Last Night for the Group – Candles on the Pujada’s Steps

Before we scattered at the end of our Spanish journey back to Portland or other destinations in Europe, we shared stories on the last evening with a farewell dinner at a raucous Basque café. We then gathered on the nearby Pujada steps. As a fleeting group gesture, we created a temporary art installation by placing 100 lit candles on and up the staircase in various iterations. Locals enjoyed our antics as we briefly changed the nature of the space both for us and them. As we made our goodbyes, and reflected on great sights, great food and great company, vows were exchanged to continue design journeys.

A Revisionistic Legend of the Xuixo

Most of our group fell under the siren spell of Girona’s luscious Xuixo (I'm afraid some of us were seduced twice in a single day). Legend has it that this pastry evolved out of the civil coexistence of Girona’s multiple religions and cultures. As our retelling of the story, the French said, "we must use croissant dough," the Muslims said, "let’s deep fry it," the Catalans said, "but first fill it with cream custard," and the Jews then declared, "afterwards, why not roll it in coarse sugar." The rest is culinary history and the city lived happily ever after - especially our students.

The Steps of Girona - the Pujada de Sant Domenec

The Pujada de Sant Domenec

Continuing the study of public spaces, our group spent time investigating a unique elevated plaza, the Pujada de Sant Domenec. Geometrically complex and difficult to describe, the space has evolved over centuries and combines street and passive plaza activities with dynamic spatial characteristics unlike anything most students had ever seen. Buildings enfronting the space include a medieval palace multi-family houses, cafes, workshops, stores and a monastery, while use of the space changes dramatically over the course of each day, coming to its highest level at night. Sketching, measuring steps and levels, and people-watching in this complex space over several days provide valuable lessons for the students when they confront future design projects.

New & Old Coexists in Girona - The Result is Sheer Delight

Top: City Walls, a Remodeled House, a University Building and Riverfront. Bottom: Masonry Wall, Column Capital detail, Gothic Arches next to the Ramblas and a quiet cafe

Due to its on-going organic development, every street provides insight into Girona's past, present and future. The result is new next to old, metal next to stone, polychrome next to monochrome, prosaic next to poetic, and surprise next to sheer delight.

Arab Baths, City Hall, New Housing, Cathedral Cloister, Eiffel's Bridge and Reconfigured Streetscape

Girona, a Gothic Town That's a Place Apart

The Old Town of Girona on the River Onyar

We're winding up our study trip by spending a few slow days in Girona, a university town a little more than an hour north of Barcelona in the rolling foothills of the Pyrenees. As a welcome relief from the intensity of Barcelona, students are finding time to wander many of its narrow, gothic streets where there's always something to study around every corner. A major plus of the city is that it is filled with a plethora of contemporary insertions into its old fabric.

Life Lived Publicly in Three Barcelona Plazas

Placa Virreina, Placa Angel and Placa del Pi

People in Spain live life very publicly, and most of their public life takes place in neighborhood or district plazas. One of the assignments for the study tour has been to compare three different plazas - organic, medieval Placa del Pi, rational Virreina, and modern Placa Angel in from of MACBA. Each student then selected one of the plazas for more in-depth observation of that plaza's physical chracteristics and cultural patterns.

Las Ramblas - Is it the Greatest Street?

Called one of the greatest street in the world, Las Ramblas is actually a series connected streets that runs 1.2 km from the harbor to Placa de Cataluyna and then north another 1.5 km to the Diagonal. Once an intermittent stream bed (open sewer), the street divides the Gothic quarter from the Raval. The street is divided into segments for flowers, newspapers, pets, and cafes and is populated by throngs, both natives and tourists, day and night. The street reverses the traditional Portland proportions between pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

Interlude: Look, Draw, Repeat...Look, Draw, Repeat...Look.......

More looking and sketching.  It's almost a luxury of time as we spend 6-8 hrs a day in the field studying both the poetic and prosaic. And then it's more time in the hotel and cafes working on the day's sights; and then there's Pecha Kucha-style discussions every other day for discussions of observational and analytical technique for the next day.

