wow. it’s been awhile since i wrote! this is exactly what it sounds like! i have tons of photos from several different trips. some highlights within paris are belleville/telegraphe (most of the graffiti pics), the marais (really old buildings. like, even old for paris), and several important pieces of architecture. from corb we have: his own apartment at the edge of the peripherique, the villa savoye, maisons jaoul, and the (in)famous maison de verre. we also toured perret’s eglise notre dame at raincy and the salle cortot (which is just around the corner from me and is adjoined to one of the most famous music schools in paris–the ecole normale musique de paris). we also saw niemeyer’s communist hq, the maison de peuple (which is in fabulous disrepair), and several others that aren’t springing to mind.
we also took a four day trip outside the (figurative) walls of paris, traveling south to marseilles, nice, and monaco. marseilles is kind of gritty and industrial, but–quite frankly–it was just really refreshing to be in a city that isn’t always wearing tons of makeup. marseilles is also geographically spectacular, sitting in a basin surrounded by mountains. nice is quite touristy and fun for a day or two with lots of “authentic” old markets and port architecture and a lot of old people and little kids. it seems much richer than marseilles. but neither one compares with monaco in that regard whatsoever (monaco has both a tesla and a maserati dealership in case you were concerned). monaco is bizarre–it’s like a little toy town with its ultra-clean streets, its silly people in their pseudo-american clothing, and its toy police force with their funny uniforms. also, it’s the first place i’ve been where a can of coke can cost 2.50 euro. zip zip! (that was the money flying out of your bank account)
there’s a myriad (which i just found out means 10,000 specifically–not some random uncountable number) of other things to say, but i think i’m going to restrain myself in favor of actually getting these photos up and on the web. enjoi!
this past weekend, we took a trip to villa savoye (in poissy), maison jaoul (in neuilly), and corbusier’s own apartment (in the 16th arrondisement). it was a fun trip–i’d been to savoye before, but not the other two. anyway, for them is as interested, that and some more forays into the metro system of paris have yielded a fair selection of photos.
you know what looks great? when you shrink down model photos for web display. like these! please enjoy consuming these images from the final model for this semester! …i really should be writing essays. i know.
rill rill! have you heard sleigh bells? it’s a sort of noise pop group from brooklyn. apparently they met in a brazilian restaurant. they’ll hurt your ears, but in a good way. in other news, another glorious charrette has come and gone. a lot of things were different in the school this semester and while they were mostly good, there were some bumps along the road as well. the work was really impressive, though–from all the studios. most of our critics were internal, but we did have a fair number of visitors (including derek dellekamp, francois blanciak, scott ziegler, kevin alter, chris cornecelli, etc al). the criticism was of a different type, perhaps, than in years past. but as rudyard kipling would say, “that is a tale for another day”.
my project, finally completed, tried to give shape to a sort of figure-field thesis. the studio focused on the development of a “void type”–and organizing typology that used negative space to produce urban, esthetic, sociological, or other effects. i tried to take a somewhat more conceptual approach to this, maintaining a certain distance from urban arguments–often so hard to formulate plausibly. the underlying thesis of the project was to read the void against something else, rather than as an isolate monumental form of its own. as such, a void and a mass “figure” were each placed in contradistinction to the other. each form would operate on its “doppelganger”, sometimes truncating form and extending empty space (or the reverse). i tried to carry this conceptual ethos down through the scales of the project (detailing, interiors, etc), but found a certain limitation to the depth of this study in the timeframe of the project. the governing factor of the envelope became the maintenance of a tight, taut skin with virtually no surface relief for fenestration or material changes–all to emphasize the carefully-derived massing. i hope you enjoy some of the more scenic images from the project–i may pass, at least for now, on including the drier, more technical diagrams. final model photos soon to come.
