RE:mote . . . . . . . Controlled

Kakadu National Park - Australia

2009-10-21T21:34:00.000-07:00

Before I knew it I had found my way behind the steering wheel of another rental car in another foreign country. As I got used to driving on the wrong side of the road {and it is the wrong side} I hardly ever forgot to stay in the left lane and only once clipped an old lady's shopping cart. Actually the hardest part to get used to was signaling/putting the car in gear with the other hand. Thank god I didn't have a stick shift, getting used to shifting with the left hand and staying on the wrong side of the road would have gotten me barred from the highway and country in a matter of hours. My destination in this hair-brained scheme was one of the largest national parks in Australia, Kakadu National Park of the Top End. 7,700 square miles in area, it is almost half the size of Switzerland. So divide Switzerland in half, take away the lush green mountains and replace them with wild bushland and crocodiles, and you pretty much get the picture. The reasons for going to visit Kakadu were many. It is pretty far off of the beaten path {300km away from Darwin}, has only one paved road running through it, aboriginal owned and maintained, and the location of many stellar works by Glenn Murcutt and Troppo Architects.

There is only one main town in Kakadu, called Jabiru, or as I refer to it, the majestic home of the crocodile Holiday Inn. Just thinking about it now brings a croc tear to my face. That's right, one of the main establishments of this town is a hotel in the shape of a crocodile {the eyes even glow at night}. Sadly though, far being from the exception, the hotel is more of the norm as far as architecture goes in Jabiru. It's the biggest town in Kakadu, with a whopping population of 1500 people and was originally established as a closed settlement for uranium mine workers in the relatively recent year of 1982. Though located deep in the bush, where resources are scarce and limits on consumption should be the name of the game, most all buildings, like the croc hotel, turn a blind eye to the climate and culture surrounding themselves, opting for a massive amount of air conditioners plugged onto trailers to live in. A lot of it is probably to be blamed on the large influx of money from the uranium mining, but that is a tale for another day. What I wanted to establish is that instead of opting for climatically sensitive buildings, the usual solution is to tack on AC units to hermetically sealed containers and block out the environment altogether. Nothing new, nothing earth-shattering, but they provide a striking counterpoint to some of the other more sensitive buildings designed in the area. In all fairness, I should say most of my bitterness is probably left-over from having to spend one sunburned induced day and night in a storage container with a small window and interior faux wood siding.

As I mentioned before, Jabiru and the surrounding camps of Kakadu are located deep in the Australian outback, or bush. In no other country can I think of a population so unceasingly proud of its connection with the untamed outdoors. Similar to the American cowboys of lore, the bushmen of Australia are extremely prideful of their independence and resourcefulness, often spending the nights outdoors under the stars in their portable "swag." They even created a completely Australian term for it, "the bush." In no other country that I know of does this naming take place. In the States, as in other places, we have deserts, mountains, wilderness, but nowhere do we have "the bush." Australians are so connected to their untamed land they have their own terminology and have created a mythology surrounding it. As Eskimos have dozens of names for snow to show their familiarity with it, Australians living in the outback {another created word} have created an environment that is undoubtedly Australian. The husband of a sculptor I met worked a hard life doing work for the mines in the bush, but his chest swelled with pride anytime he had cause to mention how long he was usually in the outback for. "I've been out bush for a week or so, so I haven't had much time to keep up with the news...". Once a bushman, always a bushman. Out of all of the types of people in Australia, I believe this one thing separates them the most. City folk or bush people. To go bush means to be leanly self sufficient, taking as little as possible and still being able to get by. I've been reading the novel "We of the Never Never", which is the 1902 account of a lady from the city living in the rough outback among the bushmen near the area to later be called Kakadu {if you've seen the movie Australia with Nicole Kidman, its basically that plot except done well}. In the book the bushmen are always refereed to as doing the most with the little as possible, echoing the moral of the now popular aboriginal proverb "to touch the earth lightly". It is with these thoughts in mind that I approached the sought after projects in Kakadu...

Per capita, there are an overwhelming number of well done projects in Kakadu. The Bowali Visitor Center by Glenn Murcutt and Troppo, the Mary River Ranger Housing, the bathrooms at Gunlom, and the Bush Bungaloos by Troppo just to name a few. For the blog I'm going to focus on the Mary River Ranger Housing and the Bush Bungaloos b/c I was able to get a much more intimate look at those projects, but make sure to check my flickr page if you want to see more images of the Bowali Center. The ranger housing at Mary River was designed by Troppo Architects to provide living units for some of the rangers working at Kakadu National Park. Being a ranger is an exhaustive experience and usually solitary experience, so many of the rangers are single as well as only stay with the park an average of three years or so before moving on to other parks or opportunities. I was lucky enough to meet one of the rangers, Stephen, at Kakadu and he showed me to a luckily {for me} vacant house that I could explore at my leisure. It was only a matter of minutes before I had my laptop/workstation set up and was rifling through the fridge to sample the juice that the last tenant left at their hopefully recent departure. The structural plan of the house is incredibly simple but allows room for flexibility. An all steel frame is supported on concrete piers to deter termites and raised the house up one storey above the ground. Stephen remarked that he liked that it was raised up b/c it doubled the available floor space that he could use {he also appreciated that you could sit on the toilet, open the door, and have an amazing view of the park, which I would have to agree with him on}. When the torrential downpours came in the wet, he could still relax under the shelter of the house and dart in and out to do various yard work when the rain subsided. When you climb the stairs to the main level of the house, you understand it is segmented in three different zones. You enter onto a screened-in breezeway with the living space to your left and bedrooms to the right. The breezeway is left always open to the outside winds, and can be closed off from the rest of the house by sliding doors {also used for heavy storms} while the living space is cooled by a fan. The bedroom section is partitioned off in the third zone and has minimal air conditioning.

Besides being elevated to capture the prevalent breezes, the house is a thin bar building with operable louvers on both sides to encourage ventilation. Instead of wooden louvers like the old government housing in Darwin {see previous entry} the new standard is glass fins that still allow views when closed and are less expensive than the custom wood construction. For vertical air movement the houses have a double skin corrugated metal roof with an air gap in between. Hidden vents are tucked in the ceiling to draw air up and outwards through rotating circular vents placed at the roof ridge. What I took away most from the Mary River housing project was how Troppo took an existing mentality like the government housing at Darwin and updated it with new materials and technologies while still retaining a similar vocabulary.

Another project by Troppo Architects in Kakadu NP is located in the main town of Jabiru {remember croc hotel?}. Its a series of small rooms called "bush bungalows" that are scattered throughout a lush tropical landscaping a little bit off the main road. Even though the bungalows are very close to each other {I heard many conversations that I was not meant to I think} they are positioned in a way that promotes privacy. The entrances are directed away from each other and the landscaping blocks most all of the views from one room to the next. The design and fabrication of the bungalows is built on the philosophy of fewer materials to do more. A small metal box {4m x 4m} is raised a little less than a meter off of the ground and capped with two different colored canvas roofs with an air gap in between. The interior roof is made of a white plastic feeling material that lets light in and gives the interior a feeling of openness. Outside a tougher perforated black mesh material blocks most of the hot sun and air is again brought out of the structure by a rotary vent connecting the two roofs at the peak. The roof not only lets ambient light in, but shadows of the surrounding trees, bushes, and even occasional lizards exploring the strange white material. You are always made aware of the nature around the room even though you can't always directly see it, though the perforated metal panels that enclose the structure block views from the outside and allow you to see outwards from inside.

At night the reverse is true, with lights on inside the whole box glows and is partially visible to the outside. It looks pretty in a picture, but once you go outside you realize how much people can see to the interior of the bungalow. The metal frame of the room is modular to allow for mass production and very low in size {see picture above}. Besides the perforated metal, plywood panels occur on each wall besides the entry to house the utilities and electrical outlets. All power is able to come directly from below and go straight into the wall without any complicated pipe gymnastics. With an extremely small material palette and uncomplicated construction philosophy the bungalows are able to maintain a very intimate relationship with the surrounding landscape climatically and visually.

"Goodonya"

2009-10-03T23:17:00.000-07:00

Conversation between myself and a friend in Sydney:

Me: “…well, I’m thinking of swinging through Coober Pedy after Alice Springs”
Friend: “You know how far that is right? It’s like half-way to Adelaide”
M: “Is that far?”
F: “It’s almost 700 km!!!”
M: “...So, is that far?”

You would think after driving around more of Norway than most hardened truck drivers I would have a better sense of direction and distances, but sadly the conversation above is fairly typical. Like a raccoon seeing a spoon my eye sometimes wanders too quickly to shiny objects and interesting sounding places. But it also brought to clarity a big snag I had encountered in Australia as well as many other locations. Projects that are remote tend to be, what’s the word, well… far, and Australia is fairly similar size-wise to the continental US, which means large. I was at a crossroads of options on how to get around the Northern Territory and was weighing the pros and cons of transportation. Renting a car, buying a car, hitching a ride, grabbing a bus, or maybe walking really fast were all possibilities on the table. I was almost to the point of wikipeding how to hot wire a car when in blatant desperation I pinned a flyer on the hostel bulletin board looking for a ride to various sought after locations. When I realized how confining to my self-interests that would be, as well as the potential of spending more than 30 minutes with the people that were staying at the hostel already, I took it down faster than it took me to write…

But in ruminating on my situation and perusing different for sale options, I began to become much more aware of the caravan culture in Australia and the Northern Territory in particular. Where a sleek, smooth RV or airstream is not a rarity in the States, car camping is taken to a new level in the Top End. The variety of rigs are as unique as the people that pilot them and most all rental companies advertise packages geared towards families hitting the dusty trail together behind the wheel of a big air conditioned monster with clanking pots and pans in the back. Apollo, Wicked Campers, Top End Rentals, Britz, are just a few of the many companies that offer rentals in large 4wd campers. Beyond the rentals are the pure-bloods, people that have been around the country more times they can count on one hand and have cut, trimmed, and organized their outfit into a lean mean camping machine. Doors fold out, awnings pop open, stove tops appear from thin air and before you know it a family is sitting down at a candlelit table like they were on their personal back porch back home. As additions become more complex, some go topside, having a fold out sleeping area on top of their roof rack which is reached by a ladder and provides better breezes high in the air than I was getting camping in the trenches down below. Other contraptions shoot out from the sides and leave me to gaze longingly at several suddenly materialized screened rooms while slapping flies from my neck.

I finally ended up breaking down and renting a car, a little Toyota Corolla that was probably laughed at the whole drive to Kakadu from the captain's chairs of passing off-roaders. In a strange coincedence of fate I seem to be renting the same car over and over again just in different countries. I don't know if the rental companies have a fetish for small, black hatchbacks but they apparently pawn them off like hotcakes {see photo evidence above}. My next stop on the road, Kakadu National Park, is a large aboriginal owned park right on the border of Arnhem Land about 300 km to the East of Darwin.

Before I hit the dusty trail though, I popped over to a place called Myilly point to see the last of the 1930's government pre-war housing designed by architect B.C.G. Burnett. Of the over 60 different versions that were built in the 30's, only 4 are left standing {due to termites, cyclones, fires etc...} and are all on Myilly point protected by the National Trust organization. They are important for a number of reasons, the biggest for me was that they were the initial inspiration for most all of Troppo Architect's work in the Top End, and one of the big reasons the two young architects of Troppo {Adrian Welke and Phil Harris} decided to move up to Darwin in the 1970's. The government designed houses were listed in different "types", such as B, E, K, and L with sometimes major differences in plan and section. For instance, the aptly named Burnett house is the only one open to the public and is a "Type K" plan, which in this case means an enclosed lower story, while all other types contain open air under stories, raising the building on stilts.

The types are a take on a housing type called the "Queenslander" developed obviously for Queenland, being in a similar climate zone. The houses were raised into the air to get away from reptiles and bugs, as well as take advantage of cross breezes working their way through the surrounding vegetation. To maximize air circulation, the walls are almost entirely covered with louvers and windows, all shrouded in mosquito netting {the surly denial of bugs being a huge deal to both comfort and sanity!}.

Inside the same philosophies of keeping air moving are carried forward. At the expense of acoustical privacy, there are vents next to doors that close and swinging doors that allow breezes to move above and below their partitions. Walls are left open above door height as well to further encourage air circulation. In this manner the whole house can achieve cross ventilation even though several rooms deep. There is no way to really seal the house off from all outside elements, which is probably why I was so drawn to it. Rain is kept out but you are constantly aware of the environment around you and the climate you're a part of. I was there on a hot, muggy Tuesday afternoon and can honestly say I was cool enough inside even without a G&T to "take the edge off". Sure enough though, in proper colonial fashion they had a old bottle of Bombay and two dusty glasses sitting out ready to aid in the dark and glorious days of pre-airconditioning.

Its a shame, but many of the new houses in Darwin have not taken Robert Frost's path, tacking on air conditioners to walls and windows like they will ward off evil spirits. In the years after the disastrous cyclone Tracy in '74, government officials were wary to not have a repeat down the road and overemphasized structural stability over anything as petty as access to light and air. So now lining the streets of the outer reaches of Darwin are concrete block bunkers with less windows and more air-con units. Joe of Troppo architects in Darwin confirmed my fears by outlining more of the housing code typical of the area. The "code" assumes an AC unit in every room right off of the bat, and by a hypocritical twist of fate, actually succeeds in lowering property value of a home if you opt to do with them. I was staying in a hostel that was a poster child of the government's recommended design philosophy in post-cyclone Tracy. A bleak, low slung CMU bar building with noisy dripping AC units freezing the inside of the rooms where outside was sweltering for lack of air movement. Moving back and forth from hot and humid to cold and dry many times a day made me feel light headed with a runny nose. A quote by the venerable Australian architect Glenn Murcutt summed the situation up best when he said:

"...the new regulations really required everybody to produce these concrete bunkers or buildings that were reinforced beyond belief. And the only way to exist, let me say exist, not live, exist in these damn things was to air condition them beyond extinction almost."

Next stop on the journey: Kakadu National Park. I spent about a week there "out bush" without access to internet so more info and pictures to come soon describing the trip. Adventure, Drama, Fast Cars, and Murcutt to come. Stay tuned.

Thoughts on Traveling #26 :

Aussie Golf. No Shirt. No Shoes. No problem. It's like Caddyshack without the formal dress code.

Going Troppo

2009-09-17T04:32:00.000-07:00

"Going troppo" refers to the slip into madness some people are thought to go through because of intense tropical heat. To "go troppo (tropical)" means to go crazy. Its not coincidence then that the name of a stellar architecture firm in Darwin, Northern Territory is Troppo Architects. I had an amazing time in Sydney, thanks mostly to the incredible people I met there, but I've found I get more and more ancy in densely populated cities recently. Sitting in the window seat of flight JQ73 to Darwin, I looked down over the barren red nothingness that is the outback with a sense of anticipation and wonder. Small dirt roads criss-crossed the landscape in orderly fashions, creating a subtle grid of dissected earth that almost looks comical in its attempt to tame the untamable. A few hours later the vision below changed again, revealing trees first stubbornly lifting their heads, then gathering courage and banding together to form the lush tropics.

Darwin is in the extreme Northwest of the Northern Territory of Australia. The first sight that greeted me as I disembarked from the plane was a federal police car with a crash bar and snorkel. You know you're getting somewhere serious when emergency vehicles are equipped with snorkels and heavy 4WD tires. Everything on the surface at least is a stark contrast to the relatively easy of life of those around Sydney. I saw multiple "crash repair" shops on a walk down to the water and if you possess a car people will likely ask you where your second spare tire is. Put it this way, the first snack I had at the local market was crocodile instead of corn on the cob.

There is said to be still great tensions between the aboriginals and the whites living in the area. I just arrived today so I'll decline to assess the touchy situation too deeply until I've been on the ground a bit longer. The Aboriginal Land Rights Act of 1976 though established the ability for the indeginious populations of Australia to be able to claim land they could prove had been inhabited by Aborigines. The population of the whole of the NT is only around 220,000 with Aborigines making up about a third of that. There are over 521,000 square miles, or about 2 square miles for every person. Land ownership right now breaks down to Aborigines owning about 50% of the overall territory. Its a big political deal now what is happening to the remote communities {attempting to provide aid/schools} but the tricky part seems to be what is "help" and what is regarded as force feeding of ideals. Hopefully I'll be able to get a closer look a the situation at the rural communities, but passage alone means having a permit to get into certain areas so not sure if it will pan out.

Its "The Dry" right now, with "The Wet" coming sometime in October. When the wet comes, roads are swept away, becoming impassable because of the floods. Most Australians break down the seasons of the area around Darwin into just two, wet and dry, though Aboriginal people recognize six seasons instead of our normal four {Gunumeleng, Gudjewg, Banggereng, Yegge, Wurrgeng, and Gurrung}. The quiet before the storm is what is said to be hardest on the nerves, and the murder rate noticeably jumps up every year in the weeks leading up to the first rain of the season. The escalating violence could be seen as the nerves being worn thin, similar to going to work every day in the shadow of a volcano, knowing it could erupt at any time. Along with the wet comes the cyclones...

Even with all of our might and machines and technology we have not succeded in taming mother nature. The cyclone named Tracy is testament to this. Cut to Christmas morning, 1974, Tracy sweeps through, killing 65 people and decimating 60% of the entire city. Just more of a reason that houses have to be designed of and for a place. Knowing the intricacies of a climate and what nature is capable of. A model of building taken from another place will not survive. In some ways I think of the human race as caretakers of a house where the real owners are gone temporarily on vacation. After a while we manage to convince ourselves that it is our property, but in fact we're just watering the plants {or depleting ozone levels if you're a glass half full kind of person}.

I met with Simon Scally of Build-Up-Design the other day. He was kind enough to talk to me on a friday afternoon, but showing up with a six pack of VB apparently didn't hurt. Build Up does a lot of great work, a lot of it in Arnhem land, a large portion of Aboriginal land East of Darwin. Almost everything is flown/driven the long distances to the sites, and labor is usually flown in by helicopter for 3 week stints. Sometimes local labor is used, but often times builders prefer to use people they are used to working with, also because many of the specialty trades like electrical and plumbing are not yet available. Many of the fittings/hardware are inexpensive and uncomplicated farm equipment, allowing for easy repairs and holding up under the harsh conditions. Locally made mud-bricks are used within a steel frame for lateral bracing as well as its non corrosive qualities. For forest fires, the area around the houses are cut back and raked, with the other reasoning being that footprints of anyone coming near the house at night can be seen the next day. There are so few people in many of the communities that they can be identified by their individual footprints. Being extremely superstitious, its also allows them to see evil spirits at night with more visibility.

Thoughts on Traveling #25 :

For all the LOST fanatics... How strange is it that the Darwin flag and Dharma logo look similar in shape? Also the exact same Japanese fleet that bombed Pearl Harbor also bombed Darwin in WWII. LOST was filmed in Hawaii... One of the Dharma stations is called "The Tempest", Darwin has a lot of cyclones... I think you see where I'm going with this. The conclusion is just too easy really...

Obsessions with Extremities

2009-09-14T21:22:00.000-07:00

So much to report! Been busy since my last posting and am currently sitting in the National Library of Sydney prepping for the weeks ahead. Over the past few days/weeks little birds have been whispering in my ear about different ideas/projects relating to my topic of study. The "not late, still great" Peter Lingamfelter brought to my attention a fascinating recent post on the BLDGBLOG concerning "Art of Extreme Environments" {also make sure to check out the HUGE shout-out to fellow Branner Nick Sowers on the BLDGBLOG in another post here! I felt like a proud sibling at a soccer game reading through it}. The exhibition about "Art of Extreme Environments" is going on in Paris right now and a lot of the work has to do with existing in arctic environments, as well as the overall issue of citizenship there. Very similar to the "no man's land" issue brought up in the previous post on Svalbard.

In other news the author Ruth Slavid has totally stolen my book idea! Not really of course, but do you know the crippling feeling when you have a bright, beaming light bulb of an idea only to find out someone else has already invented it? I can still remember when I "invented" personal-size popcorn bags and then found them in the supermarket a week later... Well Slavid has just came out with a book entitled Extreme Architecture: building for challenging environments. Its actually an extremely well done book, though I still believe the best chapters to be the first two {hot & cold}. Later in the book she devotes a whole section to ski lifts it feels like, which somewhat misses the point in my view. Though again this might just be the little green monster talking. I had pre-ordered a copy before it even came out and as soon it arrived at my door a week ago I disregarded my normal unwillingness to unwrap the package and tore right into the amazon envelope.

Taken together, all of these interactions just confirmed what I've already began to believe. People have become obsessed with extreme locations. Extreme architecture. Basically anything with the radical adjective in front of it. What are most people's definitions of extreme? Why the need to differ so much for the norm? Perusing random bookstores I've began to become like Jim Carrey's character in the movie 23, completely obsessed with relating anything and everything back to my topic of study. A book on "Tropical Architecture." Of course. "Semi Non-Urban Landscapes." Okay... why not? "How to Train Police Dogs." There might be something in there... Everything is relatable if you can argue it correctly, or get your listener drunk enough. But many titles actually did seem to have something to do with my topic, or at least my semi-cynical fascination with our current use of the word extreme.

Books I've recently found with "extreme" in the title:

Extreme Architecture
Extreme Hotels
Extreme Restaurants
Extreme Bars
Surviving the Extreme
Small Buildings : Extreme Edition

What makes a restaurant extreme? What an odd book to publish. Unless you're having to fight off a gorilla while eating a cheeseburger I don't understand it. Personally, in the case of Slavid's book, I consider the obsession with "extreme" mankind's willingness to dream of far off lands. Lands where we're not supposed to be. Tell a person they're not allowed in a restricted area, they start looking for the nearest fence to jump or wall to climb. Its just human nature I guess. I'm in Australia now and keep seeing the similarities in the American and Aussie Spirits. The need for adventure, exploration, the wide open road stretching out before you. I hadn't given the American sense of restlessness enough thought until I read Steinbeck's book Travels with Charley. In driving across the States for 3 months in a camper he lays out the American need for exploring better than I ever could.

