Vienna

Vienna is now one of my favorite cities in the world.  It is something like a smaller version of Paris; a cleaner one too.  With Old, old modern, and contemporary architecture the city continues to create places to visit and to be.  With a long history of artists, architects, musicians, and political and economic influence, Vienna has a little bit of everything.  I would certainly recommend going.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucasnhoops/sets/72157633875644836/

Letter to Tia Sandra

Hey Tia San,

   Hey thanks for the news!  I hadn't heard anything much from the family.  It has been quite a while since we've communicated; I'm not even sure where to begin:

Well, I'm enjoying my classes very much.  The topic is something completely different than what I am used to doing back at UTA; we're studying Berlin, and trying to understand what are the qualities of place there.  The idea is that all kinds of architectural elements contribute to what gives somewhere a sense of place; in the case of Berlin it is a pattern of courtyard buildings, lots of empty spaces left over from the bombings in WWII, a grunginess of materiality, old brick buildings, hidden alleyways, etc.  Then we take these elements and try to make a project that describes them, or puts them into context with some sort of project. 

I am currently working on this project and in March we are going to exhibit it at a professional forum; I'm looking forward to it, but it is also demanding most of my time these days.

I went to Italy for New Years and Christmas; for Christmas a classmate of mine invited me to stay with her family in northern Italy.  She lives in a small village in the mountains.  The area has been part of the Austrian empire, so they speak German, and Italian; and I believe there is even a regional dialect that is hardly recognizable as German or Italian. 

Then I went to Milan for New Years.  A friend of mine came from the Texas to visit his sister who is living there, so I met up with them and spent a week in Milan.  It is a nice city, relatively modern when comparing it to European age.  It reminded me a lot of Argentina, Buenos Aires in particular.  There were many 4 or 5 story neo-classical (almost French) style apartment buildings, with beautiful adornments on the outside.  The weather was also great; a bit chilly but bearable. We also managed to get up to Switzerland for a day and visit some small towns around a large lake.  It was really beautiful; it looked a bit like the town we went to visit in the Mountains in France next to that lake on the Swiss border. 

My German is at a somewhat conversational level.  I can speak with people, but grammar is extremely difficult, and perhaps it's just my impression, but it seems a little less forgiving in terms of communicating,  The people are extremely nice, it's more that I can't seems to articulate myself quite perfectly when I want to get more involved in the conversation.

I have met a lot of great people in the area; everyone is relatively relaxed; they participate in a lot of mountain sports here, so a lot of skiing, hiking, mountain biking, that sort of stuff; but it's a way of life here.  It is nice, about a ten minutes’ walk away from here I get out of the neighborhood and begin walking on paths going through the wilderness.  Truly a blessing.

Besides that, I miss home of course.  I am a little more than half way through now; I'll be coming back at the beginning of August, so I still have another semester to wrap up.  I hope to do some more travelling over the summer.  For Easter I'm heading into France.  I'll be staying with Olivier, and I hope I'll get the chance to see a lot of old friends, and my host families as well.  That should be quite nice in fact. 

How about you, do you have any travelling plans in the near future?  Say hi to the family, un beso enorme

Lucas

A drawing of the mountains outside my window

Week 5

   This morning it was very cold.  The sky was covered in clouds so I couldn’t see that in the mountains it snowed sometime yesterday.  As the afternoon began I saw an opening in the clouds, and a white peak emerging into the sunlight.  Although beautiful, it seems strange to imagine that in a thirty minute hike I could reach the edge of the snow, and yet none reached the city streets.

Skiing is a very important pass time here in Austria, and especially in Innsbruck.  Many of the people I’ve met have told me that it is worth getting a year ski pass.  My roommate was telling me that you could easily go every weekend.  I hesitate though because I wonder if I’d really have the time.  It does not take that much time to get to the slopes though.  I think the nearest one could be reached in about ten minutes.

One of the studios at the architecture school is dealing with sport oriented cities and activity using Innsbruck as a primary example of a city that is geared toward mountain sports, and investigating how that might guide and shape its development.  I was intrigued by the topic and considered taking the course; I chose however to take another professor who came highly recommended.

