journal

02 November 2008

For some reason I always begin each entry with an apology for not having written in so long. There is a legitimate reason for this one however. I have been extremely busy with my course load this semester as well as with my soccer team at school. My design studio this semester involves designing early education spaces, mainly, a new daycare facility for a Reggio-inspired program. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Reggio Emilia, here's the Wikipedia article describing it. It's pretty interesting stuff to say the least. The final design is due in just a few short weeks. My other courses are definitely keeping me busy too.

A lot has been going on since I last wrote. For anybody who has been looking at the pictures, you've seen the pictures from our team trip to Argentina. Incase you couldn't tell, it went really well. During our ten days there, we played four games against various teams and pulled out a 2-1-1 record (2 wins, 1 loss and 1 tie). Not only did we get to play soccer everyday that we were there, sometimes even twice a day, but we also were able to go to two professional soccer matches. We saw Independientes take on Estudiantes, two of the best teams in the top flight of Argentine Soccer. We also got to see Argentinos Juniors take on San Lorenzo. It was a real experience being there. It was my first trip to South America and it will definitely not be my last.

So the big news is that I have another trip planned between semesters. My school is doing a J-term trip, the time in-between the fall and spring semesters, to France and Spain. We will be flying into Paris and will be there for New Years Eve. We will then be traveling to southern France and into Spain. Although the definite itinerary is not set in stone yet, we will most likely be traveling to Lyon, Marseille, and Eveux-sur-Arbresle, France as well as Barcelona, Madrid and Bilbao, Spain. Needless to say we will be looking at a lot of le Corbusier as well as Gaudi. I'm really looking forward to it, especially being in Paris for New Years Eve.

Well, unfortunately, I have to get back to my work now. I still have those big updates to do that have promised. Look for those in the near-ish future, after the semester is done and before I leave for Europe again. Bis dann.

23 July 2008

I realize that an update to the journal section of the website is LONG overdue. However, my lack of updates on the journal has given me some time to do a major overhaul to the gallery section. As many of you have probably already noticed, there's a new feel to the gallery. I can't say that I'm completely happy with it quite yet, but we're getting there.

I still have updates planned for the website in terms of content, so don't give up on me yet! I still have info to post about the specifics of my travels, itineraries, etc. Since I've been home, I've been keeping busy working and training for soccer. I actually am leaving for Buenos Aires, Argentina in just over a week to go play soccer with my team there. We'll be there for ten days. I'm really looking forward to it.

Whenever somebody has asked me in person what I did during my time in Germany and Europe, my typical response has been, I traveled a lot and got to see some pretty cool stuff. I've compiled a list and put it up on the website here to highlight some of the cool stuff I got to see. Check that out here.

I've added a little map to highlight the places I've visited so far. In another two weeks, I will have traveled to yet another country and another continent. That's three down and four more to go, but who's counting, right?

Oh, I almost forgot, I added a best of photo album to the gallery. I chose some of my favorite, and what I thought were some of my best shots from my time in Europe and compiled them together, hence the title best of. Enjoy, and keep checking back for updates. I promise you I have no plans to abandon the site just yet. I've got some big changes planned, a little shift in focus if you will. Bis dann.

29 April 2008

I know I said that I most likely wasn't going to update until after classes were done. However, the weather has been unbelievable the past week. Here's a picture of my neighbor across the street enjoying the weather. Bis dann.

21 April 2008

So after some extensive traveling, we are finally in Berlin to stay until the end of the semester (minus the overnight trip to Dresden next weekend).  I’ve finally found the time to get that big update that I’ve been promising you all for several weeks now.  The first major part of the update is done.  I’ve put all of the pictures from our trips to Italy, Hungary and Romania.  I am still working on getting the write ups for everything up onto the website.  That thing called studio has gotten in the way.  However, I promise you they’ll be worth the wait! 

So we arrived back in Berlin on Thursday April 3.  I had enough time to come home, check my email, and start getting some pictures up onto the website before I had to run back to the airport to pick up Kerri and her friend Audrey.  They didn’t get in until shortly before 10, so after the airport we came straight back to my apartment.

