a little while before going to sleep.

Day 76

Day 76
Friday, October 27, 2006
Granada, Spain

The café right below our hotel serves eggs, and the come with a roll that is perfect for making a sunny side up egg sandwich. After breakfast we walked op to St Nichols park which overlooks the Alhambra. It was a beautiful day out with that perfect balance between brisk autumn air and the warm sun. We all sat in a row along the wall sketching the Alhambra and waiting for our turn with Lynn and Damian. There was an impromptu group of hippy musicians, lead by a guy who looked like he could be Billy Corgan in the park who just got better every time someone new joined in. I did my exit interview with Lynn and Damian and we talked about doing urban design versus architecture. After leaving some money to show our appreciation for the music we went back down the hill and had some soup at a little Moroccan restaurant/hukka bar. We had an assignment for that day to write out a store of one of our favorite memories from the trip. I finished writing my story about Kent’s giant gelato at the restaurant and then headed back o the hotel for a brief siesta.
We met for drinks at 7 o’clock and started to share our stories, a little while later we moved up the street to Café Botanica, where even the waiters wore mascara, and I had an amazing steak covered in a creamy honey mustard glaze. Lynn and Damian somehow talked there way into paying for dinner, and we all shared some good laughs over the stories, almost half of which were about Cheddar. We went back up the hill through town to a small family owned flamenco show, which was pretty good, but a little sad because it seemed like the daughters didn’t necessarily want to be there. We concluded the night at a little Irish pub in town where I talked to Damian for a while about work and things of that nature. We all said our goodbyes and reminisced about the trip for a bit longer before heading back to the hotel.

Day 72

Day 72
Monday, October 23, 2006
Madrid/Valencia. Spain

Today we were rudely awaken by the phone, apparently the alarm didn’t go off and the train left in 30 minutes, Kent, Ian Cheddar and I crammed or things into our backpacks and rushed out the door. In the hustle I misplaced my 10 use metro pass and bought a new one, only to find mine again as I was boarding the metro. We ran through the train station and up to the security check where we were told that our tickets were for the wrong day. With 8 minutes to spare, we somehow managed to buy new reservations and run to the train, getting on with no less than thirty seconds to spare. On the train to Valencia we were supposed to be working on a guerilla design charette for a bicycle rack or a bollard, needles to say, I was too hung over to bother getting my sketchbook down from my bag. In Valencia we walked to the hotel where it took almost 45 minutes to check in for some reason. Some of the rooms weren’t ready and so I put my things in another room and changed into shorts and sandals, finally the weather in Spain was good again. Cheddar and I had some strange creamy ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch while everyone else went to McDonalds. After regrouping and getting my camera from the room we set off for the nearest train hub, which was located outside the city core, on the other side of the dry riverbed. On the way there we passed a ruins that had been built over with a pool of water on glass so that you could look down through the water at them, it was kind of gimmicky but still well done.
While we were waiting for the tram out to Foster’s Congress center Ali took a picture of some Spanish women and their shopping cart of food, which caused them to yell at us until their train came. The Congress center was pretty unimpressive, it was a nicely executed building but nothing out of the ordinary. We critiqued our bollard design projects and mine was definitely the lamest of the ideas. Riding back to town the tram was too full with rush hour traffic to even get off at our stop. We rode it out past the university to the beach. The beach reminded me exactly of a beach in San Diego that I used to go to with my Aunt and Uncle. Josh, Sky, Ali, Kent and I rode back into town, this time leaving Lynn and Damian behind as they tried to buy tickets. Back at the hotel I moved my things up to my hotel room, the only room on the whole trip that I shared with Joe, and read a little from my book. I took a shower and then read some more before dinner. We had dinner at another really good tapas place that Lynn and Damian picked out. After dinner Kent, Sky, Ian and I went to get some gelato, and we sat in a square watching some guys on unicycles. We went back to the hotel and watched some TV before bed.

