Topic of study for class

For studio, as i have said before, we are to observe a topic of choise throughout the rest of the semester and document on our blog what we figure out. I chose to do Green Space in the city, and have slightly skimmed the top of this and am delving more into it for the last two months. But as i thought about my topic, I realized that I needed to clarify not only to everyone, but mostly to myself so that I can look at spaces with the objective eye and perspective necessary to truly analyze. SO, here are the first questions that I decided to address:
1. -What is Green Space by definition?
2. -What is Green Space to me?
3. -Does it need/require vegetation?
4. -Does it have to be large like a plaza, or can it be small like a sidewalk?
5. -Where is it appropriate/necessary or not?
6. -How much is to much? Is there such thing as to much?
7. -Do cities today need more Green Space?

After listing out the questions that I feel like needed to be answered, I did some reading and started to answer them.
1. A defenition that I found of green space states that it is any piece of land covered with vegetation. Which stands true to what I originally though it was. But, I feel that in an urban context, which is what i am studying it in, there could potentially hold a slightly different definition.
2. Based on some of the research I have done, and observing the city around, to me Green Space could potentially be something a bit different. In a city, I want to explore if green space can revolve around a gathering space larger that just the area in front of the building. I still lean towards the fact that Green Space requires vegetation, but I am looking to explore if in the urban context other types of areas can be "Green Space".
3. At this point in time I feel that vegetation, at least to some degree, is necessary to make a space a Green Space. But, in walking around a city I have seen some areas with vegetation that dont accomplish what the purpose of green space is and become very un-inviting places, as well as spaces that have no vegetation that break the urban fabric and create less density and outdoor gathering spaces which I feel is a major purpose of Green Space. But Green approaches can be addressed on the small scale on sidewalks and such.
4. Green Space in the urban context is a relief in the density and fabric, and therefore needs to, in my opinion, stand as a larger space than merely a sidewalk or a street corner. It needs to break the urban fabric and create a space in which people can freely gather at least slightly seperated from the busy denseness and built environment of the city.
5. Green Space is necessary wherever the are of the city has gotten to dense, and there are no spaces of relief in which people can gather.
6. When well designed, a specific space can never be to "Green", but excess comes when many plazas begin being put extremely close to one another and removing all of the urban fabric. Green Space is meant as a relief in the city, not to completely replace the city. Excess can also come when nothing is accomplished by the space. This can be caused by poor design or poor location.
7. This is more of an opinion question, but one I feel like can be re-addressed at each analysis and especially at the end. After traveling to a bunch of cities, I feel that all major cities need to address the topic of Green Space more and can start by creating more zones of relief throught the city. So many of the cities, especially the old ones, have some green spaces in the old area, especially around the ruins and things of the sort, but once you move to the outer newer areas it becomes more dense and built up. Even if it is addressed in areas such as making buildings more green and putting Green Space on the tops of buildings, it is something that will help a lot especially with the battles we are fighting with the environment right now.

So, there is my beginning break down of my topic. In breaking down my thoughts, I have narrowed my topic a bit to be Urban Space from a Green perspective. I want to analyze where green spaces are in a city, and what makes something an urban space versus a green space. This may be a lot to tackle in two months, but i am going to try my best to look at spaces and see if they work and which topic they fall under.

So, I have decided a new format for my blog. I want to keep everyone updated at home as well as keeping up to date with my topic of study for class. So I decided to switch back and forth in each blog post what I am writing about. Every other post will update everyone on what I am doing, and have pictures of what I see and do, and the ones in between will be analysis and sketches and pictures of the topic that I am doing for class. So hopefully it doesnt get to confusing, but I think it will be cool for everyone to see both the work side and the fun side of what i am doing here. And to help that I am going to start posting the work that I have been doing so that everyone can see i am doing just as much work as I am fun stuff.

This past week has been awesome. Two of my really close friends were here, and that can never go bad! Caryne got here Thursday March 6, and Amanda got here Saturday March 8. I had classes starting monday, so i mostly just got to spend late afternoons and nights hanging out with them, but they got along really well and had each other to go sight seeing with. So that worked out really well.

