Solamente un mes mas...

Today marks the final countdown....there is more of the semester behind me than in front of me; exactly a month from today will be my last day of class in my semester abroad. It is surreal how long I have been over here, my flight back in January is such a blur and it really seems so long ago. Time is flying!


Today we went over our trip to Germany next week in detail, it is going to be event-full! We are going to be covering so many topics and sights in the week we are there. Berlin is starting to sound extremely interesting, along with the rest of Germany. Kathrin has our meetings and events perfectly lined up...she will definitely know where to go and what to do in her home country.


I finally had a moment to sit down and focus on one of my papers for Field studies (keep in mind I still have two more for that class, another 15 page paper for CEC, and a 10 page paper for Materials). By no means did I complete it however, I just started to finalize my ideas and what I will write the paper on. Essentially I will be covering two sites from the trip to Madrid; the Synagogue of Transito and the "Parque del buen Retiro". Both sites had a lot of "foreign" influence on its designs so I will expand this by covering the origins of these influences and there effects on the buildings. More to come on this later!  

And the results are....

So today in studio Jordi responded positively to our work, I was very pleased! That is still not to say he went without his criticisms...again pigs will fly before an architecture professor gives a flawless critique.

The major thing that Jordi stated again was for me to take away more detail. By now you are probably as confused as I was about the level of detail (or lack of) that Jordi wants out of this project so let me clarify:

After todays criticisms I HAD to know what was too much detail and what was too little so Jordi and I had a "come to Jesus" meeting haha. Basically this project is supposed to be more conceptual than practical. So essentially I am allowed to propose gravity defying elements and prospects! I am a little upset about this however, because designing a project like this never feels completed to me...at the end I am left wanting to do more.

Well here is what I proposed for today (the material that took all day yesterday), some things will be changing over the next few days (I will be subtracting some details). 

Played some more soccer tonight with the people from the dorm...got a little more action today than last week! No goals though haha. 

 First floor plan...the areas in blue and red are the parts that we will be designing. 

Second floor plan...the green  is the bridge.

 View of the support system connected to the ground. 

 View from on the bridge

 Another view from the beginning of the bridge

 View from the street and main access to the bridge

View from the air. 

I will be explaining how we split the program up into the three separate buildings (green) in the blogs to come. 

Plain and Plans....

I think I am about to set a world record for the shortest blog today...


I apologize for the lack of "interesting" chronicles in advance, haha. Today was a very plain day, the entire day (no exaggeration) I was working on studio designs. I woke up at about 10:30am and I worked until about 11pm, I took a small break for lunch and dinner just to give myself a breather. I accomplished a lot however, the floor plans are pretty much complete and ready for Jordi to critique tomorrow; I also built the full bridge in sketchup...that took forever. I will post all of the documents on the blog tomorrow after I finish them up!


Tomorrow should be more exciting...hopefully. I am mentally exhausted, Buenos Noches!

"El Invitado"

Got some work done today…

I started drawing the floor plans for our Intervention in AutoCAD today; I also began to finalize the 3D model in Sketchup so it will be ready for rendering. Everything is starting to “come together” tomorrow is going to be another long day…hopefully I can finish up the plans so that way we can go into the week prepared; Jordi and Toni have been mentioning how vital this coming week is to the success of our projects. I agree with them, after this week we go to Germany for a week and a half, so we will be missing all of that time to receive feedback on our designs…after we get back in Barcelona there really will only be time for “fine tuning”. Wish us luck!

I finally got around to seeing a movie in the theaters over here! A friend from Texas A&M, Roberto, and me went to see “El Invitado” or more commonly known as “Safe House” (Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds…it’s about corruption within the CIA). It was a bit stressful finding the movie online because I had to figure out which movie theater showed it in V.O (Version Original)…I did not want to see the movie with Catalan or Spanish dubbed over the English. It was a bit difficult actually finding the cinema once we arrived where it was supposed to be, the entrance was inside a “mall” like center underground. We were actually a few minutes late, I was buying my ticket (in Spanish) then suddenly the associate asked me a question that I still cannot piece together, she said it extremely fast. I asked her to repeat it twice and I still didn’t understand it, so finally in frustration she yelled it out in English. I felt bad at first but after Roberto commented on how he barely understood her because she said it so fast I felt a little reassured (he is fluent in Spanish). She was asking me what seat I wanted; apparently in Spain you can choose your seats when you buy the ticket. The movie was great…I highly recommend that you see it!

Hasta Luego!

La playa!

