My first week is consisting mostly of settling and exploring.
I am settling in well in a beautiful 'colonial' house with a South African Christian family. I have my own room, larger than my own at home, painted blue, with two large windows overlooking a lush backyard. This morning I was pleasantly greeted with blue skies for my first time this week from my bed. I can't say enough good things about the house, my neighborhood, and most of all my new 'family'.
I keep slipping, already, in conversation, while referring to my host parents, as my father or mother. I almost prefer to do so rather than attach host in front of the title each time I refer to them, as long as they don't mind, which from the conversations I've gathered, they don't. They are, from what I can tell, very family oriented people. The father, Attilio, who was born outside of Naples, not too far from Capua where Nana was born, told me that he feels to do his best to represent himself as a father to those who are living far from their own fathers. And it is something he does very well. They both are very sweet; I feel very lucky to be with this family.
The neighborhood is turning out to be fitting as well. I live about thirty minutes outside of central London, southeast, by train, (45 min away from Emma's apartment). We are sandwiched between two train stations, Brockley and St. John, and both are about a ten minute walk. I am realizing that I will be walking a lot during my time in London. My college, Goldsmiths, is right up the road, on Lewisham, pronounced Lew-uh-shum, not Lewis-ham, as the way a proper American would think it would be said. It's only a fifteen minute trip to school by walk and bus.
My first 'real' day of school is tomorrow, and it's not even that 'real.' It is an program specific orientation. I believe I will meet my professors and classmates, which are both groups of people I'm anxious to meet. I think we will also talk about our program and what we will be studying this year, which I'm also anxious to discuss.
In terms of exploration, most of my trips have included either Emma or Allison. Emma's apartment is in Bloomsbury, just north of Russell Square, in a beautiful part of the city. We found a quick route for me to visit that avoids the tube. I simply take the train to Charing Cross, then the 91 bus to her apartment. Buses are making life for me very convenient. Emma and I have eaten dinner a few times together, although we plan to see each other most of this weekend. We are learning how to unite our schedules together, which mine in its feeble state is fairly easy to do so, but her's is far more busy.
Allison has a much freer schedule and as a result, we have seen each other a quite a bit this week. We met at Trafalgar, explored the latest exhibit at the Portrait Gallery, then wondered to Covent Garden, all of which was so refreshing to see again. Those walks make me so appreciative that I am here again and also that I have already been here. I most noticed the refreshing nature of seeing something for the second time today in Greenwich. Allison and I explored Queen Anne's, the Laban Dance theater, the Maritime Museum, and what is currently being used a filmset to the next Pirates movie (the fourth one, which God only knows why they are still keeping this series alive, oh wait $$$$$) the Naval Academy. We stalked out alongside a tattered chainlink fence along with a British family to see if we could catch a glimpse of Jack Sparrow himself. We convinced ourselves we did, or Allison did, and I am too cynical to believe that we did. Nonetheless, it was an entertaining detour to our historical visit.
All in all, I'm very happy to be in this wonderfully gray country once again, and do believe that I will have an amazing time during my stay here. I hope the months go slow so I can savor each day I'm here.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
visa dilemma
so i'm missed my flight this morning. i can't help but feel jaded by this because this last reason to why this fell through simply was due to miscommunication.
basically, my visa got help up the mail. It something so preventable which makes it that much more aggravating. I should (better!!!!) receive it today. I haven't heard any news about it so far. This whole process has been a nightmare, which I think makes this sting even more.
I was rejected my first application due to two reasons: 1) my money was in the form of stocks 2) when liquidated to cash, it wasn't on formal enough paper (which it actually was but it just didn't look like it because they probably aren't used to seeing print outs directly from a stock broker).
I found this out (the formal reason) on labor day weekend. I contacted a visa expedite agency who, in hindsight, were very helpful. They answered all my questions in a timely manner and caught a mistake that would pop up in my next application. My next steps after talking them was to reapply under the auspice of a dependent rather than a dependent and use my father's bank account to prove my funds. Besides needing to get a birth certificate, this wasn't too difficult to do. It just weighed on me for the last few weeks mentally.
I got all my stuff together to mail to them last friday, which took me a while to make sure that everything was organized (I must have read the UK Visa website a hundred times), and confidently mailed it to the agency to be received for 10am on Monday morning. I left a two-day airbill in the package because I thought I had plenty of time to be mailed back my visa according to their two-day expedition policy. They got it monday, but processed it tuesday, called me to inform me of a mistake, we overnighted a new bank statement, they received it wednesday, processed everything thursday, including going to the consulate, supposedly mailed my newly approved visa thursday night, never got it friday, freaked out friday night, waited around saturday (well my dad graciously did), realized that my airbill was never used therefore speculated a new airbill was used, hoped and hoped and hoped Tim, my very nice correspondent, made it a saturday two-day airbill, waited on my parents stoop until 530pm, cried when no one showed, cried again when i saw it cost $1500 to change my monday morning flight to the evening, cried even more to see the cheapest option isn't until sunday night still costing $300, relished in a dinner in which my grandmother consoled me, cried more and more and more (and when I say cry i mean figuratively; no tears were shed unfortunately), and now i am praying that it is not lost in the mail.
i want this to evil process to END! wahhhhhh wahhhhhhh.
I've been a big of a mope the past day and a half. I just reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally wanted to go this week. I was so excited to be in London without anything to do and just get to roam around, see my neighborhood, hang out in the city. But, sigh, it will have to wait until next week.