Last Sunday, though, i got to take them around the city and show them where i live. We went down to the port area, and shopped a lot at all of the stands that are set up. We all spent more money than we wanted to, of course, but love everything we bought and absolutely can live without any of it! We also got to eat a huge seafood lunch. I havent had a real seafood meal here yet, after stuffing ourselves with all of it I can honestly tell everyone it is as good as I expected. After that we worked our way to the beach, and around the Olympic village. We walked a lot, but even I got to see stuff that i have never seen before. So that was a lot of fun.

All of the other days, when I got out of class I got to go back to the apartment and then go out to dinner with them. We went to a tapas bar one night, the most a mazing mexican place ever another, and pretty much every resteraunt that I have been to since being here. One day we go to meet up for lunch, and we went to this sushi place that is down the street from my apartment. It was sooooo good, but made me miss home because I eat so much sushi at home!

We also went out to this one place on one night called the Champagneria (I probably spelled it wrong), which is a place that sells bottles of cava for 2 euro and has amazing sandwhiches for pretty cheap. Pretty good for poor college kids. Cava, for anyone who doesn't know, is the local version of Champagne. It is so good! That same night we went to a latin bar, and then to an Irish pub. I had to show them all of the fun places to go!

Thursday was Amanda's 21st birthday, so we went out to a nice dinner at a place that in my opinion has the best Paella that I have eaten here. We got to drink wine and eat dinner and it was sooo much fun and so good! Then we went to this bar called Chupitos, which is a place that has a menu the size of the wall full of drinks and stuff. I was so glad I got to take Amanda out for her birthday, and especially that she got to spend it here!

Friday Caryne left, and then today Amanda did. I am definately not happy to have them leave, it made me miss home more than I thought it would, but it was so much fun to have them come visit! On Friday the family is coming in, so i have something to really look forward to!

Well, I gotta actually go and accomplish some work. So I will update again soon!

I promise i am trying to get better at this!

So its been a while and so much has happened since then! The time after i last wrote we were preparing for final review of our second project. The review was scheduled for thursday before we left for spring break. On thursday it was pushed to the monday we get back, and then friday early morning i hopped on a plane to greece!

Athens was amazing. There was so much green space and it was such a beautiful city. At every plaza there were multiple trees, at least in the area we went around, and with so many roman ruins it added to the immense patches of green. The first day we were there, after we landed, we decided to just walk around and basically observe the city. Our hostel was pretty much at the base of the Acropolis, so we were pretty easy access to most of the areas we wanted to see in the day and a half we were there. When we started to walk around the corner to the acropolis, it was a city that then opened up to what felt like walking out into a smaller town. The acropolis is up on top of the hill, and the base is surrounded by so much grassy open space it was incredible. And right behind it from the direction we were coming was a mountain that was completely trees. We walked past a really modern building, that is apparently the new acropolis museum, and were so fascinated that we decided to figure out when we could go back and actually try to go in it. It was eventually figured out that, though it is still under construction and not open yet, they let people in between ten and twelve am.

Lindsey and i decided to go ahead and go up to the Acropolis, us history buffs just couldnt wait till tomorrow. It was so incredible to look at from below there was just to much of a draw. Everyone else decided to walk around some more, and that we would just meet up with them in the hostel in a couple of hours. Going up to a place that is thousands of years old was one of the most incredible experiences. And just the fact of seeing a piece of architecture that influenced so many people throughout history and that we have learned to much about was just incredible. We had to walk up the hill to get to the entrance first though. The area around was so well designed. It felt like we were in a garden that had planned paths and organized flows of travel. There were so many trees, it was almost like they had created an area in the city that removed you from the city. And this was what we had to go through to get to the entrance. In designing all of this green space, and maintaining it all the way up to the "hill" madethe experience so relaxing and removed you from the knowledge that the city is so built up around it. When we got up to the top, everything that was up there just made us awe struck. It was such a cool feeling to stand where people stood for so many years, and just picture how it was before time took its toll. At 5:30pm though they started blowing whistles and kicking everyone out, so it was our time to leave, and stop admiring, and go to the hostel to meet up with everyone else.

