Venice

Then we went to Venice to the place where water reigns supreme.  Stepping out from the train terminal you are confronted with the grand canal right out in front of you, and you realize that the city actually is just on water.  You knew it before, and studied it and read all about it, but somehow it just isn’t the same as standing there and seeing that the water flows between all the buildings just as streets cut through our normal cities.  So we hopped on our water taxi and set off on our watery world.  The lack of cars alone is enough to make you rethink everything about cities.  The tiny streets get so skinny that two people have to turn and squeeze by each other.  Being able to touch the two sides of the street at the same time is a normal occurrence. 

Touring around the city was exciting and fun to see the differences between Venice and the other cities that we have seen.  The facades of the buildings all face the water and the smell of the water never leaves your nose.  The highlight of the buildings there was in fact nothing old and historic, but the works of Carlo Scarpa.  Having focused so much on the historic parts of all the cities, Scarpa seemed so ruthlessly clear in his knowledge of materials and how they are put together.

  

Ferrarra

After the two weeks in Como went by, our group set out for our second journey around Italy together.  We set out to go to Ferrarra, Venice, Vicenza, and Verona. Starting out in Ferrarra, we had a great time in a small town.  While in this town, we all had bikes to get around, and so we had a blast everywhere we went.  We rode in circles following each other, and all over the city to see the various architectural things we were to see.  Some of the best parts here are when I took off by myself for a whole day riding from place to place stopping wherever I feel.  I rode around the whole city, circling the city wall, which is one of the few still standing.  That night, we went to an incredibly jazz club.  A crisp ride through the fog surrounding the city took us away from the ordinary day and the luminous orange light on the walls made it seem we were soaring through the clouds.  One of the towers on the city wall had been converted into a jazz club so magnificently.  An Israeli Jazz musician with an accompanying band were there that night and they were great.  The tower had the big timber beams exposed and the underground room with the bar had a huge brick dome as the whole ceiling of the room incredibly retained.  The mix of Israeli and contemporary Jazz lasted for 2 hours and kept us all in rapture the entire time.  It was an amazing night, capped by another brisk ride through the night back to our hotel which was a convent that was transformed into a hotel. 

Settling in to Como and my project

With two weeks back in Como, I start to settle in.  Aren, Ryan, and I move into our apartment and we make it our own.  Among the other things that we were looking forward to in our settling in was having our own kitchen.  We could finally stop eating out for every meal, and cook for ourselves.  This both saves money, and lets us have fun cooking and eating all together.  Along with this, comes the fact that we can put our things in order and stop living out of a bag full of dirty clothes.  We could do laundry and finally relax to a degree that only comes with having somewhere to return to for a while.  While traveling, you learn to enjoy both the states of moving always and taking all your stuff with you all the time as well as settling into a place to call home for a while.  You must have both to appreciate the other or else you just see the negatives, not the positives.

 

Along with returning to Como comes the start of our studio project.  We examine our site which is a small strip of land outside of the old Roman square city that is now taken up by numerous railways.  They are going to take out the rails and put a station further up the line to give more space for public gathering.  Our program is a museum, hotel, stores, playground, a light rail for public transportation, and whatever we may think it needs.  The site is between the Casa del Fascio and the Duomo.  It is a tremendously important site for the growth of the city, and is great to think about.

 

This week all of us had to finish up our drawings along with starting our project.  We both finished up all the drawings we just set up on site, as well as started new ones from pictures, the latter of which I dislike.  Having drawn on site and truly taken in the buildings, drawing from pictures seems so backwards.  When standing there taking in a 3d shape and making it 2d on your page, you are truly piecing it together in your head and creating something new on the page.  When taking a 2d picture from a computer screen to draw, you only transfer lines from one thing to another.  It loses all the effect.  When doing all these drawings, I realized these things and have since then refused to draw from a picture, I now simply spend all my time on site drawing and taking in the space.

Cinque Terra

After Florence, a group of us set out to Cinque Terra for the weekend before heading back to Como for two weeks.  It would be the first of hopefully many weekend trips to come.  On the train ride there, the train went through a series of tunnels and in between the spurts of blackness came the breathtaking sunset on the ocean and the cliffs rising out of it.  It was quite a way to first view the incredible series of five towns.  That first night we wandered through the biggest of the five towns and tried the white wine made from the grapes growing on the very hills we were walking on.  It was the best white wine I have had yet, and I have not found it in any of the stores since.  Also, we got our first taste of the great seafood of the area and I had an amazing meal of calamari and shrimp.  We enjoyed a fire on the beach that someone had left seemingly just for us.