"Could it be that Americans are a restless people, a mobile people, never satisfied with where they are as a matter of selection? The pioneers, the immigrants who peopled the continent, were the restless ones in Europe. The steady rooted ones stayed home and are still there. But every one of us, except the negroes forced here as slaves, are descended from the restless ones, the wayward ones who were not content to stay at home."

-John Steinbeck 1962

Svalbard Arctic Adventure!

2009-09-03T15:08:00.000-07:00

"The ability to adapt, and the art of resignation, are some of what is needed most by those who shall live in Svalbard."

-Nord for Det Ode Hav, Liv Balstad 1956

Svalbard, Norway. One of the Northernmost settlements in the world, right up there with Greenland, climbing way past the arctic circle. Human Population = 2100. Polar Bear Population = 3000+. Not a single tree to speak of. The highest vegetation goes up to about your shin and firewood must be shipped from the mainland. 60% Glaciers. Howling, biting winds. Annual air temperature below freezing (-5C). Permafrost at 6 inches below ground. One of the most inhospitable places in the world. Why is anyone living there? Why did I travel there would be a better question...

Well, there are a lot of answers, but the short history of Svalbard is that it was almost always considered a "no-man's land". Meaning no one had true possession of it. If you came out here you were on your own. It wasn't until Norway declared sovereignty over it in 1925 that it was formally recognized as part of a country. Even as recent as the 1990's if you got off the airplane at Longyearbyen (the main settlement) and didn't have the necessary means of survival (tent, sleeping bag, rifle, etc...) you would be turned away and sent back on the same plane you landed on! It is a land of explorers, trappers, miners, whalers, and of course, polar bears. The huge, furry, teethy true owner of the area. The image of the polar bear is everywhere in Svalbard. On signs, coffee mugs, pamphlets, even greeting you at the baggage carousel when you get off the plane (see above...). There are more bears than people, and anytime you leave the main settlement, you are required by law to carry a gun, or have a guide with a gun, in case you have to defend yourself! It is a place where those that would stay have to bunker in against all of the forces that would expel them back to where they came from. It is almost impossible to meet someone born on Svalbard, though the locals that have been there 30+ years are by far the most stress free human beings I've met.

The reason I was there though... Sure it was probably some of the subconscious promise of adventure that lead "The Wanderer" to climb the mountain in Friedrich's painting, or Ogilvie to come out on an expedition to the ends of the earth. But really it was to understand how people were able to exist (and thrive) in an environment that so eagerly wants them gone. How do people build when there is quite literally almost nothing to start with, and how to respond to the climatic challenges involved?

Permafrost is one of the biggest deals up in the northern reaches, meaning frost that never disappears year round. Permanent frost if you will. If the buildings were built with normal foundation systems like the mainland, by resting on or under the earth, the heat generated from the buildings would start to melt the frost, causing the earth to start shift and become unstable. Indeed many of the buildings built by trappers long ago have slid many meters just from their own produced heat alone. To combat this ultimately impossible battle with mother nature, the buildings of Svalbard have learned to raise themselves up on stilts in order to get enough distance from the earth that the difference in temperature does not affect the permafrost. Some of the pilings (such as the research centre below) are drilled as deep as 15m below ground. The building above is an extreme example of the floating structures, as it was used to house funiculars going up and down the hills for the coal mining operations.

One building though, the "Global Seed Vault", is in Svalbard for precisely the reason of permafrost. The ground is always kept at a constant freezing temperature, there is no real earthquake danger, and the location is above sea level (by 120m). All of these factors mean that seeds from around the world can be stored free of the danger of fire, seismic activity, and floods due to icecaps melting. There are over 1.5 million different types of seeds housed in the vault already and it burrows over 150m into the mountain. Its actually just what you would expect a post apocalyptic bunker to be like, stark gray concrete with only one large metal entrance to the depths underneath. When we hiked up and stood before the portal, I could imagine the door creaking open to release a man in clothes from the 1950's, bleary eyed and confused... "What year is it?" he would say. And just to mess with him I would reply "No one knows, we are the last of our kind...".

The biggest building in Longyearbyen is pretty recent, the Svalbard Research Centre, designed by the Norwegian firm JVA based out of Oslo. Before that one of the largest structures was the Radisson hotel, that was part of the Olympic games in 1998 and then shipped out piece by piece to its new resting grounds (many buildings are built in chunks in the mainland and then shipped out to site). But the research centre was too big to be built in chunks, though the majority of all the structure was prefabricated to allow for ease of use putting together on site. The period of construction in Svalbard is short, and as the winter approaches it becomes too cold to continue, so building must be done as quickly and efficiently as possible. In the case of the Research Centre, one of the main conditions was actually wind. To protect against the harsh environments, it was to function as a sort of arctic university campus, though inside-out. Anders Granli over at JVA says one of the main factors leading to them getting the project was their philosophy of what a campus could be. Since its impossible to wander around sunny tree-lined boulevards flanked with maples, the parks and sidewalks of the campus are inside, along the wood lined warm corridors. The interior form is meant to recall the distorted mind shafts that are borrowed into the hills, with colors placed to psychologically recall the hues of the small amounts of flora that exist in Svalbard.

On the outside, the building had to be able to react to the extreme winds and storms that would be coming its way. Extensive computer modeling was down to cant the forms and elevations, allowing snow drifts to go through rather than around the raised building. Eva, the lady that was giving me a tour explained that the interior courtyard still traps some of the snow and trash from the city, though proudly pointed out that they have the last bit of summer snow in Longyearbyen every year. Copper was chosen on the outside of the building because of its material properties relating to cold. Where other metals get brittle and break, copper was able to be manipulated by a worker with heavy gloves on even in the very low digits. It also allowed for less seams, with the roof wrapping down to the sides and slightly underneath, with less chances for wind swept snow to pierce to the air gap inside the wall cavity.

I was drawn to Svalbard and its architecture precisely because of this stubbornness to exist. Not a single tree on the entire island means everything, and I mean everything ('cept coal) has to be imported from the mainland. Many of the buildings, like the Radisson hotel, are "chunked", built in bigger pieces in Norway and shipped out to be placed down in the settlement. A downside of this seems to be the buildings look and react the same way they do in other places, not native to Svalbard. Besides the bedroom windows being tiny (midnight sun), they are almost identical to houses you would typically see around Oslo or other places. I asked one of the professors at UNIS about insulation levels, thinking they must be gigantic compared to houses in milder climates, but surprisingly he answered they were almost identical in section, with an air gap in between the sheathing and relatively thin depth. The way they get around this is coal. Cheap King Coal. The entire settlement of Longyearbyen is heated by giant hot water pipes coming directly from the local coal plant a long stone's throw down the road. There is plenty of power to go around so the radiators just get turned up a little bit more and everyone is toasty. It turns out that the wind is the big thing you have to protect against. It is one of the few places that I know of that the separation of power produced and home use is completely abandoned, with everyone walking or driving by their source of livelihood almost every day. The fossil fuels are so abundant on the island and all other power sources so hard to ship that it might be one of the few cases where coal is the more sustainable option, I'm still torn on the subject. In a funny/sad side note, they add chemicals to make the smoke from the plant grey instead of black, which looks better, but then I'm imagining all of these more harmful chemicals floating around in the air b/c of it.

Thoughts on Traveling #24 :

Legally, I have to add that I had been joined in Svalbard by the rough and very tough character of Shawn "'Stache" Nee. He's a law student and has threatened numerous times to sue me unless I say he saved me from a polar bear. It's true, it's all true.

Reindeer Games

2009-08-08T12:19:00.000-07:00

How to go about explaining this... I just got done with 10 days on the road criss-crossing the highways of Norway. And when I say "on the road" I mean just that. The furthest I ever got away from the great asphalt dragon was maybe a quarter of a mile. Sleeping on the side of the road in either my rented car {nicknamed "Gonzo", I was reading a biography of Hunter Thompson at the time...} or one of the small dollhouse looking cabins that dot the countryside. My goal, to see as many of the rest stops and national tourist roads as my stamina and our current world's reserve of oil would allow. I got pretty close I'll tell you, but it was a whirlwind adventure of blurred forms, slow moving sheep, and twisty paths. To quickly sum up, here are my "stats":

-10 days/9 nights
-5200+ km driven
-1 broken side mirror
-5 nights snoring in the passenger seat
-2 hot meals {and one lousy burger}
-25+ stall outs {all the first two days}
-10 National Tourist Roads
-3 construction site visits
-1 hard hat
-50+ reindeer
-god knows how many sheep
-17 projects

There is a great website called turistveg.no/ that provides tons of great information and pictures on the projects, both those already done and what is planned. By the year 2015 there will be upwards of 200 architectural interventions scattered along the roads, with the hopes of encouraging tourism to the more remote locations in Norway. For the most part, the roads tend to be either right along the rocky coast or in the heights of the mountains, from one extreme of sea level to the next. Just to give you one indication of how remote some of these places are, for one project I had to drive past a cemetery, through wind farm, and turn onto a gravel path in order to get to a restaurant overlooking the arctic ocean...

I was interested to see how the various architects associated with the projects were going to approach the construction. Many of the projects are at the top of mountains where you have to wind your way up one lane turned 2 car roads in order to access the site, much less getting heavy equipment in place. But where there is a will there is a way and I must say I was astounded by the differences among roads and interventions of materials and methods used. From wood, to concrete, to steel, to glass, rocks, you name it, it shows up in one form or the other. Some successfully, others in my opinion end up being preconceived sleek forms plopped down in the nether reaches of the country. But I would say the vast majority take a definite standpoint on designing the project from the end to the start, and by that I mean thinking about how it will be built/transported to the site from the get go and letting the design develop towards that goal.

Many projects were broken down to a minimal amount of materials. Concrete and metal in the case of the lookout at Rondane, wood and metal at Lillefjord. Though the forms are incredibly sculptural and seemingly complex, when you study them for a while you actually find out that they are quite simple structurally. By that I mean many times they use an incredibly "dumb" structural base, and use another more malleable material to make the jagged shapes and cants.

A perfect case is the rest stop in Senja. From initially looking at its wonky path and skewed bathroom core, you would assume it was a feat of both physics and structural gymnastics. But on closer observation you can uncover that the steel structure that it rests on is extremely simple and rigid. The metal columns resting on the rock below are in an unwavering grid and work their way down the landscape in a straight line with the rhythm of one, two, gap, three, gap, one, two, gap, three, etc... A simple bolt connection holds them in place eliminating the need for extensive and expensive on site welding. The the easier to manipulate wooden members are allowed to slide and shift along the already established steel path, creating a path that is seemingly as organic as the rock formation it rests on. Even the concrete core that is used to form the restrooms is really a quite simple skewed concrete cube that has inserts for wood left out. The core is simple and achieves its visual complexity through wooden slats going in different directions.

Another one of my favorite projects from the lens of maximum impact with minimal materials is the lookout in Rondane by Carl Viggo Holmebakk. Most rest stops are latent in the sense that they do not actively engage the landscape, content to hang back and offer someone somewhere to pee or sit if need be. The concrete lookout actually amplifies its surroundings in the sense that you would normally just pass through this stretch of highway, barely noticing the countless trees as they are everywhere you look. By their repetition they become just another blur of the landscape to be whizzed by. Holmebakk shows the importance of a seemingly random grove of trees by establishing a raised concrete platform that winds and weaves its way through the existing trees. Casting off their shackles of obscurity, the flora is given a sense of nobility. Redwood royalty in the making. The platform is made entirely of concrete except for the openings in the floor, which are covered in a steel mesh to allow light to filter down to the underside. Not at the base of the trees anymore, since the ground continues to fall away, the further out you walk the higher you become in the surrounding canopy. The whole project if relatively small, maybe 80 feet or so from the entrance to the tip, but so well executed you view the landscape in a completely different way than you would have before.

I've been thinking a lot about rest stops actually {see picture above of me thinking as proof}. And as the thesis cloud begins to loom overhead my thoughts are starting to converge before the inevitable downpour in January and beyond. What a loaded word. "Rest Stop". A place to stop and rest, but what does one truly need to rest? It can't be as simple as alleviation of bodily fluids and a stiff board for a back rest. How can you design an architectural intervention that allows for both resting of the body and mind? One that becomes an active participant in the landscape, not content to sit idly by on the bench but transforming and enhancing the existing condition. Presenting it in a way that you never would have thought of before. Rest stops by their nature are only necessary as the stitching that holds fabric of urban areas together. By their definition they are remote, needed only where you don't have access to amenities usually found in even low-density civilization. In other times they would be a well to draw up water for your thirst, or as Mark Twain describes in Roughing It, a place to change out horses as you roll non-stop westwards in the bumping, jostling carriage. They are ingrained in the American psyche as well, with our glorious big laned highway system. Open road with the top down. Isn't that the American Dream? Or is that a house and 2.5 kids? I can't remember, but regardless it is a necessary part of the yearning that many Americans who have ever set out in a wood grained station wagon can attest to.

Well its late and the unification of the members of BOOM CLAP! {aka the other Branners} is coming up starting tomorrow! So I have to get some sleep in anticipation of what is to come. We're meeting in the Netherlands and I can't wait to catch up in person and not blog/email form.

Thoughts on Traveling #23 :

I've been to Hell. It has a pretty crappy hotel and relatively cheap gas. See photographic evidence.

Also this is just hilarious and where I got the post title from. Not the Ben Affleck movie. I do have to say though, in my defence "I love College" was only playing on the radio b/c it was the first time I have ever heard it and couldn't tell if the guy was being serious or not. I've heard it many times since, don't get me started on Nordic Pop Radio.

Back on the road again (like the song...)

2009-07-30T06:56:00.000-07:00

In Norway now, the land of vikings and the world's largest per person consumer of coffee. I figured I should give a little disclaimer on the blog to announce my absence, because I'll be getting out on the Norwegian Highways for the next 10 days and am not sure what access I'll have to a computer...

I'm doing research on a collection of projects under the umbrella association "Norwegian Tourist Routes". By 2015, there should be over 200 different projects completed, ranging from rest stops and bird watching towers, to bike sheds and service stations. They have announced 5 sections officially and have 13 more in the current process of construction. Architects from all over Norway have competed in competitions and the work from what I've seen already is amazing.

Here are some of the firms I've ran across engaged in the projects:

Jensen and Skodvin
Code:arkitektur
Pushak
70N arkitektur
Snoheta
Reiulf Ramstad Arkitektur
Saunders Architecture

And some more info about the overall scope of the project can be found here.

So hope to post again soon, but now its off to spend more than a few nights in a car, and the rain doesn't look to be letting up anytime soon...

Holy Zumthor Battle Royal

2009-07-27T11:31:00.000-07:00

What? Exactly.

I like the title because it is attention grabbing. But what exactly am I talking about? Well, I just crossed the border from Switzerland to its northern neighbor Germany a few days ago and have been doing some Peter Zumthor pilgrimages. On the list of projects to see [among others] were Zumthor's St. Benedict Chapel [San Benedetg] and Brother Klaus Chapel [Bruder Klaus]. The former in Sumvitg, Switzerland and the latter near the small small town of Wachendorf, Germany. Seeing both of the amazing pieces of architecture in such a short time apart got me thinking of what they had in common, and understandably thought they warranted a head to head contest of spatial might to see which would emerge the victor. Though, the architectural contest is more similar to the "dream league" of youth soccer in North Carolina. One where there are no victors and losers, and everyone gets orange slices afterwards.

Before we ring the bell, I first feel morally obligated to tell people how to reach the Brother Klaus Chapel, because it is not exactly easy through public transportation. Especially if you have such a loathing of posted signage and think you can find a quicker way by cutting through farmland [I can blame George Medlin for handing that trait down...]. But quickly, here are directions to the Chapel so others do not get into a situation where they are wandering down a busy highway with no shoulder.

From Cologne, Germany, take a train to Satzvey, one stop before Mechernich. There aren't many buses running, and especially on a Sunday so I recommend walking the 4km to the town of Wachendorf from the station. You're going to be heading roughly east by southeast the whole way if that helps. First thing is go south from the station and cross over the train tracks. Keep walking on that road and you'll get to a t-intersection. Whatever you do, don't turn right. That will put you on the highway and people will honk at you when coming around blind corners. Instead follow the sign to Wachendorf and take the left road. Walking along the bike road you should pass under a bridge in a few minutes, if you do you're on the right track. After you go under the bridge take a right onto Veyerstrausse. After walking on that road for about 10 minutes you should see yourself approaching a small town named Lessenich. Bear right once you get into town and look for signs to Wachendorf on your left. The aptly named street will be titled "Wachendorferstrausse" and will later turn into Iversheimerstrausse. After 15 minutes or so you should see the parking lot on the right hand side for "Bruder Klaus Kapelle" and the road Ribdorfer Weg. From the parking lot its another fifteen minute walk down the gravel road.

You're welcome.

Back to the real reason we're all here. Small Zumthor Chapels. I haven't read any texts comparing the two yet so I figured I would foster some of my own thoughts to fill the void. Both buildings are by the same architect, similar both in small size and remoteness of location. Both have a single entry with light coming in from above and religious program. Both have construction methods expressed as the act of making which shapes the design. With all this in common, what could be different? We'll start with site...

Context
St. Benedict's is nestled along the mountainside, lush grasslands provide space for cattle to graze and flies to lazily drone around. Greens and browns dot the landscape, and hiking paths trace through the woods down the steeply sloping site. In contrast to the animals grazing are the surroundings of the Klaus Chapel. Golden in hue, fields of wheat and gentle flatland stretch out as far as you can see. Even from a distance the building rises above the low farmland like a concrete stump that has been allowed to reside on the owner's land for some time.

Approach
Getting up to the buildings beholds something different. You come from below the wooden chapel and its presence is hidden many times by the buildings sitting close beside it. Its concrete step-brother is in the middle of a flat farmland, and on the 15 minute walk to get there it is always is the foreground of your vision, even though the path turns and twists. Where San Benedict shows you the entry upon coming in contact with it, Klaus sits blank and stonewalled in expression, and only upon walking around do you find out how to get into the up-till-then quiet exterior.

Entry
Both doors are made of metal. Though the entry is coated in wood in the case of San Beneditg, hiding its true nature under slats of pine. Klaus on the other hand, makes no question of what its portal is constructed of. It appears as a solid piece of metal and its weight to open it proves its nature. The entry of the wooden chapel pulls itself out of the building and the other is recessed flush with the face of the concrete.

Threshold
At Saint Benedict's, you are required to ascend a small staircase to elevate you to the floor height of the interior. The concrete staircase does not actually touch the building, but is held off by a small gap that separates it from the wood. In the case of Klaus, the lead floor meets a crushed stone entry path that is barely raised from its surrounding grass and gravel. The height difference and the actual meeting of materials is different and exaggerated in both accounts.

Outside
St. Benedict's takes the colors of the forest to heart, both philosophically and literally resembling the outer layer of bark on a tree. Rough and shaggy, the outside of the chapel is covered with weathered wooden shingles that show the passage of time and seasons. The exterior of the chapel devoted to Brother Klaus by contrast is smooth to the touch and eyes. Monolithic in appearance, the only secret it reveals about it's inside are the series of holes left by the concrete formwork used in construction. Benches on the outside allow you to sit after the short pilgrimage walk.

Inside
The inside of the chapels inverses itself in each individual case. The chapel from Sumtvig casts away its coarse exterior to take on the refined rectilinear form of smooth wooden pews and columns. The furniture is smooth to the touch and there is plenty of room to sit down and direct your attention forward at a horizontal angle to the alter. The craggy interior of Klaus is again a direct contrast to its smooth outer face. The process of construction for the inside was to stack trees up together in a tent like fashion and then burn them out, leaving a dark blackened surface that is jagged and eerily natural to the touch. There is only room for two grown people to sit down on the inside, and your views are directed upwards towards the religious fixture and light streaming in from above.

Light
One from above, one from the side. The light that meets the warm wooden exterior of St. Benedict's illuminates the interior, flooding the seats and floors with rays of sunshine. Light bounces around easily due to the bright coloring of the material and paint. Dark and brooding, the majority of light comes into Klaus from the top, with small amounts radiating from the glass spheres put in place of the holes to the outside. The shadows that fall tend to exaggerate the rough interior and draw attention to its ribs.

There is plenty more to talk about in the case of these two long separated brothers of sorts. I wish they could meet one day and listen to the conversation they would have between the two of them. Do you think they would get along? Would one like Death Metal while the other is a Beatle's fan? Personally I think they are like identical twins separated at birth, raised in different houses, but with the same core of being.

Time to sign out now though, mosquitoes are eating me alive and look to be calling more of their friends over to an easy meal.

Vrin and Gion Caminada

2009-07-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest reasons I am in Switzerland to begin with was the study the work and context of the architect Gion A. Caminada. Gion lives and works out of the small town of Cons, about 1.5km south of the small mountain village of Vrin, population 240. Vrin lies in the Lumnezia valley in the canton of Graubunden, Switzerland, nestled into the Alps that surround it. For most exterior purposes, Vrin is like many of the mountain villages that dot the landscape in the Swiss countryside. It has a small population made up of mostly farmers and herdsman, struggles with what and how to regard tourism while retaining its unique culture, and has faced economic hardship and dwindling population over the years. But Vrin is different in that in 1979 they formed the "Pro Vrin Foundation" in order to try and preserve their culture and way of life, but also actively seek new alternatives and methods in both architecture and planning that would not allow them to fade into economic obscurity. They started with the mantra "Preservation by Design", which means to keep their heritage intact but develop new methods of building in this remote mountain community.

