Today in my Contemporary European City class we discussed some of the major architectural and urban transitions in Barcelona. We discussed everything from industrialism, the 1992 Olympics and Barcelona’s current struggle with “westernization” and retaining its own identity. Afterwards we paid a visit to a local architect’s office. The architects name is Ricardo Flores, he owns a relatively small firm of about 10 architects/designers. His firm is located in an old house within the “Achampla” grid system of Barcelona (I’m sure I spelled that wrong haha). The “Achampla” grid is the area of Barcelona that is much newer when compared to the Gothic quarter. It is organized in a very neat grid system with “rounded” corners (these are used for parking); each block contains an interior space…usually a courtyard of sorts, the buildings within these areas are referred to as “flats”. His office was very pleasing for this reason; it felt like a very comfortable space to work in. His designs were very creative and challenging…but his models were immaculate, each model was like a 3D jigsaw puzzle with each “component” coming together or apart to convey a unique message about the design. All of the models were hand crafted…no laser cutters or machinery was used to craft them so this added to the grandeur of each model. His office seems to be somewhat international...his firm was selected to design Microsoft’s new headquarters in Milan…yes I said Microsoft…as in multi-billion dollar company of software, and computers…you know BILL GATES! It was so inspiring to see an architect in person who was so successful…who knows he might be very famous one day…and he may have shook hands with Bill Gates! His English was pretty fluent…I was impressed.
In Spanish culture class today we walked around random spots in the city and were given “tasks” to ask the locals for directions to various landmarks and areas within each district of Barcelona. This was a challenge for obvious reasons…the locals do not slow their speech down like our professor…they ramble on very quickly. Surprisingly every person that we talked to was very helpful and nice (probably because we “targeted” older nicer looking people haha). This one gentleman that Caitlyn and I spoke to resembled Sean Connery and he was very talkative! After he answered our initial question he continued to ask where we were from, what we were doing in Barcelona, how we liked it here etc. Between the two of us we understood the majority of what he was asking and telling us…he was pleased to see that we were trying very hard to learn and speak his language. After he “finished” talking he even continued to walk with us as we made our way to the destination…he made my day and I seemed to have done just the same by bringing a little excitement and adventure into his life for the evening!!
Very excited for Valencia this weekend…I was supposed to be taking a bus to Valencia but everyone bought their tickets after class today. I would have done the same but apparently a passport was required, needless to say I was not prepared to purchase the tickets. No one waited on me to go back to the room and get my passport so I debated long and hard if I was going to go to Valencia again (I was actually a tad upset that no one waited for me…oh well). The only reason why I am still going is because a grad student named Abraham from Texas A&M overheard the conversation and noticed that I was going to be “alone” for the trip so he offered to accompany me on the trip….long story short between a lot of confusion at the bus station we ended up purchasing Train tickets instead of bus tickets….so looks like I will be on a Train to Valencia!
Here is the three page power point presentation that I had to turn in for my Materials class
No comments:
Post a Comment