Spring Break

For Spring break I stayed half the week in Barcelona, while my friend Claire visited me, and the other half of the week I visited Paris. Having Claire visit me was awesome! It was nice to see a friendly face from home. It was also nice to re-visit places in Barcelona that I had not been to in a while and to be able to experience the atmosphere of the city as a whole while I showed her around.

The second half of my spring break I spent in Paris and that was amazing beyond belief. I saw many, many sites! One of my favorite aspects of Paris was its overall atmosphere…whether walking along the Seine or spending a picnic meal in the Luxemburg Gardens.

Villa Savoye was definitely one of the neatest buildings I saw while in Paris. Although it can be initially a little disappointing since the context of the building is quiet different from the way it originally was (and also from the way your teachers would have to you believe it still is!), once you get over that there are many things that you can learn from this building that no text book will teach you.

I visited many museums in Paris and so Ali and I began to analyze and compared their success through their use/control of light and circulation. There were some that were very successful is this but it is amazing how many museums there are that have very poor circulation and light. It makes you realize how complex the design of a museum actually is.

It was interesting to compare Paris and Barcelona's built environments especially since Cerda's expansion of Barcelona was going on at around the same time as Hausmann's changes to Paris. Hausmann definetely created much more bold gesture's than Cerda and this creates and city that feels much more grand and monumental. I think the variation in the scales of the city - from the Seine, to small scale buildings, to large, help to keep the city from feeling completely monumental in scale.