Today was a great stress relief…

Went running this morning and as the weather continues to warm up more and more people flock to the boardwalk and the beach. I unfortunately did run across an older man who was completely naked once I arrived at the beach…it was not pleasant, and it would not be my last encounter with nudity for the day. I ran a little longer and further so I came across a beach front sports center…it was very inviting because it had a tennis court right on the beach; I wonder if it is a members only facility or if people can walk in and rent the courts?

After running I came back and did some laundry…that took up a larger portion of my day! An hour and 15 minutes to wash, and another hour and 15 minutes to dry…doing laundry here consumes way too much time. A small group of us went back to the beach for the rest of the afternoon. The walk over to the beach was slightly embarrassing yet entertaining. It is not “hot” “hot” here yet, today was around 60-65 degrees in the sun and maybe a little cooler in the shade; so to us it was perfect weather, it was very pleasant and perfect “t-shirt” weather. Well the Spanish don’t quite agree with this philosophy…they were still wearing scarfs, heavy boots, jackets etc. We stood out in our swim trunks and lighter jackets/beach attire and it was interesting to see everyone else so “bundled” up even once we arrived at the beach. The nights are still pretty cold so I understand the concept of keeping the “winter clothes” out but during the day the weather here is perfect. At the beach there were some locals who weren't as “bundled up” as their counterparts…we had the great displeasure of seeing another older gentleman walking about the beach naked; this man was very gaudy and showy with his nudity, he would walk around and almost “pose” then continue to meander around the beach. Obviously it is not illegal because there were police officers scattered throughout the area. 

Tonight we went to Ice-bar...the interior of the bar was completely made of Ice! The floor was a metal grating (probably so people don't slip and fall) but the walls, seats and the "bar" were all ice. Even the cups they served the drinks in were made completely of ice. They provide you with a jacket (sub-zero grade) and gloves because they keep the inside at a cool minus 11 degrees! 

Hopefully tomorrow I can get some studio work done. buenos noches!

Internet Wars Episode Gazillion: The Connection Strikes Back!

GAAAAAAAAAAAAH, an all too familiar sense of stress is starting to creep back into my life…STUDIO! Just like in Clemson, studio has finally reached the point where everyone and everything is being pressured; Jordi still said I had too much detail on the bridge…and not enough on certain parts? It is three weeks out…if I don’t start designing detail now then Mallory and I will never complete this project!! After talking to him again he finally realized that I probably should be designing detail by now…

So this weekend I have to actually add the program to the spaces, square feet (square meters) and all, Saturday day is going to be long and strenuous. I booked my flight to Germany today; shout out to the Masters family! With that excitement does come a little bit of anger, have I mentioned how terrible the internet is here in the dorm? Well because of the internet (lack of, ha) when I tried to book my flight yesterday the internet server would hang up therefore it would not accept the charge to my visa. I tried two different airlines, German Wings and Airberlin; Airberlin had an overall cheaper price so I wanted to book with them.  I could not book either one, so I called the US support center for the airline and they told me to make sure I was on the “USA” website. I did this and the price shot up drastically, I figured I would try again today and “miraculously” it worked…all is peachy right? WRONG. The prices in Euros shot up from yesterday to today…my luck.

In Materials class today we took a few Metro stops to another part of Barcelona…honestly if I had not been awake during the commute to this part of the city I would have believed that I was in another city, somewhere back in the US too. This is obviously the more progressive portion of the city, there were skyscrapers, wide highways, lots of cars, gas stations, an IKEA store, and the smell of a metropolis! Just for a few moments I felt like I was home again…

 They were hosting a palm tree up to the roof of this one (I think it is under construction) 

 By far my favorite skyscraper in Barcelona! 

 You know this looks like a US city!!

Bridge here, bridge there, bridges everywhere

Today was not as productive as I wanted it to be; I did run this morning but I was not able to make any more progress on the papers for my different classes. I did come up with another bridge design...this one is pretty simple, it is about as close to a "plank" style bridge that I would like to get. Like I said before, I would prefer for the bridge to be a little more elegant than a board to get from one place to another; that's what bridges in the industrial age were for...


I had a lot of trouble trying to book my flight to Germany...ran into issues concerning my use of an American based bank card for a European based airline. 


Hopefully Jordi will not suggest to be even more basic with the bridge, I would like to stay with a design and start to "build" it back up again...since last week I have come up with about five different designs for the bridge, surely one of them has to be a winner! This one goes back to the basics and utilizes a simple truss system. 


Pretty laid back day other than that....tomorrow is another long day!