There's been a lot of talk about Guardamar's age; Its castles, its traditions, its history. But just as much , if not more can be said of its present state; something in between development speculation and decline.

Everywhere here we see gashes in the urban landscape, pieces of the city that just seem to be missing. But very quickly we realize that these wounds weren't created by some sort of destructive force, but by growth itself. The gashes are outlets waiting to accept new flesh. But in most areas of speculative development today, growth is stunted, those outlets may remain to be negatives of pure white walls and old tile roofs, evidence of neighbors, left behind in a temporary economic boom. Perhaps out of stubborness, or perhaps because they were just too late.

The view they create is strange, in places the manifestation of investment looks like a tumor, stand alone amongst its peers. In other situations they encroach what we can only assume to be what once was.

The spectacle makes one consider what other incisions development can cause, do they still resemble trauma and anomaly? Maybe they do, otherwise how else would we recognize the new. Views from Murcia (though not limited to Murcia) reveal to us a foil to our lovely Guardamar. Places that just can't seem to grow anymore must destroy its own flesh to make room. But what if, like Guardamar, the growth does not come? wounds painted brightly, vestiges of what once was, its all too familiar.

PS, We should have more table cloth lesson plans.

-Mondi

Wonderful Stumbling's

Last week or so Mondi and I made an impromptu or at least poorly preplanned adventure to Seville, the fourth largest city in Spain with a rich history of Islam influence. Dazed and grumpy (especially Mondi) from lack of sleep after our all night bus ride, we ended up at the end of a trolley line at six o'clock in the morning, looking up upon the towering Cathedral de Santa Maria de la Sede (the third largest church in the world according to Wikipedia). It was quite a stunning moment, brought upon by such a swift change in environment and outlook. I spent some time as mondi rushed around the photograph the Cathedral thoroughly, watching a small flight of black birds circle the spires in the dawn light. I made me think of Mr. Palomar and the starlings at dusk. It appears he was on to something.

We had a perfectly wonderful time meandering the crooked and dizzying streets of Seville. It is a quit a pleasant city to be lost in. In perhaps one of my all time best dérive, Mondi and I decided to explore an open door of a large, unassuming weathered facade. In our late afternoon stupor, our expectations for exciting outcomes from holes in unadorned facade were rather low. But it just so happens that the building we wondered into happened to be the Plaza de Espana, build for a world's fair in the 1920's to showcase Seville's technical achievements. It was a fun little mix of classical, art deco, and Moorish influences. The thing must of had more than a million painted tiles of blues, greens, and yellows. A good find.

Touring in a van

After missing all the first vans that Alex rented, our apartment finally got on the last van tour.
The first major stop was the salt ponds of Santa Pola. This excited a couple of us because salt ponds were central to our previous 101 studio. The ponds were tinted different hues depending on their salinity. The salt piles were beautiful because they were so white and pristine.
The Tamarit Watch Tower was situated in the salt ponds. The main use of the watch towers was retreat; through fire and smoke signals, the towers were placed so that enemies could be seen before they could reach the coast. This particular tower was too far from the coast, so it was used for communication instead. Plus, it looks pretty epic sitting there in the water underneath the equally epic sky.
The ghost town of new Guardamar was kind of eerie. All of the buildings were left abandoned and unfinished because there was no money for them to be completed. We thought it was odd that no crime had found its way into the place.

The Moorish Tower was another watch tower. I thought it looked like a golf course.
On the way to/in Torrevieja, we stopped by this cliff side. It had a gorgeous view.
We also made our way to Carrefour, which was right next to a mall. At Carrefour, I found Kung-fu noodles, which was the brand for every instant noodle.
The mall was outdoors and had a fantastic roof.

-Angela Tam

Barthelona

(I started writing this Sunday night, but fell asleep halfway through)

I am currently in Barcelona, taking advantage of the ever so precious wifi in our hostel. It's been a fast-paced 36 hours so far, and given that I only had that much time, I tried to pack in as much as was physically feasible. After an hour-long adventure hunting down our hostel from the airport, we dropped off our stuff and headed for the Barri Gotic. We wandered around for a good couple of hours, ice cream and water bottle in hand to mitigate the beating sun before heading back to the hotel for check-in and a nap. Semi-rested, we made our way down La Rambla and turned into a smaller alley in search of a less crowded/expensive dinner, and a TV to watch the soccer game. (Womp, US) The night ended with a stroll along the Port and a failed attempt at finding (or searching for) a nearby bar. Day 2 was dedicated to Gaudi...casa-hunting, Park Guell strolling, and Sagrada awe. With a little Metro pick-pocket attempt thrown into the mix. That night we headed to Montjuic to see the Olympic Stadium (where we also happened to find 10 stray cats and an Aerosmith concert). After taking the funicular to the top, we descended through the stadium, and past the gorgeously lit museum in search of the Magic Fountain show, which sadly never actually ran. But we did stumble upon a Pride concert of sorts at bottom of the hill, an entertaining sight in any country. After dinner we headed back to our hostel, exhausted from our seemingly non-stop movement through the city. Exhausting, but well worth it (duh).