The next day, we set out on the trail that started on the Southernmost of the towns, and led along the coast through all of them going north.  It started on the “Via del Amor” and then just went from town to town.  It was amazing.  The sun was out in perfect form, and the ocean was pure blue.  Each town was incredibly different from eachother and yet the same.  They were all buildings clinging onto the cliffs like mollusks or clams.  The cliffs are all different, and this is what gives the towns their own individual feel.  Walking along this trail is a series of breathtaking panoramas one after the other.  We took breaks on the beach playing in the water and sand, and then found our way to the second to last town and into an amazing restaurant with a view out over the town and the ocean.  We had some of the most amazingly fresh seafood I would bet were pulled out of the ocean that very day.  Between all of us, we had octopus, shrimp, scampi, pesto lasagna, bass, and other amazing things.  We had the same great white wine of the area and it was just as good as the night before. 

Then after lunch, we realized that our train was leaving in an hour and that at the rate that we were going, it was going to take us two.  So we put on our serious faces and started to put it to that trail.  We walked fast, jogged a bit, and jumped down the sloping parts as quick as we could.  Through the whole thing, we realized that we were not tired, and could keep going forever.  We were on a high of exercise and activity so great, that we didn’t want to stop even when we reached our destination in only 40 minutes.  Then we had some time to kill, and stripped down to our underwear and hopped in the ocean, much to the disbelief to the Italians sprinkled around the beach gaping at us.  We frolicked and laughed enjoying the cold water engulfing us.  It was refreshing, and was just the thing that we needed after our trail running.  Upon getting out, we had to dry off to our best ability without towels and then put our sandy clothes back on and go hop on the train dripping and full of ocean. 

 

Florence

Our trip in Rome ended and with those two weeks gone, I head off to Florence for a week.  I feel like I am leaving home, to leave the streets I have come to love, and romp off to another city to explore.  It feels good to have no roots and simply drift from one place to another.  To have all that you need packed up into a bag on your back traveling along with you.  So now I find myself in Florence, and as much as I did in Rome, I don’t think I did enough.  I never quite feel like I did enough in any of the places I have been, but at the same time, I look back on what I did, I see that I couldn’t have done any more.  So now I set my sights on Florence and all that she may hold. 

One of the best things about Florence is the hotel I am staying at.  It has a sense of humor and elegance at the same time with each room themed with a famous painter with their paintings on the wall, and the room decorated with them in mine.  I was staying in the Boticelli room, with little angels looking down on me from the ceiling.  The best part of the hotel is the owner of it.  Our abroad program has stayed in this hotel for many years, and the owner of the place is great friends with our main teacher Graham so we get along great.  The owner Bruno is a hilarious man and so full of joy and fun.  We would go out drinking and he buys all of us drinks and tells us that we are “beautiful,” somehow beautiful means so many things, just fun and good spirited and interesting and such.  We were all “beautiful” and there was just a great time to be had.

Florence is quite a beautiful city.  The town of the Renaissance so they say, and it is quite full of art and all the things which the Renaissance brought to the world.  The Duomo here is one of the more daunting that we have seen, especially when considered how large it is in comparison to the size of the city when it was created.  The history of the duomo is interesting and aspiring.  It was started when the town was small and wanted to declare its strength in the countryside, and they built everything but the dome, and the proposed size of the dome would be the largest in the world.  Brunelleschi managed to solve the problem and created the dome that now towers over the city visible from miles away over all the whole city. 

The art here was also quite amazing.  The Uffizzi Gallery had numerous wonders that like most art comes alive like nothing before when seen In person.  The best thing for me though was the statue of David found in another gallery.  It is touted to be incredible around the world, and going in I had a lot built up around it for being so famous.  I found myself wondering what was so amazing about it that it should stand apart from all the other statues that I have seen.  In the moment that I saw the statue, I understood why.  It is as if the rock hurler had been taken from life and simply frozen in time waiting for any moment to wake up and simply hop off the stand and walk away.  I sat down and started to sketch him as I had found myself drawing most everything these days.  As has happened a few times before, in the beginning I sat in solitude unnoticed by the people around me, but by the time an hour or so go by and the drawing had taken shape and started to look quite good, I had gathered a crowd of people stealing glances at my sketchbook.  The best moment was when a group of school students were walking through and they paused to listen to their teacher.  One of the boys saw my drawing, and stopped to watch for a bit, and then as some of his friends stood in front of me, he cleared them away to let me see the statue better and continue my drawing.  (Another time at the Campidoglio, a group of Asians treated me like a rockstar and took pictures of me and my sketchbook).  I find that drawing is the best way to make friends.