The good news is that when I planned this, I gave myself a two-week cushion before school starts, so thankfully I will not miss anything important, and I still will have plenty of free time next week. I also am glad that I have a week to do nothing in town. Last week was very rushed, especially after going to DC, so I feel better that I can have a really slow pace before I leave.
I think I'm fine now; I just really don't want to have to deal with a potentially lost visa. That will make me cry, maybe even with real tears. I'm not emotionally prepared to have that happen.
basically, my visa got help up the mail. It something so preventable which makes it that much more aggravating. I should (better!!!!) receive it today. I haven't heard any news about it so far. This whole process has been a nightmare, which I think makes this sting even more.
I was rejected my first application due to two reasons: 1) my money was in the form of stocks 2) when liquidated to cash, it wasn't on formal enough paper (which it actually was but it just didn't look like it because they probably aren't used to seeing print outs directly from a stock broker).
I found this out (the formal reason) on labor day weekend. I contacted a visa expedite agency who, in hindsight, were very helpful. They answered all my questions in a timely manner and caught a mistake that would pop up in my next application. My next steps after talking them was to reapply under the auspice of a dependent rather than a dependent and use my father's bank account to prove my funds. Besides needing to get a birth certificate, this wasn't too difficult to do. It just weighed on me for the last few weeks mentally.
I got all my stuff together to mail to them last friday, which took me a while to make sure that everything was organized (I must have read the UK Visa website a hundred times), and confidently mailed it to the agency to be received for 10am on Monday morning. I left a two-day airbill in the package because I thought I had plenty of time to be mailed back my visa according to their two-day expedition policy. They got it monday, but processed it tuesday, called me to inform me of a mistake, we overnighted a new bank statement, they received it wednesday, processed everything thursday, including going to the consulate, supposedly mailed my newly approved visa thursday night, never got it friday, freaked out friday night, waited around saturday (well my dad graciously did), realized that my airbill was never used therefore speculated a new airbill was used, hoped and hoped and hoped Tim, my very nice correspondent, made it a saturday two-day airbill, waited on my parents stoop until 530pm, cried when no one showed, cried again when i saw it cost $1500 to change my monday morning flight to the evening, cried even more to see the cheapest option isn't until sunday night still costing $300, relished in a dinner in which my grandmother consoled me, cried more and more and more (and when I say cry i mean figuratively; no tears were shed unfortunately), and now i am praying that it is not lost in the mail.
i want this to evil process to END! wahhhhhh wahhhhhhh.
I've been a big of a mope the past day and a half. I just reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally wanted to go this week. I was so excited to be in London without anything to do and just get to roam around, see my neighborhood, hang out in the city. But, sigh, it will have to wait until next week.
The good news is that when I planned this, I gave myself a two-week cushion before school starts, so thankfully I will not miss anything important, and I still will have plenty of free time next week. I also am glad that I have a week to do nothing in town. Last week was very rushed, especially after going to DC, so I feel better that I can have a really slow pace before I leave.
I think I'm fine now; I just really don't want to have to deal with a potentially lost visa. That will make me cry, maybe even with real tears. I'm not emotionally prepared to have that happen.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
aaaahhhhhhh
i'm goooooooiiiiiingggggggggg tooooo annndorraaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!
AND
i fffffouuuuuunnnnnddddddd aaaa plaaaaceeee toooo liveeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
AND
i fffffouuuuuunnnnnddddddd aaaa plaaaaceeee toooo liveeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
getting ready to move
i'm a week and a half away from moving back to england and i thought i'd revisit this blog after seeing a few others do the same.
so, a week and half, and i feel like it's still a year a way. i can't believe i'll be in class in three weeks, more like four, but still, it's drawing nearer and nearer. I feel like I still have so much to do at home. I feel like I also just started summer vacation, at the perfect time too--weather has been so great these past three days. Today was the first day where I had nothing to do. I loved it. I could use about a week or two of a maine-like schedule.
I have a few kinks to work out before I leave. I need to go through the visa process again after I was denied over a technicality. I'm fairly certain I will be fine this time, not without a hefty price though. I also think my housing search has come to an end. Emma will visit one tomorrow morning, 8am, (she's a saint I know), and after I hear her opinions, I'll make my decision. It's between living with a family in south london in a big, old, nice house, which sounds a lot of fun, but will be far (about an hour) away from downtown OR living closer to downtown, in a smaller apartment with three older guys, in a cool neighborhood. I'm up in the air. Living with a family sounds so great. I'd love to have a british, south african step-family. It's also close to school.
And school! School is something I'm very excited about. I'm almost disappointed I'll only be there a year because the classes seem so interesting. I feel like I've been always been destined to be a sociologist and was too afraid of the structure of the profession, because of the lack thereof. I will only take two classes this semester, which I don't know if that means I will need all my free time to do the work because its so intensive or that it might be a light course work, either of which I'll be ok with.
I'm hoping that I will get to travel a bunch. I already have two trips in the works. Emma and I going to Venice in November. And Allison and I are going to Andorra in October. Venice is definite, andorra is still a maybe. I hope to add a bunch more to this list.
I can't wait to have a routine there and be able to explore the city. I really hope to know the city well. In fact, I thought about looking into being a tour guide for a part time job. I think I'd love it. There is actually a tour guide school I could attend to get certified, which I think I might do. It also might give me more incentive to brush up on my spanish because the best candidates speak two languages. That'd be quite the challenge to give a tour in spanish; I'd be nervous enough to give it in english. Anyway, I hope to have some time to follow through with this.
