Saturday I flew from Porto to Barcelona. It was a bit sad to return to Barcelona without being able to see the city again. I will definitely return someday.

Sunday I flew from Barcelona to Amsterdam and, after a three hour layover, from Amsterdam to DC.

Generally the traveling was uneventful. I didn’t get charged at all for my luggage weight on Ryanair (whew!). The Tryp Barcelona Aeroporto was nice enough and super convenient. After ending up on standby for my flights out of Barcelona, I ended up in Economy Plus on the eight hour flight from Amsterdam to DC. I ate McDonald’s in the airport at Amsterdam. And, after a really long day ended back up at home.

I will be creating a presentation and/or a book with information from my trip and I will eventually add the link to that here so that everything is together, but otherwise, that’s everything.

Buenas noches all!

Saturday morning I awoke to the sound of some very noisy seagulls (but in the best possible way). The air was fresh, I had more sleep than I had had in several days (5 hours!) and was in a great mood. After a really nice breakfast with Hua Li (who had traveled with us from Santiago, but was headed back that day), four of us went on a walking tour of Porto.

Porto is a lovely city and I hope I get a chance to go back some day.

After the tour, we had a nice lunch and then crossed the river to Graham’s Winery for a tour of the property and port tasting. The tour was interesting and the port was delicious (I took some tiny sips since I can’t really drink alcohol). We celebrated Magda’s birthday with a special taste of a vintage port, which tasted entirely different than the other ports.

We rushed back to the hostel, I picked up my bag and headed to the Porto airport for my flight back to Barcelona.

Here are the few photos from Saturday in Porto.

After much celebration the night before and getting up early to pack, we boarded a bus to Porto, Portugal. Since I had arranged a flight out of Porto on Saturday, I checked out of the dorm and left Santiago for the last time.

On arriving in Porto, we got a tour of a series of houses (Casas de Boa Vista) designed by Alvaro Siza. The houses were full of amazing details. I noticed two other interesting differences between Portuguese houses (at least these) and American houses:

• The house was a six bedroom house, but had six or seven bathrooms. Apparently the standard is about one bathroom per bedroom.
• Marble and granite are inexpensive in Europe and so are everywhere. The soffits around the doorways and garage as well as all the bathrooms were done in large pieces of marble, which would be an indication of huge luxury in the US, but is not out of the ordinary in Portugal.

After the tour of the apartments, we drove to Matosinhos (just north of Porto) to visit one of Alvaro Siza’s first projects — the Boa Nova Tea House. Sadly, the former restaurant has been empty for some time and has been stripped of its copper flashing and other parts. The site though is amazing and you can see why the project is so well known.

Just down the coast at Leça da Palmeira are Siza’s Swimming Pools, which were completed at nearly the same time as the tea house. We spent three hours at the pools, swimming (the water was COLD), eating and enjoying the sun.

After the pools, we changed and drove back into Porto to visit Siza’s office. The offices are lovely, functional and filled with sketches, plans and more models than in most architectural offices. We got a quick tour from one of the architects in the office (the same one who gave us the tour of the house earlier, but I didn’t catch his name) and then Siza signed the books that nearly everyone brought with them. Siza was very, very nice about the signing considering he had a broken arm and there were over 20 books to sign. I had Siza sign the report I did on him for history last spring.

The students who were returning to Santiago had to leave abruptly, so after about two minutes of quick good-byes with the people we’d spent three weeks with, six of us (me, Jordan, Jackie, Magda, Javier and Scott Brown) loaded into taxis to go to our hostel.

The Gallery Hostel in Porto is extremely nice. If you ever make it to Porto, I highly recommend staying there. We checked in at about 8p and then on the suggestion of three lovely Belgian women we went out in search of dinner with two German guys we met at the hostel. We were supposed to meet up with Tatiana for dinner, but by the time we were ready to go out, she had already left her room, so my adventure in Portuguese pay phones was unsuccessful.

After dinner Magda and Scott headed back to sleep, but the other six of us wandered around Porto a bit and had a couple of drinks before getting back around 3a.