Day 69

Day 69
Friday, October 20, 2006
Madrid, Spain

The day started of with a breakfast of bread, bread, bread, and coffee ant the café attached to the hotel. It was drizzling rain outside as we walked trough the streets to the Renia Sofia, stopping along the way at the construction site of a new Herzog and deMeuron museum being built along the Paseo del Prado. The project was a renovation of an existing brick building in which the architects had removed the first floor and suspended all of the brick from cantilevered steel supports. There will also be an entrance courtyard in front of the museum which has “green” side wall which was really impressive to see. At the Renia Sofia we had to wait out front for a while for it to open which gave us a good opportunity to look at the large anodized red aluminum louvers covering Jean Nouvell’s addition to the Museum. Although these louvers seemed more functional than those on the Torre Agbar tower their ½ inch thickness seemed excessive and wasteful. Inside the Museum there was of course the Picasso’s Guernica which was a really amazing painting. It was especially interesting to see the accompanying sketches and photographs of the progress of the painting. There was also some very cool work by Pablo Gargallo and Julio Gonzolez, as well as some Salvador Dali paintings. Upstairs was some really good contemporary paintings from current Spanish artists.
After everyone waited for me downstairs in the café we went over to the train station to get reservations to Valencia. Several of us didn’t have our eurail passes but with Lynn’s help we were able to talk the guy into giving us reservations. I borrowed Cheddar’s pass to get reservations on the night train from Madrid to Paris for after the Spain portion of the trip. After that we went to an exhibit on contemporary Spanish architecture at the botanical gardens before breezing through the Prado in order to see a couple important classics that Lynn told us about. Sky, Lynn, Damian and I went to a private contemporary collection further down the street which had some interesting modern art and a good impressionism collection. I walked back to the hotel and hung out in the hotel reading until dinner. We ate in a little boutique restaurant in the gay district that was entirely decorated in pink neon lights, but the food was really good.

Day 67

Day 67
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Salamanca, Spain

I woke up too ate to get breakfast today, opting for a shower instead. It was raining as I walked the two blocks to Plaza Mayor where we were to meet Lynn and Damian. We took shelter in the cathedral which was had a bizarre layout with chapels all around the edges and the nave sandwiched between a large stone monument in the back of the church and a fenced off altar area. Lynn and Damian gave us an impromptu guerrilla design charrette with the premise that a terrorist attack destroyed the doors at the entrance of the church. It was our task to redesign them. We stood sketching in the church as Lynn and Damian tried to find a dry place to have or “lessons.” We critiqued our Bilbao design charettes in the courtyard of a neighboring university building that had some tables in it. We broke for lunch and Jake, Josh and I ended up eating in a very nice but completely abandoned restaurant. It was weird being alone in a subterranean restaurant being served by an old man (probably the proprietor) in a tuxedo. After that we returned back to the courtyard and Lynn gave us a brief history lesson in Spanish history, and we also critiqued our door design charette. I went back to the hotel to read for a while because it was too rainy to do much else that day.
That night Lynn and Damian gave us an assignment to go out and party with college students. We went to a Dutch pub for dinner and a few beers before going to a club. The club was almost empty when we got there but since there were 11 of us we kind of brought a party. After buy one get one gin and tonics the bartender gave us all another free round to keep us around as more people finally started to show up. We danced for a while and met some cool Norwegian girls. Finally it was decided that we should go to another club. I somehow ended up walking there with Erik and the next think I knew we were in a fistfight. After I came to my senses and left the fight I went back to the hotel and went up to wash off my bloody nose. When I looked in the mirror I realized how bad it must have looked to the receptionist downstairs. There was blood pouring all down my face. I washed it off cursing Erik for almost breaking my nose and went to sleep.

Day 64

Day 64
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Bilbao, Spain

We got up and had breakfast in the hotel, they had a nice four star buffet, but I didn’t even realize until after I ate that they also had eggs and bacon made to order. Several of us worked on our design problem to design a sketching chair or bench in the lobby of the hotel. After about two hours we walked down to the town. We walked down the riverfront to Calatrava’s bridge. The bridge crossed to a brand new development with two glass towers creating a gateway from the river walk public space back into the city. We approached the long anticipated Guggenheim from up the river at first seeing only his sculptural stone tower which seemed to be a waste of materials. Inside the museum was excellent, its large lobby space made orientation extremely simple. The only time I got lost was walking through Richard Serra’s sculpture “A Matter of Time,” which was successful since that seemed to be the point of the sculpture. The collection of Art Povera, an Italian art movement using simple found materials was very interesting. In addition to all of the permanent art in the museum there was an exhibit of large scale color field paintings which I really appreciated. The main exhibit was a collection of modern art from African artists which occupied the whole third floor and was interesting in the broad range of work it presented, from very sophisticated paintings, to more childlike models of fantastical cities.
We met Lynn again outside of the Guggenheim, underneath the large spider sculpture. We took Fosters metro back up to the hotel. After a brief rest at the hotel a large group of us set out for dinner, this time Sky led the way with her guidebook. We kept striking out as places seemed to be closed or changed since the book had been written. We kept dropping members of the group along the way, but finally Joe, Sarah, Sky, Erik and I found a local seafood restaurant. I had a really good local variety of fish although it was a bit hard to eat because it was not filleted. We left the restaurant only to find that the metro closes at midnight. We had a long hike back up the hill to the hotel.