The food here, has been the best since I arrived in Italy.  Within minutes of arriving, I came upon the most amazing dessert I have come across in my life.  It was as layered as was Rome.  Starting on the bottom, was a freshly cooked waffle then on the top of that comes two flavors of gelato to your choosing, I got peach and vanilla bean, then comes another waffle topped with some whipped cream, and then for the final touch, warm melty Nutella lathered over the whole thing.  This column of goodness was out of this world.  The five of us that got it, stood there without a word for five minutes completely engrossed.  Among the other foods that stood out in Florence was Ribollita soup which is a specialty of the area made up of things I cannot remember, and it was so thick and rich that you could eat it with a fork.  Then there was the strangely typical of Italy good Chinese food, and even an amazing buffet with all the Italian greats for the small sum of 7 euros. 

The Ponte Vecchio is one of the more interesting buildings there, being a normal bridge across the River Arno that had buildings latch onto the sides of it creating a street along the bridge.  The buildings stick off the side of it and have little wooden stilts sticking onto the side of the bridge like spider legs.  We had a great dinner on the last day there just on the side of the Arno with a perfect view of the bridge where we could watch the sun set and the shadows change on the bridge which took on a variety of different identities as the sun changed.  Another night, a group of us happened on a strange little intervention on the side of the river just a few hundred feet down from the bridge.  There was a small turf soccer field placed on the bank of the river with netting on the sides to keep the ball from falling in.  We had a great game there that even involved a bunch of fans cheering suddenly to our surprise when I scored a goal.  My team lost in a nerve-racking 11 to 10 game.  

The Apian Way

One of the best days in Rome came when all 16 students rented bikes and rode down the Apian Way out of Rome.  The instant we got on the bikes, all madness broke loose.  We all turned into little kids the second we had the freedom of two wheels.  We proceeded forth in a huge line of bicycles taking each road we went down by storm.  We were all ringing our bells in great musical glee the whole way.  Once we got out of town, we hopped onto the cobblestone Apian Way which has been a street ever since the Romans laid it down all those years ago.  It was a beautiful day of sun and a few clouds hanging on the hills off to the side.  We rode up and down hills and over rough rocks bumping up and down until our insides were jumbled to a good degree.  We took our bikes off road and cruised through pastures and valleys, rivers and off rocks.

Rome is home

Rome comes to grow on me, and I feel like it is home at times.  I know all the streets, and even gave some Italians directions in Italian the other day on how to get to a certain piazza.  I know the good places to eat, and I am learning more and more about the history, and ordering principles of the organization of the city.  I can link all the piazzas together in the mental map of the city, as well as figure out why the piazzas work so well as they do.  I do feel like we are learning so much here, multitudes more than in normal school.  I feel like traveling abroad particularly in search of architectural understanding should be a must for any such architecture student.  All those who skip it in their learning, are missing out on so much, seeing as how this trip is still just another stone in the learning of the world around us, a necessary help to letting us explore the rest of the world with such an inquisitive and discerning eye. 

The drawings have become of great importance to me and they process of doing them, truly brings you to that place.  Now whenever I look back in my sketchbook, it truly places me directly back in the place.  What the eye sees only goes so far, but what the eye sees, and the hand puts down in pen on paper, the mind can never forget.  I have been working on my methods of drawing, and it goes to show that it takes so much practice to get into your true style of drawing, because even now, I feel completely lost.  To learn how to take down in drawing the essence of the place, and the bare essentials of what make it what it is such a hard lens to see through, that I just see parts of it now and then.  I am getting there, the drawings come so much more freely now, and in looking at places and buildings, I see through the decoration and noise to what is guiding them and can start to just depict that.  Geometries start to map themselves onto buildings, and they explain themselves to me.  Also, the practice of putting pen to paper every day makes one become more and more accustomed to drawing everything one sees.  All of a sudden, you want to draw everything, not just the buildings, but the glasses on the table, and statues, and everything.  

