Paris, France

The weather is breaking a bit here. Today the sun actually came out! I was at the Parc de Buttes Cahumont when it happened, sitting atop the rocky precipice with a fantastic view of Sacre Coeur in the distance when it happened. Unfortunately I was dressed for gloomy weather - jeans and a black shirt - and so I couldn't stand to vask in its glow for long. However, it's good to see the sun again, I hope he sticks around for another two weeks. It's amazing what an overcast gray cloudy background does to contemporary architecture in a photograph.

My interview with Christope Lab this morning was rescheduled due to them being in the middle of a competition, and no one speaking a lick of English. Of course I, dropping the ball, cannot even ask my questions in French. So we're rescheduled for the 10th, interpreter and all. That meeting too may be cancelled, and the interview may have to be done via internet, which I'm not to happy about, but will work if needed. Other than that it's been a few slow days here. I'm going to map out some night routes to get some night shots of a few major works before I skip town in less than 2 weeks, which may compensate for an otherwise washed out series of graytone photographs. I've been using saturation filters way too often.

Paris, France

A bit of a break in the weather allowed me to get a full day in. Mostly now I've been running around town, cramming for my interview on Saturday. The trip has taken me to parts of Paris I have yet to go to, and even more of a chance to gauge an objective view of the city.

With 2 weeks to go I'm working on getting some final pictures of a few projects around town...and about 10 drawings left, thanks to a bout of bead weather (and being locked out of the Musee du Quai Branly 3 days straight). Once the interview is completed I'll have a bit more time to devote to getting drawings finished. I had originally planned on having three more essays completed before leaving but now I think that decent starts will have to be enough...they've been difficult to crack into and as usual I'm not quite pleased with the level of thought.

Paris, France

For starters today was nice because I got a meeting with an architecture firm in Paris scheduled for Saturday, so now I have 8 essays and an interview. Then today all went downhill. I went to the Musee du quai Branly to draw it, and I got about 2 minutes into the drawing and it began raining, so I packed up, left, and took the 20 minute train back to my apartment and made lunch (that also blew up on me....another story, another time). Later in the afternoon I looked outside and it is sunny and dry, so I pack up my things and take another 20 minute train to the site. I get there, set up, and before I can erase all the lines I drew in the 2 minutes I drew that morning, it began raining again! So that set me in a bad mood.

Paris, France

Despite some wicked weather I am plugging along on drawings, having completed two yesterday and one today, and another 2 scheduled for tomorrow, weather permitting. In addition, I have at least some ideas for another three of the essays, getting us up to all but 1 or so that have some sort of concept or direction. My rain delay alternative for tomorrow is to begin writing about the fabulous souterrain, the underground of Paris. Mostly I'm focusing on the Metro system and its natural ability to be very disorienting, and how it represents itself (via maps, etc.) in a completely different way. But this could use some beefing up. As with most of the essays, they've become observational and really lack any new ideas or putting forth any arguments, which is not what I wanted from them. But I have all next semester to make sense of them. I'm basically here to collect information. I'm currently getting my hands on some CATIA models of the major subway stops, without the groud. They're surprisingly well ordered.

Paris, France

Thqankfully, a day of decent weather descended upon Paris, and great timing. I ended up walking the most today, covering a good portion of the Left Bank from the Latin quarter to the Eiffel tOwer, then across to the 16th back to the Champs-Elysees. Despite the touristy locations, my focus was on 5 buildings, 2 of which I was able to draw (Musee du Quai Branly will have to wait, a major portion of the gardens and my drawing spot were sealed from the public). Hopefully this weather stays with us, as I have quite a bit to work on. I'm down to 2 weeks now. Kezia, the other Nix fellow just got into town, and hopefully I'll be able to meet up with her soon. I'd like to run my ideas for my essays over some people, preferably before I leave town in 2 weeks, in case there are changes/photos I need to take.

2 weeks. Let's see how we do...

Paris, France

Tonight is the festival of music, so I will make this short. There is much to celebrate.

For one, I have passed the halfway mark on a paradoxically fast and slow trip. The weekends drag by, but the weeks, well, it's already Thursday. In the meantime I have finished a second essay on the so called "tent phenomenon" of some 550 tents that have been donated to the homeless of Paris. The move has of course brought alot of attention to the subject of homelessness, but form my perspective it introduces interesting juxtapositions against Beaux-arts stone architecture.


There is also something interesting about "urban nomads", entire communities that can pick up and go at the command of a police officer. And, it goes without saying, the idea of urban nomadic communities has also piqued my interest. Entire subcultures, unabashedly setting up camp in the shadows of Notre Dame and the Centre Pompidou.