My last hurrah in the states includes a trip to DC to see Jordan from Chile. I'm looking forward to seeing him. I also am going to visit the Gate which I haven't been to since last winter. It'll be a fun weekend.
Keep posted for more updates. I hopefully will fix my camera so I will have a place to post pictures of my trip. I still am meaning to post my pictures of Maine and Portland/Seattle.
so, a week and half, and i feel like it's still a year a way. i can't believe i'll be in class in three weeks, more like four, but still, it's drawing nearer and nearer. I feel like I still have so much to do at home. I feel like I also just started summer vacation, at the perfect time too--weather has been so great these past three days. Today was the first day where I had nothing to do. I loved it. I could use about a week or two of a maine-like schedule.
I have a few kinks to work out before I leave. I need to go through the visa process again after I was denied over a technicality. I'm fairly certain I will be fine this time, not without a hefty price though. I also think my housing search has come to an end. Emma will visit one tomorrow morning, 8am, (she's a saint I know), and after I hear her opinions, I'll make my decision. It's between living with a family in south london in a big, old, nice house, which sounds a lot of fun, but will be far (about an hour) away from downtown OR living closer to downtown, in a smaller apartment with three older guys, in a cool neighborhood. I'm up in the air. Living with a family sounds so great. I'd love to have a british, south african step-family. It's also close to school.
And school! School is something I'm very excited about. I'm almost disappointed I'll only be there a year because the classes seem so interesting. I feel like I've been always been destined to be a sociologist and was too afraid of the structure of the profession, because of the lack thereof. I will only take two classes this semester, which I don't know if that means I will need all my free time to do the work because its so intensive or that it might be a light course work, either of which I'll be ok with.
I'm hoping that I will get to travel a bunch. I already have two trips in the works. Emma and I going to Venice in November. And Allison and I are going to Andorra in October. Venice is definite, andorra is still a maybe. I hope to add a bunch more to this list.
I can't wait to have a routine there and be able to explore the city. I really hope to know the city well. In fact, I thought about looking into being a tour guide for a part time job. I think I'd love it. There is actually a tour guide school I could attend to get certified, which I think I might do. It also might give me more incentive to brush up on my spanish because the best candidates speak two languages. That'd be quite the challenge to give a tour in spanish; I'd be nervous enough to give it in english. Anyway, I hope to have some time to follow through with this.
My last hurrah in the states includes a trip to DC to see Jordan from Chile. I'm looking forward to seeing him. I also am going to visit the Gate which I haven't been to since last winter. It'll be a fun weekend.
Keep posted for more updates. I hopefully will fix my camera so I will have a place to post pictures of my trip. I still am meaning to post my pictures of Maine and Portland/Seattle.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Life without Internet in the countryside
Its been a week since I have updated! Unfortunately that is not because we have been ridiculously busy because life is quite slow in the countryside but simply because we do not have internet! What we are gathering is that since Kiplin Hall is located in such a remote location that we are too far away to get good internet service. A neighbor poked her head in the other day and debunked the myth that the reason we didn't have internet was because our landlord didn't pay the bill (which is what he explained to us). After she explained that it took her five years to get adequate internet, our hopes are starting to dry up to believe that we will have internet in the house. Do not worry though! It is a good thing, I think. We are already learning how to live without having the internet, which is turning out to be quite nice. We have to be a little more creative with how we use our free time instead of spending so much of it online. We are spending more time outside, going for walks, riding bikes, playing soccer-er-football. In fact, everyone is getting soccer. We are all about to buy cleats and shin guards. DuPuy is the ref. There are four guys and four guys which makes it fairly easy to make even teams. We keep varying them up to figure the best match up. Today it will be me, chris, emma and sarah vs. justin, jesse, jenny and zach. Keep posted for the results.
Life without the internet is posing to be a difficult academically. We cannot use google for anything. That means no google maps, no random searches, no ways to procrastinate. We actually have to do all of our work without distractions! Kidding aside, it is annoying to know that if you did not save a google maps pdf properly that you might not be able to do work the whole day (since we are doing site analysis). It is also difficult to do precedent analysis. We are dependent on the random books that people brought, all of which are extremely contemporary which will be interesting to see how their influence will manifest in our contextually traditional projects. LTL, Think/Make, and Diller Scofidio at the moment are our urban precedents, interesting. We now add precedent analysis to our list of things to do behind checking email and facebook when we have about an hour or two of internet use. Studio without internet will be an interesting variation to add to our already mutated version of our 'international' studio. Hopefully, the results will still show magnificent work as DuPuy repeatedly states that we will all produce. God willing.
Anyway, I don't really want to write a daily journal of our adventures because it will probably bore you. I mean it is exciting for us but reading about what we ate for dinner and what game we played at night becomes cumbersome to read. I will try to highlight the more exciting things that happen rather than a play by play, which will hopefully make this a little more enjoyable to read!
Next blog I'll post a little more about what we are doing in studio. It is an interesting project that will hopefully produce interesting results.
Life without the internet is posing to be a difficult academically. We cannot use google for anything. That means no google maps, no random searches, no ways to procrastinate. We actually have to do all of our work without distractions! Kidding aside, it is annoying to know that if you did not save a google maps pdf properly that you might not be able to do work the whole day (since we are doing site analysis). It is also difficult to do precedent analysis. We are dependent on the random books that people brought, all of which are extremely contemporary which will be interesting to see how their influence will manifest in our contextually traditional projects. LTL, Think/Make, and Diller Scofidio at the moment are our urban precedents, interesting. We now add precedent analysis to our list of things to do behind checking email and facebook when we have about an hour or two of internet use. Studio without internet will be an interesting variation to add to our already mutated version of our 'international' studio. Hopefully, the results will still show magnificent work as DuPuy repeatedly states that we will all produce. God willing.