Day 61

Day 61
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Barcelona, Spain

This morning we had breakfast at a coffee shop on las Ramblas, cappuccino and pastries. The staff of the shop took daown too many orders and it took us fifteen minutes to leave as they tried to figure out who the pastry went to. We walked down las Ramblas to the waterfront, where there was a office tower by EMBT under construction. It had some huge cantilevers and some really unique uses of reflective glass. We continued down to the beach of Barcelonetta, which was a huge urban redevelopment about 10 years ago. We had a group discussion about large urban moves as a stimulus for development, and as a way to foster communities, all the while standing in front of the large functionless copper fish by Frank Ghery. We walked up the street to the university. The library in the university was inserted into an old brick building with lots of columns and brick vaults. The architects who did the renovation came up with a precast concrete modular system that fit in around the columns and allowed for the space to become multistoried. The lighting design also helped create a very warm intimate study environment.
From the university we took a metro out to the Forum, and the “blue whale” by Herzog and deMeuron. Although there were some interesting moves in the building it could really only be understood by looking at it from above in model form. There was a huge architecture exhibit inside focusing mostly on Barcelona that allowed that opportunity. We ate lunch in a nearby mall food court even though all of the stores were closed for a holiday. Right next to the mall was a landscape park by EMBT that suspended several huge concrete pots in the air using the trellis system that the plantings were supposed to grow out on. Right now it doesn’t seem to accomplish much, but maybe in another ten years or so when the vines have grown it will make more sense, for now it just served as a good perch for all of the seagulls.
We rejoined Lynn and Damian at the Torre Agbar but unfortunately it was closed for the holiday as well. I don’t understand how the louvers on the building do anything as they are not operable. We ventured back to the hotel for a siesta. I tried to read but again Erik turned on his CNN to watch the same stories as were on yesterday. That night we met with Lynn and Damian and the told us how to get to Park Guell the next day and they told us about the e train to Bilbao on Saturday. Lynn and Damian took us to a tasty but crowded tapas bar for dinner and we finally discovered how tapas was supposed to work. We rushed off from dinner to do a pup crawl with Kristin. The first bar was pretty fun giving out unlimited beer for an hour but after that the drinks were increasingly lame, and the whole thing turned out to be a gimmick to make you buy drinks. Ian pissed me off right after the third bar and since I wasn’t having much fun anyways I just decided to go home.

Day 58

Day 58
Monday, October 10, 2006
Barcelona, Spain

The day started off with a quick stop for breakfast along the Passage Gracia. Kent and I decided we would wait outside for a minute to let the line die down, however just as many people went in front of us so that we really didn’t save ourselves any time in line at all. After that we went to see Gaudi’s Casa Batlio, which was extremely cool on the interior. I think that I took over 70 pictures there. I really appreciated the organic nature of the whole thing and the fact that it was evident that every part of the building was built by a craftsman, so that no details were unresolved. After that we went up the Pasage a little way to Casa Mila the whole time admiring Gaudi’s blue glazed hexagonal pavers. Casa Mila seemed less radical than Casa Batlio, and the courtyards were nicely done but on the interiors and on the building seemed incomplete. Even the rough stone façade looked like it had once been destined to be smoothed over like Casa Batlio. Jake, Ian, Sky and I walked down the Diagonal towards the Sagrada Famillia, and had lunch at a little tapas place along the way. I don’t think we quite understood tapas yet as we all ordered a few choices but ended up with almost meal sized proportions.
We met the rest of the group in the park adjacent to the Sagrada and ventured inside. The west façade was really cool, with very abstracted almost cubist like figures carved into the stone. My camera batteries decided to die immediately after going into the church so I didn’t get any pictures. Sometimes it is good to just experience a place without worrying about capturing it for later. We walked around the side aisles of the central nave and debating the use of stone versus concrete as we watched the craftsman prepare fiberglass molds for the complex forms of the columns and vaults. After getting a good look at the more traditionally carved east façade we rode the elevator up to the top of the eastern spires. From the bridge between the spires you could see almost all of Barcelona from the port around to the Torre Agbar. We ventured back down the wide (comparatively) spiral staircases with their impossibly steep railings. Back on safe ground the group broke up. Kent and I walked the loop around the building to see all te sides, stopping halfway around for a magnum. Sky stopped a minute later to get some water and we wandered back towards the hotel, loosing sky every half block or so as she stopped to take “3 feet” photos. After a siesta and some reading back at the hotel the group met to go to Hard Rock for Jake’s birthday. After another far too big Hard Rock dinner and unlimited refills we ventured to the Travel Bar for a round of birthday drinks.
A couple drinks later we all returned to the hotel for the night, where Erik continued his annoying habit of turning on CNN every time we were in the hotel room.

