Seriously, how is this thing supported?
next chapter
16 years ago
Thursday, April 30, 2009
San Carlo Part I
Yeah, great. Thanks Borromini, for creating a staircase that is physically impossible in the universe I occupy.
Seriously, how is this thing supported?
Seriously, how is this thing supported?
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Presentations II
Well, it's all done folks, my time here is almost up. And now I've finished all of my classes for Spring 2009. For the last assignment, I put together a smattering of the research I've done on Medieval churches for a presentation, and we had a fairly informal jury review of our semester's work.
My presentation
I say 'fairly' informal because, to be fair, we didn't even know we were having reviews of any sort until the day before. We were all under the impression that we'd just have our work for the professors to look at -- not that we'd have to give a 15 minute presentation on it.
The look of panic
Basically what mine came down to -- and what a lot of people's came down to -- was a personal, independent study of something in Rome. We weren't trying to draw conclusions, or make any kind of statement about what we were doing. For the most part, we were just spending a lot of time looking at and drawing something we really liked. But suddenly, we had to give reasons, have intentions, and have some kind of important conclusion based upon what we studied. Which, you know, is tough if you were just drawing the Roman skyline, making a sectional cut through a street, or looking at church porticoes. Actually, John Mansour (the joker I did this project with) put it best when he, after being asked why he did his project, said, "I turned to Scott and said, 'You know, I'm going to draw this.' So I did." John's a simple man.
And this is not to say that this was a particularly stressful presentation. We've been having these for four years now, and we've gotten pretty good at winging it. And the feedback was really good. We had a visiting juror from the American Academy in Rome, who provided really great insights into Roman history and culture, and in general into the ideas behind architecture. We had a really great time, and it was really fun being able to see the culmination of everyone's work.
My presentationI say 'fairly' informal because, to be fair, we didn't even know we were having reviews of any sort until the day before. We were all under the impression that we'd just have our work for the professors to look at -- not that we'd have to give a 15 minute presentation on it.
The look of panicBasically what mine came down to -- and what a lot of people's came down to -- was a personal, independent study of something in Rome. We weren't trying to draw conclusions, or make any kind of statement about what we were doing. For the most part, we were just spending a lot of time looking at and drawing something we really liked. But suddenly, we had to give reasons, have intentions, and have some kind of important conclusion based upon what we studied. Which, you know, is tough if you were just drawing the Roman skyline, making a sectional cut through a street, or looking at church porticoes. Actually, John Mansour (the joker I did this project with) put it best when he, after being asked why he did his project, said, "I turned to Scott and said, 'You know, I'm going to draw this.' So I did." John's a simple man.
And this is not to say that this was a particularly stressful presentation. We've been having these for four years now, and we've gotten pretty good at winging it. And the feedback was really good. We had a visiting juror from the American Academy in Rome, who provided really great insights into Roman history and culture, and in general into the ideas behind architecture. We had a really great time, and it was really fun being able to see the culmination of everyone's work.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Presentations
We have our final presentations of studio work today, so I've pinned up and am waiting for reviews to begin. I'll put up some pictures in a bit.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Photosynth Update
My official program this semester, Photosynth, has recently made some major upgrades, not the least of which is the ability of Macintosh users to now be able to see synths. Hooray! To celebrate, here's a synth from photos I took a while back at Ostea Antica, a ruin we visited about a month ago (has it really been that long). I just never got around to stiching them all together.
For those of you who haven't been able to see my synths before, here's all of them in one place, so you can see some of what I've been working on over here.
For those of you who haven't been able to see my synths before, here's all of them in one place, so you can see some of what I've been working on over here.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Studio II
When last we left our heroes, they had made a beautiful picture, but had not yet turned it into anything resembling architecture. Well, here then is what we ended up making:
We left the texture from the drawing in the model, both because we thought it looked nice and because we felt it helped make the transition from 2d graphic to 3d model easier to understand. I really feel that we were able to take what made the drawing so compelling -- the flowing lines, the local symmetry, the focus on axes -- and really expand on it when we pulled it into the third dimension. You can see that we focused heavily on the use of stairs -- we wanted to be able to pull people off the street without forcing them into the forum: sort of a halfway zone.
An overall view of the site. The bridge we felt was too visually heavy and obstructing, and it was actually one of the only negative aspects the jurors brought up.