Anyway, I don't really want to write a daily journal of our adventures because it will probably bore you. I mean it is exciting for us but reading about what we ate for dinner and what game we played at night becomes cumbersome to read. I will try to highlight the more exciting things that happen rather than a play by play, which will hopefully make this a little more enjoyable to read!
Next blog I'll post a little more about what we are doing in studio. It is an interesting project that will hopefully produce interesting results.
Monday, February 1, 2010
English Countryside--Kiplin Hall!
Friday
Friday consisted of us traveling to Kiplin hall, about four hours north of London. The drive was gorgeous. We lucked out and had great weather, the sunniest day so far in England. It did bother us though that we were trapped in the car, but it at least made for picturesque views. We had a beautiful sunset once we reached Kiplin which set well over the lake on our property. The grounds to the estate are unbelievable. Its almost like its out of a novel. We didn’t explore much because we knew we had an empty pantry so we set out to buy groceries.
The grocery store is about twenty minutes away but it was worth the drive. I bought a week worth of food for 25 pounds, which is about 40 dollars. The only pain was that they charge for bags and I didn’t know that until I finished paying. Most of us didn’t know so we had to individually load all of our groceries into our van. Thankfully we have a big trunk.
We went back to our house and made dinner. We got settled in the place after we got a tour from the groundskeeper. The place is an old carriage house that is recently renovated. Its an L shaped building with a courtyard facing the lake. On the ground level, we have a library (our tv room), a kitchen, a dining room, our studio (which is a big room with four tables), and a guest bedroom. Upstairs there are three bedrooms, two bedrooms for the four girls and one large bedroom, which is more like a loft, for the four guys. DuPuy has his own entrance to his apartment on the ground level, but right now his heat is broken so he sleeping in the guest bedroom.
I am particularly happy with the living conditions. The rooms are spacious. We have all new furniture all of which is from IKEA. The loft is the coolest room in the house so I’m happy to be sleeping there. It is also the warmest. Our first night we had to learn the hard way about our heating system. Even though we had the warmest room, the entire house dropped down to about 7 Celsius and was freezing. We found out that the heat was circuited to drop down so low. Obviously we changed that immediately.
We are going to do a video of our house and the grounds once our internet is working and we will put it on youtube.
Saturday
We spent the day in Richmond scouting out sites for our studio project. We explored the very cool, medieval city of Richmond. We also checked out Easby Abbey, an old ruin from the sixteenth century. Very cool. It was a very relaxing day.
Sunday
We went to Durham. Left about 10:30 am. Took about an hour to get there. The city is beautiful. It reminded me of a British Siena minus the huge plaza. We thought about looking around for sites but we decided to stick with Richmond as the location of our main site.
We broke into two groups and went to coffee shops to use the internet. We were online for about an hour before we met up with DuPuy. It is kind of annoying that we need to depend on coffee shops to use the internet. I am looking forward to when the internet is fixed at Kiplin. I made a blog for the group so hopefully we will use that soon. Our name is British Blitzkrieg. Hopefully no brits will find that offensive.
After surfing the web, we explored the historic part of the city. The atmosphere is very quaint. There old buildings that date back as early as the eleventh century. It is a typical medieval city with extremely narrow streets, with buildings about three stories high, built in a regional style that radiate out from a central square. There are two major buildings within the historic city, the castle and the cathedral.
The castle was built in 1070 and is now used by Durham University. About 150 students live there. It’s basically their version of Stamp with residence halls minus the fact that it is a castle. We went on about an hour tour given to us by a student attending the university. She did a very good job and DuPuy made sure to tell her multiple times about how much he liked it. It made me think of Carolina who gave tour guides in Florence. It seems like a great job to have. You get to talk for an hour and be an expert about something interesting. Then you get paid. Wherever I live next, I might look into giving tours for a historic building in the area.
The castle looked very stereotypical, like what a kindergartener would draw as a castle. The crenellations are probably the biggest reason. We toured the building and became very jealous of the students who live there. It’s almost unbelievable that students get to study in such a magnificent place.
We also visited the stunning Durham Cathedral, which happens to be Dupuy’s favorite cathedral (which is something to say considering he’s been to hundreds). It is built on a cliff so that the westward face, the main entrance, is inaccessible. It makes for a dramatic view. This forces the entrance to be on the sides. The things that are most noticeable once you enter are the huge columns and the dramatic light let in through the clerestory. The columns made the building feel heavy. Every other column is either inscribed or painted which makes for an interesting perspective because it distorts the rhythm of the columns, which is typically consistent. The light was incredible. The orientation allows for light to enter through the clerestory and it reflects well off of the vaults. Both sides have large rose windows. There is noticeably more fenestration (a characteristic of English Cathedrals) than the cathedrals we visited in France.
We stayed for evensong, which is a shortened mass free to the public that runs about thirty minutes long. It combines two choirs together, the men’s and boy’s choir and they sing hymns. It is nice to hear both voices together. We also went to evensong at Westminster Abbey and were able to sit much closer to the choir. This time we sat kind of far away from the choir in the regular pews. I prefer to sit closer because it was much more engaging. Nonetheless, it is a great chance to spend time in the cathedral for free listening to beautiful music.