One of the methods of building that Gion Caminada and the population of Vrin have been working with most extensively is the art of "strickbau" construction. Strickbau is extremely common in most alpine regions and consists of "layered wooden beams, 'knitted' together at the corners for stability and typically extending somewhat from the core block." One of the main industries in the alpine region is wood, so thick timbered construction is used for its durability and plentiful availability. What Gion was faced with, was how to take this traditional building technique and incorporate it into buildings of the 21st century. Also important was the economic livelihood of Vrin, so using local labor and materials was necessary to jump start the economy again and keep the money in the hands of the community with the creation of new jobs. What I think is most important about all of this is that the architecture is not a radical departure from the traditions and techniques developed over the ages, but an improvement and building upon them. Many times I would walk by a building several times without realizing it was designed by Gion, which I believe to be a great testament to fitting within and enhancing a given context, not trying to overpower it. Which made me think of Vals, and the introduction of Peter Zumthor's baths. I'm not sure how the village was before the pritzker prize winner designed his masterpiece, but it has also transformed the countryside through the construction of numerous and not particularly well done hotels needed to cope with the large increase in tourism. Does dropping a wonderful piece of architecture into a rural mountain town radically transform that area by tourism alone and therefore destroy what made it unique in the first place? Though of course this is also a question about how to handle tourism, and I digress back to my initial point about the context of Vrin... In response to a question about repetition or discovery in an interview, Caminada replies:

"Repetition has always interested me. I find the vast visual diversity of our modern cities extremely boring. The monosyllabic style of an old Italian city is attractive by contrast. I believe we are not even capable of registering too much diversity. One must repeat certain things to prevent the world from becoming monotonous."

I brought the quote up because I believe it talks about the context of Vrin and the honest attempt to fit in with a context, not act as a radical departure for it. Which brings up a whole other slew of questions about globalization and if architects should even be allowed to design in a place they have never been. Even after doing multiple competitions myself in locations I had never traveled to before, I'm under the mindset that all of the internet research and googleEarth mapping I could do would never be enough for actual on the ground experience. Caminada has lived in Vrin almost his whole life, growing up there to his farmer father and working in carpentry for most of his youth, and mostly only branched out to similar contexts he can understand and design within.

But back to the"strickbau" typology [there are too many things to write about and not enough keystrokes in the day]. As I mentioned earlier in my ramblings, strickbau is a construction type made up of heavy wooden members knitted together and usually extending over at the corners. Think "Lincoln Logs" in real scale and you'll be pretty close to picturing it. Strickbau was and is used because it could deal with non intensively manufactured logs and minimal construction materials, many of the fasteners being different types of dovetail joinery. The question then is how to take this construction type and update it to meet the modern demands of residences and buildings with the improvement of building technologies? Currently, Caminada has been updating the joint where the members connect using a hybrid type of stick framing eerily similar to some construction in the United States. Though instead of regular platform framing studs, parts of the wall are pre-assembled and overlap at the corners for a minimum use of material but still strong structural strength. The benefit in the new technique is that it also limits the use of complicated joinery and time consuming fitting, allowing construction to keep up without sacrificing quality. Caminada continues to experiment in every building, trying out new techniques, but gratefully they always seem to be like steps of a seasoned hiker, slow and steady, never hopping from stone to stone.

Before I move on to barns, I wanted to leave you with another quote from Caminada's book Cul zuffel e l'aura dadl : Gion A. Caminada. You should definitely pick the book up as I could spend days blogging and only graze the surface of many of the different and pertinent topics it discusses. In response to the topic of transparent spaces:

"Dealing playfully with any event or occurrence is possible only when certain rules for play exist. By contrast, current playful approaches to completely open spaces reflect the weakness of today's lifestyle. By that I mean the freedom of life in the modern world and the people who have no idea how to deal with this kind of freedom. The classical Modern period generated this freedom but it didn't teach anyone the art of dealing with it once it was attained..."

Even without the work of Gion Caminada, the small village of Vrin somehow managed to steal a small piece of my heart and lock it away in one of the many farm buildings. And when I say many, I mean many. The "core" of Vrin clusters together as if animals seeking warmth from the closeness of the nearby homes, while the hills are dotted with structures to store hay and many times the animals that eat it. The landscape is not completely natural, and without the constant cutting of the grass for fodder, it would eventually turn back into the heavily forested area that it once was. To store the grass that is cut, there are wooden structures extremely similar formally to those that are present in Vals [see previous post], but with some very important differences. It is interesting that though Vals and Vrin are only separated by a mountain range, the valleys speak different languages, German and Romansch, and buildings with the exact same function should be so similar yet so different. In Vrin, what drew me to the grass barns was their almost religious devotion to a particular size and form.

From what I can understand, this is largely due to the size of the timber that could be cut and carried to the site and then assembled into the barn. The plot of land that is tended to by the structure is dependent on how much grass can be stored at any one time, therefore the spacing of the buildings is somewhat regular spatially, as they are all almost the same size. The hay storage is on the top level, with the door raised above the average height of the snow during the winter. All of the barns sit perpendicular to the slope, also to allow access from the backside for the animals to be sheltered in the small lower story. What is most interesting about the barns for me is their rigid similarity, but subtle differences. Each is almost the exact same dimension, yet in their construction or possibly the idiosyncrasies of the owners, each is subtly different. Repeated over and over again, they make a powerful presentation of design within a box, or in this case a barn.

Thoughts on Traveling #22 : Why is it always that one of the last pictures you take is a jumping picture? Its like you've run out of things to do so you figure you'll just lift your feet in the air and that will make a better picture. It makes no sense what-so-ever and I thereby dismiss them as a practical insensibility, after this one that is... [sidenote: the TaylorCAM was in action during this time, I'm really looking forward to what this whole series looks like]

Bathing with the Best

2009-07-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from my travel sketchbook while in Peter Zumthor's Thermal Baths:

"...in the 42°C water room I was thinking about the morality of space and wanted to write my thoughts down before they flutter away like little angry birds. It all started when I was thinking about stealing a towel in the main area [I had not brought one and could not figure out where to obtain one for the life of me]. As my imaginary devil and angel were locked in a heated debate, I opted to await their decision in the "fire" room after a briefer than expected plunge into the opposite extreme, the 14°C pool. As you enter the 42° room [not big enough for more than 8 people sitting comfortably] the colors change from from the blue, green, and gray hues to a deep burgundy wall and flat concrete made to look pinkish by reflected light. I very slowly made my way into the water, further confusing my body that was only a minute ago actively attempting to prevent hypothermia. The floor of the small space was rougher than normal. Aggregate in concrete blown away to expose reddish and muddy brown rocks. The height of the water was just above the headrest, less than an inch deep.

As I stared up at the ceiling I was contemplating if the space itself was what was giving me this more dwelled on than normal moral dilemma? In short, was it possible for a space to have a moral character? I got thinking back to many of the churches that stuck out in my memory... Fay Jones' Thorncrown, Mont St. Michel, St. Peters... What if it was not the overbearing thought of eternal damnation or the presence of mysterious symbols that filled my body with moral fiber, but the actual space itself? Are prisons in their design un-moral, and therefore condone the violence that goes on in between their walls? Would it be better to have a beautiful space for a prison or would that go against the idea of punishment deemed necessary? Is isolation enough of a punishment in its own accord that it doesn't need to couple itself with horribly designed spaces?

Was it the light above, or the temperature of the water, or sounds echoing off of the walls that made me smile at passerbys more than normal? For me, the baths have a sacred quality to them, rivaling many of the churches I have seen in my limited years. After this long game of moral badminton, I still ended up stealing the towel. Not sure what that means about me yet though, some questions are better left alone maybe..."

Suffice to say the "Baths" were a mind altering experience, and lead to the thinking of deep thoughts in shallow water.

The small village of Vals held its own uniqueness though. Vals is located in a narrow valley in the Alps, with close shorn green hills rising up on either side dotted with a very particular farm building. The building itself is used for storage of the grass that is cut and used for fodder for livestock. One taken by itself is not a spectacular sight, but when multiplied hundreds of times over, the formal language becomes extremely powerful by repetition alone. They are all nearly identical formally but the closer you look, each is made personal in some form or another by its owner and caretaker. They rise from a stone plinth [concrete in the modern ones], possibly to get them above the snow line in winter, and the stone continues upwards to create four stout corners used to hold up the roof. All four sides are then infilled with usually vertical wooden siding, though the side on the uphill direction has the door used to shuffle the hay inside for storage. Seeing all of these farm structures done with craft and strong regional ties got me more than a little nostalgic for the tobacco barns I grew up with in my home state of North Carolina.

I hope to find out more about the structures that are such an integral part of alpine village culture in the future though so far I'm having trouble finding English speaking citizens in the small towns. Back in Chur now and will be heading to the small remote village of Vrin tomorrow for 3 days so its likely I'll be MIA for a bit.

Thoughts on Traveling #21 : Zumthor... I know its probably not your fault and everything... but this has got to be the worst entrance to a place of relaxation I've ever seen. I felt like I was about to walk into a strip club in a bad part of town.

Miss Swiss Miss

2009-07-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

I just got into Switzerland and boy are my arms tired. My arms aren't tired from flying or anything ridiculous like that. People can't fly, that's crazy. No they were tired b/c I think I slept on them wrong on my plane ride into Zurich. And for those of you that are confused because my last blog entry was in Chile, don't be. A lot of stuff happened and then I got to Switzerland. End of story. Well not the end of the story at all, but I'll get back to it later I hope. But in the vain hope to stay current we are now in Swiss territory.

Zurich is one of the most tidiest, cleanest cities I have ever seen. It's streets are so clean you can eat off of them, and in fact one time I almost did since my bratwurst hit pavement. I hope they are paying their street-sweepers six figure salaries though, because it is also one of the most expensive places I have ever been. Single espresso? 4 dollars. One hour of internet? 7 dollars. Towel rental from a hostel? 5 dollars!?! I'll dry with toilet paper thank you.

I stayed about 3 days in the city and on the last day I ran across some Ivan Valin worthy research along the canals of the city center. Apparently the canals in Zurich are clean enough to swim in, as a young Swiss job-skirting population jumps into the fast moving canal and drift/swim down a ways. Then get out, walk and chat up to the put in point, and do it again. Nestled along the sides of the riverway (is that a real word?) are fences to lock bikes in, and plenty of hard deck surface to lay out in towels on. Volleyball courts, beer stands, diving boards, and one chain-smoking lifeguard all come together in the middle of the city to do the water equivalent of frolicking. Sadly it was my last day and my trunks were packed in a trunk in the hotel, so I left Zurich arid but sweating to go to the smaller town of Chur to the east.

Fact about Switzerland:
There is no standing army, men between the ages of 21 and 32 are given a gun and 24 rounds of ammunition to keep at their homes and undertake a few days to weeks of training a year. Then after discharge they go into National Guard service.

That is in no way relevant, but thought it was interesting. Chur. Its a pretty small city (pop. 32000) in a flat valley flanked by two tall mountains on either side. Located in the Swiss canton of Graubunden on the eastern side of the country, its being used as my home base as I try to seek out some zumthor work as well as the small small town of Vrin (pop. around 300) a train's throw away from Chur. Vrin is home to the work of Gion A. Caminada, where he has done many notable projects in the tiny town with local labor and materials.

To get a better feel for the town that is to be my home for the next week, I decided to take a hike up the mountain to get a better look. I didn't really consciously make the decision to go on a hike, but having just gone to the grocery store and buying peanut butter, jelly, bread, and tuna, I didn't really have any alternatives. Before I knew it I was crossing a road with rather fast moving and quick reacting car traffic in order to find a breach in the fenced in fortifications at the base of the mountain. Eventually I stumbled on what could be a trail, but since there were only markings with no words, I couldn't tell if it was telling me to stay out or go in? What would you think if you saw three horizontal bars stacked on top of each other with 2 white and one red in the middle? Feeling in an optimistic mood, I took it as an invitation and ducked around the nearby house to start scrambling. After a while the broad 6 foot wide trail became lazy, washed out and became a 6 inch wide overgrown footpath. I eventually made it to a place where they had been doing some recent logging and was interested in some of the improvements they had made in their infrastructure.

For preventing drainage in their gravel roads, they used sections of old railroad ties buried in the earth with concrete on either side to not allow for shifting. The trough in the middle was left open so that water could spill out harmlessly and the railroad metal meant that it would last a very long time. In other locations, where there were replanting efforts going on, the bottom of the fence pole was burned, presumably to keep termites from eroding the wood.

Back in the hostel now and ran across some interesting research conducted by "New Scientist" magazine. They were attempting to find where the "Most Remote Place in the World" was. Before Stephen Loicano has an aneurysm, I think Antarctica was discounted in the search, so it mostly deals with the other continents. But it discounts air travel and looks at how long it takes to travel somewhere by land or water from a city with the population of 50,000. From their research it looks like Tibet is the "most remote place on earth", with one location taking 20 days of hiking and one day of car travel to get there. To be really honest I think they should have included air travel, but then it wouldn't have been as interesting.

Also found two other interesting terms. A "pole of inaccessibility" marks a location that is most challenging to reach owing to its remoteness from geographic features that could provide access. "Point Nemo" is the oceanic pole of inaccessibility, or the place furtherest from any land mass at 48 52.6 S x 123 23.6 W. "Ultima Thule" in medieval geographies was meant to denote any distant place located beyond "the borders of the known world". Looks like I'm heading to Tibet...

Thoughts on Traveling #20 : It is impossible to win staring contests with young children. Yet they have no patience. It makes no logical sense.

The Open City has a gate...

2009-06-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

Last year I participated in an international competition with Professor Rene Davids at UC Berkeley that was sited in Valparaiso, Chile. In a lucky stroke of fate we ended up winning and as I had never actually been to see the site, a pit stop was very much in order. Valparaiso was deemed a UNESCO World Heritage site in order to preserve the ascensores, cable cars that run directly up the steep hillside, as well as the vibrant culture of the city. Our proposal dealt with creating an economic and spatial stimulus in the city through the creation of "plug in pavilions", inflatable public spaces giving away free energy powered by wind kites in the hills. Going to the actual city in person, I'm still unsure of how the intervention would be taken by the inhabitants, but suffice to say I would like to see the little inflatable pavilions dotting the hillside.

While staying at "Hostal Caracol" in Valparaiso I ran into an incredibly interesting family from Cape Town, South Africa that was meeting up with more family members to travel around Chile and Argentina for close to a month. I only mention this occurrence because its going to come up later in another blog, which is called foreshadowing. After climbing the ultra steep stairs and back alleys of the city for a day or two, I was only slightly being passed by old ladies carrying heavy grocery bags with legs the size of small tree trunks. The city is one large stairmaster machine, and this is coming from someone who is no stranger to the terrain of San Francisco, California.

From my professor Rene I had found out about a place about an hour by bus North of Valparaiso called "Ciudad Abierta" or "The Open City" in English. Ciudad Abierta was started back in the 70's by a group of poets, artists, and architects with Utopian ideals to create an atmosphere outside of the stifling constraints of Santiago. The "city" is not truly a city in the normal definition of the word, nor is it completely "open" by physical standards. It is comprised currently of about 10 family residences and an equal number of public pavilions/meeting areas, closed in by gates and fences and broken up into two distinct sections on opposite sides of a busy highway. The property of Ciudad Abierta is right on the water and comprised of about 270 hectacres, or 670 acres. Many of the buildings there are built in the sandy dunes nearby, creating a constantly moving and shifting site.

One of the houses there, nicknamed the "Dune House" [or it is now anyway] is constructed completely within the dunes, prone to high winds and the removal of the very foundation it is built on. Also did I mention that it is in an earthquake sensitive region? The only thing that could make it a more challenging site to build on would be if an giant mutant moth started coming over the sand hills breathing fire. Slight exaggeration? Possibly. But the site necessitated a re-thinking of how to construct the house, and therefore how to design it. In order to allow for the wind taking away a majority of the sand that the building would be resting on, they started to experiment with a "floating foundation" system recently made more well known by the Canadian architect Mark West. West uses fabric instead of wood or steel for the formwork, allowing the concrete structure to bulb out where more strength is needed instead of a continuous section. For the dune house, concrete piles were cast down 2 meters or more in certain locations, but the majority of the foundation of the new addition is raised above the sand, being cast in strong fabric held in tension to allow the sand and wind to dig out underneath the beams instead of trying to fight the constant movement.

In order to account for the earthquake activity, the house has a completely suspended steel structure with many different joints to allow movement. If you stripped the skin of the building away, the hanging members would wobble something akin to a series of chains hanging from a ceiling. Indeed as it was being built, the main structure was put in place first and way only slightly stabilized once the floor was installed to give it a slight amount of rigidity. From the outside the dune house calls to mind the bleached carcass of a large animal that died from exhaustion while within site of the ocean. The wooden structure visually mimics bones, appearing to be ribs, though in reality, the houses are built in stages over the course of many years. Mainly from a financial point of view, the buildings many times start with a core element and then branch out from there as funds and more family members increase. In the case of the dune house, there are three distinct stages of ongoing construction. One being the main house that the family lives, the next is the open superstructure that is in the process of being expanded to a floating outdoor living area, and the final one is still in the initial stages of foundation being poured.

At Ciudad Abierta, the process of design is unable to be separated from construction, as they exist simultaneously usually. Rarely are anything resembling construction documents done, and the students that are the majority of construction force each take on different pieces of the project to make their own and elaborate on. No one technically owns the land that they build on, it is all managed through a corporation and all inhabitants meet together a few times a week to discuss future plans and how the construction of different projects are coming along. More to come on the Open City, as there is not enough time in the year to write down all of the fascinating occurrences or webspace enough to post all of the pictures of the incredible structures. They defy sketching and any attempts to think of how you would draw them makes your mind freeze up. I believe they are able to achieve such astounding complexity through the continual construction process, and not having it all planned out before. They start with an initial scheme and focus, and evolve continuously through that. Scattered all around the city are projects that pushed the limits too far, and therefore had pieces chipped off or incomplete. But the magic of the place exists for this very reason as well, for every "failure" there are 50 other locations where material exploration changes 8 times over the course of several feet. It seems to be in a constant state of renewal, never happy to look at a detail the same way again. Many of the materials are left over from other projects or donated, and students will grab whatever at hand to accomplish their goals.

The best example of this I can think of is when to get reception for a very high stakes futbol game, a few of the students living in a place called "the cells" started lashing together bamboo poles to create a makeshift antennae. Then brought over some bricks from a nearby pile to stabilize it, and presto, we're watching color TV! You get the feeling that many of the inventions started from this very functional perspective, and were infused with art through the process of making. All this writing and I haven't even gotten to my gracious host of Ciudad Abierta, Ivan! Stay tuned for the Adventures of Ivan and the Open City soon!

Santiago_Chile

2009-06-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

In Santiago I was lucky enough to meet up with another Berkeley graduate student, Amber Nelson, who is down south visiting her talented boyfriend, Fito. Fito is a member of a performing street troupe, splitting their time between serenading old women in jewelry shops, narrowly missing getting hit by cars, and mixing up a concoction called "fanschop" in the park [a combination of fanta and beer which is surprisingly very good]. I spent the day acting as the honorary photographer, though I was much worse at earning tips...

Santiago is in places very beautiful, especially around the two prominent hills, cerro Santa Lucia and cerro San Cristobal as well as the Providencia region. You don't notice it as much when you're on the ground, but once in one of the funiculars or cable cars in San Cristobal park you get a glimpse of the heavy mat of air pollution that rests on the city like fog's drunk and untrustworthy step-brother. Then like Tolstoy's white bear, it becomes impossible to not think of the smog once you're in the city again [to get into Leo Tolstoy's childhood club, you had to sit in the corner of a room and not think of the imaginary white bear in there as well. You also had to go a whole year without seeing a hare, either alive or cooked... Hard isn't it?]. Santiago proved to be a much need recooperation point for a little R&R [reading and research].

I also got to eat the best [and only] crab pie I've ever had in my life at a bar called Liguria in Providencia. My time in the city allowed me to meet up with a few architects to get the lay of the land and talk Chile. Rodrigo Perez de Arce is a very gifted architect in Santiago that is currently teaching at the Universidad de Catolica Pontifica and redid the main plaza of Santiago, Plaza de Armas, among other projects. He was kind enough to have me over for a truly Chilean meal with his lovely family and gave me great advice about some places to visit when traveling.

I walked around the bohemian feeling courtyard of Universidad de Catolica on my way to the architect Mathias Klotz's office. His office is on the basement floor of his black wooden-sheathed house near the school. Hugo, one of the architects there gave me the tour and showed me what they have on the boards currently. They are doing lots of international work it looks like and look to be extremely busy considering the relatively small office size. He also apparently has a healthy obsession with cars, with little models and replicas scattered all over the shelves. I picked up a Mathias Klotz book in the local bookstore and he described his philosophy on site in that a building should be like an automobile. Parked on site, but able to be driven off at a moment's notice. Then thinking back to the lightness in touching the ground of most of his projects, this is probably a pretty good description.

Thoughts on Traveling #19 : Always double check "googlemaps" in a foreign country. It has no trouble confusing a large movie theater with the middle of the ghetto. Apparently they look the same to a computer.

::Desert Hotels::

2009-06-12T08:31:00.000-07:00

After catching my breath from my exhausting half -mile bike ride, I kept rolling down a dusty path to a visit some of the hotels near town. The Explora Hotel, locally known as the Hotel de Larache and Hotel Tierra Atacama. Hotel de Larache was designed by German del Sol [pronounced "Herman"] and Jose Cruz, with Tierra Atacama being done by Rodrigo Searle and Matias Gonzalez. I had a tour scheduled with the general manager of Larache, an extremely knowledgable and passionate Chilean named Maurice Dides. As we walked through the alfalfa fields that surround Larache, Maurice outlined the philosophy of the hotel and how it related back to the architecture that houses it. The Explora philosophy, as described on the website is:

"explora was founded to encourage a new way of travel in the remote regions of the Southern tip of South America. We love nature and enjoy liberty, we suggest a philosophy of travel born out of the desire to explore the natural and cultural environment of the remote. "

This means that explora is thought of as one giant "base camp," with monastic rooms and a minimum 3 night stay to make sure guests participate in trekking and outdoor adventures. The hotel was designed originally to allow horses to access the interior pathways, further blurring the spatial separation between outside and inside as well as refined and rustic. Though you can't find hoof prints in the hallway now, the fixtures of the doors to the main spaces are made with hardware from the stables. Which was another interesting feature of the hotel, the entry actually comes through the stable area. When I arrived, at first I thought I had the wrong place, being lost in a small maze of aromatic horse stables and cobbled paths with no sign to guide my wanderings. It wasn't until a surly Chilean with a cowboy hat took pity on me and guided me to the main lobby that I found my way.

