Time for Independent Trip-----MOROCCO!

Jiaxin(Kathy) Li

We went to 5 cities in Morocco: Tangier-Chefchaoen-Fez-Marrakech-Casablanca
Here are some highlights and lowlights in each city:

TANGIER!
We went to THE CAVE in Tangier, it was very cool, weather-wise. When we were walking I suddenly realize that this is the exact cave that was in Taylor Swift's Style music video. It is a wonder how these caves formed, I suppose done by water since you can tell the shape of the waves carved on the stones.

Also this is taco in Morocco, more like a burrito tho.

CHEFCHAOEN!

As the blue city, it is very blue. 

Yeah very blue. Shot of this cat made my day. What a beautiful combination of colors!

FEZ!

Fez or Fes? Either way, it is the capital of leather-making. It is a heavily populated place but primarily on handcraft. 

The market in Fez should be the biggest at least to my view. After first sight of the market in Morocco, it seems that each market is, meh, kind of really similar to each other.(except when you are in a blue/red/white city when walls do change) The majority of goods are the same, souvenirs, shoes, bags, food etc. I am a little lost here, because markets look the same to me, but what might distinguish markets is the people. However, it could be due to tourism, people in the market are still similar, catering to different languages to attract tourists' attention. Maybe, out of the market, out of tourist zones can we tell the difference between cities. 

MARRAKECH!

It took 7 hours to travel by train from Fez to Marrakech, and I get to see sunset on the dessert!

After three cities of intense market (window) shopping, in Marrakech, we visited Jardin Majorelle but YSL museum was closed on that day. It is beautiful because it is full of water, the life juice, water!

What made this pool particular is that the water is almost silent. For real! The water is running but hardly could I hear any sound. Half a week soaked in the sand and dry land, it is indeed refreshing to feel water and greenness in a while. Cueing Jo for the concept of Thermal Delight, I really felt the happiness of fresh water after all these time. 

In addition, we visited the Museum of Marrakech. Surprisingly and not surprisingly, there was no one there, almost. We had the museum to ourselves. Again, Thermal Delight works when I had two hours of peace and silence away from the busy, messy crowd of people. The museum itself is also art, here in this video. 

CASABLANCA...

We did not actually explore Casablanca because everyone was tired and we have an early flight tomorrow. But we had crepe! It is very delicious and fun to watch. I am not sure whether crepe is different in Morocco in anyway, but it tastes great!

BACK TO GUARDAMAR

It is refreshing to be back! Back in a place you know. See you in the pension. 

Mercadillo in Guardamar: Past and Present of the Urban Space

Mercadillo in Guardamar 

July, 16th. 2019

Jiaxin(Kathy) Li
Hi Kathy it me Ben
Ben stop messing with my blog get your own blog!

Every Wednesday witnesses the rise and fall of an empire. An empire with developed business system and densely populated land. But what makes it particular, from other types of empires, is how ephemeral, and particularly, record-ably ephemeral it is.  

From Wednesday morning around 6 to 8, empty streets are taken, divided, filled, decorated. From 8 in the morning to 2 in the afternoon, commodity occupies space, gets picked up in the air, and subsequently gets misplaced, rearranged, transferred, and finally lands into another person’s private space, away from the public space. People are wandering, going into different store’s territory so that the owner feels appropriate to ask 'can I help you', keeping their feet on the streets while invading other people’s space with cautious eye contacts. 

But the most spectacular aspect about the mercadillo is you can see how it makes an empty street space into urban space and release the urban back to serenity within a day. The past and present of this urban space co-exist and define each other, rely on each other. 

10am, Mercadillo

WHEN THE PAST BECOMES THE PAST

This sentence seems to be nonsense. But what it means is when simple experience is glorified with time, more poetic and beautiful. Memory is different from experience in the same way, because what glorifies it is the fact of how untouchable it is. We can also apply this in real life. To many, industrialization and urbanism have been destroying the beauty of nature for a long time, with pollution, ugly and boring urban structure, hard steel etc. But remember the time we spent in Alcoy in the deserted factory? Time makes it beautiful, or at least brings out the beauty of it.  