Our full day in Rome consisted of waking up and going to the Acropolis museum, the new modern building at the base of the Acropolis. This building, we learned, when they struck ground for construction they hit roman ruins with artifacts that date back over 4000 years. So, the design was re-evaluated and the building was lifted and now creates a canopy over the ruins, protecting them and opening it up for everyone to see. The floor on the inside of the building is made of glass and in periodic areas opens up so people inside of the building can look down on the ruins. After we stayed there for a while and sketched, Lindsey, Josh and I decided to start walking to all of the areas a bit to the outside of the Acropolis. We had been told the day before that we need to walk up the little mountain/hill next to it and that there is an incredible view of the entire city. Again, we got to a place where when walking around it and then up it I felt completely removed from the city. It is amazing how a city maintains the areas like this instead of letting them get built up and populated. It becomes a retreat for so many people, and is so serene in so much chaos. More cities need to have spaces like this in which it is in the center of the city, and a person can go to "leave the city" without actually leaving the city and be in a place with so much nature and calm. When we got to the top there was so much space to walk around, and so many incredible views of the city. In observing green space for class (as you have probably been able to tell that is what i am doing) I really looked around and tried to observe the city outside of where i had seen and see if the rest of the city was so observing of the necessity of green space. It appeared, that outside of the "old city" area, the plazas with trees and green space seemed to trickle away and one moved away from this center. It was a really beautiful sight to see though because at two of the edges of the cities were mountains that were vast and green and on one side you could see the water. After that we walked around the old city, and went to the Agora. By this point i truly began to realize that, as in Rome, the city maintained a lot of green space in the old areas and lost it progressively as the new areas arose. That is one thing i can say for Barcelona, at least for where i have been so far, that though there are not a lot of places in the city that maintain a lot of large green spaces, the places in both the old and the new city contain trees and at least some growth giving life to some plazas.

Sunday we hopped on a boat, and took a ferry to Santorini. The ferry ride was so amazing, we went past so many greek islands an basically just got to spend the day looking all over the Aegean Sea. I really cant complain to much. When we started to pull up to Santorini, the whole side of the island we saw were these huge cliff faces. The cities were all at the top built into the edge of the cliff and looking out over the water. Their connection to the waterfront were these incredibly long, winding paths that gradually led you up the cliff. The island was really cool, and when we finally got up to the top was like being in the country. The houses/buildings dont exceed two story, and there are just miles of fields. And from each side of the island you can see all the way across. The island was big length wise but width wise it was pretty narrow. Our time on the Island was spent visiting the black, red, and white sand beaches, going to the towns and shopping where we could. Basically it was an amazing place to just walk around and see everything. The green space is hard to explain in the city. The cities did not feel like cities, and many of the places that you walked did have trees but there was no planned green space and it was not the feeling in itself of being a city so the green space was not completely necessary. And the rest of the island was fields and farm and beach and cliff. We missed tourist season by about a week, so a lot of the touristy stuff was closed so that just meant doing what we could on our own.

On thursday i came home, with Alwin, three or four days before everyone else. And Caryne came! It was/is really exciting to have my best friend here! And then Amanda came on saturday so the week just kept getting better and better! And so far i have just been taking them around, going to class, and spending as much time with them as possible. Sunday we ate a huge lunch/dinner down by the beach. It was the most amazing food i have had so far. Seafood here is definately amazing. And i am definately going to have to eat it more.

Tonight, we are going to watch an orchestra at the Palau de Musica, which not only is it cool to go watch this but it is a really cool architectural building with what we hear is an incredible stained glass ceiling. SO that should be a really fun experience. Amanda's birthday is tomorrow, so of course we will be celebrating that. But i will get on tomorrow and i am going to be updating this with at least a little blurb every day. So keep updated and i will be posting frequently!

So......Updates on studio. I am in Greece right now, but can update you on that when i can overview the whole trip and figure i would give an update of the work that i have been doing. When i scan the work in at the end of spring break you will be able to see what we have been doing. But the project was that we had a site assigned to us in Barcelona, and we were to create an analysis and potential transformations and present them in a layout of hand drawings. My plaza is called Plaza De La Merce, and it is down by the water. There is a design school that pretty much is the main activity on the plaza, but there is a really cool church for the patron saint of Barcelona that is at the head of the site. The plaza is simple a stone ground plane, with not a lot of activity and pretty much just a place that people walk through to get to their destinations faster.