Gaudi's Homage to English Garden City Design

The study team on Gaudi's Serpentine Bench in Park Guell

Originally commissioned as a 60-unit subdivision in the English Garden City style, the project failed due to its relative distance from the city center. Radical even for Gaudi, only two houses were built, but the project tour de force is the market hall with its plaza above surrounded by the serpentine bench. The project is now a city park (which we made use of for a picnic brunch), the park is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. Nothing else like it on the planet.

Top: The Plaza, Gatehouse and Bench detail, Bottom: Market Hall, Hall Columns and Stone Grotto

Interlude: Public Markets as Neighborhood Anchors

One striking aspect of Barcelona's neighborhood stabilization strategy is the focus on food as a foundation of community. Ranging from La Bocheria, Barelona's Cathedral of Food, to more than 30 permanent food markets in the city's network, markets are daily destinations for locals, chefs, and tourists, especially for hungry, foraging PSU students. You can even take nutrition classes and put in a delivery order via the internet.

To Paraphrase...A Tale of Two Parks

Parc Diagonal Mar, by EMBT Architects

Open spaces are the foundations of redevelopment strategies in Barcelona.  We've visited and studied two large and contrasting parks, each with their attributes and shortcomings. The youngest of the two is Parc Diagonal Mar (2002) which centers a Corbusian landscape of residential towers. The park's metaphorical tentacles connect the district to the nearby seafront. Highlights within the park included tubular lights & misters. Suspended planters incorporated Barcelona ceramics, where upon close inspection, actually was of crushed bottles, cans and the designers' initials.  The older of the two is Parc Clot (1986), which is in the midst of a blue-collar neighborhood. Built to replace obsolete railyards and warehouses, the park includes traditional hard and softscapes. Central to Clot was the retention of industrial architectural fragments to provide focal points at the park edges. One warehouse arched masonry wall was converted into the illusion of it being an aquaduct spilling out into a pond. Both parks illustrate a design intention for high usage at night, when nearby residents spill out into park for the evening promenade.

Parc El Clot by Freixas & Miranda, 1986

The Barcelona Pavilion (it's really small, with such big ideas)

All planes and overlapping spatial volumes, it remains the hardest building in Barcelona to draw. Originally built as the German Pavilion for the 1929 World’s Fair, the pavilion was the last of Mies van der Rohe's works before he emigrated to the United States. It is considered a key work of both his and the “International Style” movement for its spatial fluidity. The simple, horizontal structure contains his trademarks: precision, fluidity of space, and abundance of “pure” materials. The present structure (1985) is a faithful reconstructed copy of the original.

Interlude: Look, Draw, Repeat...Look, Draw, Repeat...

Sketching in La Pedrera, Parc Diagonal Mar, MACBA, and Sagrada Familia

The process of learning to look can make the simplest things quite beautiful.  As the primary requirement for the study trip, students have been spending most of their time looking in order to see, and recording their impressions in sketchbooks in both descriptive and analytical drawings. The intent of these exercises is to document both the mundane and the extraordinary. Selections from the journals will be displayed at PSU upon our return.

Sketching, architectural journals, and finding the right spot to look & see, even on a train

Antoni Gaudi's Masterworks - La Pedrera

La Pedrera, Sketching on the Roof, and Attic Exposition

Unconventional Casa Mila, or La Pedrera, was the last residential project completed by Gaudi. From the outside, the undulating balconies look like a series of waves; on the inside, you'd be challenged to find a single right angle. Designed in consultation with Josep Jujol, the apartments are arranged around light coming from two central courtyards. We explored a furnished model apartment, roofscape and the attic, which houses a marvelous exhibition of Gaudi’s lifetime of works.

Antoni Gaudi's Master Works - Sagrada Familia

Sagrada Familia with its nearly complete Nave

Considered his masterpiece, Gaudi devoted most of his life to the construction of the church. When finished, the Sagrada Familia will have a total of 18 towers and accommodate 13,000 people. The towers reach a height of 90 to 120m. The building is under construction and could be finished some time around 2030. We've been coming here with PSU students since 1996 and it's amazing to watch its construction; the church nave has evolved from a construction site to an awe-inspiring place for services. The views from near top the towers over Barcelona is as memorable as the jelly-legged descent down the tower's spiral interior.