PART OF PRESENT IS LOST

Present lacks the quality of untouchable-ness. In this case, present might be more annoying, painful, mundane than the past. This issue circles back to the mercadillo—What’s about it? Mercadillo characterizes urban life in Guardamar. At least this is the most urban you can get out of Guardamar. It is very difficult to portray and capture something that is not special at all, like the common practice of daily life. The mercadillo characterizes ‘urban’ space by summoning lots of people and interactions. To me it was too loud, too messy at times. But that is, to me, the present. 

2pm, Mercadillo

BUT WHAT IS PAST WITHOUT PRESENT

Present is boring. What we would describe the present? 

Buy food, wind splashing the tent, comparing shops, pat the dog, try on clothes, birds flying, kids crying for toy, step on gross rot fruit, checking the price, dropped a pepper, clashing of coins, on the phone, whisper of gossip, scolding the kid, sound of flipflop, teaspoon in coffee. 

Loud, messy, busy, rushing. Present.

What is past without present? 

Nothing. 

Nothing because it stopped in time. Past without present not only means that it does not current exist. For instance, dodo bird does not physically exist now but it still has a 'present' because people recorded it and remember it. In this strict definition then, a past that does not have any trace in present means that it really disappeared from memory, and therefore, it is nothing. 

WHAT IS PRESENT WITHOUT PAST

What about the other way round? If we zoom in onto the napkin on the stone floor, and ask ourselves, what is that? 

Nothing. Nearly Nothing. 

It actually circles back to urban spaces. What makes present urban? With layers and layers of the past, we develop technology, agriculture, currency, clothing … Layers of layers of the past pile up to present—what we see now as urban. One square meter of this urban space is a collection of compressed space, resource, time, effort. 

But with past, the present wall is added with a touch of time and history. Think about the many events, incidents, accidents that happened here in the mercadillo, exactly 24 hours ago. Indeed, the napkin does not change at all, but you can tell, it has a story now. 

Here is my mercadillo video edited, that inspired this post.

The Berkeley Bubble

I was trapped in a bubble back in Berkeley. Caught up in the pressures of people pursuing prestigious business careers, this summer was my escape from the toxic environment to expose myself to something greater than a computer in an office with no windows. 

I enrolled in a study abroad program to experience an eye-opening summer by visiting new cities and countries with different cultures and practices. Little did I know, I would have this eye-opening experience by interacting with the 16 other Berkeley students in my program. 

This is the first year that this Spain Environmental Design program accepted non-architecture students. Studying abroad with people of different majors meant differences in our skills and thought processes. There are currently 17 of us in the program and majors ranging from Sociology to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science to Economics and more. Through the different class assignments to the small lunchtime conversations, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with students that I will never meet with the typical classes I would take or organizations I would join at Berkeley. I became intrigued by the beauty of different studies and how education shapes an individual by trying to comprehend how my fellow classmates think. Suddenly what many people called the Berkeley bubble became something so diverse and beautiful in Spain. We all brought different ideas to the table that were challenging and also inspiring. From students that had their future planned out to students still trying to find their interests and passions, we were all at different stages in our lives. We were all so different that there was no way of comparing each other. Different age, different grade, different major, different background. We were all supposed to be different. The professor designed this year’s program so that new perspectives were brought into the studio. 

So the point is, I didn’t have to fly 6000 miles to have my escape and eye-opening experience this summer! (Just kidding!) You never have to be trapped in the bubble you surround yourself and identify with. Accept differences and be open to learning new perspectives, and you might just find yourself loving the bubble!

- Julia

(Blog 1/4) 

"Spain is the sort of place that never really made sense, but in the very best possible way." -- Anthony Bourdain

These are the words that echoed in my head as I arrived to Spain. It being my first venture out of the country, and my only exposure to travel being TV shows like Bourdain's, I struggled to picture what this might mean.

Even after I arrived, it took some time to accept that I was truly in another country, and not in some Disneyland-style manufactured Little Europe. Being dropped in Madrid during the weekend of the Champions League Final probably didn't help with that. It was so exhilarating, with soccer drunkards roaming the streets at all hours, and with constant music, cheering, and ~*ambient noise~*. Still, everything felt uncanny, like it was part of a movie set, and I found myself wondering if I was on an extremely realistic lot at Universal Studios.