Day 54

Day 54
Thursday, October 5, 2006
Ibiza, Spain

This morning we awoke to a wake up call from Cheddar in the other room, we slowly showered and dressed before heading across the street to the beach shack sandwiched between two construction sites of two beachfront hotels. We ate our delicious American style breakfast of bacon, eggs, toast, and orange juice. After that we walked down the street and proceeded to go through the process of renting scooters. We headed outside to find our scooters the scooters were mounted and we one by one started to drive off. Instantly Cheddar lays his scooter down trying to turn out onto the street, right under the watchful eye of the scooter rental lady. She immediately turns to me and asks if I have ever ridden a scooter before. I always try to be honest in situations like this and so I say that I haven’t, she takes my scooter away, and Kent hurries off before she can do the same to him. Back at the hotel everyone heads off for the other side of the island while I have to stay back at the hotel. I caught up on the entries in my sketch book and lounged around by the pool before eventually going on the internet for a while.
At this point I am starting to think that being alone in an off-season resort is a pretty crappy way to spend your 22nd birthday, when everyone comes back for lunch with bottles of gin and tonic for my birthday present. We ate lunch and than headed off to find a cool beach, this time I’m riding on the back of Kent’s scooter. We hung out on the beach drinking gin and tonics and building Calatrava-esque sandcastles until the sun started to set. We set off again and ended up stopping along the highway to watch the sun set over the salt ponds. We found another white sand beach and in the dying light vowed to spend the rest of the week at the beach. On the way back we drove underneath the flight path of the planes landing at the airport and Kent, Josh, Kristin, and I watched a plane land over our heads, Wayne’s World style. After a siesta back at the hotel we a late dinner. Walking back we were lured into a club by promoters, and we spent the rest of the night there, dancing and drinking Gin and Tonics while everyone bought me tequila shots. It turned out to be a very good birthday after all.

Day 49

Day 49
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Milan, Italy

I awoke to find that Jake had successfully woken up and left without even waking me up. We met downstairs and left our bags at the hotel. We went down to the train station and waited in the yellow glow of sodium lights to try to get night train tickets to Barcelona which were sold out. We ended up getting some tickets for the next night though. We went to an internet place near the train station and located a hostel in Milan, Hotel California. We retrieved our bags from the hotel and walked the 4 blocks to the address of Hotel California, but we couldn’t find it there. This seemed to be a common problem as the clerk at the hotel that was there quickly dialed the number from memory and handed the phone to Cheddar. The guy on the phone said that there was a problem and to wait out front and he would be there in 30 minutes. After an hour and another phone call three Italian guys showed up in a beat up station wagon, filled with painting equipment. The guy who spoke English said that he would take three of us at a time to another hotel five minutes away, because Hotel California had quote; “water in the walls.” Kent, Ian, and Josh crammed into the back of the station wagon while the guy went upstairs to check on something. While he was gone a Vietnamese guy came up trying to sell watches and got into the passenger seat and started talking to the driver. The English speaking guy returned and threw the watch seller out and the car speed away as we memorized its license plate number. After about 20 minutes the car returned and without knowing what had become of the other three, Cheddar, Erik and I piled in and again we speed off, Cheddar following our route on the map. Sure enough we arrived at a hotel deep in the suburbs of Milan with a one star rating, and the guy arranged for us to stay there for the same price as we were originally supposed to pay.
Luckily, there was a metro station nearby, and we set off to the other side of town to try and find a Tadao Ando building. We found it and made it into the lobby, but the security guard wouldn’t let us any further. After that we found a Renzo Piano building nearby that was U shaped with a forested hill in the center. Under the hill was a cafeteria, and a lecture hall for the company. We hung out in the galleria in central Milan for a while waiting and then went over to the train station to meet Kristin, a girl that Ian, Kent and Josh had met in Riomaggio. We went back to the hotel for a while before Ian, Kristin, and I went out to a nearby pub that was so popular that the people filled up the whole street outside for a block. We met an English guy that had just moved to Milan to teach English, we hung out with him for a while before heading back to the hotel for the night.