So as we've crossed the halfway point, we're getting to the point where things are beginning to fall together. I have 3 more essays and, God willing, an interview to conduct before I leave town in 2 short weeks. When I'm back I'll have another 2 or 3 essays to write form the comfort of my own home, as they need little more from me at this point than photo documantation to go along with the text.

Paris, France

I keep getting rained out of my days here. It's rained off and on for the past 4-5 days and as of now I've had to cut 2 drawings short because of rain. So things are moving pretty slowly. We're hitting the halfway mark, and I've only got one essay finished, but I have 3 others started, and today and yesterday I spent the entire day out taking photos for the highly-graphic ones. Things are beginning to gel, but I wish I had more drwaings done. That's about the only thing I'm actually behind on right now.

Paris, France

I've reached the end of the second week, and with the weather being bad lately (rained off and on the last few days, plus its been cold and windy) and with spending the last few days at La Defense, I'm feeling a bit burnt out. The last two times I've been out of the country were two week trips, and they had the fortunate circumstances to end just as everyone was beginning to get on each others nerves. So in a way the next few days are the biggest mental hurdle for me, and hopefully the weather clears up to help me out.

With one essay down and another quickly taking shape, I'm pretty happy with where I am. The last one and this one, based on the monumentality of the Grands Projets, are two of the larger, more intensive writings I have planned. But dealing with really alrge buildings day in and day out has kind of burnt me out, so for the first part of next week I will be switching gears to photo-documenting a few of the shorter, more photographic esays. This should give me a few days to clear my head and come back on the GP essay with a fresh head.

Just about the time I'm heading back onto the GP essay I'll be hitting the halfway point of the trip. Looking back it feels as if each day has been very long and substantial, but in all, the weeks feel like they're going pretty quickly. Thursdays seem to sneak up on me quickly and suddenly I think I'm falling behind, but the weekends go slow enough that I catch up.

Heading to the Bastille Opera for a tour yesterday, I ran into Gil and the group from UWM sitting on the staircase. They had just gotten into town a few hours prior, but maybe my mid-week I'll be able to meet up with a few of them and go do some socialising. I could use a stiff drink before thinking about the Grand Arche again.

Paris, France

Yesterday I spent the day working on the first of the series of essays. It's complete, so to speak, although I think that there's more depth and inisght I can give to the subject matter. Right now its essentially about how Paris solved the overcrowded cemetary issue by exhuming corpses and putting them in the abandoned caverns below Paris. It's definitely thinking outside the box, and the resulting catacombs are one of the most interesting places you can go in Paris, in my opinion. However just that much explanation isnt worthy of its own essay, and I really have to look more into the implications of such a move, and how that has more significant architectural and urban consequences. I wonder what else we could put down there?

So with one essay more or less finished I'm ready ot move on to the next one - the Grands Projets. Essentially, there were seven buildings constructed in the 80's and 90's by then president Francois Mitterand. From my view, they're all really damn big. So I would like to look at scale in contemporary parisian architecture, but also historically, since the French have been building big for a long time. Also what the use of scale means, architecturally and symbolically, and if the treatment of these monstrous buildings is consistent with their messages. It's a chance to actually do a bit of criticism and diving into a bit of theory on them. So that will take me through sometime early next week, hopefully.

We've had a few days of rain on and off here, so it's been tougher to go out, or at least tougher to get myself to go out. Today I officially pass the 1/3 marker of this trip, and although there's plenty of time left, it still makes me kind of nervous. I still haven't really developed a system for analysing the city.

Paris, France

My second week on the ground here began on a high note. I went to visit the RATP bibliotheque and archive, and was able to track down a series of 3-d models done on CATIA showing the metro lines <>. With this data I will be able to graphically show the complex workings of the many paths of the Paris Metro. Inspired by this article, this information will help guide one of the essays, which thus far deals with spatial orientation and relationships underground. Ideally I would like to convert these computer drawings so I can make 3-D models of them, to use as part of my presentation. Now all I need to do is write the essay.

I got the bones of another essay in place (pun regretfully intended) over the weekend, which deals with Paris' cemetaries and ossuaries, and the issues the city has had in the past dealing with death in the city. I've got the outline worked out and tomorrow am descending into the catacombs in order to cover the last part of the death scene in Paris. Unfortunately I'm realizing that alot of these essays are going to require historical background information and other scholarly research which I do not have the resources for in Paris, so before any of these essays can really take off, I'm going to have to be back in Virginia with access to the proper materials. The trick will be forecasting enough ahead of time so that I gather the correct information while I am here in Paris so that it still has relevancy after I'm back and have begun to write.

Paris, France

This was meant to be updated daily, but its been hard to find a decent internet connection long enough to get all m research finished and update this. I'll have to try harder.