As our time stretched from one week, to two, and as we settled into our semi-permanent home at the Pension, I realized that life here is carefree in many ways. I had never really understood the concept of cities that move slower (even after a brief summer in a small company town in Minnesota) but here, it feels as if time is thicker, gooey-er, melting in the sun like molasses. The days here feel longer. There's always time for a siesta (especially with the heat!) People seem less concerned with the silly American worries like working 9-to-5 and living in the perfect suburb. Laying on the soft, fine sand of Guardamar's beaches makes one wonder what you were ever stressed about before: what more does someone need besides ocean air, gelato, and Pension meals? It seems to me that once anyone's spent time in this happy, easy place, they can't help but continue to live their lives with the same carefree-ness.

If there's any souvenir that I could take back to San Francisco with me, it would be this feeling. The feeling that there's always tomorrow, that what really matters is the people you're with and the food on your table, and besides that, there's not much else to stress over.

Every city that I've been lucky enough to live in (for however short a time) has its own pace and its own unique feel. I've always thought that I was a big city kind of girl, but there's something so nice about the escape that a town like Guardamar offers.

In Bourdain's words: "Any reasonable, sentient person who looks at Spain, comes to Spain, eats in Spain, drinks in Spain, they’re going to fall in love. Otherwise, there’s something deeply wrong with you."

- cynthia

(blog 1/3)

What is in a Name

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
                                                    -Shakespeare

My name has always been something I have found humor in for most of my life. I just love how uniquely generic it is. Emily Johnson. Emily, the most popular baby girls name for over a decade in the early 2000s. All of us lost in the sea of the Emily wave. And Johnson, the second most generic last name in the U.S. losing to only Smith in mediocrity. Emily Johnson. Simple, classic, easy to remember. Or so I thought…

It was two weeks into the program when I realized that to Alex, my name was Ellen. We were in the midst of hiking the mountain to Alicante’s Santa Barbra castle. The ironic part was he was on the phone when he called out “Ellen! This way.” so I missed my opportunity to correct him. I thought to myself, “Well, we’re two weeks into the program. Let’s just see how long this plays out.” And in the subsequent days I watched Alex become confused where everyone else in the program (whom I informed of this adventure) alternated between “This is EMILY’s video.” and “Hi, ELLEN.” The straw finally broke the camels back when I sent an email listed as Emily Johnson but at the bottom, I signed off “Best, Ellen”. The next day, this was how the conversation played out:
“By the way, what is your name?” Alex asked.
“...” I silently smiled because I knew the jig was finally up.
“Because your last email really confused me”
“Well… my given name is Emily.”
“But you go by…”
“... Emily”
“... Then why am I calling you Ellen?”
“I don’t know… I don’t mind, I’ll answer to either.”
“No. I want to call you by your name. Is Em alright?”
“Sure.”

And while this is the funniest nickname story I’ve experienced this summer. I’ve gained a lot more from my classmates including Ellen, Em, MLE (get it?), MLA, Paris (my middle name), Paris Champagne, Emilia Johansen, Jo, americana alta etc. It’s really been a new experience because, other than my parents, I’ve never had nicknames before (my parents calling me Bubba Jones isn’t really something I want to advertise). Emily was always too simple to be worth it. So the little bit of pizazz to my typically generic name has made me super happy this summer. It’s a little sign that I know I’ve made friends I will treasure for a long time. But, in the end, I know that no matter what I’m called the person who they know is just me.

-Ellen :)
love you Jo it's your roommate! Btw I made up half of her nicknames.
Lov ya too, Kathy ;)

Space and Change

What happens to urban spaces when they change? How do we interpret the narrative of a place to include drastic shifts like abandonment or public access? How can the labels we place on spaces drastically change how we interact with them and do these labels actually mean anything? These were questions that arose when I began looking back on some of the urban spaces we have traveled to while in Spain this summer. I began looking at places like Granada’s Alhambra and Guardamar’s Rabita and Fonteta and wondering why tourist like to visit these places and how do their labels both restrict and expand their possibilities as spaces in the future.