Hotel de Larache's landscape falls somewhere between the beauty of a well maintained farmland, and an overgrown trail that runs through a forest. The alfalfa fields that make up the majority of the area are partitioned off by thick chest high adobe walls to allow the horses to graze in different parts of the property. The landscape is flooded every 17 days when the hotel gets its allotted 20 hours of water, and the horses are rotated to prevent over-grazing. The small rooms look out onto this functional frontier instead of the normally sterile maintained landscape of most hotels.

The rooms are shielded from the hot summer sun by the use of a metal roof that acts as a heat shield, separated from the building underneath to provide an air gap. With this low-tech idea, the hotel does not have any need for central heating or cooling, even though in the middle of the desert.

Though most of the hotel falls under the rustic rough and tough, there are still a few points where you get back to more of the glamorous life associated with a high price tag. There are a series of pools and saunas in the back accessed by a heavy wooden walkway. Though even these seemingly superfluous containers of water have a function. In the case of a fire, the pools serve as an emergency water source, being drained if the need arises.

The other hotel I visited was the Hotel Tierra Atacama. The two proved to be an interesting comparison, as Tierra treated its connection with the landscape in a decidedly different manner. Where as Explora's line separating the building and surrounding is blurred and tugged apart, Tierra is distinct, with the property gazing out longingly over the austere desert. Instead of a fractured form, it is controlled and made predominantly of right angles and 20 degree slopes [+/-].

I didn't have a tour guide at Tierra, but luckily they didn't mind that a gringo went wandering around peering into people's windows. Fortunately for me, most all of the guests were away for the day hiking, horseback riding, or taking shots at one of the local bars. So that meant I was free to explore the extent of the property as long as I didn't get caught jiggling door handles. First on the list was heading out to the large acreage of property owned by the hotel. The walkways don't meander, they pierce the horizon, hovering over the semi soaked fields without visually touching. A striking contrast to the solid heavy walls defining the pathways at Larache.

The Hotel is probably most well known for the corten steel boxes that dot its interior. Their taut metal skins' stretched across, shrink-wrapping the boxes beneath. Their precision is perfect, everything lines up and is ordered. But in their accuracy of measurement something seems to be lost. I've been realizing more and more what draws me to many of the places I've been is the connection with the human hand. If you're a thoroughly unabashed modernist like myself, you strive to make sure everything lines up, has an order, nothing left to chance or chaos. That last statement was a gross generality and not at all accurate, but the fact remains that many times in the quest for refinement, a soul gets left behind. I've found more and more that slippages are a thing to be exploited, not contained. The rough marks left on concrete after form work is taken off showing the signs of making, the splinters left unsanded on a piece of wood, or the unevenness left in the adobe brick even by skilled masons. These are things of celebration I feel, the pressure for perfection is possible to be washed away by the acceptance once again of the calloused hand of the construction worker. Character, the hardest thing to define and even more difficult to achieve, can be gained from the logical process of making.

Never blog after a few glasses of wine, you get all worked up and off topic. What I was attempting to say in not so many words was that in the projects I've researched so far, one of the commonalities has been their lack of perfection in construction. Whether that is because of their separation from refined tools, the unskilled labor often times used, or the blinding sun throwing off measurements is up for debate. But the fact remains that I believe it to be an advantage, not a detriment in most of the cases I've witnessed. God I hope this doesn't lead to a rash of slipshod construction.

San Pedro de Atacama

2009-06-10T18:29:00.000-07:00

Listen.
San Pedro de Atacama is a small village in an oasis in the middle of the Atacama desert. Which also happens to be in Northern Chile. Population : around 5000 people. 7,900 feel above sea level, making it high and dry. One of the driest places in the world actually, with little to no rainfall ever recorded. Temperature in the 80's during the day and drops down to below freezing during the night. The village was founded 11,000 years ago by the "Atacamenos". Some of the first known farmers in the country, they used llama droppings to fertilize their crops. Then, when the llamas got old, they cut them up and grilled them. So it goes. They charge 1200 pesos for a stick of llama meat now. I would have easily paid 1500.

The Atacamenos don't have much water, so they put up signs like this one in the bathroom. It was hanging in the hostel I stayed at and I only saw it the last day. Then I felt bad about my long showers before I knew it was there. They have so little water that they have to ration it by the hour.

There are a series of water channels in the village that are operated by a person called a "celador" [sp?]. You get a certain amount of hours of water from the channel depending on your plot of land. If you have horses or alfalfa you get a bonus. The Hotel de Larache gets 20 hours of water every 17 days. Which is a good amount and fair. They have both horses and alfalfa.

There are three types of shops in San Pedro. One is posh-rustic restaurants with expensive drinks. Another is tour operators with big glossy pictures of lagoons on the wall. And the last is an internet/bike rental/convenience store/laundry or any combination of the four. That is all. And a post office. All of the dogs are lazy and nice except for the ones that are owned by junkyards. They have pointy ears and good posture and run much faster.

A good way to get around is to rent a bike from the laundromat/internet cafe. Then you can go anywhere you want and see the other small villages. There are small creeks to cross that give you wet shoes if you go too fast. It is very high there and I think that I had altitude sickness, though no one told me that. I got about a mile before I had to stop and rest and wave to people passing. I'm sure they all knew that I wasn't reading my map because I was breathing so hard.

Many of the homes are made with many different materials. No one ever told me why. I think it was because you build with what you can in the desert. Sometimes that means barrels. Other times that means sticks. And every once in a while it means blocks.

The Tin Man cometh

2009-06-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

Just ran across this project in Patagonia and thought I would share. I'm in Santiago right now after being in the Atacama Desert for about a week [posts to come soon]. Manuel Rapoport is an industrial designer who has made a house out of almost all recycled materials in the Patagonia region of Argentina. I'll be making my way to Valparaiso soon, and then after that down to Concepcion and Puerto Montt. If anyone knows anything I should be looking at or who I should be talking to make sure to let me know!

-T

Floating Along

2009-06-05T17:48:00.000-07:00

Puno is a port town nestled off of the shores of Lake Titicaca, near the Bolivian border to Peru, and served as the next stop on what I'm now referring to as the Great South American Bus Ride. It feels as if my body is more used to traveling at 99kph [but never 100kph] than walking now. I've added up the amount of time I've spent on planes, trains, buses, or boats so far and I'm pretty sure its topped triple digits. Buses love to show dubbed over English shows and if I have to watch the Fresh Prince of Bel Air in Spanish again I'm actually going to believe Will Smith is Chilean.

But worth the travel it was, as Puno offered a great opportunity to explore some of the islands in the middle of Lake Titicaca, one of the highest navigable lakes in the world. I went down to the port in the morning and caught a boat with some local Taquilens [from Isle Taquile] in order to make it out to Los Uros, or "the Floating Islands". The name makes them sound like something out of a paperback fantasy novel, and they actually are similar in some respects, albeit without dragons or wizards. Los Uros are a series of many small bits of inhabitable land created by bonding together the local reeds, called totora, native to the lake. The reeds are not only valued for their medicinal properties, but serve to create a completely renewable construction material. As the reeds on the bottom of the island deteriorate, new material is added to the top to replenish the land, done almost every three months. Harvested locally, the islands are one of the few completely "sustainable" construction techniques I've heard of from a material point of view.

Not satisfied with just walking on and living on the reeds, the inhabitants of Uros also consume their slender building material of choice. The lower part of the totora is white and spongy, and contains iodine that wards off certain diseases. I tried some of it and tastes like what you would assume it to taste like, completely devoid of flavor with the consistency of a soft Brillo pad.

The population of Uros originally attempted to escape from other hostile peoples so they took to the water in order to get away. I've heard the original idea was defensible b/c they could move the islands to a different location in the lake when they heard enemies were present. I highly doubt the validity of this statement, as the top speed of a bunch of moving reeds would probably get close to .5 mph. Though maybe they were meant to just move so as not to give away their position. The transportation of the Uros got jealous and also mandated that it be built out of reed material, so all of their canoe like boats are incredibly well crafted and can go several years before they finally succumb to the elements. They are basically reed bundles tied together in order to get enough buoyancy, and are extremely rigid and tight construction wise. So some of their food comes from one material, their homes, their land, their car, as well as many of the obvious baskets and other oddities. I've never seen a culture so dependent on one main staple, and it brings to mind the Native American culture of re-using every part of the deer for different purposes.

The walls of the homes on the island are woven, keeping out the wind by layer after layer stacked on top of each other and threaded together. Many of the roofs use plastic now as an under layer and have also found out the benefits of meshing high tech and low tech. Since getting electricity out to the island would prove to be a shockingly hard venture [bad pun] many of the simple houses have turned to the sun to gather power in the form of solar collectors. Though it is pretty funny to see the gleaming metal in contrast to the simple woven homes.

Is it possible to gain some of the insight from the ongoing renewal of Los Uros as applied to our current construction practices? Right now almost no materials from a single family house can be re-used when torn down, and certainly not decay into the earth to come back in a different manner. What would happen if we allowed our buildings to "decay" to a greater extent in order to replace them? Or in a different vein, it allows us to look at the reuse of building materials to be used in another future project. Either embracing the degradation that would happen or using construction techniques that encourage longevity. The floating islands touched me in the way they utilized a local building material that can be renewed, as well as actually accomplishing the hard task of living where "we were not destined to be." Floating along, bobbing from the wakes of boats that pass by in the distance.

Thoughts on Traveling #18 : There are two competing types of peanut roasters in Santiago, Chile. There is the "Nuts4Nuts" stand and the "Crazy4Nuts" stand. I always patronize the Crazy4Nuts cart because I feel bad they weren't able to break away and come up with a better name.

Picchu Piku

2009-06-02T09:05:00.001-07:00

Well I'm finally caught up to the present time blog-wise, or at least closer to the ultimate goal of actually reporting on current events. After a long plane ride and a seven hour layover in San Salvador, I have made it down to Lima, Peru! I'm off to a good start, already lost a sketchbook on the plane ride down here. Luckily [and sadly...] I don't think there was anything too important in it. Thoughts of Peru so far... everyone in the airport has surgical masks on, to protect against the influenza scare. Which, by the way, is not one of the things you want to see when entering a new country. Either that or armed guards with german shepards patrolling the streets. Both scenarios reek of post apocalyptic foreshadowing.

My Spanish has gotten rusty to the point of being incomprehensible over the last few years. Usually at restaurants I end up playing a game of gastronomical russian roulette, not entirely sure of what I'm going to get, and too polite to try and order anything else. Since Lima proved relatively uninteresting I decided to hop the first bus I could out of Lima to get closer to the ultimate goal of Machu Picchu [apologies to any Limians, you have a lovely city I'm sure]. On a side note, I've also given up all of my dreams and ambitions after having a taste of the good life. From now on I'm selling what moral character I had left to pray at the alter of greed with the hopes of becoming rich enough to afford VIP transportation. I came to this conclusion after accidentally buying a ticket for the "premiere class" of a bus company going from Lima to Cusco, Peru. Not truly accidentally, but they were out of tickets for the regular economic and business classes and all they had left was a ticket to ride in style in the luxury bus. Luckily it wasn't actually that expensive as far as transportation goes, so I said "Hey Taylor, live a little and upgrade." If I'm spending 21 straight hours on a bus I at least want it to be comfortable. As soon as I sat down in the cushy comfy seats on the "Cruz del Sur" I heard another fellow travel-goer exclaim "This is definitely the nicest place I've ever been!". We were on a bus, just to recap, but I did have to agree with him somewhat that it was a very nice bus. Each person had two vents, with the assumption you could blow cool air on your feet and head at the same time I guess? Well now that I've lost a majority of readers talking about seat cushions, I'll reward those that persevered by fast forwarding to the main reason I'm in Peru in the first place. Machu Picchu.

Its written into the Peruvian constitution somewhere that it is every tourist's legal responsibility to visit the Incan ruins, so I set about to fulfill my patriotic duty by doing the same. The bus ride was relatively uneventful besides passing by some great examples of typical Andean housing on the way to Cusco. The closer you get to the city, the more confused the houses became, finally resembling a cross between an 80's office building and a mud hut. Very strange. The wooden doors are usually always extremely well crafted, made of solid material with carvings and different patterns worked into them. The houses blend almost seemlessly into the courtyards they are adjoined to, with adobe walls skirting around the property to close in livestock and shop spaces. Earthy tones of umber also gives the houses even more of a seeming connection to the lush green landscape that surrounds them.

Machu Picchu. Words cannot accurately describe the mystical power of the rocky site nestled in the midst of the towering mountains that stare down at it. Therefore I won't attempt to weigh the memory down of those who have been there or are yet to go with superfulous analogies. I will put forth some of my thoughts on the construction of the place though, with the hopes that they have many relevant examples even in today's world of architecture.

The site was built nostly around the 1460's [A.D.] and only stood used for around 100 years before Spanish conquistadores and disease all but wiped it out. It was not plundered however, and is intact in most all of the key areas. One of the main techniques used in construction was called "ashlar," or the tight setting together of stones without mortar. Earthquakes are a major concern in the area, and ashlar type construction holds up much better against lateral movement, having nowhere to go and no mortar to disrupt. There are also male and female ¨keys¨where the blocks touch to interlock them even further from movement. To quarry the necessary stone in order to build such a prodigious structure, several different techniques were used. One of the ways that the stone was broken down into managable sizes was to make a crack in the rock and insert wooden wedges into the fissure. The wedges would be wet and therefore expand, splitting the stone further apart. This technique was repeated until the rock seperated.

I was also blown away by the complexity achieved by just one single material, stone [not including earth]. True, the thatched wooden roofs have long since deteriorated leaving only the shell of ruins, but most all of the main parts of the structures are made using different sizes and shapes of one single material. Relating the philosophy of less is more in terms of material to contemporary practice yields an interesting comparison. Instead of using a multitude of materials to achieve complexity [and perhaps contradiction....bad architecture joke...] the Incans chose to exploit all the possibilities of a single one, but in numerous different ways. As seen in the pictures above, stones are cantilevered out from walls to create simple functional staircases. In the repetition of openings in a stone wall, some are infilled to create alcoves instead of views. The path of water is traced and made way for by openings and matter worn away with the passage of time. And the creation of a threshold is made evident in the selection of higher quality stone to differentiate the doorway´s importance. All the subtleties in design are made by a re-thinking of a single material in order to make it work a number of different ways. Machu Picchu was inspiring and opened up a host of ideas in thinking about how to make the most out of a single piece.

Thesis Reviews & Oil Spills

2009-06-01T15:27:00.000-07:00

Matt and I made it through our Great American Adventure with only a few scrapes, 2 speeding tickets, and multiple parking violations. I still can't return to Tennessee or Arkansas currently... We made it back to Raleigh, NC where I grabbed a plane out to California to make it in time for thesis reviews and a long awaited reunion with Megan.

I was glad to see most everyone in studio in good spirits with only a few threats of jumping off of the 9th floor. Reviews were a week or so away so I tried to stay out of studio as much as possible, though to no avail. Peter "Soundman" Lingamfelter and Gavin "Keeper" Knowles managed to coerse me into doing a few odds and ends to help out, though I think I probably did more harm than good. Reunited with Shivang Patwa we had our old studio pod back in action and celebrated by going to the hidden gem that is the Berkeley Art Museum cafe for lunch. Believe it or not, Peter and Gavin are actually having a good time in the picture above.

The big day[s] finally arrived. People prepared in different ways. Shivang shaved his mountain-man beard to find intimidating sideburns, Peter dimmed the lights and put on some mood music to warm up, while Gavin decided not to frighten young children by putting on a respirator. I was very proud of them as well as all of my other classmates and compatriots that are too numerous to go into detail. Suffice to say though, I was deeply impressed by the level of work that was going on at Berkeley and grew both inspired and anxious thinking of the coming year when it would be my proverbial head on the chopping block.

I got ready for my adventure into the American Southwest and loaded up my old '88 Honda accord with a sleeping bag, tent, and a newfangled GPS system. The goal: Roden Crater, Cinco Camp, Marfa TX, DesignBuildBLUFF, CalEarth, Double Negative, and some stellar Arizona work. The trip was going great the first 4 hours and I almost made it to LA before my car broke down on the "Grapevine", a nasty set of hills on I-5. You know its bad news when a guy in a beat-up Jalopy pulls up next to your car and waves at you to pull over b/c your car is smoking too much. Luckily I had AAA [everyone go buy a membership, best purchase of my life next to my Pez Dispenser collection] so they were able to tow me 80+ miles to my dear friend Mike Olsen's house in Burbank. The next day I drove/pushed my way to an auto shop to find out that the problem was minor, yet horribly expensive. Something about transmissions and flux capacitors, I don't speak mechanic. The thought of driving out into the middle of the desert with a car down on its luck didn't sound as appealing, so my dreams for the second road trip were dashed. I managed to get "White Lightning" back to San Francisco by keeping it on cruise control on hills to prevent over-revving, though being passed by 18 wheelers going uphill is both comical and damaging to one's already bruised ego.

On the good side though, being back in the city for another week allowed me to help move into our new place in San Francisco! Megan and I, with the help of a few friends, a little energon and a lot of luck, found out about a Julia Morgan building that had an opening and jumped on it as soon as possible [don't worry if you didn't get the energon joke, you're probably better off for it]. Another one of our good friends Michelle Lopez was also looking for a place to stay until the winter, so it worked out perfect that they could share the place until the traveling is over. By some twist of fate it also has a courtyard and about a dozen rose bushes, and without me there, have an actual shot at surviving. The stay in California felt all too brief and before I knew it, I was heading down to our shared-name neighbors in South America to see the Atacama Desert and chance my luck at making it to Patagonia. More to come soon...

Thoughts on Traveling #17 : Dogs gaurding junkyards hate it when you take their picture. And their friends they bring to chase you aren't too keen on the subject either.

Rural Studio_Alabama

2009-05-31T14:37:00.000-07:00

April 10th-13th, 2009 [Rural Studio - Newbern, Alabama]

There is a saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words…”. With that thought in mind I set out to write a small novel through the helpful use of visual imagery. Some would call my lack of letters and spaces laziness, others sloth, but I am choosing to view it as prudent time management. The longer I wait, the more I forget about those days that pass, and fearful I might lose yet another sketchbook, I felt it wise to post on some of my past exploits before the second coming. Thank you again to all of the unforgettable people at Rural Studio who made our trip there such an adventure. Special thanks go to Miss Anne and Whitelaw for letting us camp in their yard, Gayle for getting us settled and feeling like home, and Jon for giving such a great tour on his precious day off. Without further ado, I give you… Rural Studio, Alabama style. Any and all questions should be sent directly to Matthew Fornaro at mjfornaro@gmail.com.

The "Rural Studio HQ" - Morrisette House

Our campsite in the backyard of Miss Anne and Whitelaw

Cows watching our progress.

The Rural Studio Studio, aka "The Red Barn"

A lecture by Carme Pinos and budweiser in a can. Good combo.

The bathrooms and stairs to Sam Mockbee's old house.
Sock Hop Dance. Don't listen to anything people at Rural Studio tell you, they don't work.
See, what did I tell you?
Okay they do work. Really hard. Notice top left.
Construction rear shot. Courtesy of Matthew J. Fornaro.
Construction rear shot. Courtesy of Taylor G. Medlin.
I'm either helping frame this wall or lost, who knows at this point.
How Rural Studio does on-site presentations. I love the bench.
Carme understandably worn out after a few days of site visits.
Subrosa - memento to Mockbee.
Newbern Little League Baseball Field
Series of bathrooms at Perry Lakes Park. "Tall Toilet"
View upwards
"Mound Toilet"
"Long Toilet"
View from the can.
Perry Lakes Bridge
Perry Lakes Tower
Mason's Bend : Hay Bale House
Mason's Bend : Smokehouse
Mason's Bend : Glass Chapel
Jon showing us around Akron's Boys and Girls Club. Stellar guy.
Akron Boys and Girls Club [1st] being refurbished after vandalism.
Matt cooking our farewell dinner

Thoughts on Traveling #16 : Have you ever noticed how the name "Sinbad" is just a combination of two words that mean evil? Right? Isn't that crazy?

I'm sorry, I think I've had too much caffeine.

Fay Day

2009-05-27T08:27:00.000-07:00

April 7th, 2009 [Gentry_AR_USA]
We wished Brad a fond farewell and started down the road to Gentry, Arkansas, home of Fay Jones' Thorncrown Chapel. Gentry is an incredibly small town and the chapel is constructed in the middle of the woods, though when it was built originally in 1980 it was even more isolated than it is today. As mentioned before, the town is incredibly small, the population was estimated around 2200 souls in the 2000 census. Matt and I pulled our car into the incredibly friendly information center in what I would assume is downtown and got the helpful advice to also visit the fire watching tower out in the parking lot. It would have been a good idea if the entry to the tower wasn't a fickle money stealing machine with bad intentions. Since it had taken our last quarter I had to hop the back of the fence and hope we weren't chased out of town for trespassing. About halfway up Matt mentioned he wasn't entirely over his fear of heights and as soon as we reached the top I realized I had now established a healthy fear of falling to my death as well. We only saw a few parts of the heavily wooded country on fire, and figuring that someone else would tell the Gentrians we climbed down and proceeded over to the Thorncrown.

Fay Jones designed the structure of Thorncrown in a way that two able bodied men could carry any necessary pieces into the forest. Therefore the building materials are composed of just pressure treated 2x4's, 2x6's, and 2x12's and able to be brought in without disturbing the pristine site. The philosophy of the construction had a direct impact on the design and was most likely the predominant reason that the chapel is able to achieve such a light and airy countenance. Since all of the structural members were small to begin with, strength was gained by building up wooden pieces in order to form larger beams and columns, though the largest used were still relatively minute. I've since left my sketchbook with notes on an airplane [curse you Taca Airlines!], but if I memory serves the main columns are only at the front and back of the chapel, with all of the infill columns being constructed of a sandwich system of 2x6's and 2x4's, also incorporating all of the minimal lighting and electrical elements into the cavity created by building up the wooden members. The sandwich system also allowed the spanning beams that held up the ceiling to join the columns on the inside, thereby creating a stronger structural system even though the vast majority was only wood with extremely long spans [The only steel used is in the diamond shaped connection pieces holding together the wooden beams].