Enjoy the photos of the day.

Due to some completely insane planning strategy, Wednesday included a field trip, a lecture and then as many hours as you could possibly put in on your studio project before the final crit on Thursday. For most of us that meant fewer than 4 hours of sleep (I got 2) after what had been a pretty long couple of days preceding.

But, let me start at the beginning. Our field trip on Wednesday morning was a “wood”-themed trip. We had two local architects (Elias Cueto and his partner, whose name I didn’t catch) take us to a sawmill and a carpentry shop where they create furniture of their own design. Both architects were super enthusiastic and knowledgeable and it was a great field trip.

First we went to the sawmill. I’ve never been to one before and generally it was more or less what you would expect. Two interesting things I learned: 1. sawmills are about drying wood not really about cutting it, the thinner you can cut wood, the faster it dries so the game is to optimize the thinness of the wood with the orders; 2. everything at the sawmill is automated so that no people ever actually directly interact with the saws/planes/routers and the wood. I posted several photos of the process.

After the sawmill, we went to the carpentry shop. The shop itself wasn’t that interesting, but there we got to see several of the prototypes and talk with the architects about their design process. Two of their chairs (the Maria stackable chair and the Margarita dressing chair) are shown in the photos. If I could have afforded one, I would have ordered a Margarita dressing chair, but with shipping the built to order chairs are pretty pricey. Check out the Sedes-is website for more images and more about the collaboration.

On returning to the studio, we had a lecture about building materials. The lecture consisted mostly of some extremely interesting photos of unique building materials shown very rapidly. I wish I had a copy of the PowerPoint, but lacking that, I don’t have much else to say.

After the lecture, we began the push to finishing up our projects. As of Wednesday afternoon, I didn’t have much to show for my design aside from pages and pages of sketches rough ideas, so I had LOTS of work to do. I did finally get some pieces done to show my design, but not enough really and one of the criticisms I had was that I needed more to explain my design. But, more on that in the next post…

At last we came to the end of the studio project. Thursday morning we set up in a large (very noisy) room at San Martin Pinario to present our projects. We were divided into two groups so that at any time there were two people/groups presenting. Further, we presented to the professors that we hadn’t worked with. So, my group presented to Maria and Tatiana and William Curtis.

Things were pretty chaotic Thursday morning. Each group had taken a totally different approach to the project and so there wasn’t a lot of consistency. Most of the projects were good though, and it was nice to see what everyone had been working on.

For better or worse, I posed a few photos of my boards and models so you can see what I presented. I got completely fair feedback (not enough to show what my ideas really were, some design considerations that I should think about, etc.) Here are my notes:

• Dominance does not have to be created by being above, context plays a role as well.
• Since the bridge is south facing, the views and bridge are about light. There should be some light studies included and taken into account in the design.
• Instead of splitting into two spans, create one span for the entire bridge. (This was something I had debated back and forth on, so I have no issue with this at all.
• Why do the bridges arch? If they are going to, find a curve and let it determine the form.
• Make the presentation speak for itself through diagrams and images.
• How do the travelers know which bridge is for cyclists and which for pedestrians? Make the conditions help you to control the access.
• Create notes and diagrams while you work and not at the end.

After the crit, we returned to the dorm cafeteria for our last meal (of many) there and a short nap (another 2 hours). At 9p, everyone met for a really enjoyable dinner together. This was the last time we saw William Curtis, Jacques Gubler and Carlos (the director of the program). After dinner most everyone went for drinks and general socializing that lasted into the wee hours of the morning. I left about 3a, but there were several that stayed out until 5a or so. It was a fun night and a good end to our stay in Santiago de Compostela.