This image is really powerful because it shows the idea of the zones of space. You can see the guy standing on this platform, halfway between the street level above and the forum level below, and you can see it winding along all the way into the background. There are three different places you can move down to this level, and you can walk along it for the entire length of the archeological site. There will be coffee shops or restaurants along the wall in the background, to give people a real reason to want to move down into this area.
Oh, and while I can't take credit for all the ideas, I can call the model officially mine. And I'm pretty proud of it for only having had 2 days to make it.
We left the texture from the drawing in the model, both because we thought it looked nice and because we felt it helped make the transition from 2d graphic to 3d model easier to understand. I really feel that we were able to take what made the drawing so compelling -- the flowing lines, the local symmetry, the focus on axes -- and really expand on it when we pulled it into the third dimension. You can see that we focused heavily on the use of stairs -- we wanted to be able to pull people off the street without forcing them into the forum: sort of a halfway zone.
An overall view of the site. The bridge we felt was too visually heavy and obstructing, and it was actually one of the only negative aspects the jurors brought up.
This image is really powerful because it shows the idea of the zones of space. You can see the guy standing on this platform, halfway between the street level above and the forum level below, and you can see it winding along all the way into the background. There are three different places you can move down to this level, and you can walk along it for the entire length of the archeological site. There will be coffee shops or restaurants along the wall in the background, to give people a real reason to want to move down into this area.
Oh, and while I can't take credit for all the ideas, I can call the model officially mine. And I'm pretty proud of it for only having had 2 days to make it.
B'day Greetings
Guess whose birthday it is today? No, not mine, alas. It's Rome's! And to celebrate this most auspicious of days, our whole class paid a visit to the Pantheon. On April 21, right at solar noon (which is actually 1:00 due to daylight savings), the light from the oculus shines right on the door of the building. It was incredible.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Multimedia!
I went to a church, and found a little rehearsal of musicians. I'm posting a little audio clip so you can listen too.
I hope this will work. If the audio clip doesn't work, leave a comment and I'll see what I can do.
I hope this will work. If the audio clip doesn't work, leave a comment and I'll see what I can do.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
San Giorgio al Velabro
An aside to talk about what I'm working on now. For my main studio project, as well as for my undergraduate research program, I'm studying various churches around Rome. While I'm here, I'll be taking plenty of pictures, while making drawings and taking field notes. I'll sort and organize these photos for reference later. Here's what I've done for one of these churches.
Note all of the controls. Photosynth is incredibly powerful, and it's great to be able to dive in and explore an environment.
Note all of the controls. Photosynth is incredibly powerful, and it's great to be able to dive in and explore an environment.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Studio I
I realize that while I've been showing a lot of what I've been a lot of my fun stuff and leisure activities, I've failed in representing the work I've been doing for ... you know ... school. I'm going to break this up over several posts, both to help you guys out there see the process of designing something, and to make it easier for me to have more content on here. So here we go:
This is our site: The ancient forum and Trajan' column (Note: Not my picture, my camera's battery was dead that day). You might notice that along the left-hand side of the photo there is a big wall. You also might notice it on the right-hand side as well. This is because that wall runs all the way around the site, and there's currently no way to get down among the ruins. The objective of this assignment is to make a way for people to get down into the forum, as well as to beautify the street edge for pedestrians (there's a major road running right past the ruins).
You can see here two different pages from my sketchbook showing some of my thoughts about how to handle this "urban edge". I really wanted to use stairs prominently, to lead people down onto various levels and eventually into the site. I also wanted to use that giant column at one end -- Trajan's Column -- as a focal point, and to direct people's attention to it in particular. Those walls are officially 7 meters high, so 
about 23 feet. This gives plenty of room for different levels on the way down, so I wanted to tier and step my way down to the ground.
Now, I didn't work on this alone, nor can I can take full credit for the ideas. I was in a team with 4 other people (2 from University of Arkansas, 1 from Auburn, and 1 from Philadelphia University), but for the most part I worked closely with this joker:
That's John Mansour (like man-sewer, haha), the other Auburn student. And I can't take credit for that photo, that's his facebook profile picture. We're pretty good buddies, and we have a similar design style, so we work really well together, constantly bouncing ideas off each other and making our designs better.
We took some of my ideas and some of his, and brought them together into a strong graphic representation of our concept. In other words, we made a pretty picture:
Yes, I know, it's incomprehensible. Pretty much all you need to know is that you're looking down on the forum ruins from above, the grey circle near the top with all the lines coming out of it is Trajan's column, the red area is the street level, and the squares running all the way around is the area that we had to work with. There, that wasn't so bad, was it? Ehhh, well at any rate it's a pretty picture...