Fabulous Fridays

So Rome holds in it a vast array of opportunities for adventure.  Many of the nights we had there consisted of bars and lots of wine, with plenty of interesting conversations in half Italian and meeting people from all over the world.  One night stands above the rest in its wildness.  This particular Friday, we were out doing our usual drawing assignments, when lunch came around, and we didn’t feel like going back out to draw, rather, Ryan, Loren, Sarah, and I set out to enjoy the evening and start the weekend off right.  First thing we set out to do was go enjoy the amazing cloudless day while the sun was still out.  We went to the new Richard Meier building by the Piazza del Popolo which had a great little fountain out front with an amazing place to lay about.  We took our shoes off and dangled our feet in the fountain relaxing to the enth degree.  After a brief nap, we set out to buy some wine to take up to the lookout above the Piazza for the sunset.  We picked up a bottle a piece and set out to pick out our spot.  

When we got up to the overlook, we knew right away, this was the place we wanted to be most in the world at that particular moment.  The sun was setting directly behind the dome of St. Peters with light even being able to seen through the clerestory windows of the building.  The sky turned blood red.  We cheersed to our mutual ecstasy at the moment we were in.  Then after the wine was gone and the sun was set, we set off to see what else we could come up with.  Just under the overlook was a series of fountains and such stuck into the wall which we knew we had to get to.  We climbed some fences and I scaled a few columns and inched along a cornice to get to where we wanted.  From there, we danced in the fountain and enjoyed mooning Rome and just generally having a good time. 

Then, we headed off for our next adventure, with a few more purchased bottles of Italy’s finest.  An adventure is indeed what we found.  We came across Hadrian’s tomb and just to the side of it was some loud music, and believe it or not, a gigantic ice rink.  We couldn’t pass up the chance to laugh at ourselves, so we finished off our drinks, laced up our skates, and proceeded to glide and fall all over the ice.  Sarah couldn’t quite help but fall every 2 minutes or so, and we all had a great time being ridiculous.  Ryan and I did some power slides on our stomachs, and called it a day when we were all quite covered in ice.

Then we headed for some pizza to regain our center of balances, and make plans for later in the night.  After dinner, we gather some more troops and the enlarged group of us head off out to a bar.  Going into the bar, I make a new friend with the help of my Roma scarf.  A Lazio fan (the other team in Rome) disliked my scarf and said I shouldn’t wear it not being from Italy, but just then, a Roma supporter came to my aid and spoke up for me and we proceeded to have a great time singing the Roma song and sharing a few beers. 

After having a few beers with the locals, and trying to strike up some conversations with some good looking Italian ladies, we decide to head off to do what Ryan and I had been planning for a long time.  We headed to the Trevi Fountain with La Dolce Vita in mind.  Upon getting there, we unfortunately find a cop car there at 2am, trying to ruin our fun.  So we head to the other side of the fountain, and there out of sight of the cops, take off our shoes and roll up our pants and hop in the fountain.  We wade around in the water, and I head over more to the center to find an overflowing part to wash my hair in.  We frolick in the water, and enjoy baptizing ourselves in the architect’s version of holy water.  Finally, we pull ourselves out of the water and start to dry off.  Then we finally pack it up to call it a night and rejoice in what was such a glorious Friday.

More Rome catchup

So in Rome, most of the weekdays consisted of a quick breakfast followed by an immense walking tour with our teacher Michele who had an incredible knowledge of the town, and a way of telling it to us that we could relate to, and understand the underlying principles.  We would walk from building to building drawing quick sketches and measuring our plans and sections the whole time.  We are training our eyes to see proportions and measure spaces as we walk through them to truly understand how everything is working together to allow people to use them, and be successful as an urban element.  It is a frantic day of listening to all he says, writing down the important parts, and then drawing the spaces to relate the notes to it.  This keeps us all at attention the whole morning, until its time to break for lunch when we say goodbye to Michele, and head off for some amazing food.  The majority of days are full of paninos, which are the lunch food of choice in all of Rome and pasta and other things thrown in at random.  Then post lunch, we split off to do what we like, going back to certain buildings to finish up our drawings and such as well as exploring wherever we feel like we need to go.  The whole day is taken up by this series of events with some dinner and drinking to finish up the day, and just a little bit of sleep. 