Day 43

Day 43
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Venice, Italy

After waking up freezing at 6 in the morning due to an overactive air conditioner, someone had set it at 17 degrees, I attempted a shower in the bathroom that you couldn’t stand up in without hitting your head on the ceiling. It also had no shower curtain so try as best as I could there was still water all over the place. We ate breakfast across the street in the main part of the hotel. We headed as a group down to the biennale site, however we were an hour early and so Mark gave us an assignment to have ten quick sketches done by the end of the day. I got about 3 done before going to the biennale. The exhibition on world cities was really good with loads of innovative ideas on presentation that I can’t wait to try. It is amazing to look at graphic representations of the inequities that exist between first world and third world countries. The next gallery was an exhibition on using stone construction in the modern day, and a hypothetical proposal for a “new city” where 20 young Italian architecture teams each designed a part of it. The overall scheme was very cynical and utopian but it still proposed several interesting ideas. I stayed at the biennale all day, until I got kicked out a six, at which point I had to rush to try to finish some sketches before our 7 o’clock nightly meeting with mark.
For dinner most of us went to a pizza place that had a student menu. Afterwards we found one of the few bars in Venice and had a beer while Josh and I explained what we knew of stick frame construction techniques to Sky. After that we headed back where Kent and Ali insisted that I go get a magnum ice cream bar. I went just up the canal and had my first magnum, which was tasty but not extraordinary enough worthy of all of the praise lauded upon it. After that I headed back to the hotel and read or a while, and played some cards with Cheddar before bed.

Day 29

Day 29
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Monterosso/Rome, Italy

I woke up somewhat reluctantly, on the account of my hangover and headed down for our last Bar Davi breakfast. We met a woman from North Carolina at breakfast who kind of looked like Angelina Joli. She was traveling Europe on her own and seemed a bit lonely even though she appeared to make friends fast, as she was meeting some other girls there whom she had met the day before. We got our bags and headed for the trainstation. We sat awhile in the sun waiting for the next train before finally bidding farewell to Monterosso. We switched trains in La Spezia where we met several American girls who were studying in Florence and had take a short trip down to Pisa for the weekend. Jake went into the train station to get McDonalds and came back to inform us that Kent, Ian, and Josh were going to be on the same train and were waiting just down the platform. They had spent the week off in Nice and Riomaggio. We finally got on our train and continued to Rome, Kent and Ian kept getting kicked out of seats because they hadn’t made reservations and spent most of the trip in the aisle.
In Rome we wandered out into the train station not knowing how to get to our hotel, but luckily a free hotel information guy told us to get on Bus 64. The bus was full of people and we didn’t manage to get off until several stops too late but we managed to find our way there with our bad maps. At the hotel there was again some shuffling of rooms but we finally settled down and tried to prepare our minds for “school” again. We were left instructions to meet Mark and his wife Verna by the fountain in Piazza Navona. We ate dinner nearby, and I got my first impression of Verna who seemed displeased with everything, especially with the street performers playing music and begging next to our table. After dinner, several of us went to an Irish bar that advertised a free shot for students. There was pretty much no one there and so we decided to head back. In Piazza Navona there was a professional street performer who had amassed a huge crowd. He put on a good show, even when a drunk guy and his huge german shepard tried to attack him. The show finished and we watched him take off across the square in the direction that the guy had headed off in, he continued sprinting all over the square trying to find the guy and was definitely ready to fight. Eventually, he gave up and we went back to the hotel.

Day 27

Day 27
Friday, September 8, 2006
Monterosso, Italy

Another day in paradise started out just like all of the others, with a trip to Bar Davi, a small café halfway between our hotel room and the beach. We learned over the course of our day that depending on the service of the sole waitress/proprietor? Breakfast could take anywhere between 20 min and an hour. After, our breakfast of cereal, yogurt, and cappuccino we headed back to the hotel to prepare for the days hike. We got our eurails, plenty of sunscreen, and swimsuits and set of for the train station. We took the train for the short trip down to the other end of Cinque Terra, a town called Riomaggio.
We located the trail head and after some confusion over paying for a hiking pass we set off on a flat, paved path with railings that with the exception of a few stairs would have been wheelchair accessible. We crawled along the way to the next town trapped amidst a hoard of tour bus patrons, passing snack stands and at one point walking through a covered colonnaded walkway filled with “street” musicians. We weren’t expecting this kind of thing in a national park. Fortunately it turned out that it was just this short 1 km path to the next town, Manarola, which was know as the lover’s walk and filled with the less adventuresome type of tourists. From then on the path went up, got steep and rocky and there were definitely no more handrails. In the third town, after ascending a huge ziz-zag staircase up to Corniglia, we found ourselves hundreds of feet above the ocean in a tiny town that huddled onto the cliffs, all around the town were vineyards with a system of rollercoaster like carts for transporting the grapes back up the steep terraces to the town. We stopped for a pizza lunch in the fourth town, Vernaza, and afterwards we went swimming in the harbor, which was much saltier and therefore more buoyant than the beach in Monterosso.
We finished our hike back over to Monterosso and took a brief rest at the hotel before heading back out to the beach to go swimming for a while. We set out for dinner kind of late and all of the restaurants seemed to be full, we ended up eating at a small little outdoor café in the plaza next to the elevated train tracks. Right as we were paying for dinner, we heard fireworks going off on the other side of Monterosso, but by the time we made it over there they were pretty much done. There were however a bunch of floating candles in the water and it was a very beautiful scene, even if we had no idea what the celebration was about. We listened to a violinist for a little while before heading back to the hotel for the night.