After some sweet talking and petty bribery we were able to get the nice lady taking tickets to go to the front of the chapel and sing a few hymns. I can say without blushing that Clarice [I can't remember her real name, but Clarice is a beautiful name and should serve the purpose] was one of the finest singers I have ever heard, and shutting your eyes in that magical place to hear her sweet notes was something that will stay with me forever. Acoustically it is incredibly well defined, and the sound reverberates so much that you feel guilty shuffling in your seat if others are present. I was also surprised by the minimal way that the Christian religion was treated in the interior and exterior. The only noticeable cross to speak of is outside of the chapel at the far end, nestled in between a few moss covered boulders, and is very small and modest when compared to the size of the rest of the church. The real religion for me present was its connection with the surrounding forest, not being able to easily separate sacred space and nature. To the left of the church the hillside fled away to find a lower position while the right side continued to climb upwards, creating another wall of wood and underbrush when looking in that direction. I've heard since that the chapel is the highest sought after place to married, needing booking a year or more in advance, and its easy to see why.

April 7th-9th, 2009 [Austin_TX_USA]
One of our close friends, Jeff Watson, from back in the 205 Ashe Ave. days lives in Austin, so we were legally compelled to visit him on the way to our next stops. Jeff is attending UT right now for architecture and has picked up scrap-booking as a hobby. While we were in town an eerily creepy exhibition by the artist Arthur Ganson was going on in one of UT's buildings. Ganson is known for creating machines that intricately move, with countless gears, pistons, wires, and anything else he can get his hands on. They were incredibly complex and even staring at many of them for several minutes I still couldn't figure out how they were moving. Above are some shots from the exhibit for your viewing pleasure, as well as my personal favorite, a wishbone pulling a giant metal wheel.

Before leaving we took a few canoes out on the Colorado river with Jeff's girlfriend Sarah for a relaxing float and semi-competitive racing between boats. The trip was delightfully uneventful with no turn overs and Jeff only tried to scuttle us 2 or 3 times. Our visit was at an end however, so we jumped in Lucille and headed away to the next part of our journey, Pinecote Pavilion! [another Fay Jones project]

April 10th, 2009 [Picayune_MS_USA]
On our way to Rural Studio in Alabama we wanted to swing by and see another Fay Jones project in Mississippi near a town called Picayune. The project in question is the Pinecote Pavilion, an outside non-religious pavilion set in the middle of a deep marshland. To get to the pavilion you walk along a series of wooded trails for about 15 minutes before finally coming into a small clearing approaching the wooden structure. I have to say though, surprised as I was, I fell I was even more mesmerized by Pinecote than Thorncrown. Even though the building is not devoted to a religious purpose, you still get a feeling that it is a sacred space, talking in hushed tones and shuffling around instead of striding. Maybe its the lack of glass, I'm not sure, but it feels even more light and delicate, even though the roof is gigantic and comes down to the scale of a person in the eaves. There are many similar details and materials as Thorncrown, again using a combination of 2x's for most all of the structure.

Everything is based on a modular grid, and even the flooring material of brick and wood edging is used to panelize and further break down the space into smaller parcels. The scale of the human body is never made to feel overpowered, even though the structure itself is great in height and length. By bringing down the roof to almost eye level also serves to screen those inside and never make them feel small by comparison. The lattice work of joists, beams, and bracing members forms an intricate wooden spider web of structure, connecting pieces together with sometimes 6 or 7 joining together at one location. Another way the pavilion creates a sense of immateriality is by dissolving the edges of the roof at every chance. The center of the roof is split open by a skylight, only allowing the joists to connect for support. At the sides and ends, the many layered rood under structure begins to break up. First holding back wooden shingles, then sublayer, and finally only carrying out 1x3's further, creating a mix of shadows and opacity when looking on.

Matt and I couldn't stay long as we had to get back on the road to Alabama, but our next stop was Rural Studio, so we jumped in and hit the pavement.

Thoughts on Traveling #15 : Never store apple sauce in your bookbag, its sure to end in heartbreak and sticky fingers.

Homeward Bound [minus the cute talking animals]

2009-05-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

April 2nd, 2009: [Raleigh,_NC_USA]
My time in Cappadocia had come to a close and I headed back to Istanbul, Turkey from Goreme by another cramped overnight bus. After one more night in a hostel I jumped the big flight home to Raleigh, North Carolina to see my family for a few all too short days. Being in one place for more than two nights and not having to fight a crowd of people for the shower was a welcome exchange from the frantic pace I'd been keeping up to date. Two Months+, 7 countries, and now back in the States until after Berkeley's Thesis Reviews on May 2nd and 3rd. While back in Raleigh my mom, dad, and myself went by my undergrad college of North Carolina State University to view their celebration of the 60th anniversary of the College of Design. Wandering the halls I ran into a few familiar faces, though I still felt like I was trespassing slightly for some reason. The normal response I get when seeing someone back home is usually "What the #@%$ are you doing here?", followed by "No, seriously, why the #@%$ are you here?". It was great to catch up but most of my time in NC was spent decompressing and buying jeans that didn't look like they had been cut from a burn victim. The next part of the journey was a two week US Road Trip tour de force with my veteran road tripper buddy Matt Fornaro. Matt and I did a three week road trip back in 2007 from the East coast to the West to move me out to California, and we were looking for a repeat with an architectural emphasis this time. We had upgraded from a cramped, smoking '88 Honda Accord to my sister's spiffy '95 Honda Accord, codenamed "Lucille". We packed a cooler half full with string cheese and beer and we were off headed east on a great black stretch of tar.

April 3rd, 2009: [Nashville_TN_USA]
Our plan was to head west all the way to Fayetville, Arkansas, and then cut down to Houston/Austin and back around through Louisiana and Alabama on the way home. Driving along, we saw the same series of tanks on trailers over the course of many days, and couldn't decide who was following whom. I tried to get them to deliver the tanks to P.O. Box Nick Sowers - Berkeley California, but I don't think they could understand me through the wind in between our cars. About an hour outside of Nashville I remembered my good friends Chase Holfelder & Co. were bunkered down recording for a new CD, so we gave them a call and lucked out by getting to come by the studio to see the magic in person. I can now happily say that I am a country fan, or at least one of theirs. I really hope they used the tracks I laid down, it was probably some of my better kazoo playing in the last 8 years or so.

April 4th-6th, 2009: [Fayetville_AR_USA]
Next stop: Fayetville, Arkansas to see the work of Marlon Blackwell and make sure our friend Brad Payne hadn't gotten arrested too many times. I am happy to say he is not even on parole and doing some phenomenal work at Marlon Blackwell Architects. Brad graciously showed us around the office and introduced us to the small, yet lively town of Fayetville and their extensive whiskey selection.

"Tower House"
The next night we grabbed some questionable Chinese food and headed up to the "Tower House", an amazing project in the middle of a dense forest overlooking the whole of downtown. The height of the tower was determined by the record height of the surrounding trees and is used as a vacation home for a family. The program is luckily very sparse and is comprised of an open living/eating area, a bathroom, and a sleeping deck. Since its used during the summer months mostly, the family sleeps on the upper deck where they are shielded from the wind but can still experience views across the entire forest. Structurally, the tower is one big gigantic steel truss, and I can say without hesitation that it can withstand some extremely high winds. While we were there the trees close by were leaning over at almost a 45 degree angle, presumably to get a closer look at the forest floor and pick out a place to lie down. The entry is through a raised steel portal and the ground inside of the tower is covered in pecan shells to give a satisfying audible crunch when you walk on them [Brad correct me if I screwed this part up]. The walk up is an open metal staircase that is screened by raw-cut wooden members used to shield you from the harshest of the elements and calls to mind the bark of a large oak tree, emphasizing the vertical nature of the project and relating it back to its surroundings. Almost all of the windows in the open living area are operable, allowing for cross ventilation if necessary, while still using a standard size, just repeating them the whole way around.

"Blessings Clubhouse"
Another stop on the list was the Blessings Golf Course, that Jon from the office was nice enough to take us by and show us around. One of the pieces of the project that struck me the most was the finishing of the interior of the spa/bathroom in the men's locker room. I can only hope that the women's was as nice, but understandably we didn't go poking our camera lenses in there. From floor to ceiling it is covered in different shades of long green hued tile that emphasizes movement to a large sky lit soaking tub at the end. Using only one material, but with different grades of color united the whole area while also making it extremely easy to maintain. Your eye therefore was free to concentrate on the actual volume of space and the light beaming in, warming up the ceramic tiles. Even the mechanical vents were recessed into the ceiling in a way to blend in with the over-riding mentality of the one material.

"Blackwell House"
One of our last stops with Brad was the house of Marlon Blackwell, completed in 2006. Its located in a relatively dense suburban area, and as such has to carefully screen views to the surrounding houses. The house is comprised of two long boxes stacked on top of each other. One spans across the restored stream on the site, while the other sits on top, cantilevering off of the front and hovering over the backyard to provide shade and protection for an outdoor sitting area. The whole house is wrapped in a delicate rain screen that compartmentalizes the exterior wall to protect the rubber coating from both sun and rain. Rain sits on the horizontal surface of the wood instead of the wall and theoretically allows for replacement of individual wooden slats instead of entire sections of siding. Marlon was nice enough to give us some sage advice about other places to visit on the next leg of our trip and we set off to see some Fay Jones on our way to Texas.

Thoughts on Traveling #14 : WARNING: over-caffination while close to funny hats can lead to ridiculous pictures being posted online.

Finding Neverland, or at least fairies

2009-04-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

March 24, 2009: [Cairo_Egypt]

My last full day in day in Egypt was spent doing what all visitors to Cairo should be doing, namely driving around a smoky cab with the windows down by a 15 year old Egyptian with a peach fuzz mustache. Among our many stops were the pyramids at Giza. I was really worried about them being overly populated by tourists, but can say on good authority that if you do it right it is one of the most inspiring visits you will ever make. My new friend Abdul claimed the only true way to see the stone cones was on the back of a horse or camel. As I trusted his informed opinion I choose to take a camel ride up to the pyramids from the back entrance. We entered from the non-sphinx side and after a polite yellow toothed man made sure my goal was not to blow up the sacred site we were off and running, or riding I guess. Our makeshift caravan was comprised of my guide on horseback, myself, and a barefooted Egyptian boy that had my camel by a long rope. At first you can't even see the pyramids, but as you ride on the craggy points start to peek out from behind the dunes like shy tortoise heads. Once we crested the hill, a large photo-op session took place with me jumping off of a then unhappy horse among other things. Note to readers: camels are very tall, its like standing up on Shaq's shoulders if he spat more often. The scale is profound once you get up close, and baffles the mind how workers could move just one stone, let alone that many. For all of our modern towers and spires, I still have yet to see anything as awe-inspiring size wise as those silent behemoths.

The night before I had an amazing dinner with Nashwa, her husband Wael, and their two beautiful children. On the last night in town I met up with Abdul and good friend of his Ramy [sp?] for yogurt drinks and some hookah. It was fascinating to learn more about the culture from those that had lived their mostly all of their life and I only wish we had more time to catch up. As my time in Egypt was running to its inevitable conclusion, I wished it goodbye and made my way to Istanbul for a solitary night on my way to the Cappadocia region of Turkey. The region made it onto UNESCO's world heritage site because of its rocky formations of volcanic tufa rock called "fairy chimneys" that were turned into churches and in habitations around the 4th century AD. Many of the initial inhabitants were Christians escaping the persecution of the pre-Constantine Roman Empire. Fleeing to Goreme and other areas of Cappadocia, they began carving out of the soft white rock to form tombs, houses, churches, and stables.

March 26th - 30th, 2009: [Cappadocia Region, Turkey]
I arrived in Goreme by one of the 158 odd Turkish bus companies, this one being falsely called "Metro". My hostel reservation put me at the Goreme Cave Pension, with my dorm room being carved into the interior of one of the stone spires, and thankfully not as damp and cold as a similar situation in Alberobello, Italy with the trulli houses. The first day I got in was relatively sunny, but the clouds thickened during the night to dump about 6 inches of snow on the ground the next day, which made me realize two things: check the weather of where you're about to go more often, and don't send home your long underwear until you're sure you won't need it anymore.

The next day I went on a tour of the various underground cities only rediscovered in 1962 by farmers stumbling on the 8 story deep labyrinth of tunnels and caves. Like all tours in big buses, it ended with us at an onyx market attempting to sell everyone on board overpriced jewelry. But the next day was time to explore again, and the previously mentioned snow was burned away by a sunny, gnat populated day in Goreme.

I set out to adventure in the Rose Valley, which is a pretty close hike and home to more examples of carved out architecture than I had digital film for. After a while I just stopped taking pictures manually and switched over to the TaylorCAM to have my eyes and hands free to soak in the surroundings. Everywhere you look is populated by a densely packed series of cave rooms and openings meticulously carved out of the steep cliffs. Most are upwards of 4 or 5 stores high, and seemingly inaccessible since their wooden ladders have been rotted away over the years. Either that or whoever lived in them had spider monkey genes, I tried to climb up to many of them only to land down on my back looking up a clear blue sky and circling pigeons.

Another interesting part of the construction of the carved dwellings is the residents closeness to the animals that they lived with. Not only were many of the lower caves used as makeshift stables for livestock, but the so called rat of the sky [or pigeon] was revered as an almost sacred entity, with the inhabitants of Cappodocia being dependent on its droppings for their livelihood. Next to many of the churches and cave houses are a series of carved out nooks reminiscent of a 2nd grade cubby wall. In reality these repetitive holes were used to house the pigeon population and more importantly, to catch the precious pigeon poop that was ceremoniously dropped down to the projecting sills. Pigeon dropping was used from everything to fertilize the farmland in the middle of the narrow valleys, to constructing a paste for the frescoes in the interior of the numerous rock churches. Underneath the pigeon holes is a 1 to 2 foot wide stone shelf that would be used to gather all of the droppings for use in the fields or churches. The early Christians lived right next to their animal counterparts, forming a symbiotic relationship in both proximity and the sharing of food. The pigeon would be coaxed to back to their constructed nests, and in turn would be supplied with more food than a dozen crazy old bird men sitting in central park could provide.

Staring at the long stretches of the valley walls, the elevation of openings formed an almost urban scale by their number and closeness to each other. A city of thousands if not more occupied the numerous valleys and ancient dwellings and up to the early 1920's, many of the sacred chambers were still populated by Christians and Muslims alike.

Strolling around the small town of Goreme after my day long excursion, I ran into a stone mason in the middle of the street working on blocks of soft rock for a soon to be opening hostel. Stopping a moment to study his technique, his face lit up into a mustached grin when I asked him what he was doing. By a series of frantic gestures and pointing we soon came to have a very good conversation about the various implements he was using and how the rocks were shaped for future use. The stones came rough on all sides and were shaped on site before being put into their final resting place in the building. With a theatrical flourish he whipped out his steel square and made a mark with pencil on the next rock waiting to be carved. After the initial line was drawn he propped up the stone and set to work on it with authority. I don't know if he was showing off for the benefit of the jaw open American watching his work, but without sophisticated tools he made a precise right angle cut with just accurate swipes of his rock hammer. He stood beaming as I checked his craftsmanship only to find no flaws whatsoever. This seemingly inconsequential event made a deep impression in me about the skill derived from someone that knows their craft, and amazed me at how the human body can be trained to do seemingly impossible tasks with practice and precision. I must have been overly appreciative in my thanking his demonstration because as I made to leave he told me to wait as he reached in his thick coat and pulled out a handful of Turkish raisins for me to munch on on my way home.

Thoughts on Traveling #13 : Its highly possible that Obama is endorsing the Turkish banking system with a low interest rate of 1.13%. See documented evidence below. So that's where all of our tax money is going to!!!

Eco Lodges

2009-04-28T16:06:00.000-07:00

The eco-lodge at Al-Karm, Egypt has gotten me investigating a relatively new form of hotel popping up everywhere. According to an article on Eco lodges by "HowStuffWorks", they can be defined as "an industry label used to identify a nature-dependent tourist lodge that meets the philosophy and principles of ecotourism." In other words, they are looked at as an alternative for for hotels near city centers, instead focusing the experience on the natural wilderness surrounding, while having a minimal, if not positive, impact on the communities and ecosystems surrounding them. Al Karm had no electricity and heated all of the hot water through the use of solar hot water heaters, able to be used year round b/c of the usual lack of cloud cover and abundant availability of sun.

But without even looking for them, Eco lodges are turning up more and more where ever I look. I'm at UC Berkeley's library now and was perusing the shelves only to find an entire issue of C3 devoted to "Resort Hotels Contextual to Region", usually end up meaning some sort of expensive getaway miles away from the hustle and bustle. But the deeper meaning behind the articles is what I'm concentrating on. The upper class has always been on the forefront of exploring hard to access areas, usually just through available means alone, those same locations being next to impossible to get to because of the expenses of transportation costs. Is this heightened concern for posh nature lodging just a desperate cry for spatial and environmental freedom imposed by the over density of cities? Does the so called taming of the wilderness imply a positive or negative outcome for the national parks that house these hotels? Also it should be said that not all of these hotels are either ritzy or glamorous. Al Karm did attract a usually higher eschelon clientele, but the rates were definitely reasonable and the lodging was by no means refined. It could be the wanting for more rustic surroundings is part of the draw as well, such as city slickers going to live on a "dude ranch" in Montana for a few weeks in order to get a taste of the rough and tumble. But with the morality of expensive vacationing aside, Eco-lodges have came increasingly to the forefront in architectural magazines and websites over the past few years. Here are some examples of the ones I've ran across so far, as always, please feel free to add your own findings in as well.

Juvet Landscape Hotel
Valldal, Norway : Jensen & Skodvin
construction cost : 1.28 million
The outcropping of buildings at Juvet is created by exploding the traditional view of one building with all of the rooms housed in it, instead creating a scattering of smaller rooms set clustered together in the landscape. The rooms are positioned close to each other, but with views tightly constricted to the surrounding forest and not the nearby other vacationers. A series of 40mm steel rods driven into the rock support the minimal material interventions of heavy wooden construction.

Hotel Remota
Patagonia, Chile : German del Sol
construction cost : 10 million
Many of the materials necessary for construction arrived on site by boat, since its location in Patagonia was so difficult to get to. The existing grass that was removed, was kept to form the 24inch layer of earth and plant insulation on the roof of the new hotel [skeptical about this one...].

Explora Hotel
Atacama, Chile : German del Sol
construction cost : ?
The building is raised 3' off of the desert floor with slits cutting the roof and other outdoor areas to allow breezes to flow through the public spaces.

TE Lawrence eat your heart out.

2009-04-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

March 21, 2009:

Woke up after a surprisingly restful sleep on a camel blanket at Al-Karm to set out on a "high mountain" hike with Badri [my Egyptian guide for those of you just joining us]. We ate breakfast with Hoder and said goodbye to the disproportionally large number of Bedouin men manning the camp [there was a 2:1 ratio of workers to campers]. Hoder drove us about 20 minutes in the datsun to the base of a very imposing looking stretch of mountains. After Badri got his morning prayers complete we set out heading right towards a seemingly impassable wall of rock and sand. After walking for about half an hour or so the mountains seemed to shuffle aside visually, allowing us entrance to a narrow pass in between two of the silent sentinels. The TaylorCAM was up and running and after Badri got over his initial laughing fit at a very odd American I explained to him the way it took pictures at an interval of every 5 seconds. I haven't compiled the video yet, but from sampling it looks to be mostly about 2 hours of Badri's backside and a bunch of rocks. Now that's good television.

Just as the batteries on the TaylorCAM were shutting down, we got to our first destination and concurrently, the first break of the day. We had reached one of the inner valleys of the high mountain region known to contain many of the gardens of the Bedouin. The valleys are higher in elevation and protected from much of the harsher winds, and therefore lend themselves to cultivating small amounts of trees and food. The first part we stumbled on was an oasis of sorts, not containing any visible water, but with lush high palm trees providing shade and a stopping place for food and water. This part of the Sinai desert is truly one of the most remote reaches, with access being limited to foot or donkey, even camels have a hard time going up many of the steep trails. Walking on I was struck by the way the gardens were contained. Worried about protecting the precious crops from bored and hungry donkeys, fences and walls are constructed around many of the small fields. Since materials are such a valuable resource in this area, even the boundary conditions are created with a care for the management of the limited means available. A fence is created with scraps of wood held in place by a rock with a single strand of barbed wire connecting them at the height of a donkey's head. After a little bit further we got to a place with a larger number of Bedouin in habitations, meaning you could almost see two within eye shot. Here Badri told me it would be a bad idea to take pictures, but I managed to snap one of a traditional Bedouin traveling garb.

This guy was trucking, and even walking at close to my full speed he easily outdistanced us in a matter of minutes, to veer off to another distant path invisible to my eyes. At around lunch time we stopped at an encampment headed up by strangely enough, Hoder's brother. They invited us to sit down for the customary tea and then we played the very popular "how old do you think I am game". It blew their mind that I was older than all of them except for Hoder's brother, with them quoting my age anywhere from 15-19 and I grossly overestimating their own. They offered to walk us the next part of the way, as they were going to try and make a phone call anyway, with telephone service being about as rare as an ice cream stand in those parts. The next part of the trip was pretty hilarious, as it consisted of four Egyptian men and myself wandering aimlessly around a series of rocky outcroppings holding cellphones up to the sky and shouting at each other. When someone finally got signal, everyone would crowd around their location like an invisible desert phone booth.

We parted ways and a little bit further on Badri showed me a marker he had placed on a previous voyage to show the right path in the barren wasteland. It was a set of rocks stacked on top of each other reminiscent of an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture, equal parts nature with the odd hint of human interaction. Before making it back to camp a few hours later, we stopped at Badri's father's convenience store to chat and stare at the open desert road, occasionally raising our hands to the odd passing truck.