We were only five deep when we left the cathedral to come home. Sara, Emma and Jesse left early to make dinner for us. They made thai chicken stew, or at least that is my interpretation of the name of the dish. Needless to say, it was delicious. I had two servings. We had a good conversation with DuPuy. We are learning a lot about his insight and his personal life, which adds another layer to this trip that makes it so worthwhile. The boys cleaned up after we ate a tasty apple crisp. We are going to try to have group meals every Sunday. I imagine that the girls will remain the cooks and the boys will continue to clean up. Otherwise dinner will be chili, instant mashed potatoes, frankfurts and canned corn.
Post dinner plans consisted of people splitting up and getting on with their personal endeavors. Some laundry was done. People cleaned their rooms. I read our tech homework, which was very uninteresting (thermal conditions of various building materials). There was a good amount conservation tonight about our daily schedule. We will have tech every morning 10-11. He will teach from Bovill’s slides. He has said repeatedly that he wants it to be interactive so I hope that this means that we will learn this material much better than we do in a lecture setting. We will have studio following tech at 1 and that will go until 5. Ideally we will have it four days a week and split the week up with a field trip for our history class. Weekends will consist of us traveling to nearby sites like we did this weekend (Richmond and Durham). The schedule sounds ideal to me. We maintain this until the end of the month.
I am now preparing for bed, at 11 at night. In fact, I have been ready for bed since ten but I am dragging this out by writing this journal. I like getting tired early; it’s a change of pace from previous schedules. There might even be a chance that we will get eight hours of sleep a night. Can you believe it? I almost can’t. It sounds too good to be true.
Tomorrow we will go to Richmond to pick our site. I have a site in mind. I want to do an infill project that will tear down an existing restaurant and build a mixed-use building with retail on the bottom and a bed & breakfast above. It terminates the view one of the streets off the main square. The street splits and the site is right at the fork. It will cover tectonics, urban issues and adaptive reuse.
Our assignment was given to us rather impromptu. We scouted out potential sites for the group but it now turns out that the sites we found are candidates for our personal sites. We make all the decisions from deciding the site and determining the program. I want to do something simple programmatically so I am learning towards mixed use. I feel like I have done quite a few celebratory buildings and it will be good to do something more discreet. I found a few sites that need work on them but only really found one that fits the urban description that I am looking for. I want a site is located within the city medieval fabric that will require an understanding of the vernacular style and the existing urban conditions. Most of the sites that need help are located on the main road, island buildings that are better suited for celebrated buildings. Emma is considering one of these sites for her project. She wants to do some type of tourism information center, because the existing one is not too substantial.
I’m glad that DuPuy is giving us independence in choosing our sites. We each will have very different projects, which will be refreshing. It seems to be more applicable to post-graduation because we have to learn how to develop initiative and the ability to balance pragmatism and idealism within the creativity of design. It will give us a good sense of what we are made of, which is good and bad for obvious reasons. I see more good than bad and what I do see as bad is probably just scary if distilled down. I am curious to see what we can accomplish in a month. I don’t know how to compare consecutive design with the format we design at in Maryland. I imagine that we will have good results. We are removing so many unhealthy variables that it almost has to be better.
OK I have to go to bed. I will plenty of time to write tomorrow. I am the first to go at 1pm tomorrow and the final crit is at 4:30. I will most likely go to ‘the station’ and use the internet and post this! I can’t wait until we have internet.
Friday consisted of us traveling to Kiplin hall, about four hours north of London. The drive was gorgeous. We lucked out and had great weather, the sunniest day so far in England. It did bother us though that we were trapped in the car, but it at least made for picturesque views. We had a beautiful sunset once we reached Kiplin which set well over the lake on our property. The grounds to the estate are unbelievable. Its almost like its out of a novel. We didn’t explore much because we knew we had an empty pantry so we set out to buy groceries.
The grocery store is about twenty minutes away but it was worth the drive. I bought a week worth of food for 25 pounds, which is about 40 dollars. The only pain was that they charge for bags and I didn’t know that until I finished paying. Most of us didn’t know so we had to individually load all of our groceries into our van. Thankfully we have a big trunk.
We went back to our house and made dinner. We got settled in the place after we got a tour from the groundskeeper. The place is an old carriage house that is recently renovated. Its an L shaped building with a courtyard facing the lake. On the ground level, we have a library (our tv room), a kitchen, a dining room, our studio (which is a big room with four tables), and a guest bedroom. Upstairs there are three bedrooms, two bedrooms for the four girls and one large bedroom, which is more like a loft, for the four guys. DuPuy has his own entrance to his apartment on the ground level, but right now his heat is broken so he sleeping in the guest bedroom.
I am particularly happy with the living conditions. The rooms are spacious. We have all new furniture all of which is from IKEA. The loft is the coolest room in the house so I’m happy to be sleeping there. It is also the warmest. Our first night we had to learn the hard way about our heating system. Even though we had the warmest room, the entire house dropped down to about 7 Celsius and was freezing. We found out that the heat was circuited to drop down so low. Obviously we changed that immediately.
We are going to do a video of our house and the grounds once our internet is working and we will put it on youtube.
Saturday
We spent the day in Richmond scouting out sites for our studio project. We explored the very cool, medieval city of Richmond. We also checked out Easby Abbey, an old ruin from the sixteenth century. Very cool. It was a very relaxing day.
Sunday
We went to Durham. Left about 10:30 am. Took about an hour to get there. The city is beautiful. It reminded me of a British Siena minus the huge plaza. We thought about looking around for sites but we decided to stick with Richmond as the location of our main site.