Day 21

Day 21
Saturday, September 2, 2006
Geneva, Switzerland

Jon Newton is here, I woke up to find out that Jon had showed up at some point last night and had tried to take the girls out dancing in a typical Jon sort of way. We walked out onto the island in the river near our hotel, where Corey gave us our first design charrette, to design a tourist information kiosk. The first part of the assignment was to wander around by ourselves for 3 hrs recording what we experienced. For the next 3 hr I wandered, somewhat aimlessly around Geneva attempting to record a fraction of what I saw, smelt and heard, there was silence on the river, deserted streets, sirens, traffic, a cemetery, a train station, a streetfair/market, and a full blown circus. I concluded my trip back at the hotel where I met Josh and Ian and we had a spaghetti lunch near the university. After that we took a series of trains, and busses way out to the suburbs to an office park to see a watch making factory designed by Bernard Tschumi. We looked around the building although it was Saturday and no one was there, we finally got too close or something because a security guard came and kicked us out. We rode back to the hotel where I played my first game of gin rummy with Cheddar and Corey and failed one of my classes for winning.
For dinner Corey, Jon, Kent, Josh and I went to the Sushi Train, where the sushi bar was literally a model train. It was a good dinner and even included a hefty discount for who knows what reason. After reconvening at the hotel Corey decided that I should lead the way to that night’s activities, I set off in the direction of the university but it turned out to be too far away for the group and my “leadership” couldn’t keep them on the trail. We turned around and ended up at Lord Nelsons pub, an English brewery with two 5 liter yards of beer for the 8 of us. After that Jon, Erik and I crashed a private party which was being held on an island in the river, where a girl from London gave us directions to a cool bar. Whether the bar we ended up finding was the correct one or not, the night ended well at a very low-key bar full of thirty somethings and cheap drinks. We finally stumbled or way home and I passed out soundly in my incredibly uncomfortable cot-bed.

Day 15

Day 15
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Basel, Switzerland

After getting up and eating a buffet breakfast in the club X-tra we walked down the street to the bahnhof and as it turned out our train was on the very first platform that we got to. We took the train to Basel and walked to our hotel which was located in a renovated prison. Although the prison ambiance had been almost completely lost in the renovation, there were still very small doors. We then followed Corey to a Herzog apartment building that had a heavy cast steel screen that resembled the gutter drains around town(I thing Herzog probably did those as well). We found some lunch at a food court like place on the main shopping street and then walked to the Cathedral and monastery. We took a ferry ride from the across the river on an ingenious little boat which uses the flow of the river to push it across the river on a cable. We walked along the river on a street that was about 20 ft above the river. And searched all over in vain for a way too get into a courtyard ant the University that had a Herzog apartment building in it. We gave up and went to the train station to buy stomp tickets which turned out to be very expensive.
Joe and I bought some beer instead and headed back to the hotel. The place we bought it at had some 15 franc forties of Old English which was pretty ridiculous. After a couple beers at the hotel Corey, Chedder, Josh and I went to a Swiss restaurant full of some very strange and mix matched characters. At dinner it was decided that tonight would be a poker night and we collectively spent all of our change to clean out all of the peanut M&M’s out of a candy machine to use for chips. The game started off in Corey’s room where we were informed that we were too loud and were disturbing the other guests. We moved the game to Sky and Ali’s room where things got a bit out of hand, due to other people trying to tell me how I play poker. I showed them by proceeding to place several bad bets and came in second place to Ali, winning the pot of American dollars from the people who were lacking in francs. Being thoroughly drunk at that point, I offered to buy Cheddar a Döner if he came with me to find one, and so we did.

