Natural

Renting an apartment in a nine-story building is not a big deal if there is a working elevator.  Mine, thankfully, is tiny but useful.  I did hoof it up one day, just to see what it was like.  Not terrible, but I hope it never becomes necessary.  I often walk down the stairs in the morning on my way to a café con leche and croissant at Maribarbola.  I decided to photograph the experience for kicks, and noticed how the skylight creates different effects  the lower you go, and a tiny little slice on the first floor.  I might try this again at high noon with better light to compensate for the fluorescent lighting on the landings.  The image is 4' x 5' at 200dpi if you'd like to order a poster version for yourself!

Idiosyncrasies

I have compiled a short list of things that, in my various urban experiences, seem to be particularly unique to Barcelona:

Of Mussels and Men

On my right, two over-excited Americans are each busy taking something like 1000 pictures of themselves and their food.  Could you imagine being friends to both women and, when it comes time to watch the post-visit slide show, being subjected to two times the number of "Smiling face holding menu" shots or "Thumbs up with my face next to my plate" images?

On my first day in Spain:

If you're organized enough, Spain's transportation system is just as easily accessible by English speakers as Spanish speakers, and you can get through the system crazy fast.  

I made it all the way to Avenue Diagonal, where my rental apartment is located,  much faster than I predicted-- then turned the wrong way down the Avenue, twice, and it took me an extra hour to find the apartment.  I suppose this means I was almost organized enough.


A portion of Barcelona, developed during the 1860's under the guidance of Ildefons Cerda, has unique chamfered corners at every intersection that help you turn your horse and carriage around a corner. 

Making Images

Sexy.  Hi-Tech.  Red.  Lumix DMC-G1R. 

I've spent the past four or five years using Canon's Powershot S3-IS, a very popular camera for people who, like me, dabble in photography but are not quite ready or capable of buying a full-featured SLR camera.

10_Museu d'Art Contemporani

Links and info and stuff for Meier's Barcelona art and urban project.

6: Sagrada Familia

A 100-year-old construction project-- and perhaps the world's most ornate building.

5: Park Guell

Luscious Nouveau-ness.

3: German Pavilion

Not the actual real one, they apparently "lost" the original after disassembling it.  I lose my glasses, and I forget where I park all the time, but I haven't lost an entire building.  Yet.

2: Mercado de Santa Caterina

Everything you ever wanted to know, architecturally speaking, about:

1: Igualada Cemetery

A place for the dead, but really it's for the living.  I don't think the dead care very much.

Revise and revise again

I'd like to point out that when planning an independent study, you should always double the expected time for approval to accommodate scheduling, red tape, and logistic snafus.  It looks like the trip is finally a go!

Contact!

The Barcelona Institute of Architecture just got back to me about my request for a tour of their school and some faculty interviews, and they seemed interested in making a connection between BIA and UMD.  How exciting!  If nothing else it will be nice to meet fellow colleagues of the city I'm studying-- I'm sure they'll have more insight into Barcelona architecture than I might ever glean from reading books.  It will be interesting to see how Spain's pedagogy compares to the US, as well as getting to know the sort of academic environment that comes about when designers don't have quite as much fear of litigious reprisal and can therefore take bigger risks.

Finding a home abroad

Here's the big secret to staying in Barcelona: apartments!  For about the same cost as a hotel room you can get a bedroom, small sitting/living room, kitchen, bathroom, and an all-in-one clothes washer.  My experiences in Rome on a prior study abroad trip left me with the notion that you really can't experience a place unless you not only visit local restaurants, but also visit local markets and cook your own food. 

Filling in little boxes

The blank canvas is the most difficult to draw upon.  My experiences with drawing and designing have taught me this, but it also seems to apply to planning.  When you have to fill 48 days with meaningful work, and an entire city to work with, where do you start?

Building a class

Up to now I've been busy writing, then re-writing, and writing again a proposal to study architecture in Barcelona, ES.  It's been difficult managing a full class load while putting a self-taught class together.  Thankfully Luis, my faculty mentor, has been around to pile on even more work than I had imagined.   

Introducing...

Hi everyone, pleased you decided to stop by my blog.  Feel free to comment and say 'hi'!  My name is John, and I will be traveling to Barcelona between May and July 2010 for a study of the architecture of Barcelona, and I thought it might be helpful to blog about the trip while I'm at it.