That Friday morning I had to meet for class at the Pergamon Museum on Museum Island.  They have a temporary exhibition there that’s looking at museum design in the 21st century.  There were 28 projects from around the globe all from different firms.  Some of the firms included Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, Daniel Libeskind, Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid, UN Studio, Mario Botta and Renzo Piano to name a few.  If you’re not familiar with architects from around the world, that is essentially an all-star line up of world famous architects.  It was very impressive walking through and seeing not only seeing their drawings and sketches from very early in their designs, but also to see their massive models for the projects.  Kerri and Audrey tagged along for the museum visit.  We also got to see the Pergamon Altar (yes, the museum was built to house the altar, hence the name) as well as the Ishtar Gate.  The tickets we got (for free!) gave us admission to 20+ museums in the city, so after the Pergamon, we quickly popped into the Altes Museum.

That afternoon, I took Kerri and Audrey all over the city, showing them all the sites.  We went from Museum Island to the Brandenburg Gate, to the Alexanderplatz.  Naturally I took them out that night to Slumberland, the bar with the sand on the floor.  We had an awesome time. 

Saturday was another good day.  We ended up going to see Hertha take on Bremen.  It was bit of a different experience this time.  The last time we were there less than 30,000 fans were in attendance.  This time, there were just fewer than 60,000 fans there.  Needless to say it was awesome.  Check out this video of everybody chanting right before kick off.

60,000 Fans Chanting

Since Kerri and Audrey left, I’ve been extremely busy, which is one of the reasons why I haven’t updated the journal in so long.  The Sunday that they left we had a tour of the Reichstag, the home of the Bundestag, the main federal parliamentary body.  The word Reichstag means Imperial Parliament.  The name of the building is taken from the governing body that once inhabited it during the Second Reich (1871-1918) and the Weimar Republic (1918-1933).  The Bundestag is essentially the equivalent of the Congress in the United States.  The building itself first opened on 5 December 1894.  It was designed by Paul Wallot.  Following German reunification, the decision was made to move the national capital back to Berlin from Bonn, the capital of West Germany.  It was at this time that several competitions for Berlin to help the city accommodate the move of the federal government back to Berlin.  One of the projects was to renovate the Reichstag which sat right next to the Wall, almost completely unused since the beginning of the Second World War.  The design competition was won by Sir Norman Foster.  He only kept the exterior shell of the building and completely re-designed the interior.  He also added a glass dome to the building, something that was not part of his initial design for the renovation. 

Something that Foster wanted to draw attention to was all the graffiti on the interior walls of the Reichstag from Russians soldiers following their defeat of Berlin.  The graffiti has been preserved through Foster’s efforts and if visible inside the building today.  Check out the gallery for the Reichstag Visit.  You can see pictures of it there.

Last week we finished up our seminar lectures, and were completely devoted to studio.  On Friday the 18th, we had a progress pin-up for our studio work.  It’s about that time of the year again, when studio starts to take over our lives.  We are finished up with our workshop class on Wednesday of this week.  After that, we only have our final papers due for our seminar and our final review for studio.  We all still have a lot to work on, so we’ll be living in studio for the next two and a half weeks.  We present on Monday May 5 for studio.  I might not have another journal update until after May 5th. 

This past Thursday, we had another seminar site visit.  This time we went to the Jewish Museum designed by Daniel Libeskind.  I should have the pictures up shortly for all of your viewing pleasure.

I had a nice little surprise visit this weekend.  Well, it wasn’t really a surprise but Pete Perreault came down from Copenhagen where he’s studying this semester.  I got to take him all over Berlin.  The weather is finally starting to warm up, so yesterday afternoon we went to Prater Garten (a beer garden)!  Their beer is absolutely delicious. 

In closing, I’ve added a video section to the website.  Click Here to check that out.  It has all the videos so far on one page so you can quickly view them all at once.  I’ve also finally had the time to get the panorama’s from Italy up on the website.  You can find that album in the Italy section of the Gallery.  Click here and I’ll bring you directly to it. 