This is our site: The ancient forum and Trajan' column (Note: Not my picture, my camera's battery was dead that day). You might notice that along the left-hand side of the photo there is a big wall. You also might notice it on the right-hand side as well. This is because that wall runs all the way around the site, and there's currently no way to get down among the ruins. The objective of this assignment is to make a way for people to get down into the forum, as well as to beautify the street edge for pedestrians (there's a major road running right past the ruins).
You can see here two different pages from my sketchbook showing some of my thoughts about how to handle this "urban edge". I really wanted to use stairs prominently, to lead people down onto various levels and eventually into the site. I also wanted to use that giant column at one end -- Trajan's Column -- as a focal point, and to direct people's attention to it in particular. Those walls are officially 7 meters high, so 
about 23 feet. This gives plenty of room for different levels on the way down, so I wanted to tier and step my way down to the ground.Now, I didn't work on this alone, nor can I can take full credit for the ideas. I was in a team with 4 other people (2 from University of Arkansas, 1 from Auburn, and 1 from Philadelphia University), but for the most part I worked closely with this joker:
That's John Mansour (like man-sewer, haha), the other Auburn student. And I can't take credit for that photo, that's his facebook profile picture. We're pretty good buddies, and we have a similar design style, so we work really well together, constantly bouncing ideas off each other and making our designs better.We took some of my ideas and some of his, and brought them together into a strong graphic representation of our concept. In other words, we made a pretty picture:
Yes, I know, it's incomprehensible. Pretty much all you need to know is that you're looking down on the forum ruins from above, the grey circle near the top with all the lines coming out of it is Trajan's column, the red area is the street level, and the squares running all the way around is the area that we had to work with. There, that wasn't so bad, was it? Ehhh, well at any rate it's a pretty picture...
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Photos
New facebook album. If you don't have facebook, go here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2326070&id=7020852&ref=share
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2326070&id=7020852&ref=share
Easter II
This morning my roommate Eric and I met up with our friends Allen and Amy to head all the way 
across Rome to attend a sunrise church service in the Piazza del Popolo. We stood on a terrace on the western end of the piazza, and had a magnificent view of the city. [Note: this is not my photo, I didn't bring my camera.] It was absolutely stunning. Of course all this was very early, we left our apartment at 6:00 (about the time y'all were going to bed in the CST), so there was nobody on the streets. We literally passed probably 3 people the whole way across Rome. There weren't many people at the service either, so it was just a fun small group. When the service was over we walked down the Spanish Steps (Note: my photo this time, but not from 
today), and to the church itself, where we had a small breakfast of coffee and pastries.
I was planning then of going to Santa Maria in Trestevere, where a group of other Auburn students were worshipping. However that didn't work out -- it would have taken much too long to get there -- so we decided to just go to the Vatican instead. Heh, "just" go to the Vatican. Saint Peter's Square was packed, and that piazza is huge, in case you didn't know. I don't know what the exact number of people present, but I know there were tens of thousands.
The service was wonderful, and the music absolutely amazing. Actually, I can't really describe it in words, so here's a video.
I'm not in the video exactly, but about 2/3 of the way through you can see a bunch of fools waving at the camera (they were really getting on my nerves), and I'm basically just beneath the camera. So that was my day. Happy Easter to all of you!
across Rome to attend a sunrise church service in the Piazza del Popolo. We stood on a terrace on the western end of the piazza, and had a magnificent view of the city. [Note: this is not my photo, I didn't bring my camera.] It was absolutely stunning. Of course all this was very early, we left our apartment at 6:00 (about the time y'all were going to bed in the CST), so there was nobody on the streets. We literally passed probably 3 people the whole way across Rome. There weren't many people at the service either, so it was just a fun small group. When the service was over we walked down the Spanish Steps (Note: my photo this time, but not from 
today), and to the church itself, where we had a small breakfast of coffee and pastries.I was planning then of going to Santa Maria in Trestevere, where a group of other Auburn students were worshipping. However that didn't work out -- it would have taken much too long to get there -- so we decided to just go to the Vatican instead. Heh, "just" go to the Vatican. Saint Peter's Square was packed, and that piazza is huge, in case you didn't know. I don't know what the exact number of people present, but I know there were tens of thousands.