March 22, 2009:

Woke up at the Bedouin camp to a grinning Badri greeting me as I sat down to my early breakfast of beans, cheese, boiled egg, bread and honey. I had asked him to take me by a "Nawamese" village east of St. Catherine on the way to Dahab. Hoder was busy that day, also being a teacher at a local elementary school [Arabic and Math], so it fell to another of Badri's friends, Muhammad, to drive us to our locations. Since we were going outside of St. Catherine's, we had to pass by a series of police checkpoints. To ease the process along Badri came running out of his house with a light purple Jabaliya headdress for me to throw on to avoid questioning. I didn't think it looked convincing, but apparently my darker tan was starting to have some benefits, we cruised through all of the police checkpoints with just a casual wave and me tugging my lilac covering down closer around my non-Egyptian eyes. I learned later this might not have been the best idea had we gotten caught, but luckily everything went on without a hitch and in my head I could almost hear people starting to call me el-awrence like Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia [By the way, I asked numerous people what they thought of the movie in Egypt, and no one had seen it, which definitely shot me down].

Arriving at the site of the Nawamese I was struck by both their size and orientation. A cluster of about 30 or so low stone cylinder structures greeted us on entry. The entrances were all turned to the west, with none at all being visible when walking up. Once you get around to the back side though, the twinkling of dark eye sockets stare back at you in the form of the portals of the Nawamese structures. They are all about 7 feet tall, with many of the entrances having to be crawled through in order to be accessed. The buildings seemed to bubble up from the earth they rested on, low to the ground with thick clay colored walls, they resembled a barnacle on the Earth's crust. One of the things that struck me so mightily when visiting many of the parts of the Sinai peninsula was my inability to trace where buildings started and stopped. So many of them interacted with the landscape in such a primal way I began to question whether the sandy dunes arrived first or the raw stacking of stones to form walls. Even after thousands of years of blowing winds and stinging sand, the Nawamese still stand unmoved, indifferent to the changing governments, floods, and droughts. All past materials in the form of wood and reed forgotten to leave the bleached carcasses of stone with their backs turned, gazing out towards the setting sun.

The sandy plains of Egypt have a near and dear place in their heart for me, and even now I can hear them calling me back with their ancient, raspy voices. I hope to go back there someday to soak in even more of the Bedouin's care for their surroundings and in habitations.

Egyptian Adventures [Part II]

2009-04-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

I'm currently back in SF, CA right now but need to do some serious catching up on backlogged posting. So we're going to continue in Egypt and work our way through Turkey and some road tripping in the USofA.

When we last left off in Egypt, I had just eaten about 4 lbs of chicken at a Bedouin get together, and woke up the next day to go see St. Catherine's Monastery, proclaimed to be the oldest still inhabited monastery in the world. It is also said to be the sight of Moses' flammable plant, with the monastery being built around it's location and the mountain where he delivered the ten commandments about a two or three hour hike away [Mt. Sinai or Mt. Mousa]. The monastery is nestled in the bottom of a valley surrounded by tall rocky mountain ranges and protected from the harsh winds. The landscape around it was stunning, though the actual collection of building themselves were hard to get a feel for due to the massive amount of tourists pouring off of giant charter buses. As soon as you get inside you were swept along in a sea of fanny packs and bad khaki safari hats. Whizzed by priceless paintings and artifacts only to be spat out the opposite end. After I got over my initial claustrophobia gained from tightly packed spaces, I continued onward with the goal of hiking up Mt. Sinai. Luckily for me only of the bravest of the brave air conditioned travelers dare to climb up the hot three hour hike up to the top. Those that do usually take the camel path up riding the spitting four legged beasts. I approached the base of the mountain trail to find a German couple [Leo and Ruth as I was to find out later] argueing with two Egyptian policemen who would not let them pass. They said you have to have a guide in order to go up the mountain, which we thought to be just a way to gouge more money out of tourists looking to climb said rock. Apparently though, they really do require you to have a guide, as there are numorous paths up to the top with no signs marking which is the right way to go. We ended up jumping on with a group of four french women touting ski poles and a nice Bedouin guide that led the way.

On the way up the long and dusty path are small outposts for snacks and drinks ran by Bedouin. Everything has to be brought up to supply them and like good capitalists, the prices inch up the closer and closer you get to the top. The plan of the small shelters is usually always a "U" shape, with the open end of the "U" facing north. The walls are thickly stacked rocks from the surrounding mountain with minimal mortar used, just enough to keep down the often harsh winds, especially during the pre-dawn and post-sunset pilgrimages. Above, the roof is made out of light palm beams and even lighter palm fronds. The front open side is then enclosed again with wooden shelves that also serve as a sun baffle, blocking and bouncing any stray rays that manage to get past the small overhang. After seeing many of the Bedouin structures inhabited in Egypt, you can usually break down the materials into two categories: "Very Heavy" and "Extremely Light". Many of the walls end up being exceedingly thick stone structures, able to block a majority of the wind without teetering, serving as a thermal mass to absorb much of the sun's heat, and having the ability to recess shelves and other items into their deep cavities. In distinct contrast, the roofs and screens all tend to be very delicate, dappling the harsh light, yet still allowing breezes to slip by. Mostly made out of reeds or palm, every once in a while a lightweight steel under-structure is also applied. I made it up to the top of the mountain without too much trouble, though there it was interesting to see old English women shelling out ten pound notes to young egyptian boys to help them get up the last quarter mile of steep steps. After saying "adieu" to my french company and guide, I hustled back down the other way to get up Mt. Sinai, the aptly named Siket Sayidna Musa, or "steps of penitence" that took me only about an hour, but going at an admitted too fast of a pace.

For the next few days I had on my agenda to go visit some Gra Safah "old houses", an ecolodge even deeper in the desert, and a hike in the "high mountain region". To accomplish all of this, it was necessary to get a Bedouin guide to show me where everything was located and make sure I don't end up a bleached pile of bones out in the sand somewhere. That night at the place I was staying, the appropriately named "Bedouin Camp", I went to meet with the local Sheikh of the Jabaliya tribe, Sheikh Mousa. A sheikh is a tribal leader that is looked to for guidance and leadership for all of the members of his tribe, and is an extremely good person to get to know, as I was come to find out later. We sat down with a map with visible north arrow and pointed at different dots for a while till we both seemed satisfied that we knew what we were talking about. Then I figured out through Sheikh Mousa's limited English that he would have a guide come by that night in order to discuss price for the trip and finalize plans. After I had dinner sitting out on the mats with low tables, my future guide popped his head around and introduced himself as Badri. We sat down and drank tea while we talked about what would be possible to do, and when to hike versus drive [tea is always present and they say if you get above ten cups a day then you can start to worry]. There was some confusion at one point and I asked Badri if we could look at a map inside and go over exactly where we were going to visit. We ambled inside and Badri scratched his head when looking at the map, turning it this way and that. Eventually it devolved into him pointing at a location and asking me what it said, then pointing to another and repeating again and again. After it became painfully obvious the Badri could not locate our current position on the map, much less where we were heading I started to get a little freaked out. But as it turns out, many of the Bedouin guides have no need for maps, they are raised around the desert their whole life and know all of the paths and markings by sight, not from our preconceived top-down-north-south-east-west ideal. In fact, Nashwa told me that most Bedouins don't even use the cardinal points to give directions, its usually just broken down into "up" versus "down", meaning which way on the mountain you are heading.

Badri and I had come to an agreement, so the next day himself and his cousin Hoder picked me up in Hoder's old 1981 Datsun to head out into the great white unknown [or at least to me]. On the way to El-Karm Ecolodge [where we were staying for the night] Hoder leans over and tells Badri we have to make a stop first. At a seemingly invisible turnoff point Hoder pulls the car off of the bumpy dirt road to an even bumpier sandy road and drives down a few hills. He is in charge of one of the water wells/gardens that the Bedouin have maintained at hidden locations for hundreds of years in order to make sure they always have enough water and food to survive. Since the modernization of much of Egypt, these gardens are disappearing more and more, but some such as Hoder still upkeep them for the valuable resources they provide. We walked past some Bedouin scarecrows, complete with head scarves, lording over a small vegetable garden. Behind the silent sentinels was a hole open to the sky, carved out of the hard earth about 15 feet deep. Badri and Hoder grabbed a leaky bucket with a rope attached and Mobil Gas container and proceeded to haul load after load of water up into the black gas container. After it was filled up to the desired level we walked over to a shallow concrete basin about 20 feet away that had a spliced black plastic tube sitting in its small confines. As Hober started twisting the pipe open, Badri began pouring little by little of the precious liquid into the bowl, and picking out large pieces of twigs or rock that might get caught in the tubing. After Hober started a water vacuum by holding his thumb on one end, he told me it was going down to the garden where we entered. The irrigation ritual has to be done every day when they have not had much rain, as the well is too low to bring water by itself. We sat watching the glistening water in the summer sun until all that they had hauled up had been drained into the jet black piping. Walking back, I could see the now, though I had not seen it at all before. It was right below the surface to protect it from UV rays, occasionally held down by rocks gathered from the surrounding areas.

Next stop, El Karm Eco-lodge to meet Sheikh Gamil, put our small packs down, and of course, have more tea. After everyone had said hello and caught up with friends and family members [many of the Bedouin are related in one way or another, for instance, Hoder's father was working as a cook at the camp currently] we headed back out to see some of the Gra Safah before the sun set. Gra Safah translates to "old house" in English and are stone structures made with incredibly skill and barely any bonder to speak of. The ruins are clustered together to form a small outcropping, with maybe 25 to 30 structures altogether. They all lie on the Eastern side of the nearby mountain range, being protected from fierce western winds and sun with most all of the openings to get inside facing north, probably covered by wooden doors or cloth that has long since rotted away. The roof now is open to the sky, but originally would have been covered most likely by reeds and valuable scraps of wood that had been grown in one of the protected valleys further up. Besides the one main opening to enter, all of the structures are punctured by numerous ultra small holes to let in light, the keyword here being "numerous" instead of large. The tiny voids are put low on side and high on the other, allowing wind to blow through and drive the hot air up and out and providing a minimal amount of light in besides the doorway. The construction technique behind the stone wall is elementary but incredibly sophisticated in the same breath. The ancient builders started with the heaviest stones to make up their base, and gradually got smaller and lighter as they proceeded upwards. The idea being that even large men would not be able to lift the heavier blocks up very high. Seemingly simple, but then I think back to the way many buildings are currently built, with an overwhelming uniformity in their material as it goes up. The same steel section sometimes used all the way up many stories for presumed ease of use and unwillingness to differentiate between materials and the way they are put together. Some of the Gra Safah are clustered even closer together, sharing walls and possibly made for multiple families to occupy concurrently. One of the dwellings I stumbled upon might have been for a tribal leader, as the construction was even more painstaking, and large thin slabs of stone had been inserted into the wall to become shelves on the inside. At other points in the same structure the stones had been removed and a lintel place above, creating many nooks in a gridded pattern for even more storage. Once the sun started getting more and more sleepy we decided to head back to camp for the night and taste Hoder's father's cooking.

El Karm Ecolodge is a small outcropping of buildings designed by a still yet to be determined French architect in 2002 [I asked everyone I could and checked websites and all I can say with certainty is that he/she is in fact french]. The Ecolodge is run by Sheikh Gamil and can sleep about 16 people at any one time, though they are currently in the process of building several more structures to expand. They have waterless composting toilets and solar hot water heaters and no electricity in the whole camp. As soon as the sun goes down all you can make out are fleeting shadows gliding by with headlamps to light their way to the candlelit bathrooms. In the main dining space, instead of having a few large windows, cues were taken from the surrounding ancient houses, with many more smaller openings creating a seemingly random pattern of light and shadow. Most all of the interiors are kept as cool and dark as possible, with transitional shaded spaces serving most of the activities during the day and into the dusk. Though it worked well in the dining spaces, many of the rooms had trouble getting any light at all with the same philosophy, though ideally you would really only be in there sleeping after a long day of hiking and exploring I would guess.

Thoughts on Traveling #12 : Never needlessly offend anyone in Egypt. There is a very high probability that they will later end up being your sole guide taking you up a dangerous mountain. And call you out on it. And then you'll feel like an idiot.

XTREME!!!.......architecture...

2009-03-31T09:06:00.000-07:00

As the first leg of my leg of my trip is fast approaching [t-minus one day till back in the States] I've understandably been doing a lot of thinking about the future and the next places to visit. I'm in a hostel basement turned bar right now and don't have access to what you could quite call a noteworthy library, so I've had to do with 'ol reliable internet googling. In searching out prospective places to visit, I've ran into a stream of projects under the heading "extreme climatic architecture", or shortened "XTREME Architecture!!!" which is better at grabbing attention I think. Its all about marketing. In vain have I been trying to search "remote construction", "isolated building", or "remote architecture", which usually garners such results as this, though which arguably informative, is definitely lacking on the graphic end. I think they are still using Adobe Paint 2.o.

But back on track, there is a distinctly prominent vein of writing about architecture in extreme climates, or places that are prone to some of the harshest and coldest temperatures, hot/stinging winds, and over saturated rainfalls. As "remote construction" and "extreme environments" usually have much in common, the searching has brought some interesting new projects/proposals to my attention. In instances of extremity, you no longer have the option to ignore the environment around you. You must confront it head on, or risk blundering about and being swept away by the often merciless forces of nature. By being forced to analyze an exaggerated climatic condition, many theories and ideas can be found that are as equally relevant in locations much more temperate than their harshly bitter climatic stepbrothers. Here, in no particular order, are some of the projects I've recently ran across. Please feel free to comment if you have ideas about more buildings/places that fit into this criteria.

[Project (linked)
Place : Architect]

Glacier Museum
Norway : Sverre Fehn

Mammoth Museum
Siberia, Russia : Leeser Architecture

Hotel Tierra Atacama
Atacama Desert, Chile : Rodrigo Searle & Matias Gonzalez

Eso Hotel Cerro Paranal
Atacama Desert, Chile : Auer + Weber Architects

Kyororo Museum of Natural Science
Matsunoyama, Niigata, Japan : Tezuka Architects

Lavarack Barracks
Townsville, Australia : BVN Architecture

Center of Gravity Foundation Hall
Desert Hot Springs, California, USA : Predock_Frane Architects

Bedouin Birthday Party

2009-03-31T00:14:00.000-07:00

Egypt = One of the most amazing experiences of my life. I got into Cairo on Tuesday the 17th, after regrettably saying goodbye to Megan’s wonderful company in Athens to resume traveling solo. I did everything short of hiding her passport [!?!] in order to get her to stay, but somehow she managed to slip away back to the States. After touching down in Cairo I apparently forgot I had the sign that says “tourist” still taped to my back and was swarmed by Egyptians offering taxi rides. I could write a whole novel, or at least an op-ed piece, on Egyptian Taxi Bargaining, but I’ll just say that I’m getting better at it for now. Egypt overpowers your senses. The sun seems somehow brighter and un-tempered by European politeness. Dust invades your nostrils and eyelids while frantic loud sounds come at you from every direction. The sound of “taxi….taxi.taxi….taxi……taxitaxi” is an ongoing phenomenon and it’s not at all uncommon to have three or four grown men standing around you arguing why what they are offering is a good price. All that being said, from first sight I instantly fell in love with Egypt. Perhaps it’s my nostalgia of too many times watching Peter O’Toole and Omar el-Shariff in Lawrence of Arabia, but there seems to be an inherent rough honesty in the sands swirling around the desert landscape that has always drawn me to it.

I decided to grab a plane straight to Sharm el Sheikh, in order to get within shorter distance to my ultimate destination in Egypt, the central/southern end of the Sinai Peninsula. I won’t waste more keystrokes saying anything about “Sharm” other than it is what would happen if Las Vegas and Myrtle Beach, SC had a baby together and raised it on tea and tourists. Don’t ever go there if you can help it, though I do have to say I met one very reliable source that advocates in favor of “The Sharm”. Alright… I’ll give it another shot.

In order not to overload the bandwidth of the entire internet with Egyptian Travel stories, I’m just going to list off story topics with the suggested drink I should be bought before/during telling said story so we can get on with the good stuff.

Taxi Ride From Sharm to St. Katherine [police corruption, haggling, no gas, language lesson] = Whiskey
Craft Center [Nashwa & crew, earth bags w/ barbed wire, pickup truck, Bedouin tent] = Guinness
“Bedouin” Birthday Party [chicken, Egyptian guitar, English cat caretaker, horoscopes] = Sierra Nevada
Mt. Sinai/Mt. Moses [Germans, fanny packs, steps] = Long Island Iced Tea
Nawamese Day [Bedouin head wrap, more police, hobbit doors] = Glass of red wine

The real reason I was in Egypt however was the Sinai Peninsula. It’s located east of Cairo and is separated from the main portion of Egypt by the Gulf of Suez. The interior particularly is unique in that it is at a higher altitude than most of the rest of Egypt and is subject to mildly hot days, but very cold nights, and cut by high mountains criss-crossing over each other to create protected valleys. One of Berkeley’s best and brightest, Momen El-Husseiny, put me in contact with his good friend Nashwa Ibrahim, who is heading up a team to teach [and learn] construction techniques with the local Bedouin tribe, the Jabaliya. The organization is called The Egyptian Earth Construction Association [EECA] and has as its noble mantra : “The act of building, if appropriate, has the potential of improving our built environment while preserving our non-renewable natural resources. It is our mission and the responsibility of all who are involved in the building process in Egypt, to apply appropriate building technologies that : use local building materials, utilize renewable sources of energy and implement energy saving techniques, and harmonize with the environment and play a part in the development of local communities.” Nashwa, as well as fellow officemates/friends AbdulRahman El-Taliawi, Moushira Elamrawy, and everyone else involved with the project were without a doubt the warmest people I have come in contact with on my travels [and most any other time for that matter], treating me as part of their family, feeding me, driving me around, answering all of my interested [albeit ignorant] questions, and finally inviting me to an amazing birthday dinner the very first night I was in town! The project they are working on has a little bit of everything in it. At some moments it is a material exploration of construction techniques, at others it seeks to provide design guidance and drawings, and also actual construction of several projects [including a craft center and eco-lodge]. They are working heavily with the local Bedouin tribe of Jabaliya to learn from and educate on how to upgrade existing building techniques that have been proven through centuries of harsh desert survival. Bedouin are a nomadic tribal people still very much present in contemporary Egypt. They are some of the few that know the unmarked/unmapped desert trails and how to survive in the unforgiving desert, as they have been doing so for thousands of years.

Two of the many building techniques that the EECA are beginning to explore in the most isolated part of Egypt are “earth bags” and “rammed earth” construction. Though rammed earth building has grown in prominence in much of southwest United States, it surprisingly hasn’t been used much at all in Egypt, even though sometimes one of the only present materials is earth. Rammed earth walls are made by setting up either wooden or metal formwork similar to concrete, then mixing 10 parts earth, 1 part cement, and 3 parts water together [their recipe]. Then the earthen mix is compressed layer by layer with a ramming tool. They first tried to use a heavy pneumatic tool that requires a loud, wheezy generator and compressor, but the Bedouins understandably didn’t like the fierce noise piercing the tranquil desert silence, plus the mobility of the heavy machinery was a big concern. In the end, manually ramming the mix down by two laborers produces close to the same result in the same amount of time without the added cost and weight of more “advanced” tools.

The other technique being explored started up the very day I arrived on site. The method is referred to as “Earthbag” construction and is composed of only four different materials: earth, plastic bags, barbed wire, and plaster. What happens for building an earthbag wall is the following: The white plastic bags are filled with loose sandy earth from the site, tied, and then lined up end to end to form the base course. Next, strips of barbed wire are laid in lieu of mortar in between every layer of bags, holding them together and providing some lateral structural stability. After the courses rise to the required height, the whole wall is then plastered in order to protect the plastic from UV deterioration as well as tie everything together structurally. One of the advantages of this type of construction is not only its minimal cost and resource use, but also its mobility. There is some debate on the subject, but the most a camel can realistically carry is somewhere between 350 and 500 kilograms, which means carrying large stones or other heavy building materials large distances can become a big concern. In many parts in central Sinai [particularly the “high mountain” region], the only way to access many locations is either by foot or camel. If the material carried could be lessened, construction would be able to take place at even more remote, previously inaccessible areas. In the case of earthbag construction, all that really has to be carried are plastic bags, coils of barbed wire, a few cutting tools, and plaster equipment. A heavy construction technique then becomes extremely light by comparison, still providing thick structural thermal mass at a minimum of environmental impact and resource waste.

warming ourselves by our "fire"

That same night after I had just met everyone for the first time, they were nice enough to invite me out to celebrate Nashwa’s birthday, with great food and music from an “oud” [a traditional Egyptian instrument]. Moushira cooked an incredible chicken even though she is a vegetarian and retired vegan. She said it was her first time trying but that has to be a lie, it was too good. It was an amazing experience and I was sad to see them have to go back to the “big city” [they work for about 30 days in Sinai and then have 10 pseudo-vacation days back in their respective cities, Cairo and Alexandria], though luckily I got to see Nashwa and Abdul again in Cairo later.

Thoughts on Traveling #11 : The secret to Egyptian Taxi Bartering. First off, be Egyptian, that will make it much easier. However if you were cursed with fair skin and a limited knowledge of Arabic like myself, there are a few things you can do to ease the price down. One thing to know, taxis do not have meters in them, so unless you know the rough price where you’re going beforehand and act really confident, you’re going to get semi-ripped off. The “best” thing to do is not have a bookbag on and just get inside and tell the driver where you’re going, then give them the “right” amount of money when you get out. If that proves to be impossible, you’ll have to haggle them down. Here’s what I do: listen to the first offer someone gives you, then basically walk away and figure you can get about half of that price with someone else. Next person that approaches offer about 1/3 of what the first guy said in the hopes that you can get it down to around half of the original price. It’s a messed up system maybe, but I actually got to enjoy it. Or, if you’re really lucky, you can meet some nice people that will give you a really good price just to be good samaritans, but those are much harder to find.