So through the project, which was a group project, i learned a lot about the history of the site and some of the city. The city in this area became so dense that they chose this place, which used to be a normal city block, because of the entrance of the church on it and demolished the buildings on it to create a relief in an overly dense area. It is really kinda cool to look at the more urban scale, which this semester is all about, it is just kind of daunting to zoom out so much when we are so used to looking at a little area and designing one building. It is definately openin my eyes up to new ways of design.

This past week we also went to a building that used to be a hospital and was converted into a library, which is what it currently is. We were here for our sketching class, so we got to walk around a lot and really just observe and analyze how this building (or series of buildings) worked and how we felt in the space.

It is still, two months later, really cool to be studying everything about this city. There are so many pockets within in that people would never see unless they lived here, and not only do we get to see it but we get to analyze it and walk around it and observe it. It is like no where that i have seen before, and i see something new ever day that just completely fascinates me over and over again. I cant wait until today/tomorrow when i get to start taking friends around and show them not only what most tourists get to see but what is a little more hidden and has been showed to me through learning here.

Check in soon for a full breakdown of greece! I will have pictures and all of that fun stuff loaded as well as sketched that i did and studio work that i have been doing.

Wow it has been a bit since my last post! What have i done since then?! Last weekend five friends and i went to Rome. We were there for three full days and got to really explore the city and it was so much fun! It is a really touristy city but great for a visit. We also had to do sketches of analysis for our sketching class for multiple areas, as well as observe a topic of choice to document. I chose green space in urban fabric for the fact that a lot of cities have become to dense and lack green space to bring nature into the man made.

The first day we went to the Vatican and went through Saint Peters and the Sistine Chapel. I got to see paintings by Michelangelo and Raphael. It was some of the most beautiful work i have ever seen. Saint peters was like nothing i have ever seen. And because we were also doing work for studio, i looked at the plaza out front and the design of the zones inside of the cathdral and ended up using what i figured out about the zones of the cathedral in our project. When we walked over to go see the Sistine Chapel, we had to walk through the longest path through what felt like the entire museum to get to the actual chapel. But in the museum we saw a map that the vatican had made a very long time ago of what the world looked like and the Americas where like a big blob looking thing on the left hand side. It was really funny to see. After that, four of us went to go see the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, which is an area of roman ruins where royalty as well as other events occured right next door to the Colosseum. The green space that ihave noticed so far in Rome is where the ruins lay. The ruins are surrounded by greenery and not touched for preservation purposes. Other than that there doesnt appear to be other green spaces other than the trees along the river. We ended the day meeting up with the rest of the people at the Spanish Steps, which is supposed to have lots of potted greenery, but apparently in the winter it is barren except for the people sitting on the steps. I would love to see the difference that the plants make to the steps when they are all out. In pictures it looks amazing.

The second day we started with a trek to go see the pantheon. We have learned so much about it that it was something we all had to see and put aside a lot of time for. When we got there we walked around and sketched the relationship of the interior space to the exterior space. It was a really neat building to see, but kind of anti-climactic to what i thought i was going to see. But it was definately an awesome building. After the Pantheon we roamed through the city to see multiple plazas and the Trevi Fountain that is a very big tourist attraction. At the fountain we got to get Gelati which is amazing! As expected to be in Italy. I did studies of circulation and zones in multiple plazas so that i could use them as precedence studies for my studio project, and created pages of sketches to bring back for the studies.

The third day we woke up and went to see the pope speak at the Vatican and that was soooo cool. There were a lot of people there, but not as many as i expected to see on a sunday morning. He gave a speech in seven languages! It was pretty cool to hear. After that we went as a group to a plaza called Campo Doglio and then my studio group split of and we did more studies of plazas for our project. It was a pretty relaxed day, i got to try these folded pizza thing and a beer. It was an awesome lunch. Then we walked around until later in the day and went to a nice italian dinner for the third time. Such good food!

We woke up monday morning at 3am to cath a bus to the airport. It was such a bad idea to have an early am flight because the bus doesnt run as often and rome was freezing! But we got to the airport and on the plane and then directly back to Barcelona and studio.

