All posts filed under “Overview

SKOPJE __ A City Slips Away

Skopje is a strange place.  An unsettling mishmash. In 1963 the city suffered a devastating earthquake which destroyed nearly a large portion of the city.  Japanese architect Kenzo Tange was hired to complete a new master plan for the city.  A massive amount of building stock […]

6 MONTHS IN…

It seems only appropriate to begin with the gratitude: I owe a continuing thanks to the UC Berkeley Branner Fellowship decision committee for selecting my proposal and granting me this truly once in a lifetime opportunity. The past six months have been extraordinarily enriching, rewarding […]

COLLECTING CONCRETE

“It is truly bizarre. For a start it is almost uniformly grey.” Guardian reporter Sean Thomas’s description of Le Corbusier’s Couvent de la Tourette is a notably unsympathetic one*, but not an entirely uncommon one.  Concrete is quite often dismissed as simply dull, bland, and grey.  And […]

SÃO PAULO ___ Re-imagining Infrastructure

After a failed attempt to swim in the pool at Lina Bo Bardi’s SESC Pompeia (apparently “Open to all the Public” actually means “Open to all the Public*”), a friend and I strolled through Barra Funda over to check out a different sort of pool […]

SÃO PAULO ___ Buildings that Flutter

Sao Paulo’s reputation is not one of great beauty.  In fact, the city’s “ugliness” was one consistent mention amongst the few people I spoke to about the city.   And upon arrival, the reasoning for this attitude became quickly clear.  Sao Paulo is a hard […]

SÃO PAULO ___ Arrival

I arrived at the airport – dazed after the red eye, and focused on finding cash, wifi, and maybe a sim card.  It was only after I had stopped to sort out what my ATM pin code would be on a keypad without letters, that […]

GLASGOW

Whereas Edinburgh was a dense, easily walkable city, Glasgow’s scale was noticeably larger.  The building styles were more diverse and the city certainly felt younger (by comparison). While in Glasgow, I had the great pleasure of meeting with Ross Brown, whose Scottish Brutalism website I […]

GLASGOW | Excursion: East Kilbride

Today I took the train out of Glasgow past small farms and technicolor sheep to East Kilbride, a suburban town just a few miles southeast of the city. My primary destination was St Bride’s Roman Catholic Church (click the link for a detailed post), but there were a […]

EDINBURGH

And so it begins… While London was to be the main focus of the UK leg of my trip, I stumbled upon University of Strathclyde student Ross Brown’s impressive website chronicling his Master’s research project Scottish Brutalism and on a bit of a whim decided to […]