My studio course had its first meeting last Thursday.  Our topic is dealing with the voids in the fabric of Berlin.  Berlin was bombed during the war so many spaces and even buildings still remain empty and abandoned.  Of course, the fall of the Berlin wall also led to many industrial warehouses and factories becoming abandoned.  These warehouses where the spaces that hosted the various underground rave parties that took place in the early 1990’s; without their abandonment and the lack of jurisdiction and police the underground culture became the night club culture that thousands of people from all around the world come to visit.  The moment also generated artistic and musical movements that now are the popular almost mainstream culture of Europe, and maybe even the U.S. 

I’m not sure what we are going to work on yet, but I know we will have to make a series of proposals that engage this artistic culture along with the remaining voids.  There is a threat that the voids could be filled by developers and investors.  The issue isn’t that economic activity is taking place in Berlin, but that if the voids get filled with luxury apartment buildings and condos, the culture that is Berlin now could be lost, and the charm of the empty spaces that can be used as passage ways and hiking routes through the city, would become closed. 

Taking this class I have realized what is so important about the experience of a place, and how even what might be considered beautiful buildings, could ultimately destroy the experiential atmosphere of the place.  After all, it’s the local restaurant with cheap pizza, or the café tucked away in an alleyway where we meet friends, that create the joy of our experience in a city, not the monuments or land value.

Since school has started I have to say that I am extremely happy to be working on something.  Before I was soaking in the sites and getting situated to my environs; now I am making friends, going out, working on projects, and getting a sense of what daily life is really like here.

I have three supermarkets within about 5 minutes walking.  One of them is a chain that was started in Innsbruck by a family that owned a bakery.  Now they are a supermarket that has a special bakery section in it that serves fresh and cheap bread.  I usually go there to get it.  On Fridays a there is a farmers market where I can buy local produce.  I get vegetables from one stand, cheese from another.  Another sells honey and mead. 

While the food quality here is really good, everything is closed by 6 or 7.  So I have to carefully plan my day in order to get everything I need by the morning or early afternoon.  Then I spend the later afternoon working on things at home.

I also began a German course.  It is quite difficult, but my roommate today was surprised by my improvement.  I wish I could learn everything so quickly, but language is more of a habitual kind of learning, and getting used to the vocabulary and grammatical rules are habits that build on top of each other, so it can never come immediately.  From an outsider’s perspective, however, it may seem to happen at lightning speed, especially when the student is immersed in it.

Last Saturday I had a chance to put my German skills to some use.  A new friend of mine invited me to a housewarming party where I knew no one except for her.  I arrived with some difficulty because the apartment was located on the other side of the city.  Innsbruck is not very large, but it is dense, and it is not organized in a square grid, so orienting yourself is not as easy as in the U.S.  I did arrive at last and began to meet people and talk to them.  I always greeted in German, and attempted anything I could say in the course of multiple conversations.  Soon enough people were helping me by teaching me new phrases, correcting my grammar.  It was a fun night.  I didn’t realize it, but it was soon 3 AM and everyone was leaving, but not to go home, to go out dancing in clubs downtown.  There is a little district in Innsbruck of clubs that are all located underneath the railroad.  The railroad is raised up on brick arches, and so under these arches are multiple clubs, bars, and music halls, and so when I arrived with the party, most of Innsbruck’s students were out on the street or in the clubs.  This is something that does not exist in Dallas.  There are some small areas with a few bars or maybe a club to dance in, but they all close around 2 AM, and then everyone has to drive home.  The best part about this district here in Innsbruck is that it is within walking distance to most of the city.

I think beginning the school year has market the beginning of me becoming part of the city and culture; the beginning of new friendships and deeper experiences.  I do miss Mexican food though.

Until next time,

lucas.n.hoops' photostream

lucas.n.hoops' photostream on Flickr.

Week 3 and 4

        Life became slower once I had settled into my new home.  My roommates finally arrived toward the end of the week.  I took some time to get to know them.  David is an architecture student in the bachelors program.  He is from near Freiburg, Germany.  Alexandra is from the Netherlands.  She is the youngest of our group, just now going into her first year of business management.  She told me that she decided to come here because she loves the mountains.  I think David came for the same reasons.

Last Wednesday we got together and cooked a meal; pumpkin curry soup, a potato salad, and weinerschnitzel.  Weinerschnitzel is a piece of flat thin meat, breaded over (like milanesa) and fried.  I put Lemon juice on mine, and ate it with some cranberry sauce.  It felt slightly like we were having a miniature version of Thanksgiving.  I don’t think my roommates considered that though. 