I was looking at my stats for the website the other day and some of the numbers were quite surprising.  I’ve had over 860 unique visitors so far since I first put up the site in January.  I’ve also had over 200,000 hits from people all over the world.  Here’s a short list of the countries people are visiting my website from:

• United States
• Poland
• Japan
• Hungary
• Great Britain
• Germany
• Austria
• Costa Rica (hi Jared!)
• Austrailia

I hope everybody’s enjoying it!  I most likely won’t update my journal until after classes are all over with.  So don’t expect anything in this section for the next two and a half weeks.  However, I should have more pictures to post from the mayhem we call final project time in studio!  Herzlich Danke!  Bis dann…

24 March 2008

So as many of you may already know, I was in Italy last week. Unfortunately, I'm now off to Budapest and Romania for a short stint. I unfortunately didn't have enough time to get all the pictures I wanted to up on the website, nor did I get around to getting my write up for Italy (or Poland) up here yet. Sorry to keep you all waiting another week or so, but it unfortunately looks like that's going to be the case. I am due back in Berlin next Thursday and will be getting everything onto the website by the end of that weekend (I hope). Bis dann.

12 March 2008

Man, time is flying by.  I am still working on my write up for our trip to Poland this past weekend, so unfortunately you’re all going to have to wait until I get back from Italy to read up about Poland.  But, I’ll give you a basic synopsis of what we did, so you can understand what you’re looking at in terms of pictures.  We spent a lot of time in the city touring around various parts including Wawel Hill, where the old Wawel Castle and Cathedral are located, the Main Market Square, one of the biggest in Europe, and Kazimierz, the old Jewish center.  As you can also tell, we visited Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration camp, about an hour and a half outside of Krakow.  That’s all you’re getting for a sneak peak.  Check back in about a week for the full write up!

As you can imagine, we’ve been really busy lately.  We got back from Krakow Tuesday evening and hit the ground running.  We had our midterm for our History of Berlin Seminar on Thursday and we had mid-term reviews for studio today.  We’re running back to pack and get in a couple of hours of sleep because we are leaving for the airport at 3am.  We are flying into Naples, and going up to Rome, Florence and flying out of Venice on Sunday 23.  Sorry for the short update, but I need to get finished packing and such.  Check back in a week for a big update!

21 February 2008

Well, I would like to apologize for the lack of updates in the past week or so.  We have finally started to get down to work.  I am studying abroad, right? Anyways, we have had a lot to do in the last two weeks.  I'm going to try to touch on some of the stuff we got to do, which included a Bundesliga match, as well as a concert.

We’ve gone on three site visits for our Urbanism of Berlin seminar.  Last Wednesday, we visited the Onkel Toms Hütte Siedlung in southwestern Berlin.  It was designed by Bruno Taut and built by the GEHAG, a housing authority still around in Germany today, during the late 1920’s.  There were other architects involved in the settlement, but Taut is the architect that was most influential with his over 1800 dwelling units that he designed.  It was originally designed to be social housing, but soon after it was built, it became a middle class housing development.

We were fortunate enough to go inside two different homes while we were there.  Although the condos may seem small when compared to those in the US, they are still highly desirable pieces of property to own.  One of the homes we got to visit, the owner had bought the apartment in the 1960’s and she is still living there today.  The average townhouse goes for €300.000.  All of the townhouse units feature a sizable garden out back.  It’s a suburban neighborhood in the middle of Berlin, which is one of the reasons why it is still highly desirable 80 years after it was built.

It has always been a dream of mine to get to a European futball match, and this past weekend, that dream was finally fulfilled!  As part of our seminar, we looked at Nazi era architecture, and by far, the biggest Nazi era project is the Olympic complex and stadium in Western Berlin.  The complex was built for the infamous 1936 Summer Olympics which were held in Berlin.  Our professor decided the best way to look at the stadium was to see it being used, which means we got to watch a game!  We saw Hertha BSC, the Bundesliga club in Berlin, take on Arminia Bielefeld. 

Going to the game was one of the most intense things I have ever seen live.  The atmosphere all over the city is like nothing I have ever experienced.  There are at least a dozen or so police officers on every single train platform on the way to Olympic Stadium.  They have their riot gear helmets at their side, and billy clubs at the ready.  I got onto an express train from Zoologischer Garten to Olympic Stadium.  Everybody is chanting, singing and drinking.  I thought there were a lot of cops at Zoo station, but when we got off the train, we were greeted by over 2 dozen police officers on the platform alone.  Although there is a heavy police presence, the general atmosphere is still pretty tamed.  They are clearly there to make sure that nothing happens and that everybody has a good time.