We broke into two groups and went to coffee shops to use the internet. We were online for about an hour before we met up with DuPuy. It is kind of annoying that we need to depend on coffee shops to use the internet. I am looking forward to when the internet is fixed at Kiplin. I made a blog for the group so hopefully we will use that soon. Our name is British Blitzkrieg. Hopefully no brits will find that offensive.
After surfing the web, we explored the historic part of the city. The atmosphere is very quaint. There old buildings that date back as early as the eleventh century. It is a typical medieval city with extremely narrow streets, with buildings about three stories high, built in a regional style that radiate out from a central square. There are two major buildings within the historic city, the castle and the cathedral.
The castle was built in 1070 and is now used by Durham University. About 150 students live there. It’s basically their version of Stamp with residence halls minus the fact that it is a castle. We went on about an hour tour given to us by a student attending the university. She did a very good job and DuPuy made sure to tell her multiple times about how much he liked it. It made me think of Carolina who gave tour guides in Florence. It seems like a great job to have. You get to talk for an hour and be an expert about something interesting. Then you get paid. Wherever I live next, I might look into giving tours for a historic building in the area.
The castle looked very stereotypical, like what a kindergartener would draw as a castle. The crenellations are probably the biggest reason. We toured the building and became very jealous of the students who live there. It’s almost unbelievable that students get to study in such a magnificent place.
We also visited the stunning Durham Cathedral, which happens to be Dupuy’s favorite cathedral (which is something to say considering he’s been to hundreds). It is built on a cliff so that the westward face, the main entrance, is inaccessible. It makes for a dramatic view. This forces the entrance to be on the sides. The things that are most noticeable once you enter are the huge columns and the dramatic light let in through the clerestory. The columns made the building feel heavy. Every other column is either inscribed or painted which makes for an interesting perspective because it distorts the rhythm of the columns, which is typically consistent. The light was incredible. The orientation allows for light to enter through the clerestory and it reflects well off of the vaults. Both sides have large rose windows. There is noticeably more fenestration (a characteristic of English Cathedrals) than the cathedrals we visited in France.
We stayed for evensong, which is a shortened mass free to the public that runs about thirty minutes long. It combines two choirs together, the men’s and boy’s choir and they sing hymns. It is nice to hear both voices together. We also went to evensong at Westminster Abbey and were able to sit much closer to the choir. This time we sat kind of far away from the choir in the regular pews. I prefer to sit closer because it was much more engaging. Nonetheless, it is a great chance to spend time in the cathedral for free listening to beautiful music.
We were only five deep when we left the cathedral to come home. Sara, Emma and Jesse left early to make dinner for us. They made thai chicken stew, or at least that is my interpretation of the name of the dish. Needless to say, it was delicious. I had two servings. We had a good conversation with DuPuy. We are learning a lot about his insight and his personal life, which adds another layer to this trip that makes it so worthwhile. The boys cleaned up after we ate a tasty apple crisp. We are going to try to have group meals every Sunday. I imagine that the girls will remain the cooks and the boys will continue to clean up. Otherwise dinner will be chili, instant mashed potatoes, frankfurts and canned corn.
Post dinner plans consisted of people splitting up and getting on with their personal endeavors. Some laundry was done. People cleaned their rooms. I read our tech homework, which was very uninteresting (thermal conditions of various building materials). There was a good amount conservation tonight about our daily schedule. We will have tech every morning 10-11. He will teach from Bovill’s slides. He has said repeatedly that he wants it to be interactive so I hope that this means that we will learn this material much better than we do in a lecture setting. We will have studio following tech at 1 and that will go until 5. Ideally we will have it four days a week and split the week up with a field trip for our history class. Weekends will consist of us traveling to nearby sites like we did this weekend (Richmond and Durham). The schedule sounds ideal to me. We maintain this until the end of the month.
I am now preparing for bed, at 11 at night. In fact, I have been ready for bed since ten but I am dragging this out by writing this journal. I like getting tired early; it’s a change of pace from previous schedules. There might even be a chance that we will get eight hours of sleep a night. Can you believe it? I almost can’t. It sounds too good to be true.
Tomorrow we will go to Richmond to pick our site. I have a site in mind. I want to do an infill project that will tear down an existing restaurant and build a mixed-use building with retail on the bottom and a bed & breakfast above. It terminates the view one of the streets off the main square. The street splits and the site is right at the fork. It will cover tectonics, urban issues and adaptive reuse.
Our assignment was given to us rather impromptu. We scouted out potential sites for the group but it now turns out that the sites we found are candidates for our personal sites. We make all the decisions from deciding the site and determining the program. I want to do something simple programmatically so I am learning towards mixed use. I feel like I have done quite a few celebratory buildings and it will be good to do something more discreet. I found a few sites that need work on them but only really found one that fits the urban description that I am looking for. I want a site is located within the city medieval fabric that will require an understanding of the vernacular style and the existing urban conditions. Most of the sites that need help are located on the main road, island buildings that are better suited for celebrated buildings. Emma is considering one of these sites for her project. She wants to do some type of tourism information center, because the existing one is not too substantial.
I’m glad that DuPuy is giving us independence in choosing our sites. We each will have very different projects, which will be refreshing. It seems to be more applicable to post-graduation because we have to learn how to develop initiative and the ability to balance pragmatism and idealism within the creativity of design. It will give us a good sense of what we are made of, which is good and bad for obvious reasons. I see more good than bad and what I do see as bad is probably just scary if distilled down. I am curious to see what we can accomplish in a month. I don’t know how to compare consecutive design with the format we design at in Maryland. I imagine that we will have good results. We are removing so many unhealthy variables that it almost has to be better.