The service was wonderful, and the music absolutely amazing. Actually, I can't really describe it in words, so here's a video.
I'm not in the video exactly, but about 2/3 of the way through you can see a bunch of fools waving at the camera (they were really getting on my nerves), and I'm basically just beneath the camera. So that was my day. Happy Easter to all of you!
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Easter
Hello everyone! I know it's bit early for you guys (and actually for me as well, it's only 11:30 pm), but I wanted to go ahead and wish y'all a great Easter! I have two events planned so far: a sunrise church service in the Piazza del Popolo, followed by a mass at 'our own' Santa Maria in Trestevere, which is just down the street from our apartments. This will be a great chance to break in my new suit as well. Hooray, this is gonna be fun!
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Some Fun
I take lots of pictures, but I'm not the only one. Sometimes we get tired of photographing all this silly architecture and just want to have fun with our cameras. Case in point:
These were taken simultaneously. Oh good times.
These were taken simultaneously. Oh good times.
Photo Galleries
I know that not everyone has Facebook so they haven't been able to follow all the photos I've been uploading on there. Here are the three galleries I have up so far, but you can only see them if you have an account with Facebook. If you don't have one and don't want to create one, you can leave a comment to this post and I can email you the album. There are quite a few of my best pictures on there, many more than I can put on here.
Gallery 1: Cermalus
Gallery 2: Palatium
Gallery 3: Velia
By the way, I'm naming them by the 7 hills of ancient Rome, so really the name has nothing to do with the pictures contained within.
Gallery 1: Cermalus
Gallery 2: Palatium
Gallery 3: Velia
By the way, I'm naming them by the 7 hills of ancient Rome, so really the name has nothing to do with the pictures contained within.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Photos
I know, I know. So much for my flurry of posts. You know how it is.
Here are some pretty pictures from the places I've been.
Cervara, Italy. We spent the better part of the day walking around this beautiful city.
Pantheon. I stood beneath the oculus in the rain. Absolutely incredible experience.
A beautiful church in Pompeii. That's the city, not the ruins.
A building in the ruins of Pompeii.
These were actually pretty tough to witness.
Caparola.
Circular Stairwell in the Villa Farnese in Caparola.
Again.
Also, I have a bunch of pics up on Facebook, but I don't think all of you can get there. I'll see if I can post links to the galleries.
Here are some pretty pictures from the places I've been.
Cervara, Italy. We spent the better part of the day walking around this beautiful city.
Pantheon. I stood beneath the oculus in the rain. Absolutely incredible experience.
A beautiful church in Pompeii. That's the city, not the ruins.
A building in the ruins of Pompeii.
These were actually pretty tough to witness.
Caparola.
Circular Stairwell in the Villa Farnese in Caparola.
Again.Also, I have a bunch of pics up on Facebook, but I don't think all of you can get there. I'll see if I can post links to the galleries.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Venice
One final post on the trip. We concluded by getting up Sunday morning and dashing out of Padova to catch our train to Venice. We made it with some time to spare, and enjoyed a relatively peaceful ride through the Italian countryside. As we came closer, we saw it:
Yes, we had finally arrived in Venice. We really didn't have any sort of plan to speak of, other than our departure time of 4 pm, so we bought a map of the city and began to wander.
Now, I'm as obsessed with bridges
as I am with reflections, so Venice was a magical city for me. The bridges were superb, and great fun to photograph.
Details, also, were fun to observe as we moved between cities. I really enjoyed looking at the
intricate metalwork that was similar throughout entire cities, but different between them. Each place had its own distinct style. Venice was no different, so I captured plenty of images of the little details.
Of course, everyone loves the symmetrical views down the waterways with the bridges spanning in the distance and gondolas floating along, so I took some of those as well.
In the end, Venice was an absolutely beautiful
city, if touristy. But given that this is nearing summer-time, that's to be expected. I'm glad that I was able to visit this early in the year, because I expect that the city (and Italy in general) will only get more crowded as time goes on.
Eventaully, we had to bid farewell to Venice, and caught our train home. We were on a EuroStar, a "fast" train, but it still took us about 5 hours to get back. We arrived about 10 o' clock and took a little bus back to Trestevere, and home.
Yes, we had finally arrived in Venice. We really didn't have any sort of plan to speak of, other than our departure time of 4 pm, so we bought a map of the city and began to wander.