For Uncle Stephen and Dad:
typical Bedouin breakfast [beans, feta cheese, honey/jam, bread, hardboiled egg]

Construction Workers and Guard Dogs

2009-03-29T01:30:00.000-07:00

Sadly, my sister Whitney had to head back to the States after her all too short trip, but luckily my girlfriend Megan was able to come visit near the same time, so that they overlapped by about a day. We all spent one great afternoon and night in Athens, though missed getting to see the Acropolis, sorry Whit! [Who knew it closed at 3?] Megan and I left the hustle and bustle of Athens to jump on a ferry resembling a cruise ship to head to the distant island of Santorini. Santorini is generally heralded as the premier tourist destination of all of the Greek islands, and rightly so I think, its one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. A series of three volcanoes erupted long ago, heaving up ash and soot and creating a caldera, or interior body of water surrounded by steep rocky cliffs. Since our trip was so early in the season though, a few things were different on the island. Mainly that we were the only people there that were not construction workers, Santorini natives, or dogs. It was an odd time to be there but ended up working out perfect for research, since we had a front row seat to investigate the construction techniques used in the re-crafting of the island. We seemed to trade the noise of loud obnoxious tourists for the soothing sounds of heavy jackhammers and grinding hammer-drills. Though not often seen by visitors to the island, the whole village of Oia [where we were staying], goes through a complete rebirth of buildings. The air is a buzz of workers re-painting houses, mixing concrete, and donkeys braying carrying heavy loads down to construction sites. There are only about four months where the entire island is not overrun with tourists and workers must jump on the opportunity to do all of the repairs and new building for the whole of the coming year. It calls to mind the image of the phoenix, when spent and turned to ashes bursting forth in a blaze of new fiery glory. Many of the buildings being refurbished looked like they hadn't been touched in years, but in truth it appears that island life is much harder on the upkeep than many would like to admit. A week or so after we were to leave, our Bulgarian bodyguard/handyman Vicilis promised that all of the buildings would be back to the blindingly bone white so notorious for Santorini pictures.

The small village of Oia is similar to the Greek island of Hydra in that its roads are so narrow and steep that only donkeys and a few other forms of manual transport are used to bring all of the materials necessary for construction down to the sites. This means a few things for the buildings of Santorini. First off, long pieces of material, such as timber or steel are not only hard to acquire on the barren volcanic island, but they are also incredibly difficult to carry down the winding paths. For these reasons, as well as others, most all of the buildings are made out of materials easy to break apart into smaller pieces. Instead of using large unwieldy sheet material, the buildings are crafted out of concrete, small stones, short lengths of steel, and plaster, all smaller and easier to be loaded into the large canvas bags carried by donkeys.

The construction and therefore the finished architecture becomes tied directly to the landscape and materials present at a site such as Oia. Some of the other methods of carrying include wheelbarrows, mechanized buggies, wooden chutes for dropping loads, and of course, the strong backs of many of the workers.

Another interesting part about the whole of the island is the prominence of the concrete half complete shells of houses dotting the coastline on the side not facing the caldera. They are everywhere seemingly, the flat-gray floors, roofs, and columns already in place and just waiting for the next step of infill it would seem. But I've been a lot of construction sites in my relatively limited years, and have never seen any that clean [unless its being run by George Medlin]. The hollow shells looked as if the often prophesied day of reckoning had already came, accidentally sweeping up workers with hard hats and leaving their tools to decay to dust with time and exposed steel to rust. I assumed the stalled construction was a bi-product of the economic downturn, but after talking with an extremely reliable source [the internet cafe guy who is a born and bred Santorini native] I believe it has to do more with property tax. He related to me that there is not the same idea of property tax on Santorini [and maybe all of Greece?] as we have in the States. Instead of paying a certain percentage of the value every year no matter what, you only pay a utility tax tied to if you are using water or not [to prove no one is living there]. There is also a different loan system, as many families don't take out the whole cost of the house to pay back, but rather wait till they have enough money for the next stage of construction, even if it is years down the road [and it often is]. Because of both of these different situations there is, I would dare to say, an overabundance of bleached concrete fossils now native to the island. Most all of them have poles of rebar still poking their gleaming metallic heads out of the concrete, impatiently awaiting the next pour. When the house is finally completed, they are still sometimes either left or capped, in case the family wants to expand another level or bedroom later. I believe part of Oia's organic flow of structures and paths is due directly to the prolonged pace of building, allowing workers to take their time as well as happen onto an old project years later.

Oia was an incredible experience, though I think most all of it was due to the company of Megan and arguably the best breakfast patio on the whole island. To aid us getting around the island, we unwittingly enlisted the help of a pack of wandering dogs. From the best of my understanding, the scenario went as follows: Our first day there Megan was nice to one of the aforementioned canines on the way down to drop off our bags. There are as far as I can tell, at least three distinctly different territories managed by separate packs of dogs in our small village. The ones that took it upon themselves to be our protectors occupied the middle ground, stretching all the way from the internet cafe and green church bells to near the windmills near the tip to the north. I think they took it as a chance for raiding into neighboring territories every time I went to go get a pastry in the morning. We would walk up from our apartment to the main street, where "Nomad" and "Count Adamar von Lichtenstein" would be seemingly napping by the side of one of the houses. Seconds after passing your ears could pick up the padding footsteps following closely behind. If there were any other people walking on the same side street [and there always were] the dogs would amble forth and commence barking at them non stop until they deemed we were a safe distance away from the threatening flower lady or malicious schoolkid with SpongeBob lunchbox. At one point they even went so far as to back a Greek construction worker talking on a cell phone into a corner so that he couldn't even complete his call. Of course, at first all of this strange red carpet treatment feels flattering, if not slightly laden with guilt. But after about 4 days of this non-stop it came to the point where I would actively seek alternative routes to the local internet spot, though magically our guardians would always manage to find which way I was taking, trotting alongside with heads held high and tongues wagging in reference to their good deeds.

Thoughts on Traveling #10 : Upon foreign strangers asking me the always-always-always first question "Where are you from?", there are several responses that can take place. If I say "United States" or "America" there is a 93% chance of "OhhBammahh!", while if I reply with "California" there is an moderately heightened probability of "Swcharzenegga", and every once in a while, every so often... "Terminator!!!". If I say "North Carolina" they just stare at me blankly. So I usually just create an obviously fictitious country name like "Iceland" as my comeback.

TaylorCAM [vr. 001]

2009-03-28T13:32:00.001-07:00

As promised, the first online look at the "TaylorCAM". Constructed from a modified US Army paratrooper's rig from Korea, its basically guaranteed to get me thrown in somesort of scary foreign jail [just kidding]. The military harness was customized by the addition of another set of straps and elastic bands with the help of the capable fingers of Berkeley's own Kim Suczynski. In the middle of the apparatus is a Canon PowerShot SD400 bought from a very nice Asian man on craigslist.org for 60 dollars. After hacking into the camera with the aid of the good guys at CHDK [Canon Hacker's Development Kit], the camera was re-tooled to be able to take a picture at an interval of every so many seconds. Right now its set up to take a picture every 10 seconds, to be compiled into a video on photoshop later. Unfortunately my mini-mini-laptop I'm carrying around won't do the video right now so all I've got is stills until I get home.

The TaylorCAM was devised for my thesis prep course last semester at UC Berkeley as an experiment in the invasion of privacy into the life of myself and others. It was meant to look at the question of "Is anyone truly alone anymore?", but has luckily since morphed into the task of documenting parts of my travels to the remote locations. The photo stills below are taken from a hike in the "High Mountain" region of the Sinai Peninsula with my Bedouin guide Badri. The ultimate goal of the hike was to get an up close look at the secret Bedouin "gardens" hidden in the valleys, painstakingly constructed over generations as a way to grow food and live in a hostile environment. I'm hoping to get another set in tomorrow in a hike to the "Fairy Chimneys" of Goreme, Turkey, where I'm currently at.

Lazy Monks

2009-03-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

Whit and I left our affectionate donkeys, cats, and islands to head into the heart of Greece, northeast of Athens. The destination was Meteora, a place with even more rocks and monks, this time luckily in the same place. Just to recap quickly and add to the confusion already present, so far in the travel blog there have been writings on Madeira – Portugal, Matera – Italy, and Meteora – Greece. I can’t even really keep them straight at this point, but suffice to say they are all different locations. Meteora is in the mountainous region of Greece and was at one point a gigantic lake ringed by a tall mountain range. Eventually one of the surrounding mountains split open and let all of the water in the lake run out to the neighboring regions, leaving many of the rocks in the middle of the lake smooth towering spires of stone rising thousands of feet in the air. Eventually the stone towers became home to hermits living alone in the cracks and nooks where they could find shelter and a life of isolation. Further and further they would climb up, sometimes only coming down for resupplies of food once or twice a month. In time the hermits were united under the banner of Christianity and banded together to form one of the first monasteries of the region, naming it the “Grand Meteoran” and leading into the naming of the whole outcropping as “Meteora”.

There are many theories of how the first monks were able to get the initial materials up to the top of the un-climbable cliffs, but my personal favorite one is that they flew kites attached with light ropes to the top, then used the small ropes to haul up larger ones, eventually creating rope ladders and a complex pulley system for hauling up monks and materials. Like Oscar Wilde, my theory on factual information is that I'll believe anything more interesting, the more outlandish the story, the more truthful it becomes by sheer intrigue. So we'll go with the kite scenario. In reality though, it was probably closer to a series of wood/rope ladders worked up slowly, as can still be seen in the image in the very bottom of the post.

About 6 of the original 18 monasteries are functioning today [we were able to get into only four due to really odd scheduled open hours]. It used to be that the only way to access most of them was either rope ladder, a large net brought up by a pulley, or a small gondola like machine. Only in the 1920’s and 30’s were the stone staircases created to bring tourists up to the heights, before that the monks lived in relative isolation. Why the need for escapism? Why not live down in the valley like normal people and just build higher walls? There is a profound beauty that surpasses standard notions of a "nice view" when you get up to the top of one of the monasteries. A stillness of sound pervades the air and the villages below turn into abstract canvases flecked with a muted palette of colors.

In the frantic pace of many of the metropolitan areas, I sometimes forget that spaces still exist that are apart from the elbow bumping and car horns. As cities expand outwards even more and the human population increases what happens to our spaces of isolation and stillness? Do they then become even more precious by their relative scarcity and lack of availability? Does quiet become something that is as easily commodifiable as bottled water? Quiet bars maybe? Crazy thoughts perhaps, but I've become more aware on my travels of the people, similar to those brave sailors striking out in the great blue nothing in Moby Dick, that actively seek out these spaces of remoteness and extremity. Monasteries in particular are one of the few buildings that necessitate a certain amount of space for reflection and contemplation. The trial of actually getting to the places is half of their architectural power I believe. It's similar to a hot bowl of Zataran's Rice and Beans with beef jerky thrown after a day of long hiking in the rain [Matt F. I'm looking in your direction here]. At the grueling end of a journey, anything tastes better than than nothing, though in that case it was really good beans and rice. In order to record the process of actually getting to these remote environments, I've gotten the "TaylorCAM" up and running again after some more initial testing. Whats the TaylorCAM you ask? Images to come soon, but suffice to say it makes me look like a terrorist and takes a bunch of pictures.

Oh, and there has been some confusion about my flickr photos [mainly because the link is more or less hidden], but if you hunger for more pictures you can click the ".Flickr Pictures! Hooray!" link on the right side of the website or just click here to stare at colored pixels to your hearts content. The photos are also organized in sets broken down to country on the right side of the flickr page if you want to search that way.

Thoughts on Traveling #9 : Using the word "special" to describe something only makes it special the first 10 times or so. Whitney and I found this out after our pension [hotel] owner used it on everything from dinner, wine, his fire, prices, books, and I think at one point his mother's laundry skills. By the way, this blog is "special".

I need to buy a thick coat with a fur hood

2009-03-27T01:46:00.000-07:00

"Ice Cube" Research Station - United States

"HalleyVI" Research Station - England

German Research Station

Chinese Research Station

Belgium Research Station

I'm currently sitting down at breakfast after taking an overnight train from Istanbul to a place called Goreme, Turkey. Overnight buses are notoriously hard to sleep on, especially when they are blaring 3:10 to Yuma in Turkish with no English subtitles, and I fear my "NesCoffee" is just not strong enough this morning. Nevertheless, I've ran across more and more reasons that I have to try and get to our southern sister continent, Antartica. Not only is there a relatively new American Research Station at the South Pole, but it seems the Brits have jumped on board holding a recent competition for the HalleyVI Research Station for the island under down under as well. Antartica is smartly thought to be one of the most extreme, environmentally hostile, and remote environments in the world. Psychologically draining as well as physically exhausting to be in for extended periods of time. I just missed a competition to design a new research station apparently and the winners should have been presented a few days ago, though I haven't been able to find any images yet.

I have to look more into it financially, but getting down to the icy tip of the world would be incredibly worthwhile to be able to study the environments first hand I think. Have to go now and get settled, but more blog updates coming soon.

The Isle of Hydra, misleadingly, does not have any magical creatures

2009-03-25T18:04:00.000-07:00

I left Alberobello, Italy with a stuffy nose but happy to know I was meeting up with my sister Whitney in Athens, Greece in a few days. After traveling alone for over a month it was so great to see a familiar face, though I felt bad for making Whitney carry twice her body weight to Europe and back with things I had forgotten or wanted to send home. We tried unsuccessfully to eat "Greek" food in Athens and headed first to the island of Hydra, a two hour hydrofoil ride from Athens. Our definition of Greek food might have been skewed though, and it was probably more similar to an American going to Spain and demanding a Nachos Supreme with extra sour cream.

The isle of Hydra is very small in size when compared to most other Greek islands and is unique in that it does not allow any motorized vehicle transportation at all [excluding the three garbage trucks that are used to maintain the entire island]. Even bicycles aren’t used, though we could never figure out if it was just due to the frequent elevation changes or if they were actually outlawed, though I would guess the former. The latter sounds like a bad anti-public transportation "Big Brother" mentality. So the modes of transportation available on land come down to your own two feet or a donkey. The removal of the automobile has had drastic effects on the makeup of building on the island as well as the infrastructure. Besides having slightly more feces on the ground than a North Carolina State Fair, it is also completely devoid of asphalt [the material needing a heavy steam roller to be done properly for roads]. Breaking the heavy shackles of car reliance has allowed the streets and stairs of the island to become one and the same; a marriage of ramps, portals, bridges, and landings.

When you first get into the port you assume the donkeys to be a quick way to make a few bucks off of foreigners, but in reality, they are an extremely integral part of the movement of goods and people. All building supplies for new structures or repairs are carried in large bags on the sides of the four-legged trudging animals. Eyor, one of the best characters ever created [in my opinion], aptly sums up donkeys, as they all seem extremely depressed. Just looking into their eyes makes you want to cry, and I’ve heard they have the second highest suicide rates under dentists. Most of the density of the island happens near the edges of the water, as the higher you go, the more difficult it is to move materials. There are only three main villages and the rest of the island remains basically uninhabited near the center. Whitney and I went for a hike into the interior and only saw one unusually nice monk, eight dirty sheep, and 112 hoboesque cats the whole day.

Besides its raw untamed landscape though, the real beauty of Hydra lies in its connections between buildings. Since the car is taken out of the equation, the paths are freed to move with the topography and morph into each other. Many of the large streets that run up the hills also double as a rudimentary storm water drainage system. Instead of channeling the water underground, the entire street is lowered about two feet below most other paths and brings the water out directly into the ocean. Some roads split as if a fissure opened up the earth separating them in two, many times to create one steeper stair for humans and one lower grade one for donkeys.

In his book on stairs, Charles Moore talks about the importance of the spaces of circulation to not only move people from one point to the other, but to create spaces for gathering and inhabitation. Streets slowly become ramps, which in turn go higher and transition seamlessly into stairs, with some places incredibly hard to define because of their complexity of grade change. The late and great Louis Kahn regarded the street as the room of the city, with the walls being the buildings and the ceiling the sky, and Hydra looks to be taking that comment seriously.

Thoughts on Traveling #8 : Kids in Southern Europe do not wait for holidays to dress up in costumes. They do it during the day, and they do it often. Check out Zorro about to snag this guy.

Lag time.

2009-03-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

Its been almost a full moon since my last blog post b/c the internet out here has been killing me with its creeping, crawling, dragging pace. I haven't been able to upload images to either flickr or the blog its so bad. As I'm attempting to be a good blog host however, I'll try to give an extremely abbreviated update on what I've been up to for the last few weeks with the carrot dangling promise that I'll be able to get the blog posts online soon. Then I'll leave you with a few passages by men who know much better than I how to twist the tongue and dip the quill.

Since the last post I was joined by my sister Whitney in Greece for about a week, visiting the small yet steep island of Hydra with its shy donkeys and numerous cats. After that we were off to Meteora, Greece, a place north of Athens that is known for its monasteries perched precariously on top of steep stone pillars. Heading back to Athens, we were joined by my girlfriend Megan and able to spend a day or two together before Whit had to head back to the States and school. Megan and I shipped out to join a very protective pack of dogs and loud construction workers for a bit on the Greek isle of Santorini, getting numerous free gifts by being the first "customers" of the year. It was so wonderful to see familiar faces and be able to speak English in full sentences with border line good grammar. I was off solo again to Egypt, where I currently am right now. Most of the week was spent with an incredible architect and new friend named Nashwa Ibrahim in the Sinai Peninsula near St. Katherine's Monastery in a small town named El Milkah. She as well as some other passionate individuals are doing a lot of experimental construction techniques using the local Bedouin tradition of building. Now I'm back in Cairo for one more night before I head off to Turkey for the next quick leg. Sorry for the super quick snippets but look forward to adding more very soon!

Here are the previously promised quotes I've ran across on my train/bus reading. Its odd that when you have something on your brain it always manages to pop up into whatever you're reading over.

"It is true, there are innocent pleasures of country life, and it is sometimes pleasant to make the earth yield her increase, and gather the fruits in their season, but the heroic spirit will not fail to dream of remoter requirements and more rugged paths."

-Henry David Thoreau

"With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts."

-Herman Melville

Alberobello, Italy - Trulli Houses

2009-03-10T08:06:00.000-07:00

After leaving Matera, Italy and the kind, yet creepy hospitality of Bruno’s Bed and Breakfast, I headed east to Alberobello, another small town in the southern region of Italy. Alberobello, is known for its mortar-less stone hut style of building called “Trulli”, or as Megan refers to them, “Smurf Houses”. It is one of the few regions in the world with this particular building form, besides some in France and Arab nations, though Alberobello has arguably the highest concentration of the interesting conical stone houses. The odd form alone warranted investigation and I wanted to know more about why it was regional to this spot in the world, how their construction and sense of place were related, and what it was like inside the small structures. I got my last wish rather quickly as I ended up staying in one of the older trullis in the tiny town [Alberobello has about 10,000 people and you can walk from one end of the other of the main part of town in about 15 minutes]. The trulli I was staying in was almost 400 years old and located in the eastern end of the two main trulli outcroppings. As you can probably guess from the outside, the interior is incredibly small as well, mine consisting of a main room that had a bed and random wooden furniture with a lower smaller nook to the side for the hobbit-like bathroom. There were only two openings to the outside, one being a 6 inch by 6 inch square window and the other the half of the door that had a large wooden shutter on it for light or privacy, depending on the circumstance.

The company that was renting me the trulli had a great tour guide named Francesco who was an Alberobello native born and bred and pronounced his “yes” like “yesh”, but otherwise had surprisingly great English for Southern Italy. He took me and four other interested Japanese architectural students on a long walk the first night I was there to explain the history of the town and the trulli. To my surprise the town is pretty young [“young” in Europe being less than half a millennium] and was settled in the 16th century. The Count that originally owned the land erected the town with the tried and true practice of tax evasion. The rumor I heard before I went was that the trullis were designed to be erected and taken down in the matter of a day, so if someone saw the tax man from the king coming, all the villagers would take their houses apart to prove that they weren’t living there. This proved to be impossible, as a trulli even back in the day took at least 3 months to construct. The real reason for their construction technique was that by using no mortar in their stone stacking, the Count was able to persuade the King that they were not real living quarters, just storage [many of them started this way] and thereby not have to pay dues to his liege. He did not tell this to his workers however, and collected the taxes on their houses himself. So the trulli [in Alberobello’s case] were originally built as farm storage and then later used for the housing of the poor workers, who were more or less treated like slaves.

As you can imagine this would not often lead to great living conditions, as the trulli themselves were supposed to look like temporary storage and not actual housing. From living in one for several days I can attest to their extreme cold nature in the winter as well as their lack of natural daylight and ventilation. I was sick most of the whole time I was in the town and shouldn’t blame it all on the trulli, though I will since I harbor ill-founded grudges and still sneeze every once in a while. The trulli are built on no foundation usually with a double wall condition. The interior stone wall is built first and then the outer one second with a gap in-between that is filled with loose rubble. The cone shaped roof is structurally very stable, sometimes using wooden cross beams to reinforce laterally, though piercing the roof for openings proves to be hard since they rely on a continuous circular shape to distribute the weight, which is why light is very hard to get into the thickly walled homes.

All in all I was sadly disappointed by the trulli as a building type. In terms of their construction it is incredibly interesting, especially before 1797 when mortar was still outlawed and it was illegal to use any “binders” in the town. But the actual living conditions themselves are pretty shoddy sometimes and don’t lead to a better source of light, air, and heat. Most of the trulli in the town are used for shops now, or museums, with only a lesser percentage being still inhabited on a normal basis. Many homes have incorporated the “trulli style” to various parts of their classical Italian style villas, but more of an add-on than anything else. There is a ban on building new truillis [to prevent spoiling the quaintness] and the older ones can only be maintained, though from their look and the tourist revenue they are bringing in, I’m sure that will continue. To be fair, the vast majority of trulli that still remain are used as they were originally intended. As I pressed my face to the window of the rumbling departing train, I could see them dotting the fields of countless farmland passed by. Their washed and worn gray faces quietly regarding what was going on around them with a look of rocky indifference.

Thoughts on Traveling #7 : You’d be amazed how much other countries keep up with American government. In a large parade in a town in Southern Italy, there were two floats showing American political figures, and only one of the Italian governments. Here is how Italy sees Obama:

"Feeling Sassi?"