So we got to walk around and see the Olympic complex, as well as a le Corbusier building, the only one that he built in Berlin.  The game was pretty quiet, although there were a few good chances by both teams in the first and second half.  We thought that it was going to end as a 0-0 tie, but in the 93rd minute, Hertha put one into the back of the net.  Needless to say, the fans went NUTS.  The one thing I do like about Germany is that you can take a camera absolutely anywhere, so I was able to snap pictures throughout the entire game.  Leanne took some video during the game, so I am working on getting that online so you can all view it.

Yesterday was a busy day.  In the morning we had our third seminar visit in the past week.  We visited the Haus Lemke designed by Mies van der Rohe.  It is located in the eastern part of Berlin.  It was built in 1932 for Herr Lemke and his wife.  It was the last building he did in Germany before leaving in 1938 to escape the Nazis.  During the cold war it was occupied by the Stasi, the GDR secret police.  So the house was kept up pretty well, but today it has been restored to its original condition and is used as an art exhibition space.  Naturally I snapped a ton of pictures and they are (or will be) on the site for your viewing pleasure.

Last night I was afforded an extremely unique opportunity.  Kate, one of the girls that I am here in Berlin with, mentioned that her cousin’s band was going to be in town while we were here.  She asked me if I was interested in going.  Of course I said yes.  Have I ever turned down a show?  I don’t think so.  It was much to my surprise that her cousin’s the lead singer for a little band called Anti-Flag.  Her cousin hooked us up with tickets and backstage passes.  We got to chill with them before and after the show.  The show itself was one of the best I’ve ever seen.  They put on a really good show and of course the German crowd really got into it.  The guys from the band were really chill.  They are currently doing a three week tour through Europe, and they just came from Australia where they were touring with Rage Against the Machine.  I just want to say thanks to Kate for asking me to go with her, and also I want to say thanks to the guys from the band; Justin, Pat, Chris and Chris.  You guys put on one hell of a show.  Thanks!

We’ve got another busy weekend ahead of us as we are going back to Potsdam to look at the Einstein Tower designed by Erich Mendelsohn.  On Saturday we are visiting Sachsenhausen, one of the first concentration camps in Germany.  While Jesse Owens was winning his four gold medals, Sachsenhausen was housing political prisoners that were considered dangerous to the Nazis, communists, socialists, and eventually Jews.  It’s going to be a somber experience to say the least.

Of course classes are going well.  We are officially more than halfway done with our German class.  Lately we’ve been going over food and such, which is extremely helpful when you go out to eat at a restaurant or café.  Our studio project is starting to really get going, as well as our human issues workshop project.  I suppose it’s time to get back to working on my stuff for class.  I hope you enjoy the new pictures!

10 February 2008

It’s been another busy week!  Last Sunday we went to Potsdam which was really amazing to see.  I uploaded the pictures earlier this week, so I hope you all have been enjoying them.  Yes, I stayed up late, very late Sunday night to watch the Superbowl.  Yes I am disappointed, but it’s okay.  Here we go Celtics!

Monday night we went to a concert at the Berlin Philharmonic.  One of our professor’s wife’s plays in the Deutsches Syphonie-Orchester, one of the eight permanent orchestra’s in Berlin.  The hall was designed by Hans Scharoun in and was built during the 1960’s.  It is an amazing building, and it was the best acoustics I have ever heard in a building.  It truly was remarkable.  After the concert, we were allowed to go backstage, where they have a private bar for the musicians, so we got to drink beers and rub shoulders with world class musicians.  Oh, and paying 10 euros for a 45 euro ticket definitely made the whole experience that much better.  Even though there’s not a bad seat in the house, being 12 rows off the stage was pretty cool.

This week we started our language class.  The first day was a bit painful, mainly because our teacher doesn’t speak English in the classroom.  It definitely forces you to learn the language. 

Hallo!  Mein name ist Brian.  Ich bin zwanzig Jahre alt.  Ich bin architektur student.  Ich wohne in Massachusetts, USA.  Mein hobby sind fotografiren und füßball spielen. 