Day 12

Day 12
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Chur/Vals, Switzerland

Breakfast at Hotel Eingang was in a second story restaurant room of what was probably the building that was closest to a “chalet” that we were ever in Switzerland. The traditionally constructed and decorated room had had a very modern sleek stainless steel and black slate bar inserted into it. This is probably not something that anyone in America would have done but in the end I think it was far more successful than trying to replicate the craft of an earlier period. We walked around Chur a little bit that morning, which included Cheddar dunking his ‘fro in the fountain outside the hotel. Corey gave us an assignment to go and sketch, while he obtained the key to the roman ruins building, from the tourism office. I sketched the Aracas Platz one of the main squares in the town. We then met to go to the Zumthor designed enclosure of some roman ruins. The design was very clean and lightweight but had some whimsical features such as staircases that cantilevered down almost to the ground and a button that lit up the inside at night so that the ruins could be viewed as if in a display case. I grabbed some focacia bread from the grocery store for lunch and headed back to Aracas Platz to try to finish my sketch from the morning.
We finally picked up our bags from the hotel and took a train up the mountain to Vals. We got of the train in some small town and waited in the train station in the rain for the bus up to Vals. The bus weaved its way up the steep climb with those with window seats gasping at the 200 ft. cliffs as our tires came within inches of the edge of the road. After a couple room changes to get the rooms worked out correctly we all headed down to the thermal baths. The building was gorgeous on the inside with 20+ ft tall stacked stone walls everywhere and slits of light cutting the ceiling into a series of impossibly floating slabs of concrete. The various bathing rooms were interesting in their own right, but overall I didn’t like that they seemed to force a constant pointless progression from one to another without allowing for a comfortable amount of time to be spent in each room, and I also wish they had been several degrees hotter, but overall the experience was excellent. Around 8 o’clock they closed the pool to prepare for night bathing, and we went to eat our excellent 5 course meal. After dinner we headed back to the baths for a few more hours of “silent” bathing which just made the whole experience a little more awkward, and very lonely. All things considered though, a very relaxing day in a beautiful building, in a beautiful setting.

Day 6

Day 6
Friday, August 18, 2006
Ulm, Germany

The first travel day, we got up, ate, packed and checked out of the hotel, heard our last “Charlottenplatz” song and got on a train to Ulm. I had to buy a ticket from that machine again because I couldn’t activate my Eurail pass yet. In Ulm we decided to forgo the bus and Just walk the short trip to our hotel, we crossed a highway, and wander through a park only to find that the bridge across the river had been torn down and was being reconstructed, so close but still on the otherside of the river. We walked up the river to the next bridge and back down the river to our hotel. We each got our own rooms in the hotel. After a brief rest we met back in the lobby where the candy bowls were promptly emptied as we waited for the stragglers. We walked up through the town and had a quick hamburger lunch along the way. We took a bus out to the University of Ulm and did some sketching of a ¼ mile long timber framed building designed by Otto Stiedler. The were some other interesting university buildings around, it is interesting how German University buildings are so light, almost temporary feeling compared to our red brick collegiate buildings. Back in town we visited the Ulm Cathedral its very tall spire, and pews which could be reversed to face backwards (a design we later encountered on Spanish trains). Across the plaza from the cathedral was a Richard Meier town center/museum building that didn’t fit into the context at all and seemed very bland. Its rooms were almost unusable for artwork because of the overabundance of glass. Every time he made a good move with the light in the building, he would counteract it. For example, in one room he placed a narrow skylight against one wall so that light could wash down it but he also made one full wall of this room glass so that the effect of the light was negated. For dinner we ate pizza next to a strange all glass modern library building with a peaked glass roof. We went back to the hotel for a little break and then Ian, Kent Josh and I decided to go hit the town. At first we couldn’t find any people hanging out. But we eventually ran into a bachelorette party, they were offering kisses, or marzipan mice for a euro, although by the time we figured that out with the language barrier they had grown board of the Americans and were ready to move on. Moments later we saw a bunch of fireworks going off next to the cathedral, we went to check it out and found that they were shooting them off of the Meier building, although we couldn’t figure out why. A couple more laps around the downtown and we ended up finding a really cool bar/dance club crammed into an old cellar with a brick vaulted ceiling. They played the best mix of 80’s music (everything from Joan Jett to House of Pain), finally the room was getting too packed and claustrophobic and I ended up leaving with Kent.