Tuesday was one of the most interesting days of the entire program. First, we had a tour of the newly opened Pilgrimage Museum led by the architect Manuel Gallego. Unfortunately, my photos don’t really do the architecture justice, but the museum had some of the best materials and finishes and some of the nicest architecture that we saw during the entire trip. Highlights:

• The museum is a “rehabilitation” of a former bank built in the 1940s. The facade remains, but almost everything else has been changed, including the one side that features a non-reflective glass wall that bends and twists around to create the skylight.
• The spaces are interconnected and open into each other in interesting ways. The interior is divided into layers both by the original architecture, but also by the additions which create additional layers that separate the exterior from the functional pieces (HVAC and the like) from the interior exhibit spaces.
• From within the museum there is a perfectly framed view of the cathedral through the skylight. It makes me wonder if I will ever understand design well enough to predict exactly what someone would see when they look up in a finished project over 5 years later. Amazing!
• A truly lovely cherry-paneled cafeteria that is at the height of the skylight and plays with circular portholes to create a playful environment.
• Incredible details throughout (see the photo of the handrails as an example).
• The discovery of a river and the ruins of the original wall around the city of Santiago in the basement. We got to see the water (it’s not very picturesque, so I didn’t include my photo).

Immediately after the tour of the Pilgrimage Museum we went up to the cathedral for some behind-the-scenes information and tour of the facade of the cathedral, which is currently being restored. I don’t have photos because we couldn’t take pictures of the parts that we hadn’t seen before, but you’ll have to trust me that it was really cool to go up on the scaffolding to see the sculptures and imagine their original polychrome state.

A short afternoon of working followed. (Two days before the final crit, two hours of studio time really isn’t enough…)

Then, in the evening we got to listen to the lecture by Hua Li from the School of Architecture at Southeast University in Nanjing, China. I know very little about China (aside from the really basic stuff) and even less about its architecture, so the lecture was thoroughly fascinating and Ms. Li was an excellent speaker. The topic of the lecture was “Traveling of Architectural Ideas: From the ‘West’ to Modern China” and focused on architecture since the early twentieth century. Specifically, it discussed how different “modern” architecture is in China than in the west due to its vastly different introduction. Specifically, in the West architectural styles of the twentieth century were often reactions to earlier or somewhat concurrent styles (e.g., Modernism as a reaction to Expressionism, Post-modernism as a reaction to Modernism, etc.). In China, the introduction of classical architecture came at nearly the same time as modernism, so the two were intermixed. We also learned about “Chinese inherent style” (a reaction to Western style where Beaux Arts technology was used to create buildings that had characteristics of traditional Chinese architecture) and the National Style, which was manufactured to represent socialism in opposition to the capitalistic philosophies of the West. Also, interestingly, Post-modernism was (is) widely adopted in China in part due to the timing of the translation of 10 post-modern books in the 1980s and 1990s.

I wish that architectural programs included more information about Eastern architecture. It’s a fascinating subject that just isn’t discussed in most basic history classes.

Before I dive into the meat of the lecture presented by Jacques Gubler, I feel like I need to place it in context.

First, Jacques Gubler arrived in Santiago de Compostela on Friday in time for our crit and was generally around for the rest of the week. Whether for cultural reasons (Mr. Gubler is Swiss) or otherwise, myself and most of the other students at CAI found Jacques a bit inscrutable. To be specific: 1. His advice during the crit was cryptic. (E.g., apparently the word “booth” is so unfortunate that Yishan was advised to find a different word to describe her information booth project. Since Yishan is not a native English speaker, this caused her quite a bit of confusion.) 2. It was quite difficult to have any kind of conversation with him (my attempt on Friday evening failed entirely). And, 3. he generally had the appearance and demeanor of experiencing something entirely different than everyone else in the room. I don’t want to create the impression that Mr. Gubler is unfriendly or anything less than intelligent and well qualified to be part of the program, but we had difficultly connecting with him.

Second, there was a bit of a packing mix up and so Mr. Gubler had his lecture notes for the original lecture (about something entirely different that I have forgotten), but the slides for the Jean Tschumi lecture. So, the presentation was not exactly as planned.

In that context, the lecture was perhaps not our favorite of the series, but nonetheless contained some interesting nuggets of information.