I think you might be able to figure that one out, but incase you can’t, I told you my name, how old I am, that I am an architecture student, where I live, and what my hobbies are.  Somebody came up to me yesterday and asked me a question in Germany, and I actually understood what he was asking me.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t respond to him in German, but lucky for him, he could understand English just as well as German, so I was still able to help him out.

This week the Berlinale started.  The Berlinale is one of the biggest film festivals in the world.  It is up there with Cannes and Sundance film festivals.  The Rolling Stones and Scorsese were in town for the opening night, which was this past Thursday.  What’s cool about the festival is that anybody can get in to the viewings, so you can be sitting next to a director or an actor from the film you’re watching.  Hopefully I’ll be checking out a movie or two this week, at least that’s what I'm planning on doing. 

This weekend’s weather was absolutely gorgeous.  Yesterday I wandered all around the city and the Tiergarten, which was really cool.  Today I checked out the East Side Gallery with Bobby, Leanne and Meredith.  After that, Meredith and I wandered around the city aimlessly.  It was a lot of fun having nothing to do.  We must have walked close to 5 miles today during our little adventure.  It’s getting late, so I suppose I should get going.  Until next time…

2 February 2008

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I have been super busy lately.  Where should I begin?  I believe I left off talking about going to the Lange Nacht der Museen.  That was absolutely amazing.  There were over fifty museums that where open from 6 pm until 2 am all for one low price of 10 Euro. If you can tell by looking at my pictures, we started out by going to the Zoo Aquarium Berlin.  Although it was a lot of fun and we got to see a ton of cool fish and animals, it just couldn’t measure up to what I'm used to at the Boston Aquarium. 

From the aquarium, we went to the Museum für Kommunikation (that one should be pretty easy to figure out).  It was more of a hands on museum where the exhibits invited you to interact with them.  The entire museum is about showcasing how we communicate as people, and its collection included old telephones, telegraphs machines, old stamps and maps, and it even had an exhibit on the internet.  Although the exhibits were definitely cool, we were there to see the break dance performance.  That was definitely cool. 

Following the break dancing exhibition, we went to the Akademie der Künste (academy of the arts) on Pariser Platz.  This is the same platz that the Brandenburg Gate is located, as well as the Frank Bank, and the future site of the American Embassy.  When we were here, we sipped a glass of wine and listened to an unbelievable vocalist sing some 1920’s era German songs.  It was here that we snapped the pictures with the Brandenburg Gate lit up in the background.

Following our little photo shoot with the Brandenburg Gate, we went decided to take a break and stop off to grab a beer before heading off to Berliner Planetarium.  When we got to the Planetarium, the line was out the door, so we didn’t end up getting in to what was supposed to be the last show of the night at 1 am.  But, because so many people showed up, they decided to do the show again at 2.  So we waited around for an hour, and it turned out to be well worth the wait because I got some pretty good pictures of the lasers during the show. 

Pretty much the whole Lexia Berlin group participated, but as the night went on, the group kept breaking down into smaller and smaller groups going off in different directions. 

This week was definitely super busy.  We started up with classes this week, all of my classes except for German which starts this Monday.  On Monday morning we went to the larges Jewish cemetery in Berlin.  It is over 100 acres in size and has over 100,000 people buried in it.  It really was amazing to see.  We were guided by a local professor who was extremely knowledgeable and he gave us a lot of insight as to who was buried there and what exactly their headstones had to say. 

Later that afternoon, we went to the Bauhaus Archive in Berlin.  We got an amazing tour of the facility, which was designed by Walter Gropius himself.  If you are unfamiliar with the Bauhaus, you should check out the wikipedia article on it.  Our studio project this semester is going to be to design an extension to the Bauhaus archive, which is going to be extremely challenging to say the least. 

On Wednesday, we had our first walk for our Berlin seminar class with Jan.  We walked down a part of the Unter den Linden, which has the Brandenburg Gate at one end, and Alexanderplatz at the other.  This walk focused on Schinkel’s architectural works in the Mitte.  Schinkel is one of the most influential German architects of the nineteenth century. 

