Paris Trip, July 9-11, 2011
Literally directly after our final review for the Delft workshop two other classmates and I jumped on a train for Paris. With no advance thought about how the trains ran we were off for one of them most unorganized trips of my life – and enjoyed every minute of it. We spent the first night in Brussels and then headed to Paris for two days. The trip was full of great food and memories between Delirium beer and waffles in Brussels and crepes and wine in Paris. We even managed to fit in some architectural sights as well, like the Cenre Pompidou.
TUDelft Workshop, July 4-8, 2011
Our final workshop was with Florian Heinzelmann, a former employee at UNstudio and now a professor of architecture at TU Delft. The college of design has over 800 students and classes thought by renowned architects such as the owner of JDS Julien De Smedt. More on the college can be found at http://www.delftschoolofdesign.eu/. The space itself was awesome with a shop the size of two basketball gyms. Correspondingly, Dutch places high value on creating design models, which we had to do. With a focus on long span structures, daylight, and paper folding, we were to create a marketplace pavilion for Delft’s main square. Our model acted as a study of structure and daylight effects to create an interactive marketplace. I hope to develop the project further in the future.
UNStudio Workshop, June 28 -July, 2011
We worked with Christian Veddeler and Jordan Trachtenberg of UNStudio this week to create a mobile classroom for debate, discussion, and research. Dealing with an axial system in three dimensions we created a adaptable system that would respond to program specification. The end result was a pavilion that could be interacted with on both the interior and exterior. We chose to place the pavilion in Torensluis Square, Amsterdam, which lover looks the canal in two directions. This experience was a fast pace, decisive, interactive process which really helped me get a firm grasp on the overall architectural process. More on UNStudio can be found at http://www.unstudio.com/
Copenhagen, Denmark & Malmo, Sweden June 21-23
The entire studio took a trip to the design capital of Europe, Copenhagen, to experience architecture instead of simply studying it. From ‘monopoly money’ to ‘all you can eat pizza’ the trip was completely different from our studies in Amsterdam. We spent our first day in Malmo, Sweden visiting Santiago Calatrava’s Turning Torso tower, the Moderna Museet, and Barents Sea. Back in Copenhagen we visited JDS office who has kindly collaborated with the University of Kentucky several times. More on JDS can be found at: http://www.jdsarchitects.com/. We also visited the new development Orsted and saw BIG’s Mountain Dweling,VM housing, and 8tallet, Jean Nouvel concert hall, and Daniel Libeskind’s Cabinn Metro Hotel. We spent our last day relaxing in the self-proclaimed settlement Christiania.
