Zooming in on the building...

We are entering the final stages of the semester and as we near the end we continue to work on the proposal for Plaza Glories. We have developed our proposal for the blocks around Plaza Glories and now we are focusing in on the buildings contained in one block.

Below, in red, are the buildings I will be designing for the remainder of the semester.




This image shows the strong facade facing the open green space of the plaza. The design of the facade will become a major focus in the design of the building.



Her are my first attempts at designing the buildings on either side of Diagonal. As you can see there is a large billboard type facade facing the square which begins to wrap around the building as it moves into the city.

Documenting the Olympic Village

Today we visited the Olympic village down near the water. This area used to be the industrial area and port for the city but now it has been transformed into a residential area with access to the beach. The Olympic village is interesting because it contains many apartment buildings designed by different architects under one master plan. The only requirement was that they used brick. Here is a bit of what we saw. By the way, the weather was beautiful. Now we are ready to hit the beach.

Spring Break: GERMANY

Friends of friends are the greatest. Without them my spring break trip would have been very boring. Instead, I had the opportunity to see some increadible places and at the same time become friends with the friends of friends. This map shows the path of our trip through Germany starting in the Dusseldorf airport and ending in Munich.

Here are my friends Bob and Meghan with their friends Malte and Daniel.

Cathedral in Koln.
Train Station in Koln.

How Cool is this! It's the Maus Castle on the River Rhine. (my mom's maiden name is Maus)
This is Mike. Great Guy. He let us take over his house in Wurzburg.

This sums up our experience on the Autobahn.

Neushwanstein Castle.

Taking pictures from that cliff was quite the experience.

The flight back to BCN.

Design for Plaza Glories: The Square

Here is Plaza Glories. It is an intersecting point for three main avenues in Barcelona including Diagonal, Meridiana, and Gran Via. In its current state, it is a very confusing area for pedestrians. The circular roadway in the center is raised up above a parking garage which blocks the views through the center of the plaza. We are developing a proposal in order to make plaza Glories a more friendly place. It is, in fact, a major city center and deserves to be enjoyed by all.

Here is a map of a current propasal for Plaza Glories which eliminates the raised motorway and reorganizes the center square. We are working with this proposal to design the massing of the buildings surrounding the plaza.

And finally, a glimpse of our proposal for the site. Our proposal contains three main ideas. First, we have developed a strong, more consistant facade bordering the L' Eixample side of the site.

Also, we introduced a pedestrian corridor under a cantilevered portion of this facade. And finally, we considered the views from the center of the plaza toward important landmarks including the National Theater.

Model of our Proposal

SKI

Many of you know I go crazy if I can't get my fill of skiing in the winter so we planned a trip to the tiny country of Andorra. (click if you want to see more about Andorra from Wikkipedia).

Anyway, I had a blast skiing for the weekend with Ben, Brian and Meghan.

Here's a little video I took while I was skiing. Check it out-

Andorra ski video. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-558591177751976035 .

Field Trip!

This is the first of two long journeys with our class. We traveled to Southern Spain to discover some very unique cities, take notes, and learn from the past.

Bob and Gisela boarding the plane in Barcelona.

City 1: Madrid

Highlights:

Museos del Prado y Reina Sophia

Churros con chocolate
Plaza Mayor

Clubs

Palacio Real Plaza Mayor

City 2: Toledo

Alcazar

Visiting the medieval brought me right back to my trip to Europe three years ago. Not much has changed since then except for the interior of the cathedral. Three years ago the interior was dark stone. Today the interior is painted white. In my opinion this was not a good change.

I apreciated the look of the natural stone before it was painted. Except for the paint, the city is timeless. The small winding streets, the swords and the look out over the river will likely remain here forever.

City 3: Cordoba

La Mesquita

This place was amazing. With the maze of columns of the older mosque and the newer cathedral built in the center, it was easy to see the mix of two very different cultures in Southern Spain.
City 4: Granada

Alhambra
City 5: Seville

Bull Ring
view from cathedral tower

Project 1: What is a plaza?

The basis of this portion of the project was to gain a better understanding of existing plazas in Barcelona. Falipe and I attempted to analyze the movement of people through three very different plazas. We captured this movement by taking a series of about 100 photographs every second from one location and putting them together in a video. These videos along with some diagrams of the movement of people through the plaza showed us how people respond to different elements in the plaza. For example, people move very differently if they are in a plaza which is very large with few boundaries such as the Forum Plaza than if they are in a plaza which is smaller and walled in by tall buildings such as the Cathedral Plaza.

Here are the links to our videos:

Plaza Catalunya: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6285088724117864257

Cathedral Plaza : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6490002278646305144

Forum Plaza: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-491868742262637873

Plaza Catalunya

Cathedral Plaza

Forum Plaza

Daytime shot of Cathedral Plaza. The plaza is long and narrow with most of the traffic moving down the center.