OK I have to go to bed. I will plenty of time to write tomorrow. I am the first to go at 1pm tomorrow and the final crit is at 4:30. I will most likely go to ‘the station’ and use the internet and post this! I can’t wait until we have internet.
Tuesday & Wednesday & Thursday--the rest of london
Tuesday
We went on a boat ride down the Thames to Greenwich. We saw plenty of great historic buildings but not so many great contemporary ones.
Greenwich has impressive historic buildings that are laid out brilliantly that sit on the waterfront. The buildings lie on the base of a hill that has the observatory on its summit. This is where the Greenwich meantime was developed. We learned about camera obscura and other dorky astronomical concepts.
Afterwards we walked under the river through a foot tunnel and checked out Canary Wharf. It’s a large financial district east of the city that is full of large, new skyscrapers. It has the largest building in London Metropolis, the Canada tower. Its built on three levels, similar to La Defense and even has a large rectangular building in the center. There are canals that go throughout the old docklands and are lined with pedestrian walkways. We found a great pizza place right off the canal after we discovered the tube closed down temporarily.
As we headed back to hostel, I started to feel sick. I went to sleep early and missed out on our own pub-crawl.
Wednesday
We were greeted with lousy, British weather on Wednesday morning. I was well on my way to being sick so I was not too thrilled to see this. We headed down to St. Paul’s and accepted that there wouldn’t be a better day to have good weather to see a view of the city. We climbed up the hundreds of stairs to see the various summits both inside and outside of the cathedral. The inside of the cathedral was outstanding. It has the second largest dome in the world only behind St. Peter’s in Rome. The cathedral was designed by Christopher Wren in 1666 ten days after the fire of London burned down the existing one. He did a phenomenal job for only taking ten days to design it. I felt lousy by the time we reached the top but the views were so spectacular that it didn’t really hit me until we were on our way to our next stop.
We didn’t do too much the rest of the day. We went into it knowing it was going to be a half a day, which I was happy about. We went to Liverpool station but decided to take the long, scenic route in the cold rain walking at full-DuPuy pace. We passed the Gherkin, the funny looking, upside down cone building built by Norman Foster. The ground level has large triangles penetrating that bottom that circle the building. I didn’t realize that it had a circular base but I guess I never thought about the ground level much before. We got lost getting to the train station from there and for some reason decided to stay outside once we reached it. I bought a phone while people ate and tried to stay in some kind of warmth.
My health was fading as the day progressed and did not have much energy to go through the rest of the day’s activities. DuPuy conned us into thinking we were going to end early but we kept on doing more things. We visited the Portrait Gallery and spent about an hour looking through the galleries. He realized that we spent more time than anticipated out and about and treated us to the tea and biscuits on the top level of the museum. It was my first teatime but hopefully not the last. It was quite good.
Teatime gave me time to revive and I chose to go out with the group to see Harrods after class. I forgot how over the top it was from when I visited when I was younger. Within seconds of entering, we were told to hold our backpacks in hand, not the most pleasant greeting. A few minutes later we were scolded for walking together in a group. I left there with Emma soon after. I hated its elitism.
Once again I missed pub time and stayed in to read. I didn’t mind too much. Before, Emma and I had a nice dinner at a pasta house that made amazing penne Napolitano that was down the road from our hostel. It was a good recovery night.
Thursday
Thursday was the first day we went north on the tube. We visited Arsenal Stadium and a contemporary Liebskind student center at a London university. Arsenal Stadium was very impressive. They inserted an enormous stadium in dense urban fabric. The most amazing thing about it is that it has no parking; they are dependent completely on public transportation. We might try to get tickets to go to a game. We have already seen how much of a grip ‘football’, as they say, has on their culture. Pubs are packed when a local game is on. We just bought our first football today to play.
We wandered over to the Daniel Liebskind student center. It’s a funky deconstructive building that is in the camp as Gehry’s and Zaha Hadid’s buildings. It is a toned down version of his Toronto museum. The building isn’t accessible to the public but DuPuy tried to charm his way in and might have gotten us a chance to go inside when we go back to London.
Our next stop was on the complete opposite side of the architecture spectrum: the very historical, very creative/innovative Sir John Soane’s museum. Sir John Soane was a prominent architect and art collector of his time and decorated his house in an incredibly eclectic way. He bought three townhouses on a square in a wealthy part of town and connected all three together. The section of the house is phenomenal. He makes a ton of small spaces and periodically open it two or three stories. The best room is in the back where he connects all three back rooms together, but each have a separate roof structure. A written description could not do it justice, thankfully we drew a ton and took a bunch of pictures. This visit is definitely a highlight as of now.
I was still sick and manage to blow through three packs of tissues that I bought that morning. We headed over the classical Tate Britain. They had a beautiful Turner exhibit. Once again I was unimpressed with the contemporary art. I also was unimpressed with the contemporary addition done by James Sterling. I haven’t seem much contemporary architecture to write home about.
We were let out early again and took advantage of a two for one discount at Wagamama that our London pass provided us. Wagamama gave us another delicious meal. I had some type of spicy, vegetabl-y soup that cleared my nasal passages right up. I’m a fan of the restaurant altogether.