Where Am I in Barcelona?

Barcelona's Museum of Contemporary Art and renovated Santa Caterina Market

Barcelona must be experienced to be understood. Under rainy skies, the group first fortified themselves at a historical cafe and then took a 4 hr. orientation tour of the city's neighborhoods on bicycles. The clouds parted as we left the Gothic Quarter and Old City and rode along a series of the city's seafront parks to and through the newest parts of Barcelona's redevelopment projects. We then toured a series of neighborhoods and wound back for lunch in the city's main food market (more about that Cathedral of Food later). A walking tour of segments of the Old City's public spaces left us eager for more explorations.

City to CIty the Fast Way

Photograph Courtesy of The Guardian

It used to take 8-10 hrs to get between Madrid & Barcelona.  Now, as we zipped along at 290 KPH in one of Spain's high-speed AVE trains, the journey took just a little longer than 3 hrs. As the Spanish landscape rolled by like a film, the dry, dusty plain around Madrid evolved into a Mediterranean coastal hillscape covered with pines and vineyards. Why can't we travel between Portland and Seattle the same way?

How Do You Remember And Honor Victims Of Terrorism?

In March 2004, multiple bombs exploded in Madrid’s Atocha train station, killing nearly 200. Spain’s answer is a memorial in the same station – a pool of light falls through an 11-meter high glass cylinder (15,000 glass blocks) into a solid blue room. A vertical carpet of grief and condolence quotes in multiple languages coats a translucent inner skin that rises like a balloon inside the pressurized room.

Further Explorations in Madrid

Madrid's Plaza Mayor and New Pedestrian Bridge Over the Rio Manzanares

Day Two continued to mix the old and new. Rainy weather allowed a shortened visit to the Reina Sophia Museum, home to outstanding contemporary art (including Picasso's Guernica); most of the group was impressed to go back in evening.  A walk throught the Old City presented Madrid's primary historical plaza, Mayor, and then down the hills to the Manzanares River.  Madaid has embarked onto extensive remodeling of its unnavigable river with 10 kilometers of improvements to both banksides with gardens, sports grounds, and new pedestrian bridges, all mixed with Neo-Classical dams, locks and bridges.

Three Urban Rooms: Reina Sophia, Plaza Mayor and Manzanares Bridge

Interlude: Food as Context

A Day Without Ham Seems Like a Day Without Sunshine

Since design is dependent on context, explorations of context are mandatory. The group is getting to know one another as we manage introductions by converging class time with meal time. Food in Spain means enjoying tapas (little plates of great food meant for sharing), especially ham. Surrounded by an untold number of hams hanging from the ceiling of the Museo de Jamon, we managed to make quick work of thin slices of Jamon Serrano. A short walk takes us to another small café specializing in gambas (shrimp); No place to sit down, just stand at the bar.  A bronze plaque states that no singing is allowed - must have been a problem in the past, so we politely refrained. And then to the next café…. 

The Prado and Caixa Forum

An initial day of explorations presented juxtapositions of the old and the new, an aspect of which there appears to be no fear. The Prado Museum’s premier collection of paintings by Velasquez, Goya, and El Greco (with a new building addition by Rafael Moneo) helped put the country’s culture into historical perspective. The Caixa Forum, with its skin of metal and plants, offered itself up as an contemporary icon and has been embraced by the city. Designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, the Forum is a venue for art, architecture and design exhibitions; a treat for us was one on Russian Constructivist works.

Assembling the Study Team

The study tour begins with three days in Madrid. Arrival in Madrid was fortunately uneventful as everyone arrived safe and sound over the past 24 hrs. We’ve rendezvoused in Madrid from Portland, New York, Paris, Milan, Barcelona and Amsterdam and are staying at a hostal smack in the middle of the middle of Madrid near Puerta del Sol.