Jean Tschumi was an architect who worked in Europe between the mid-1930s and 1960. The majority of the lecture focused on the Sandoz Labs and some on the Nestle headquarters in Vevey completed just before his death. Check out the <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Tschumi” target=”_blank”>Wikipedia page</a> if you want a quick overview, or, if you have more time, apparently Gubler wrote a book on him as well.

Tschumi was educated at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and the Institute of Urbanism in Paris as well as working for his father, who was a furniture maker. This mixed education is interesting in that it incorporates a wide range of scales of work — from individual pieces of furniture to urban planning. Although it is probably not directly related to his educational background, one of the intriguing things I learned about Jean Tschumi is that he worked at a variety of scales when developing a design. One of his early teachers would encourage drawing very small sketches to capture the intensity of thought that the smaller size allows. Conversely, once working on the details, Tschumi would often work at full scale (1:1) drafting or modeling details in the size that they would ultimately be created in. This method of working seems like it would yield better results than working at a single scale and I’m looking forward to trying the approach next year on my thesis.

The other intriuging aspect of Tschumi’s work that we saw in the presentation was the use of variants to explore different possibilities for a design. Here again, I think richer designs will develop if multiple variations on a single design approach can be explored. Of course, it requires more time to create two or three variations, but when possible, I think the extra work might be worth it.

Finally, Tschumi’s renderings were beautiful. I know very little about him, but if I get a chance I’d like to study his drawings a bit more because they were impressive.

August 6th was largely a working day, but we did have two lectures — Contemporary Architecture in Compostela and the Distinguished Lectore by Jacques Gubler in the evening.

The lecture on Contemporary Architecture featured a number of more modern buildings in Santiago and was presented with a series of “strategies” for integrating new architecture in a city that has so much history. For the record, here are the strategies:

1. have a sense of humor
2. employ discretion and quality
3. call on sensibility and emotion
4. play on presence and absence
5. use coherence and honesty
6. create intimacy

In the afternoon I played with trying to create interesting views from my pedestrian bridge and walked around the city for a bit trying to observe how windows create views in the local architecture. I’ve posted a few photos of what I found, which are likely not particularly interesting for the windows, but give a good sense of what it’s like to walk around Santiago de Compostela.

I’ll post separately on Jacques Gubler’s talk.

I’ve been home over a week now and I am trying to finish off the blog entries before I forget everything — especially about that CRAZY last week that started with a trip to the Contemporary Art Museum (CGAC) on Sunday.

The CGAC is another of Siza’s buildings in Santiago. The museum and the adjacent Park Bonaval are located on a piece of land that was formerly part of a convent. Siza took particular care to create alignments with the street and another piece of the urban landscape to create a building that hinges (you can see part of the opening in one of the photos I posted). The exterior is clad in granite and the interior features Siza’s signature white with interesting openings to the sky to admit natural light and inverted tables to create opportunities for indirect lighting of the exhibits.

Our group was lucky in that we got to visit the rooftop where Siza plays with the views of the city by hiding it until you wind your way up to the top platform where you can see the old city unfold.

Enjoy the photos.

Today we went to A Coruña (in Galician) or La Caruña (in Castillian Spanish).

First we visited the MUNCYT, the National Techology Museum of Spain. It’s a weird museum containing a random collection of science and technology artifacts in some oddly designed exhibits across 9 levels. I have a few photos in today’s set. The building itself was interesting using a system of translucent panels on the exterior and interior of the building with air trapped between as insulation.

After lunch we had about 40 minutes to tour the local “Castelo” — the fort on the bay of Coruna used to look for and defend against Viking invaders (and others, I assume).

Back to the dorms early, a nap and several hours of blogging and I’m ready for bed. Tomorrow we go on a tour of the CGAC (which is where all the lectures have been) and some studio work. I’ll try to post something tomorrow night, otherwise, I’m not sure when I’ll have a chance again.

Thursday is our final crit. Friday we head to Porto, Portugal. I fly from Porto to Barcelona Saturday and the from Barcelona to Amsterdam and back home on Sunday. It’s going to be a busy week!