Glad to be moving at a slower pace again,

Katharine

I wish I were a Murciano!

--Lily Zhang

A couple of weeks ago, our class visited the lovely city of Murcia, some 70 kilometers away from our home base. Alejandro arranged for us to see the city both for its own weekly market and for the city hall building in the center of town. Lisbeth diligently led us to el mercado… with no map. After a winding trek through the city, which led us through several neighborhoods and small public plazas, we arrived to find a market that dwarfed our mercadillo back home in Guardamar.

Water-jet cut sign? Awesome.

El mercado.

While el mercadillo slips its way through narrow residential roads, el mercado stretches across two wide streets. Both markets are teeming with people, clothes, shoes, bags, produce, cheeses, and churros. Crowds, products, boxes, and tables invade onto the streetscape. Even though the streets of el mercado are wider, a different level of obstructions surfaced with the abundance of portable shopping carts. These plastic, brightly colored contraptions wheel after their owners, who are too distracted by pouches and potatoes to notice when their carts collide into others (or others’ camera lenses). These carts caused the wider streets to feel even more contracted than the paths back in el mercadillo. As such, the sidewalk served even more as a space of retreat for the shopkeepers who could escape from the chaos of the street.

The quantity of portable shopping carts was dizzying (and painful).

The sidewalk as a space of retreat for the shopkeepers.

Aside from el mercado, the students also studied the city hall building by Rafael Moneo and its contextual response. The very modern building faces a classical plaza with a Gothic style church. Its façade is made up of limestone panels. Alex shared with us his understanding of limestone as a material built up over time of calcium and animal remains. Curious how such a temporal material adorns a new building – perhaps an attempt to pay respect to the history of the square? This material choice is similar to building in areas dominated by old brick structures with corten steel, a metal that oxidizes quickly to take on a deep reddish-orange color. The façade is reminiscent of Giuseppe Terragni’s Casa del Fascio in Como, Italy. Both have an opening for a political leader to walk out and address people from above. The two buildings use a relationship to existing classical town landmarks to assert the status of modern aesthetic and thinking. Both also make use of a compositional exterior, but the Casa del Fascio boasts a dynamic interior where spaces blur and redefine through a symphony of lines and planes. Its exterior also shifts with doors that swing open in harmony to release marching soldiers and a blank wall for hanging propaganda. Though the exterior of the Murcia city hall is striking because of contextual contrast, the students who managed to visit the interior reported that it was an unremarkable series of offices with no natural daylight.

The city hall building serves as a terminal accent among the neighboring classic Spanish style buildings.

A close-up of the city hall's facade, with the Gothic church directly opposing it reflected in the glass for the mayor's balcony.

Excerpts from sketchbook on Murcia.

Lastly, a little research the night before our visit led me to a website that recommended sampling several Murcia dessert specialties. It suggested a dish called paparajotes (lemon leaves fried in crispy batter, then dusted in sugar and cinnamon), leche frita (fried milk), and fig sorbet. Jen, Cara, Kayla, and I embarked on a mission to find paparajotes. After visiting almost ten restaurants, bakeries, and pastry shops, we discovered that paparajotes was a seasonal festival food served only at very high class restaurants. So much for following research. I ended up getting miloja (?), a slice of cream and thin puff pastry at a small bakery... Delicious and nicely wrapped.

The closest I got to paparajotes.

The construction of the packaging is brilliant.

graffiti

A very dynamic piece in Murcia – the artist even left what I assume is contact information to be contracted for future work.

It’s always interesting traveling around with architecture students. From city to city and monument to ruin, it’s entertaining to see what catches our eyes. Our cameras seem to be pointed in every direction working though a city - leaving our memory cards with a collection of random details.