So with one week down and four to go, I did some major work yesterday to figure out just what I am doing here. I decided that the best route for me is not to do a single report or research on one topic. So far, my experiences have been way too varied and chaotic to boil all my thoughts into one coherent topic. I decided I would be much better off coming up with a series of essays which are put into a single compilation which documents my travels and experiences, and hopefully with a singular architectural thread. So far I have come up with three or four different topics that can be expanded into essays, and today I spent some time riding the Metro and documenting some of the things I had seen earlier this week but had not had a chance to document. My "schedule" says that by today I should be writing an outline for just how I am going to pursuit the analysis of the candidate buildings I was also to have picked by today. Instead I have the bones of about four essays, and plenty of other documentation to back up my experiences. If this continues for another four weeks, I will be sitting quite well. The key now is consistency.

I am also waiting for a reply from my advisors, Profs. Ford, Kinnard, and Dripps. This is a rather strange deviation from my original proposal (though I've kept it as one of the essay topics) but whether this will fly with them has yet to be decided. However, I feel better about it, since my mind has already been stretching in several directions, and what's more, I have something to show for it already. The greater challenges lie in creating a thread that binds all of these essays together, and most importantly, how this fits in with any type of final project for my thesis. At the end of this I may have some "research" but more likely I will have several criticisms, cultural barometers, manifestos and interpretive zeitgeists that are all well and good, but don't get me any closer to a thesis topic.

Maybe that will come. I'm only 20% through this trip, so there is still much more time to figure out the common links, and how to turn this into more than a pretty paper.

Paris, France

Had a bit of a setback when I didn't set an alarm yesterday and ended up sleeping until 3 PM, thereby completely messing up my sleep schedule. No worries, all is back on track. It just meant that I hit the town at 5 o'clock this morning, hours before anything opens on Lundi. I was able to do some early morning sketching at the Louvre, then worked on locating the new Nouvel museum along the Siene. I was able to make it to one of the early Modern candidates, Maisons Jaoul in the rather attractive Neuilly-sur-Siene area.

When it started to rain and I realized I had been up 6 hours and it wasn't even lunchtime, I headed back to base and worked out a schedule for myself.

Basically I want to have a bit of Historic analysis first so I have something to compare it to. Then I'll get into the contemporary works, which I've slated myself as having locked in by the end of the week. There are alot of unaccounted for factors, lots of gaps and holes that will need to be filled in, but at least this gives me some kind of goal to shoot for. Personally I'm kinda excited for "Reverse Engineer Paris"

While I was at the Place du Carousel this morning, I got to musing about the difference between Paris and Venice, which I also visited earlier this year. Aside from being wed to the sea (literally, in a ceremony held each year) Venice is a city very much about its meandering pathways, its tight and narrow spots, and its campi, which serve as the only way to orient yourself in the city without your nose in a map. In Paris it is not the Place, or rather the nodal intersections of pathways, but the pathways themselves. Paris is rife with long, broad streets and boulevards that stretch into the infinite beyond (these came prior to Haussmann, as I've learned, and could be traced to Vicennes). It is in the act of crossing one of the boulevards and catching a glimpse to a landmark out on the horizon that one places themselves in the context. This is a world apart from the Venetian experience, and I'm curious as to whether one is intrinsically simpler to understand than another.

Paris, France

Already on the second day of the trip. It's been off to a slow start, since I arrived just before a weekend. Today I went to the Louvre in the morning, then to the Latin Quarter for some quick lunch. I've used the last 2 days as a chance to familiarize myself with the city again, as I really want to understand the formula of Paris before I begin my research. Perhaps I will creat a how-to guide on how to build a Paris. It could be an interesting analysis of the urban system and how it came to be. If its anything like my last studio project, that could actually become a cosmic explanation for the creation of a singluar building, sort of Paris all under one roof.

The apartment I've found myself in is a bit lacking. Well, actually I'm just mad at myself for not taking the apartment with wireless internet and telephone included, since I'll be using the internet quite frequently and talking to people would be nice. The toughest part about the trip has been the total solitude, here not being able to talk to many people (my French is horrible if I'm doing anyhting other than reading). Some people I know will be arriving as soon as the 12th, but I don't know how much I'll see them. Still, having a familiar face within 3,000 miles can be a comforting thing.

I've begun the long put-off job of defining my research and hashing out details on how its going to come together. Essentially I am comparing and contrasting the ways in which contemporary architecs are dealing with various issues and their relation to the Parisian context with thise used by early modernists such as Prouve, Corbusier, and Mallet-Stevens.

I've been researching contemporary projects like the housing by Herzog & DeMeuron, the furry apartment building, fondation cartier, and institute du monde arabe, but there are very few contemporary pieces in Paris that arent residential flats or giant civic works. So that will continue. However, with a handful of 7 or 8 I should have enough to pull out some examples of all sites and sizes.