Girona, Rome, and Great Weather (Not Bilbao)

So yet again, i will attempt to summarize our second field trip excursion. For this trip, we only hit 3 cities, Girona, in Spain, Rome, and then Bilbao, back in northern Spain. Nice trip, better pace, just some problems here and there. but more on that later.





TO NOTE: Pictures will be sparse in this part where i actually write what happened, but there is a link under my links section (look left column) that says, Rome Architecturally Speaking, click on that, it goes to an album of selected shots of the trip. There might be another one for Bilbao/northern spain, stay posted.





We first went out to Girona for a few days. its a quaint small town, at least the old town part is, and it has a very nice feel to it. it's actually a fairly rich city, which is nice, and walking around was pretty casual and nice. it wasn't like cordoba or granada that have a distinct feel and architecture. Girona was just a nice city. We checked out a couple of churches there, one romanesque, which is the older of the styles, and simpler in design. it was alright. We also went to the Gothic church there, which was awesome. Though pictures weren't allowed, i snuck some, because this church apparently has the largest span of vaulted ceiling in the world as far as gothic church. and it is a massive space, and it didnt feel like a forest of columns. it was really cool, and the stained glass was awesome.





Anyways, we did some other stuff, but really kept it quiet as far as night life and going out. we didnt do that alot this trip, which is very different from last trip. but i didn't mind, i really didnt feel like going out and spending more money. whatever. so we then eventually head off to rome.





rome was awesome. We got to hang out with the rome kids for two days which was awesome.


some of the things we saw were:


Renzo Piano's Auditorium Complex


Zaha Hadid's under construction IMAXXI building


Pantheon


Piazza de Popolo


Piazza Navonna


Pantheon, Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Roman Forum


Campidoglio


Trevi Fountain


Campo De Fori, where the Rome kids' apts were. we stayed there for 3 nights.


Quatro Fontane, only the outside


St. Peters


Church of St. Ivo


Richard Meyers Arcis Pacis Building


Tempieto


Church of San Pietro next to the Tempieto


Spanish Steps





That's quite a list indeed. we spent about five days there in Rome, so this hits alot of hte major ones. This is the stuff that we did as a group. One morning I went out and did my own tour of several other places, including the Piazza de San Ignacio Loyola, The church there, Some imperial palace and another baroque fountain that i dont remember the name of.





Over all, the most impressive buildings were of course, the oldest. Colosseum is nuts, and so are some of the buildings in the Roman Forum. the Temple of Romulus, had the original metal doors of the original temple, making them date to maybe 2000 years old! insane. It was just very impressive to walk the streets that millions of people have walked on over thousands of years. it's a very humbling experience too. Thank God the weather was nice.

Anyways, we eventually go out to bilbao. i'll write about that in another entry. i hate the internet sometimes.. one wrong click and you lose alot of info. captions on photos are always difficult.

anways, stay posted, more to come.

second half of semester begins

here is team rob bob ben's photo board. this is basically 20 boards in one image, each board being 11x 16, roughly. we had to pin them up on the wall with a half inch border, it was

a nightmare and a half. it was an extra half nightmare because we had to do crazy trimming things in order to bleed to the edge if we wanted to.

the presentation went well. Bob told me after i talked my head off that he would have rather just stood up there and let the boards speak for themselves. they definately could have. i talked my head off, but i lead it well i think, that was because we had written all the theory behind our concept early on in the night before, which is really effective later when putting information and formulating graphics for the boards. i think i'm gonna keep that tactic for later projects.

the jury went well, a bit mixed, but i think our stuff was solid, so it was good. because we had proposed to put some new buildings in and redistribute the floor area around the plaza and create new pockets of green space, keeping hte same numbers, but reallocating them differently, the jury wasn't all for it or all against it. it was alright. we later went out to this "local" place, whatever it was, it was really good. alot of meat, alot of patata, and plenty of sangria, which was a nice break.

but i'm hungry. so i'll write more later.

ps-- totally spent my free time designing this site, reading code, experimenting, and having some fun in photoshop. let me know what you think.

working on a layout

working on a layout, clearly. comments please!