Granada’s Alhambra is extremely interesting because it represents a very private space turned public. The original intention of the palace was to house royalty and as such every room, every fountain, every flower was designed for that audience as a backdrop to their lives. It was never intended to be a place where hundreds of people from across the world gather to pace through its corridors snapping pics that they can show to their friends and families to prove that they were there for a couple of hours. And yet that is what it has become. Even more so, as a regulated public space where only those who buy a ticket can enter, societal expectation restricts the kind of activities the public can do there. You will never see someone juggle or children play or people just lounging around as you would at, say the Estanque Grande del Retiro, which was also a royal private space turned public (without the fees). Instead, you will see people sitting on clearly defined benches, speaking typically only to people they know, and often in an interesting form of contemplation or meditation on the beauty and history of the space. This esteem as one of the most beautiful and important landmarks in Spain has excluded the Alhambra from the spontaneity of real life. It has become a symbol rather than a space. Space is something in which life takes place in overtime. Time has stopped for the Alhambra, and so too life there exists only in memory.

What does this mean for the Alhambra and places like it? For spaces that have changed or lost their original function? Well, my personal opinion (and, really, this whole post is just my opinion) is that when this type of exaltation happens to space it ceases being Architecture in the functional sense of the word. Instead, it becomes Architecture as a definition of art. It has become a work that I would expect to learn about in an art history textbook rather than a place I will see people living their lives. And intern the value of the architecture has changed from its use to its interpretation in the same way we can learn from an expressionist painting or modernist sculpture.

The question then becomes, when planning and re-envisioning spaces like Guardamar’s Rabita and Fonteta, is what kind of architecture do you want to create? Do you want to create a space as an Architectural symbol, a place that people can learn from and hold dear but only from arm's length? Or do you want to create a space where life can occur at the expense of remembering the enormity of its history- now that it has its own meaning today? This is the impossible problem Architects and Archeologist have to overcome every time they work on a historic site and most solutions tend to lean one way or the other.

Which will we choose going forward?
I have no idea.

-Emily

Common Water - Brianda Cerda

Common Water

I remember standing in the water of Hyde Beach in San Francisco, knowing that the next day I would also be standing in water. I wondered how much of that water was the same, or different, as the one I was currently standing in. Water. It was the only thing keeping me sane. Knowing that the water here and on the other side of the world is connected. I like to think that the water I touch in the ocean in San Francisco could have one day been in Hawai’i or Mexico. This was a comforting thought. 

Homesickness was the last of my worries. I mean, I would’ve anticipated a zombie attack and worried about that. I had relied on the thought that I would constantly be booked with activities and school work. I know… (#firsttimeabroad) But soon, between jet-lag and a free day, suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to be enveloped by the SF fog I was so accustomed to. So, what did I do? I panicked. I thought it was the end of the world, and that I had made a huge mistake. I should’ve stayed home. I should’ve taken a summer studio. I mean, could’ve done that. I could’ve stayed to see the familiar faces of friends, only to listen to their stories of their college experiences on the other side of the state, country, or world. I could’ve stayed within the safe confines of the only place I had ever known. And I could’ve stayed and denied my desire to expand my knowledge and understanding of the world. 

Letting myself hang upside-down on the hostel bed, I was forced to realize that the feeling I had encountered was fear- a certain fear of being alone and the uncertainties that come along with that. I, a girl who had always prided herself in feeling full without needing the materialistic or distractions for happiness, was face-to-face with the thing many are scared to admit- I was lonely and I was scared. I wanted to ignore that, but if I had, I wouldn't have enjoyed any of the past weeks. It was a matter of trusting myself and others. My roommates must have thought I was crazy, because I sprung up and agreed to go out with them. After I began to interact with the other students on the trip,  along with people of Spain, I felt confident and trusting. While this post seems like it's about trusting others and relying on each other, this first required me to realize that no matter what, I was to be my own accountability and sense of safety. This allowed me to see the beauty of being in another place. I used to say that ‘people are people here and in Spain’ as an expression to highlight a certain common string in human-kind, but, while I have only seen fog here approximately once, people are indeed still people, and like the water I touch can be the same water, it’s comforting to know.