2009-03-06T06:17:00.000-08:00

Thankfully, I can’t take credit for the horrible title of this blog entry. It actually came from an article by the Washington Post, and not that I ever did before, but I now vow to never read it. The title of the article is referring to the “Sassi” of Matera, Italy [literally meaning “Stones of Matera”]. The sassi have a pretty loose definition from what I can tell, but usually refer to caves dwellings dug out of the earth that many times date back to the Neolithic era. Matera is a rather small town in Southern Italy, and the majority of the sassi are along the steep walled ravine called “La Gravina” that runs along the eastern side of the old city center. On the west side of the bank are the dense ancient stone houses and more recent sassi, while the east bank is home to uninhabited sassi tucked alongside giant boulders and worn footpaths. The cave dwellings are said to be the first signs of human occupation in the world [bold faced lie] but are most likely among the oldest still inhabited dwellings in the world.

I stayed at a cheap, though beautiful hostel the first night with an aloof Italian concierge, but since they had a whole school renting out the premises for the next night, I had to find alternative place to rest my head for the following two nights. There was a sign resembling an aged bumper sticker for a bed and breakfast on a lamp post that I took to be a good omen and therefore gave a call. After haggling about the price for a few moments I agreed that I would stay there and grabbed my luggage to head over. The only reason I even mention this relatively small occurrence is because it led to me meeting the host of my board, the great Bruno. Little did I know that this man would teach me more about the town, its history, and Cuban women, than I would care to fathom. Bruno is a jazz trumpet teacher and retired communist. I know the communist bit because I asked him if he was religious, to which he replied, “No, my father was un communiste”. I understandably asked if you couldn’t be both and he answered, “No…no I don’t think so…” So that settles that debate. As far as I could gather [through lots of questioning and cross examining] the status of the apartment was as follows: Bruno lived there and rented out the room with a piano and other musical items as a bed and breakfast. In one of the other rooms his brother’s Cuban ex-wife and child, named Pasqualino, were staying for a few nights. The last room was occupied by the same brother’s current Cuban girlfriend. Where was the brother you ask? In Cuba, getting a new girlfriend. The first night I stayed at the B&B de Bruno he lamented to me for about an hour over a Panini and beers about the downfalls and hardships of dating Cuban women. I eventually asked if he had a girlfriend and he told me, “Yes, but she live in Cuba right now.” For all of his interesting domestic affairs he was an incredibly gracious host, offering me constant tea, coffee, and wine as well as eventually driving me halfway to the next town I was going to. And a damn fine trumpet player to boot.

But the real reason I was in Matera was not to find out how to acquire a Cuban girlfriend. By the way, if you’re in Cuba as a tourist, you have to quite literally register your girlfriend/boyfriend if you find one there. Apparently it’s done to curb the prostitution trade, but all the same you both have to go fill out information saying you’re dating at a government institution, otherwise you’ll be stopped and questioned by the police. Okay, the Cuban promiscuity lesson is over, we’re on to stone caves. The ‘sassi’ cave dwellings in the city were occupied until the 1950’s, when the Italian government turned everyone out and claimed the land once again. The people living in the sassi were mostly all poor and did not have running water or sewer systems, so malaria was starting to turn up. It was looked on as taboo in society to live in one, being it was public land and mostly occupied through squatter rights mentality. In the 1950’s the total size of the city was 30,000 people, with 15,000 of them living in sassi dwellings. So the removal of half of the population was a very big deal and lead to many people migrating to neighboring towns. Though people couldn’t live in the sassi technically after the government intervention, Bruno told me you could still “take a sassi” up until the late 80’s. Bruno himself “took” one for trumpet playing for some months. It was public land still and you could basically just claim it for use and other people would probably respect it and move on. But in the 1990’s Matera’s Sassi were added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list and therefore began an extensive refurbishing of the old center and its cave dwellings. After that moment many of the sassi on the west bank were fenced in so they could not be occupied at all [though a lot of dogs were locked in behind the iron bars, never did figure out how that worked]. There are construction sites claiming every other building it seems like, and the town is filled with the sounds of drills and saws during the day. Though the sassi near the river are still sitting idly by behind steel fences, it looks as if the rest of the city is in a state of great rebirth. I didn’t stay long enough to see how the gentrification process will play out, with old families being pushed aside to make way for bars and souvenir shops, but only time will tell.

Most of my time in Matera was spent on the opposite side of the ravine however, where the ancient sassi were located. To get there you had to descend about 100m straight down and then ford the fast moving water at the bottom. Both days I dared crossing ended with me having wet socks and bruised shins on the way walk home. The eastern side of the hill is populated by black openings all along the steep cliffs. Most of the caves in the last dozen centuries or so have been used by sheep herders to get their flock out of the rain and not as actual dwellings. One of the reasons it was settled long ago, besides weather and available access to fresh water was the type of rock most of the mountains are composed of. The rock is called “tuff” or “tufa” depending on who you talk to, and is a very soft, easy to break substance. This allowed for the carving of the dwellings with not very sophisticated tools, yet still provided good structural stability as many of the caves go back fifty feet or so into the mountain. As rocks were excavated from inside the cave, they were then used to build walls outside of the opening, thereby reusing much of the material used in the relatively simple construction process. The sassi at some point become pretty advanced, with multiple rooms connected by openings in the back, a skylight/smoke flue in the middle of every room, and shelves and seating carved out of the thick stone. The tufa rock also provides a good surface to bounce light off of, as it is almost white when carved away and most of the caves are unusually bright, even with only one or two light sources. I didn’t stay long in Matera, just a few days, and I moved on to Alberobello, Italy about 40km to the east of Matera studying the trulli stone houses. As I'm posting this my sister Whitney and I just got done exploring the cliff top monasteries of Meteora, Greece! We're at an internet cafe entitled "Surf City" in Kalampaka and internet has been hard to come by still, but hopefully new posts soon. Megan, my girlfriend, is coming out for a week as well to give me some much needed company. Needless to say, when your main source of conversation is your trumpet playing, Cuban dating, communist hotel owner, you tend to get a little lonely.

Thoughts on Traveling #6 : If you're alone and you see a stray dog in a field, don’t whistle. The chances of him having about seven stray friends is very high.

Space is the Place

2009-02-28T13:11:00.001-08:00

Spaceport - New Mexico, Foster + Partners

I've had "Space" on my brain for the last few days so I'm going to throw onto the blog some of the recent stuff I've run across so I don't lose it. By the way, isn't "Outer Space" just about the most uncreative name you could ever think of for the area that is in between planets? Or maybe it’s just perfect... I'm going to be referring to it from now on as "In-Between Area Outside Of Our Atmosphere Also Excluding Other Planets" or IBAOOOAAEOP for short. It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

My recent mental turn to the outer reaches came after doing some thinking on my topic and what I've been studying so far. It’s been about a month since I've been traveling, so it seems fitting to do some reflective thinking on what has happened so far and what lies ahead. I've had the rare and oh so grateful opportunity to see wonders which I never thought I would behold, met people that broadened my outlook more than my meager words could do them justice, and overall have had an amazing and profound experience. Being this grateful though also means you want to spend your borrowed time wisely, and so now I've been thinking on the steps ahead. This is as much for my own personal mental house cleaning as anything else, but I hope those that are reading will also find some interest in it, and like always, please feel free to comment or email with thoughts of your own. I've been fortunate so far to hear many friends and family's take on what I should be looking into. One close family member heard I was going to Greece and asked if I could get John Travolta's autograph, though that might prove to be difficult as well as a horrible joke. Thanks Dad.

So up to this point in the architectural odyssey I've looked into the past a great deal. There has been some recent work studied in depth such as the Nasrid Wall Addition, La Tourette Monastery, and the lucky discovery of Paulo David's work, but the majority has been investigating ways of building in more or less ancient contexts [The blog posts for Matera and Alberobello, Italy are good examples and should be posted as soon as I get a stronger internet connection for uploading pictures]. I wish to delve a little deeper into how many ancient civilizations have handled far distances to resources so I've set my sights on Greece : Meteora [Monasteries said to have used kites to haul the first ladders up to steep unreachable cliffs] and Islands [Separation from resources leads to a difference or simultaneity of construction?]. After that is Egypt : The Bedouin [Tribe of desert nomads still living in relative isolation in the Sinai Desert] and St. Catherine's Monastery [Oldest known monastery in the world in the middle of the desert, said to be at the base of the mountain where the 10 commandments were read].

Which brings me to outer space. What? Exactly. The research, along with studying how cultures reacted to their surroundings to form an architecture with a sense of place, also means to investigate those places that humans arguably are not meant to be. Sites that have no readily available materials to build with, deserts with hot stinging sand as far as the eye can see, lands of rock hard ice and snow, and places where there is not even oxygen to support life. We have mapped more territories than ever before and our cities are continuing to get denser. Now is a time when people are beginning to drastically reconsider where we can and cannot live as available land and resources become scarcer. To think about living in outer space or at the South Pole in the time of our grandfathers would have been considered impossible if not extremely improbable. But low and behold, we are at a point now where the question of "Can we?" is coming up more and more. The first private Spaceport in the world put up for an architecture competition in 2007, with the prize going to Norman Foster + Partners. And the International Space Station is hoping to near completion in 2011. I believe many of the next months ahead will focus on attempting to answer questions regarding these types of remote sites. How are they being built? How is life able to be maintained and in which way are the resources used wisely in both construction and in habitation? What does the future hold for the next radical dream turned reality?

That’s all for now, more from Greece soon and back logs from Italy…

Ciao.

Thoughts on Traveling #5 : Spanish is not the same as Italian. The Italians know this.

Haunted Corbu

2009-02-23T02:39:00.000-08:00

The next stop on the journey took me to a small town about a 45 minute train ride outside of Lyon, France. The town in question is home to the Monastery of La Tourette, designed by the architect Le Corbusier. It is one of his most well known works and has been undergoing extensive renovation work since 2005. I didn’t have phone at the train station I arrived at and was unable to call a car, so I commenced walking the 2 miles or so to the monastery, all the while followed by a very loud and talkative roll-behind suitcase. If it had of been my dad telling the story I would have said I had walked 5 miles barefoot, uphill both ways, in the snow, but alas, my oratory skills are not as developed by experience as his. I finally arrived at the convent [they call it a convent in France, even though it houses monks, not sure about the translation] with fifteen minutes to spare before they closed up shop. Since renovation was still going on at the convent, I had been under the assumption I was going to stay at the “castle” about five minutes away from the convent that houses the refractory and current living quarters for the monks and guests. By the way, the receptionist kept referring to it as a castle, but in nowhere in the wildest imaginations of any 5 year old child could that be said to be true. I would describe it as a run-down estate. Anyway I was told by the receptionist that I was to be staying at the convent by myself for the two nights I was there, which was quite a pleasant surprise! It is the architectural equivalent to a sugar starved child in a candy store. So I got my keys and headed up the walk to the convent to put my things down. Dinner with the Monks and what I was told to be the rest of the students was in about 20 minutes, so I had time to freshen up from a day and a half of straight train travel before heading down to eat. Walking into the refractory a few minutes early I met the “convent mom” [I guess that is the best way to describe her?]. She spoke not a lick of English and I had even less French at my disposal. So after a few failed and frustrating attempts at conversing on both sides we resolved to smile and nod at each other while we waited. An older bearded monk was the next to come and join, which made it three constantly nodding heads, though he didn’t join in the smiling.

Finally after what seemed to be an eternity the rest of the monks [there were 4 total that night] and the students came down to eat. Since my previous futile attempts at striking up conversation with the house mother had crashed and burned, I resigned to give them my best “bonjour” I had and then quietly sulked at the end of the table. They carried on speaking nervous French for a while as I tried to understand how the three girls there were on their way to becoming monks. About fifteen minutes passed with me being unable to understand the conversation, but coming to the determined conclusion that it was a difference of custom about who could be let into a monastery in France. The day also happened to be my birthday, and since I had just graced a quarter of a century, I decided I would try my failed luck at talking again, even just to hear myself talk. The dark haired girl sitting across from me looked to be a good target so I threw her a soft pitch and asked her if she was a student studying at the convent. She replied that yes she was a student, but not studying to become a monk, in near perfect English. After I got over my amazement in having sat in relative silence for the first two courses I was able to find out that the people at the table were French business students, not monks in training, and spending a week at the monastery in order to study for a big exam. It’s apparently a not so uncommon tradition for college and high school students in France. They go to a monastery to study for big tests for the quiet surroundings and not having to cook for themselves. Makes a lot of sense, and now I wonder why we don’t jump on the boat back in the States. Anyway, dinner after that was a much changed event and I had a great time talking to Charlotte about French customs and repeatedly asking what the monks were talking about. Not surprisingly, it was usually God, but the second night the conversation almost jumped to gossip as they were talking about a monk friend of theirs that apparently went mad.

After dinner I took my lonely lightless stroll back to the monastery where I was staying. Not much that I had read could really prepare me for the amount of creativity and design applied to every surface of that building. My room, like all the rest of the monastic quarters, was about 24 feet long and 8 wide with the back wall being mostly all glass and radiator and leading out to the small private balcony. All of the details were extremely minimal and there was a distinct humbleness to all of the materials and finishes. All of the wood was naturally stained, with a deep green painted floor and rough white plastered walls. The only pieces of furniture in the room were a storage unit [wardrobe on one side and doubled as a bedside lamp/table on the other], a sink, a surprisingly comfortable bed, and a simple wooden table and chair. The table was placed in the middle of the window facing the wall as not to be distracted I would guess, with the glass door leading to the balcony on the right and a narrow vent door to the left. The radiator was concealed beneath the table and was good for warming your feet when scribbling away late at night. The door to the outside corridor also had a narrow vent opening [about 8 inches] that could be opened for cross ventilation in the summer but not big enough for someone to be able to climb through. As soon as you walk in the door from the outside was the wardrobe and sink/shelf to separate it visually from the rest of the room. I am still surprised by the narrow proportion of the room and the low ceilings, but it never felt claustrophobic, and mostly always had plenty of natural light due to the white walls and large glass. On the outside balcony was a projecting square of concrete that could be used as a small storage shelf for books or candles. I could never figure out how Corb constructed the door frames until the last day I was leaving. The frames were yellow painted wood with no visible fasteners into the concrete from the outside. Thanks to a piece of chipped wall next to a door I was able to ascertain that the wooden frames were the same ones that were used as the formwork for the concrete, with nails being driven diagonally halfway into the back of the wood to hold it in place when the concrete was curing. The wood would then be presumably sanded down and painted with no connections to be seen.

I stayed at La Tourette for a total of 3 days and had time to get acquainted with the daily rituals as well as the time in between. Most of my hours were spent sketching and writing and it was a nice change of pace from the frantic travel schedule. I started questioning the isolation of the monastery and came to realize that it would not be possible to exist anywhere. I mean that in the sense of being separated from the sounds of a busy city and actually allowing itself to develop a silence. Imagine a monastery in a rushed and noisy urban center. Would it even be possible to function? You could argue there are other ways to cut off the auditory noise and so forth, but the fact remains that much of what La Tourette is able to achieve emotionally and environmentally is due to its location. It exists in a small village with mostly neighboring farmland and woods. At night there are no lights but the recently installed automatic one at the entry, other than that it is totally dark and still. To further provide for spaces of reflection there are two courtyards on the interior of the monastery which subdivide the spaces yet again. The door to the innermost sanctuary is a huge steel pivoting contraption that when closed shuts off the inside from the rest of the world. The compartmentalization of the spaces is achieved in way to go deeper and deeper into stillness and silence. Even in regards to circulation, the private prayer altars for the monks [before they were allowed to have a communal mass] are accessed by going underneath the central chapel by way of the necromonically named crypts. Rooms in the public view, such as the oratory in the courtyard, are gotten to by narrow corridors and have only light sources from above and to the side, with no views to the outside, allowing them to gain a secluded world all of their own.

Just as I was leaving there came a whole troop of new inhabitants to my still space of reflection. It would have been interesting to see how more souls changed the qualities of isolation, but I had to go. The next stop is Matera, Italy to see the Sassi cave dwellings that exist in the hills across from the town. After that it’s the small town of Alberobello to stay in a “trulli” and understand more about their non-changing construction.

Thoughts on Traveling #4 : In Madrid, instead of birds chirping to tell you when to cross the street, it sounds like they are shooting lasers at you. Lasers…

Spanish Gypsies

2009-02-18T10:42:00.000-08:00

After leaving the island of Madeira I flew into Lisbon and hoped an overnight train to Madrid. I have a eurorail pass for Portugal/Spain/France so I just had to reserve a seat and then we’re off. You could get a reclining seat instead of a bed for much less money so I figured I’d go that route. I forgot how I like to mess things up though and within 3 minutes of sitting down and fiddling I had thoroughly broken the seat I was in. On the good side I could recline further back than should be allowed by the laws of physics, but on the bad side I could only recline, kiss sitting up straight goodbye. After enduring the painful process that is overnight transit I had about 7 hours or so in Madrid to see the sites and spill things on my jeans. I did the latter within another five minutes or so and then headed off to see “Guernica” by Pablo Picasso in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. It’s much bigger than I imagined in real life, but after about 3 floors of Surrealism I was pretty much shot after not having slept much. I talked my way into the library there saying I was an art student [which really wasn’t much of a lie now that I think about it], but you had to surrender all of your belongings and only go in with a t-shirt, pants, pencil, computer, and white paper. I pulled down a book about Frank Gehry in Spanish to look like I was researching and commenced the pillaging of their internet connection. Not surprisingly, I still dislike Gehry even in other languages.

After all that was said and done I hopped a train to Granada and arrived in late at night. I found the hostel with the help of a cab driver who I’m pretty positive did not possess brakes. I don’t say that because he sped around, quite the opposite, he had to haul up on the e-brake every time we got to a stop light and made my stick driving look fast by comparison. The hostel I was staying at, like most of Granada, was packed with free spirits and just as many congo drums. I felt bad that I didn’t have a nose piercing and dreadlocks so I got the former as fast as possible. The dreadlocks are taking a while to happen, but I’m doing my best. At the hostel I did meet two fellow Americans, Charlie and John, that will come in later in the story [note: foreshadowing] and almost managed to sleep through the whole night until the Spanish party crew came back around 5 in the morning and continued the loud party right outside of our room. The next day it was Alhambra time, the main reason I came to Granada on my way to France. An incredible experience to be sure, though I was immensely surprised about the construction of the palaces. They seemed to be made mostly out of wood, especially the interior but most of the walls as well. I was thinking stone was going to be much more prevalent. Though the ornamentation was painstakingly crafted, I would venture so far to say that much of the building was pretty sloppy construction. With many previous openings filled in leaving the lentils, and the fountains at the court of the lions not even going in straight lines. Regarding the Court of the Lions, somebody stole the lions. The lions have been taken. Well, not stolen, per se, but imagine my surprise to round the corner and see an empty fountain with no water held up by air, not stone felines. Like my luck with most architecture sites, I usually get there when they are in the middle of a restoration project or other event. When I visited years ago the Pantheon had scaffolding covering more than half of the circle, Villa Savoye was getting ready for a wedding reception complete with laser lights and disco ball, and I’m pretty sure the Parthenon will have been moved to a site near Minnesota by the time I get there. Lions aside, the Alhambra was an incredible experience, many times having painstaking details covering every square inch of an entire room.

I didn’t know about it before I came, but later in the sangria themed night Charlie and John brought up to me that there were Gypsies living to the North of the Alhambra in a placed called Sacromonte [Peter and Gavin try to contain yourselves]. As soon as I heard Gypsies my ears perked up and before I knew it we were at the “Gypsy Museum” the next morning seeing the caves that used to be lived in by the traveling nomads. Like most exhibits using big signs with larger arrows, it was extremely disappointing and presented all of the caves in a white washed neat and orderly manner. I don’t know much about Gypsies, but I’m pretty positive even monks don’t leave their caves that spotless and tidy. After walking through there we found a trail that lead to the actual Gypsy caves, those that are still occupied and used to this day by squatters and anyone else that wants to live in rocks. I still don’t know who technically owns the land, so if anyone else knows please comment, I’ve been without internet for a few days and haven’t been able to research it further. Regardless, the site is amazing, barely outside of the city, and on the other side of the Nasrid Wall [originating from Nasrid Palace in the Alhambra] are a series of rolling hills with caves dug out and still occupied today. The constructions of the shanties outside of the shelters are piece meal and consist mostly of fabrics and fencing, presenting a rough sense of enclosure. Though since they are on the other side of the wall you can’t even see the city, just the Alhambra, and it’s as if you’ve found a lost land known only to a few. Truth be told we were one of only a few other people walking around that day and John, Charlie and I managed to scramble up on top of the wall for a better look at our surroundings. As much as I could tell, the caves were not used as very permanent settlements and were more along the lines of transient housing and gathering. The site of the caves stands very close to the city, only separated visually by the wall from viewing the urban areas. Even being so close, it manages to seem remote and in a land all of its own.

A little bit to the West of the cave encampments is an addition to the Nasrid Wall and the other main reason I wanted to go to Granada previously. The addition was completed pretty recently [in 2006] and hasn’t been in that many publications that I’ve seen, which is a shame b/c it’s a really simple but extremely well executed piece of architecture with a real sense of place and understanding of construction. Antonio Torrecillas is the name of the architect that put it together. Part of the Nasrid wall, which stands about 14 feet or so high, had fallen into disrepair and so a section was needed to link two parts of old wall along a stretch about 100 feet long. The wall as well as portal is made by thin sheets of granite stacked on top of each other with no mortar holding it together, just weight. Working as a passageway as well, the wall has a hallway sized path on the inside with light filtering in and cooling breezes passing through the shaded enclosure. Above your head in the interior of the wall are steel ties providing the structural stability to connect the two walls to each one another. There are only a few different lengths of stone, arranged in different ways in order to create a seemingly random pattern of opening and light. I thought it was an extremely poetic example of a simple material and construction technique used to create an incredibly complex spatial presence while also relating directly to the culture and site around it.

Thoughts on Traveling #3 : Portuguese airport bathrooms have a life sized fly stenciled in every urinal. Your really have no choice but to go for it.