I purchased a bike from a bike store.  I got a decent mountain bike so I could go riding around trails nearby, or to nearby villages.  Riding a bike is actually very exhilarating and risky.  Innsbruck is relatively dense for its size.  It has bike lanes along the sides of roads, and along alleyways behind buildings.  The way to my school luckily has a nice alleyway to ride along at least half of the way there.  The other half is along a relatively calm road.  The only real traffic along it are busses that pull over for bus stops.  I pull into the back of the Technical Faculty to arrive at school and I lock my bike up underneath a cantilevered building.  I walk up some stairs that enter in next to two small lecture halls and the large studio space where students work on their projects.  The lecture halls hold not only architecture classes but computer programming and mathematic courses.  In the basement is a huge computer lab, or rather 5 computer labs, each designated to different fields of study.  As I walk into the basement area I turn to the left where the architecture lab is located. 

I sat down the other day in the computer lab to use Photoshop to work on my portfolio.  One of my hopes is to find some intern work in the area.  I began to get a hang of the school system.  Essentially the main course is the Entwerfen, or studio design course.  Along with it can be taken some lighter electives in theory, or doing a smaller project.  Some of the electives can last the whole semester, and some are only a two week intensive block.  Studio meets once a week, which seems nice.  I’m still not in the throw of things so I have yet to see how it works out for me, but I can say that in comparison to how studio is run in Texas where we meet three times a week, it might be more fruitful to meet only once a week.  The issue for me is that it’s not always possible to complete something new, or make a significant development in a project in two days, however, given a week to work out details, issues, and actually make something that is somewhat presentable it may be better.  It certainly has a bit more freedom to it. 

I went to see some presentations on what studios were offered for the semester.  The were very interesting and strange on many levels.  This was the first lottery I had for studios, and it was difficult to choose from all the interesting choices.  I think my main problem was that I don’t yet have a sense for how the school works.

There are several “institutes” in the school.  Each institute somewhat specializes in a particular methodology for architecture.  One, the Hochbau institute focuses on generating detail rich designs, a neo-baroque sort of style.  Another focuses on urban design, while yet another is interested in dealing with existing historical buildings, and respectfully adding on to them. 

Since the institutes approach different issues and have different methodologies for working on architecture, each institute also has its own character and pace.  Some institutes are extremely demanding, while others are more conceptual.  I wanted to choose an institute that would challenge me yet also allow me to have a unique experience while I’m here.  I had to put my top three preferences; I will not know what I ended up in until next week.  

My roommate had his twenty second birthday party this weekend.  He invited around 30 people to the party.  It was hard at first because everyone was speaking in German.  I must have seemed like an idiot sitting off to the side nodding my head.  I did try to say a few things, but my German vocabulary is so small at this point that I always run into obstacles expressing an idea, and so I have to revert to English.  It’s simply easier for me to generally communicate with people in English at this point. 

My German has improved greatly since I arrived, but it is disconcerting when I am actually trying to have a conversation and I can only proceed up until the point where I’ve finished introducing myself and explaining what I am doing here.  It was ok though, eventually people seemed to loosen up and I was speaking with people, even though it was in English.

As I spoke to people I began to realize that many students come to study here because it is cheap, and its near access to the mountain sport culture.  My roommate David has two bikes.  One he uses for around town, cheap and replaceable.  His second bike is the mountain bike he uses maybe once a week.

The day after the party we went on a hike up into the mountains.  My apartment building is on the foot of the “northern wall” so the mountain trails are literally at my doorstep.  We hiked for two hours up to a small cabin in the mountain that serves food and beer to the mountain climbers.  It was great, and I think I see the motivation for people who climb the mountain after trying the food.  I also wondered how they get supplied up to the cabin because the drop is so steep there are no roads going there, only foot trails and bike trails. 

The view of Innsbruck was beautiful.   It was my first time getting a good look at the whole valley.  There are many small villages outside of Innsbruck not too far away, but higher up in the hills from Innsbruck.  Seeing it from so high up also gave new meaning to the area.  The people here have existed climbing up and down the mountains for generations.  Mountain activities are part of life here, and I’m sure at one point they were a necessity.

As we walked back down the mountain through another route, I saw many old fountains that taped into mountain streams.  I wondered how old they were.  Some even had carved statues of saints that watched over the fountains.  It was great to take a drink from fresh ice water flowing down from the tips covered in snow.

lucas.n.hoops' photostream

lucas.n.hoops' photostream on Flickr.

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