Now, I'm as obsessed with bridges
as I am with reflections, so Venice was a magical city for me. The bridges were superb, and great fun to photograph.Details, also, were fun to observe as we moved between cities. I really enjoyed looking at the
intricate metalwork that was similar throughout entire cities, but different between them. Each place had its own distinct style. Venice was no different, so I captured plenty of images of the little details.Of course, everyone loves the symmetrical views down the waterways with the bridges spanning in the distance and gondolas floating along, so I took some of those as well.
In the end, Venice was an absolutely beautiful
city, if touristy. But given that this is nearing summer-time, that's to be expected. I'm glad that I was able to visit this early in the year, because I expect that the city (and Italy in general) will only get more crowded as time goes on.Eventaully, we had to bid farewell to Venice, and caught our train home. We were on a EuroStar, a "fast" train, but it still took us about 5 hours to get back. We arrived about 10 o' clock and took a little bus back to Trestevere, and home.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Padova
When we arrived in Padova, it was already after dark. We ran into a hotel, found a map of the city and directions to a hostel, and began making our way across the city. We conveniently ran into an English-speaking couple who were going to their home just a few blocks from our stay. The hostel was clear on the other side of Padova, and though with the map I could get us there, it would have taken substantially longer. Because we were moving quickly (and getting a nice tour along the way), we didn't take any pictures that night.
We found our hostel, booked a room, and went to dinner at a nice little place whose name translates to "Up and Down". We spent a laid back evening wandering around the city, getting a little gelato, and just enjoying not having to be places. Eventually though, we turned in for the night.
The next moring, we grabbed a quick (really quick) breakfast from the hostel and dashed our way to the train station, because our train to Venice departed at 8:30. We did manage to snap a few pictures along the way though. Behold, Padova:
And then there was this cool little guy
We found our hostel, booked a room, and went to dinner at a nice little place whose name translates to "Up and Down". We spent a laid back evening wandering around the city, getting a little gelato, and just enjoying not having to be places. Eventually though, we turned in for the night.
The next moring, we grabbed a quick (really quick) breakfast from the hostel and dashed our way to the train station, because our train to Venice departed at 8:30. We did manage to snap a few pictures along the way though. Behold, Padova:
And then there was this cool little guy
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Vicenza
I know I've been out for a while, but I've been very busy. Hopefully I'll be able to post a lot soon to catch back up. I'll continue to talk a bit about my trip from the weekend before last (sigh, so far behind...)
If you look at a map of Italy, you'll see that Florence is right in the center, and Vicenza is a short distance to the North. The day after my little adventure of being lost in Florence, the three of us made our way around the city to check out some things we'd missed the first time around. This included a visit to David, but for the most part we just wandered for a bit.
That afternoon we jumped on a train to Vicenza, which lasted about 3 hours. We honestly didn't know much about the city when we left, except that Palladio -- a
famous Renaissance architect -- built a bunch of buildings there.
We arrived, walked around a bit, took some pictures, found a little hostel, ate at a cool help-yourself (but not really buffet) restaurant, explored the night-time city, and went to bed.
The next morning we did more of the same, mainly just exploring. However we did have one noteworthy experience, we visited the Villa Rotonda, aforementioned Palladio's most famous work.
It's a jewel of Renaissance thinking: perfectly symmetrical in all directions. Not exactly my favorite, but exquisite in proportion and balance.
Afterward, we walked back into the city and caught the train to our next stop: Padova.
If you look at a map of Italy, you'll see that Florence is right in the center, and Vicenza is a short distance to the North. The day after my little adventure of being lost in Florence, the three of us made our way around the city to check out some things we'd missed the first time around. This included a visit to David, but for the most part we just wandered for a bit.That afternoon we jumped on a train to Vicenza, which lasted about 3 hours. We honestly didn't know much about the city when we left, except that Palladio -- a
famous Renaissance architect -- built a bunch of buildings there.We arrived, walked around a bit, took some pictures, found a little hostel, ate at a cool help-yourself (but not really buffet) restaurant, explored the night-time city, and went to bed.
The next morning we did more of the same, mainly just exploring. However we did have one noteworthy experience, we visited the Villa Rotonda, aforementioned Palladio's most famous work.
It's a jewel of Renaissance thinking: perfectly symmetrical in all directions. Not exactly my favorite, but exquisite in proportion and balance.Afterward, we walked back into the city and caught the train to our next stop: Padova.
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