During my last upload I noticed a series of graffiti pictures throughout Murcia, Granada and Elche. I enjoy graffiti. I like to think about who tagged this, what the piece is affiliated with, or what it means to the artist. Here are a few highlights:

An Elche exhibit showcasing ancient graffiti.

poetry?

A piece from a childhood favorite, “The Nightmare before Christmas.”

A stencil piece used to tag benches and seats throughout the city.



Graffiti we used as a landmark to navigate through Granada.



More graffiti to come.



-Orlando Briones Monegas Junior

Valencia: A Preview

Studio Team is invading Valencia in less than two weeks! With that, here is a quick preview of Valencia from my pre-Guadamar trip with Bing and Katharine.

We got Old Parks:

(Very) Expensive Food:

Modern Sea Creature looking Museums:

Old Ornate Churches:

And much more.

We got lots of adventures to come. Be ready!

-Wayne

Anne Dublin

One of the joys of studying abroad is the opportunity for independent travel during the weekends. For me, I took advantage of our three-day weekend break to visit Dublin, Ireland. Yes, Dublin for the weekend indeed.

Unfortunately, the weather in Dublin is generally not as smashing as the weather here in Spain. I packed only for hot weather and rightly so, since the temperature in Guardamar averages around 30°C during the day (and it gets hotter apparently). Dublin, on the other hand, does not experience such temperatures on a regular basis during the summers. It was 15°C, cloudy, cold, and amazingly windy during my first day in Dublin.



So, to my dismay I shall say, I spent the morning shopping for clothes. I ventured out to Henry Street where all the shopping-related activities occur. While walking to Henry Street, I got to see quite a bit of Dublin, for I decided to use the map as little as possible in order to discover quaint local spots that are often overlooked in tourists maps and recommendations. And yes, that also means I got disoriented quite a bit. Luckily, Dublin has River Liffey running down the middle of the city, so as long as I knew where the river was, I knew the general direction I should head towards.



Here is a photograph of Henry Street with The Spire (pointy thing in the background)

Good. After I layered up (I guess I’m glad I went shopping?), I engaged in my Dublin expedition. I spent the rest of my day meandering about the city. I did visit the tourist hotspots, like the Guinness storehouse, Temple Bar (the pub hub of the city), Trinity College, and Grafton Street, which is the high-end shopping district.



I have to admit, I am a city-person, but I do very much enjoy visiting the country-side. I dedicated the first half of Day 2 in Ireland to see Newgrange, a Neolithic tomb-mound structure mentioned rather extensively in my architectural history class, and Knowth, a series of tomb-mounds but less well-known than Newgrange. Sadly, my camera battery ran out of juice, so I had to rely on my camera phone.

Excuse the quality of the pictures.

New Grange


Knowth


Other half of Day 2 continued back in the city. More meandering action was involved. Walked a lot indeed.

By Day 3 I was exhausted from walking, yet I still joined a free walking tour of the city. I learned a lot of Irish history and that was rather swell. Interestingly, during the last day of my Dublin trip, the weather was amazing. The sun was blazing and there were no clouds in the sky.
Ironically, I got sunburned in Ireland (and never once in Spain).


In the evening, I joined cheering crowds of Brazilian supporters to watch the Brazil versus Ivory Coast World Cup game. Brazil won, as expected. Excellent.


A beautiful night as well by the way.



A nice way to end my trip to Dublin. Good weather, good food, good people, good game.

Cheers mate,
anne.

MADRID

Throughout our entire Madrid trip we would constantly bring up the words that we diagram like spectacle, trauma, retreat, etc. Some of these words came up in the Reina Sophia, and of the Guarnica by Pablo Picasso was a spectacle to many of us.


Our group of 12 was probably a big spectacle for some of the people of Madrid, especially when we went out to Plaza de Sol to sketch and drink boxed Sangria, and drunk teenagers would look over us to get a peak of what we were drawing, or when 12 cameras start flashing everywhere.

Or maybe we are spectacles when we start jumping off of local monuments.


There are places of retreat everywhere in Madrid especially the park, which is like the central park of Madrid. There was the crystal palace and a man-made lake where we could row a boat.

For me, the weekly flea market in Madrid was definitely a place of trauma and retreat. It was so so crowded, I didn't want to buy anything I just wanted to retreat, just get the heck out of there. I think a few of the girls thought differently as they bought a bunch of bags for themselves.

For some reason we had an obsession with American fast-food chains like McDonald's and KFC. I guess the invasion from the globalization of American goods was a good things for us.

-Shawn Tsao