Preparing to travel with students this Fall, I could not remember how long ago it was that I took an overnight train between two major European cities. After some thought, I realized that the last time I took an international sleeper car was a decade ago, traveling from Zürich to Vienna.
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An Architecture travel abroad program (i.e., field trips), historically coined the Grand Tour, were established in the 17th century and tailored to British aristocrats in pursuit of refining their liberal arts education through a visit to continental Europe. For students tutored under a mentor, favored destinations such as Italy and Greece introduced the Classical world of antiquity to those who were expected to be leaders of their country, especially in that time of the beginning of “greater political or economic cooperation among states and nations.”
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The need for disciplinary integration: Part 2. Design topics related to urban preservation have become one of my favorite themes when teaching second year architecture students. In my program briefs, I also tend to incorporate that projects be determined—to a certain extent—by a client’s functional needs, preoccupations, and desires, all the while having student projects reflect their creative ambitions.
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Towards a new studio environment. I imagine that sooner or later the current studio environment where architecture students work mostly—or even exclusively—at their desks will become obsolete. Over recent decades, architecture schools have made a conscious effort to provide students with desks as part of their architecture design studios (belonging to the student for the semester) that are generous in scale and accommodate activities ranging from a response to program briefs and desk crits to conducting digital research, completing homework, viewing videos, listening to music and podcasts, making models, and occasionally enjoying a quick and often not so healthy snack.
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Still lifes by Ben Nicholson. Recently, I was delighted to rediscover the British artist Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) whose paintings I had so much admired while studying architecture. For some reason, I lost touch with his oeuvre despite my growing interest in the art of painting, especially the still life genre that I so much cherish. There are two reasons for my renewed interest in the still lives by Ben Nicholson.
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Unbuilt projects and competitions. Years ago, when I had the occasion to teach in Venice, Italy, I became aware of the famous 18th century vedute (view paintings) and capricci (imaginary view paintings); specifically those of Italian painters Guardi and Canaletto.
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At the age of five I moved to Vienna, Austria—the heart of the Austro-Hungarian political, economic, and cultural Empire—and ever since then, I have been fascinated by urban environments. Simply stated, the bigger the better, although that doesn’t capture the complexities that I have come to enjoy when living in or visiting metropolises around the world.
Prior to talking about Raimund Abraham, let me set the context. During my year abroad at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (I.A.U.S) in New York City—an inspirational time studying under Diana Agrest, Peter Eisenman, Mario Gandelsonas, George Ranalli, and Anthony Vidler—the city became a natural extension of my academic interests and, of course, a palimpsest to discover and experience first-hand what it meant to be at the center of the world. During the 1980s, the Big Apple was a city in deep transition, and living there was nothing less than crazy, particularly relative to the tameness of my home country Switzerland.
Robert Slutzky. Prior to introducing Robert Slutzky, let me set the context. In my second year at the EPFL, the idea of learning architecture through precedents filtered from the appreciation of vernacular buildings to an immersion with visiting guest professors.
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Memories of The New York Sunday Times. There is something rewarding about the world wide web (www), it is instantaneous and research resourcing can be done in the snap-of-a-finger from the comfort of any prosthetic digital device. Fondly called in the early 1990s, the World-Wide Wait (as the new superhighway of cyberspace), I remember when searching was nicknamed “surfing,” to be rapidly replaced by to Google or googling as in “to use Google, the internet search engine, to find information on a person or thing . . .”