The Eternal City is a truly layered place in many ways.  Physically, the city is made up of so many layers, that to dig down 30 feet would reveal a floor of the medieval Rome of years before buried with river overflows and building over.  This is a big problem in the fact that no new construction can be undertaken without excavation and examination of all the ruins of the land before the insertion of footings and such.  In terms of socially, it is also very stratified with the typical tourist mixing with the fashion elite of Italy meandering through the Prada and Versace stores and the street vendors selling their various products to all that come down the street.  Some Italians remain unchanged by the propagation of tourists in their cities and continue their lives as if we weren’t here, and they are the ones I like.  To observe them go about their routines gives me a glimpse into the real lives here, whereas others have completely based their lives around tourism.  These are the people I avoid.  Eating in any of the major piazzas brings only a mix of English speaking tourists and rude waiters, whereas if you wander into the backstreets of the cities, you can find small places that only locals go to usually, and will be treated as such.  The food also follows in taste with Americanized overpriced food in the hotspots and local food indigenous to the people of the area waiting for those who will search for it.  

First days in Rome kinda Late

So,catch you up on what ive been up to here is a rewound bunch of moments, I wake up on Sunday morning for the second day in Rome, and we decide to go to mass at St. Peters Basilica.  Walking over to St. Peters means I have to cross the city, and the Tiber so I am just constantly looking everywhere and am constantly held in attention at the surroundings.  The Tiber River is the main defining feature of Rome and its life giving force, although today, it has been stuck between two gigantic retaining walls to stop the flooding (and essentially cut it off from the city completely).  The main part of Rome we are focusing on is in the main loop with the city spreading out past it in all directions. 

So the group of about 8 of us cross the river and proceed to walk down the main thoroughfare that leads up to St. Peters that is perfectly on axis with it and is marked with repetitive markers on the side to lead you in to land at the doorstep.  Upon entering the big oval piazza in front of the church, the pure scale of everything hits you in the face with a bat.  The columns are all so large, that they dwarf everybody, and the statues on top of them are 3 to 4 times life size.  After drooling for a bit, we proceed inside, and sit down in the rows of pews of the central church for all of the Catholic Church with the Pope living next door.  Right before the mass starts, an attendee comes up and asks us where we are from.  We think he is going to kick us out for not being Italian or something and begrudgingly say Los Angeles, to which he replies something unexpected.  He asks us if four of us would like to be part of the ceremony…………  Of course we would………….  So Pat, Matt, Michael, and I walk up with the man to the front of the whole  church to the main alter and he tells us all the goings on that we do, and we sit in the front row to wait our time.  First row seats for god.  So there is the usual procession of singing and prayers and all sorts of stuff, then we get up and take the various things we were assigned to the main priest in the center of the church.  Standing there under a huge cupola, everybody’s eyes on me, looking at the priest and handing him the sacred oil in one of the most important churches in Italy, was certainly a memorable experience.  Sitting in the front row also had its perks in the fact that I was so close to the amazing sculpture behind the altar with the sunrays and clouds lifting up a huge chair all cast in gold and bronze. 

So the whole procession is coming to an end and the light starts to hit the window so perfectly that the sun beams streaming into the church from the nave to our left and illuminated two marble statues so perfectly, that they looked like they were coming to life.  It was a magical moment, and one to look back on fondly.

Then we finish up, and we all mill about the church looking at all the various sculptures and such, the highlight of which is La Pietta Michaelangelo’s sculpture of Mary and Jesus that was so soft and flowy that it stood head and shoulders above the rest.  Then as we were all congregating around the door, we hear a ruckus coming from outside, and head out to see what it is.  The overwhelming piazza that seemed so daunting as we arrived had been completely filled with people.  We had no idea what was going on, until Jim pointed up to the little window with a red sash in front of it, with the Pope himself addressing the crowd.  Apparently it was his address to the community for a recent goings on with the universities and the strained ties with the church and education.  Anyways, the Pope is a Rockstar.  People chant his name and every time he said something memorable, they cheered and went wild. 

After all this, we head off to go to our soccer game.  We hop on the bus and know immediately that we are going the right direction, because everyone on the bus is decked head to toe in AS Roma gear.  The stadium is huge and new and well designed with a huge space frame around the perimeter above holding sun shades and things and the whole stadium is in an uproar when we walk in.  It isn’t a sold out crowd, but the Roma section makes up for it with huge flags waving everywhere and smoke bombs going off all the time.   The Roma song comes on and a sea of scarves raise up with every man woman, and child singing along to every word.  (In Italy, you can change your job, your friends, even sometimes your family, but you can never change your team so these people are Roma fans for life).  There is such undying devotion here for the soccer teams, that it truly brings all the people of the towns together in support.  This is an effect that has yet to catch on to such a severe degree in the US.  There are teams that come sort of close, but nothing compares to the unyielding support of these soccer towns.  Roma won 2-0 to the crowds delight, and everyone piled back onto the busses to go home.