Rome was a really cool city, but very touristy. I would love to go back and travel the areas outside of the city. At the end of the trip i realized that there are a decent amount of green spaces around the city, but they are mainly located around Roman ruins. It is a very chaotic city, yet very cool at the same time. Maybe i will take my family back there and i can see it from a different point of view!

Its been so long since i have posted anything! But here i go!



For the past week we have been traveling through southern spain. It was the most amazing time every. We traveled through Madrid, Cordoba, Granada and Sevilla. We spent 2-3 days in each city, and did sketches at buildings we visited and had a lot of free time to walk around.



Our first city we visited was madrid. We flew there last saturday, and saturday afternoon walked the city and got to go to this plaza that was huge. We spent alot of time sketching observations that we made and then got to roam back across the city to our hotel. I actually relaly enjoyed the walk because we got to see a lot of the city that we probably wouldnt otherwise have seen has we not. The second day in madrid it was raining, but we got to go visit a couple museums and draw some analytical sketches of the way new and old parts of the buildings relate and interconnect. We wlaked through this park in the middle of the city that had a lot of cool stuff in it, old statues and memorials and what not. That night we went out to dinner at a brazilian barbecue place, and then to watch the superbowl at a bar in the city. It was so awesome that we found a place to watch superbowl, there were a lot of us that were really excited. We met some people that day from Clemson that are living and studying in barcelona and a grout of architecture majors from wales. The next morning at the crack of dawn we woke up and caught a train to go to Cordoba.



Cordoba was a shorter stay, only one night, but it was a lot of fun to see the old Mosque and what not. We got to go into the mosque and sketch and it was a really cool building. It is not used for religious stuff anymore, so it has kind of been turned into a museum feeling space. I though we were going to see this really authentic mosque, but the christians came in and turned it into a cathedral. i was really disappointed to see some of the changes that had been made, but it was still a lot of fun to see something so old and really get to sit down and observe it and sketch it. The picture shows the inside of the mosque in cordoba, which is unique because it uses a double horse shoe arch, which when one arch on top of the other but instead of just curving down and into the column at the bottom of the arch it continues a bit more looking like its almost trying to complete the circle.



Part three was Granada. This city was so cool, and the first night we got to go on top of one of the hills to a platform and watch the sun set behind the Alhambra. The picture to the right shows the Alhambra after the sun was set and they turned the lights on. It was so beautiful it is hard to explain. The Alhambra is on top of the big hill next to where we were sitting, and behind it were mountains, some of them capped with snow. The next day we explored the city, went into the Alhambra and basically got to really get a feel for where we were. This was a city that was not huge but had a lot of character and was a lot of fun. I did a lot of shopping here, which i hadnt done in the other cities. I got paintings and a bag. Also, granada is known for its Tea Houses, and the teas that have pieces of fruit and what not in them. I bought a lot of tea, hopefully it will last to be able to give as gifts.



Sevilla was the last city we visited and definately my favorite. The first day i went down to the river and sketched and got to see the Calatrava bridge as well as a lot of other cool bridges that were on the river. Here i finally got to explore the makeup of this design that i had seen in a lot of the Moors architecture that we had seen. It is a star, but it is a little different then a lot of things that i had seen. We also went into the Cathedral de Sevilla, (the picture to the left) and Christopher Columbus' tomb is in it. There was a tower that when at the top you could look out over the entire city. This city just has so much i guess the way i would put it is flavor and character. It has a lot of old courtyards and stone sidewalks and old buildings. There is a complex called Real Alcazar that was a lot of fun to see, it was huge and had the most beautiful gardens.

Hmm, Updates.....well nothing new has really happened. Yesterday we had our first jury/review. It was really laid back, but was where we basically presented our work that we have done so far. It went pretty well, i got a lot of good advice and direction that i could definately use had i had some more time.
Tomorrow mornign we are leaving to go travel all around southern spain. We get to madrid tomorrow, then go to cordoba, granada and seville. It should be fun. There is a lot of cool architecture there so we will all be very entertained. And madrid is supposed to be a crazy city to go out in so we are all pretty excited.
Other than that there is nothing really all that interesting. I am sure i will have along post after this trip. SO until then, Have a good week!