Yesterday we went to Dessau to visit the Bauhaus school, which was designed by Walter Gropius, the founder of the school.  The Bauhaus School aimed to unify art, craft and technology.  Its influence in art, industrial design, and architecture is still felt today.  The tour took us throughout the building and into the master’s homes, which Gropius also designed.  It was amazing to see the school and to stand in Gropius’s office.  I got to sit in Wassily Chair!!!  For those of you who don’t know, it’s an extremely famous chair designed by none other than Marcel Breuer, one of the masters at the Bauhaus.  It’s kind of a big deal to see one of them, let alone get to sit in one.  It was extremely comfortable to sit in. Will somebody please give me $1500 so I can get one of my own?! 

Yesterday the BVG went on strike, so basically all of the public transportation in the city was shut down, except for the S-bahn, which is owned by the national transportation company.  I basically had to walk everywhere because the Ubahn was completely shut down, as well as the bus and tram systems.  This was supposedly a warning strike in the hope that they will get a new contract with a raise soon.  I hope it gets resolved before there’s another strike, otherwise I’ll be buying myself a bike to get around the city.

Well, it’s time for me to get to bed because tomorrow we are off to Potsdam.  Check back for more pictures!

26 January 2008

I have so much to talk about now that I've been here for a couple of days. Everybody arrived safely and on time. I am living with another student in a shared apartment with a local artist. His name is Matthias. He is extremely nice, and speaks English very well. My apartment is located in the middle of the city. I am a five minute walk away from two different UBahn stops (that's the subway), and from there I can get almost anywhere in the city. The public transit system here is really amazing. We paid for our monthly pass at the airport, so we were able to start taking busses and trains around the city. It works a little different here and in the States. For example, in order for you to ride the T in Boston, you need to swipe your Charlie Card and pass through the turnstyle before you can get to the train. Here, it's done on an honor system where there aren't any swipe cards. Anybody can hop on and off the trains as they please. The only catch is that they sometimes come around and check to see who has their passes on them. It works out to be a pretty hefty fine if you can't produce your pass

Jet lag was an issue for the first couple of days. I feel like I'm finally adjusted to the time zone. We're GMT +1 here, so that puts us six hours ahead of east coast of the US. Superbowl Sunday is going to be a late night. The night life here is completely different than back home. If you go out to the bars at 10 or 11 pm, they're empty. The real parties don't start until midnight or later. So finding a bar with the superbowl on at 1 am shouldn't be an issue! As far as other sports goes, the Bundesliga, or the top soccer division in Germany, is on their mid-season break. They take off the month of January every year because it gets too cold. Handball is the second most popular sport in Germany, atleast that's what I've been told. They also play ice hockey and basketbal at the professional level in Germany. I also believe that they have an American football team in the European league. I'm not 100% sure about that though. The image below shows mr apartment in relation to our studio space. I am just a couple stops down on the Ubahn 1 train. Finding your way around Berlin on the trains isn't hard at all. Every station has a little map telling you what train number it is, and what direction it's heading on either side of the platform.

My apartment is located almost in the center of the city. I am pretty close to almost anything in Berlin. I am within walking distance of Potsdamer Platz and the Sony Center as well as the New National Gallery. I am a hop, skip and a jump away from the Riechstag and the other government buildings located on the Spree River. On my first day here, I walked to the Sony Center and Potsdamer Platz with Leanne to try and stay awake. I hardly slept an hour on my flights to Berlin, so needless to say I was extremely tired when all the excitement finally wore off. Below is a larger image of the city. The green arrow is where my apartment in is in relation to the rest of the city.

So far, we've visited several different places. Tonight we are doing something called Lange Nacht der Museen, which literally means the long night of museums. Over 50 museums are open tonight from 6 pm until 2 am. They re-route the bus system to make it easier to get inbetween the different museums. Well I need to get going to meet up with everybody to get our tickets for tonight. Keep checking back for more updates!

22 January 2008

I am sitting on in seat 26J on British Airways flight 212 from Boston to London. Everything went smoothly at Logan and we even took off on time, despite some rain and the occasional flurry. We are due to land in London at 4:45 am local time. I am sitting comfortably in the exit row with nobody to left, and nobody to my right, which allows me to spread out. Bobby and Leanne are sitting just a handful of rows behind me. We have a few hour layover in Heathrow and we depart at 7:00 am. From there, we fly into Berlin and land just before 10:00 am. We are brought directly from the airport to our housing assignments. This should make for a very eventful day!