I went out for a little bit in order to celebrate our last night in London to the bar next to our hostel. The beer is fairly cheap, but the food is the better deal. We had a good time. Zach, Chris, Justin, Emma and Jesse went out later to whiskey night but somehow missed out the big dollar-shot discount. I heard all about the next day. I, on the hand, stayed in and packed. Most night I went bed early. I was eagerly anticipating going to Kiplin hall.
We went on a boat ride down the Thames to Greenwich. We saw plenty of great historic buildings but not so many great contemporary ones.
Greenwich has impressive historic buildings that are laid out brilliantly that sit on the waterfront. The buildings lie on the base of a hill that has the observatory on its summit. This is where the Greenwich meantime was developed. We learned about camera obscura and other dorky astronomical concepts.
Afterwards we walked under the river through a foot tunnel and checked out Canary Wharf. It’s a large financial district east of the city that is full of large, new skyscrapers. It has the largest building in London Metropolis, the Canada tower. Its built on three levels, similar to La Defense and even has a large rectangular building in the center. There are canals that go throughout the old docklands and are lined with pedestrian walkways. We found a great pizza place right off the canal after we discovered the tube closed down temporarily.
As we headed back to hostel, I started to feel sick. I went to sleep early and missed out on our own pub-crawl.
Wednesday
We were greeted with lousy, British weather on Wednesday morning. I was well on my way to being sick so I was not too thrilled to see this. We headed down to St. Paul’s and accepted that there wouldn’t be a better day to have good weather to see a view of the city. We climbed up the hundreds of stairs to see the various summits both inside and outside of the cathedral. The inside of the cathedral was outstanding. It has the second largest dome in the world only behind St. Peter’s in Rome. The cathedral was designed by Christopher Wren in 1666 ten days after the fire of London burned down the existing one. He did a phenomenal job for only taking ten days to design it. I felt lousy by the time we reached the top but the views were so spectacular that it didn’t really hit me until we were on our way to our next stop.
We didn’t do too much the rest of the day. We went into it knowing it was going to be a half a day, which I was happy about. We went to Liverpool station but decided to take the long, scenic route in the cold rain walking at full-DuPuy pace. We passed the Gherkin, the funny looking, upside down cone building built by Norman Foster. The ground level has large triangles penetrating that bottom that circle the building. I didn’t realize that it had a circular base but I guess I never thought about the ground level much before. We got lost getting to the train station from there and for some reason decided to stay outside once we reached it. I bought a phone while people ate and tried to stay in some kind of warmth.
My health was fading as the day progressed and did not have much energy to go through the rest of the day’s activities. DuPuy conned us into thinking we were going to end early but we kept on doing more things. We visited the Portrait Gallery and spent about an hour looking through the galleries. He realized that we spent more time than anticipated out and about and treated us to the tea and biscuits on the top level of the museum. It was my first teatime but hopefully not the last. It was quite good.
Teatime gave me time to revive and I chose to go out with the group to see Harrods after class. I forgot how over the top it was from when I visited when I was younger. Within seconds of entering, we were told to hold our backpacks in hand, not the most pleasant greeting. A few minutes later we were scolded for walking together in a group. I left there with Emma soon after. I hated its elitism.
Once again I missed pub time and stayed in to read. I didn’t mind too much. Before, Emma and I had a nice dinner at a pasta house that made amazing penne Napolitano that was down the road from our hostel. It was a good recovery night.
Thursday
Thursday was the first day we went north on the tube. We visited Arsenal Stadium and a contemporary Liebskind student center at a London university. Arsenal Stadium was very impressive. They inserted an enormous stadium in dense urban fabric. The most amazing thing about it is that it has no parking; they are dependent completely on public transportation. We might try to get tickets to go to a game. We have already seen how much of a grip ‘football’, as they say, has on their culture. Pubs are packed when a local game is on. We just bought our first football today to play.
We wandered over to the Daniel Liebskind student center. It’s a funky deconstructive building that is in the camp as Gehry’s and Zaha Hadid’s buildings. It is a toned down version of his Toronto museum. The building isn’t accessible to the public but DuPuy tried to charm his way in and might have gotten us a chance to go inside when we go back to London.
Our next stop was on the complete opposite side of the architecture spectrum: the very historical, very creative/innovative Sir John Soane’s museum. Sir John Soane was a prominent architect and art collector of his time and decorated his house in an incredibly eclectic way. He bought three townhouses on a square in a wealthy part of town and connected all three together. The section of the house is phenomenal. He makes a ton of small spaces and periodically open it two or three stories. The best room is in the back where he connects all three back rooms together, but each have a separate roof structure. A written description could not do it justice, thankfully we drew a ton and took a bunch of pictures. This visit is definitely a highlight as of now.
I was still sick and manage to blow through three packs of tissues that I bought that morning. We headed over the classical Tate Britain. They had a beautiful Turner exhibit. Once again I was unimpressed with the contemporary art. I also was unimpressed with the contemporary addition done by James Sterling. I haven’t seem much contemporary architecture to write home about.
We were let out early again and took advantage of a two for one discount at Wagamama that our London pass provided us. Wagamama gave us another delicious meal. I had some type of spicy, vegetabl-y soup that cleared my nasal passages right up. I’m a fan of the restaurant altogether.
I went out for a little bit in order to celebrate our last night in London to the bar next to our hostel. The beer is fairly cheap, but the food is the better deal. We had a good time. Zach, Chris, Justin, Emma and Jesse went out later to whiskey night but somehow missed out the big dollar-shot discount. I heard all about the next day. I, on the hand, stayed in and packed. Most night I went bed early. I was eagerly anticipating going to Kiplin hall.
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