Day 3

Day 3
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Stuttgart, Germany

This is the first day of “school,” for this semester which we began by eating a very nice breakfast in the restaurant attached to the hotel, all sorts of meats, cheeses, fruits, and cereal with yogurt. Corey had us buy a 3 day tourist pass from the hotel which allowed us unlimited transportation for the next few days, after that was sorted out we set off after fearless leader. The first stop of the day was at Königstrasse the main pedestrian mall that ran from the train station through the center of town. This too would be a recurring theme throughout Germany as it was a popular way to rebuild the historic core of cities that were leveled by the war. We drew urban sections of this street as well as two others in town before breaking for lunch. Several of us had some all you can eat Chinese food, not far from the location of our second sketch of the morning.
That afternoon wee took a U-Bahn out to the Wiessenhofsiedlung a few kilometers outside of the town. The Wiessenhofsiedlung was an exhibition built in the 1920’s to boost Germany’s pride as well as to demonstrate a new way of producing housing. It was organized by Mies van der Rohe, who invited young “radical” architects to build housing for the exhibition. We saw an apartment block by Mies, two Corbu houses, as well as JJP Oud and Walter Gropius. After the Wiessenhofsiedlung we went to the adjacent Architecture school in a Concrete brutalist building with some very interesting spaces inside created through the use of lots of intermediate floor levels off of the main stairway. Another two blocks away was a very large open park with a double helix observation tower that I swear was tilted. We had dinner in our first biergarten; bratwurst, kartofelsalat, and some weissbier to wash it all down with. We concluded the day with an impromptu stop at some new modern all glass office buildings adjacent to the site that will become Stuttgart’s new train station.

Way, Way, Behind

Ok so I am almost 3 weeks behind on my blog now, I have beeen writing in my sketchbook so I will try to transfer those thoghts as I get time.

Day 0 / 1
Saturday, August 12, 2006/Sunday August 13, 2006
Denver / Philidelphia / Frankfurt / Wiesbaden

I got to DIA far too early so I just wandered around the concourse for a while, I'm so glad I have an ipod. The first flight to Philadelphia was really cool, it was neat to see how the western Jeffersonian grid gave way to a random shaped clustered pattern of farms and city, I missed the Mississippi River, but maybe we didn’t fly over a wide part. It is amazing how green and forested the Appalachian states were. I had about an hour layover in Philadelphia so I got some pizza, and then got back on the plane. I sat in the middle this time so there was no window view. Everyone around me was suddenly speaking german as well. I sat next to a girl from Sweden who had been in the Philadelphia airport since the terrorism in London. She flew there from Baltimore where she was visiting her family, and now she had to fly to Frankfurt and then finally back to Sweden. I'm glad my flights went fine. Both of the movies on the plane were pretty bad, RV with Robin Williams on the first flight and The Shaggy Dog with Tim Allen on the second flight, and of course you could only get sound out of one ear unless you bought the headphones with the special jack.
When the sun came up over Europe they fed us warm orange juice and cold croissants for breakfast, seems backwards to me, but it turns out to just be my first taste of German breakfasts to come. We landed in Frankfurt and then taxied around forever while all the Americans pulled out their cellphones to see if they worked. I took a bus from the plane to the terminal and went through customs, where they barely checked anything, I got may baggage and went to figure out the trains, The train ticket machines were a bit confusing and when I exchanged money I only got bills, I bout some coffee to get change and then bought a ticket to Wiesbaden. On the train to Wiesbaden I sat across from a Grad student from New York who was just finishing a trip in Europe, he was flying out of Frankfurt later that day and was on his way to see Mainz where his mother was born. Upon arriving in Wiesbaden I exited the train station and followed Joe’s map to his brother’s house. I rang the buzzer but no one answered the door, I decided to go walk around and maybe find a phone. I discovered that there was a large wine festival going on in Wiesbaden that week, and if I know Joe then he was probably somewhere in the middle of it. After fruitlessly wandering around the wine festival as well as the rest of Wiesbaden for a couple hours with my backpack on, and failing to get a payphone to accept my change, I wandered back to the apartment. Again, I rang the door bell but no one answered. By this time I was getting a little worried, and kinda pissed off, I turned around to wander off again but this time Joe’s sister and law, Chedder, and Josh pulled into the street with groceries.
I met everyone inside and Joe’s brother barbecued some hamburgers and Sausages out on the front steps. Everyone was still asleep or hung over from the night before, (Kent slept until 5 o’clock) so we didn’t do too much that night. There were some movies and poker and finally Kent, Ian, Josh and I went to a really cool hukka bar with sand on the floors and cool drapery on all of the walls. Later, Joe, Chedder, Josh and I wandered around Wiesbaden again to go get a Döner Kabab. They didn’t look especially appealing to me so I skipped out, I also wasn’t very hungry because of the Jet lag, however I ended up eating half of Kent’s because he couldn’t finish, first of several Döner experiences to come. All in all, a very long day.

Leaving

Aurora, Co

I am leaving later today at 1pm so I need to quit wasting time and go to sleep. Thanks to new levels of terrorism scairdiness I will be getting to the airport over 3 hrs early to make a long day even longer. This time tomorrow I should be over the Atlantic somewhere and hopefully by Sunday afternoon I will have located a train from Frankfurt to Joe's brothers house in Wiesbaden. I wish you all a good semester, try to have a litte fun without me.