beetles and armadillos

Yesterday started off the day and week right with a cappuccino and cornetto (croissant) at the cafe right below our apartment. The people there are so friendly and accommodating to all the studenti americani (in our apartment building there are other American students from University of Washington and University of Miami) and we get special deals for breakfast and lunch and 20% off anything else. The cappuccino is one the most delicious drinks I've ever had and paying 1.30E (about $1.75) for a good breakfast sure beats Starbucks, especially with a friendly 'ciao!' every morning.

Then I worked in studio in the mattina (morning) until our group pin-up/discussion where we reviewed everyone's work from the weekend. Right now we are working in partners to analyze Baroque architettura in Rome (mostly churches and piazzas) and our teacher hopes (key word here is 'hopes') to publish a book of all our work. Anyways. One of the focuses of our studio is "scripting" (using computer programming/mathematical equations to modify commands in our 3D modeling program) to generate shapes and forms that we would not be able to create otherwise. Needless to say, some of the stuff is unrealistic and fantasy-like but it will be interesting to see where people take it.

Which leads me to the next part of the giorno (day); after we finish work on our "analysis" for this "book," our first actual design project is to design a landscape/pavilion space over the next 2 weeks using our Baroque and scripting discoveries. We visited the site which is a long narrow triangular strip of land outside of a modern architectural feat: Renzo Piano's Auditorium Parco della Musica which is a complex consisting of 3 large concert halls and an open-air Roman-esque amphitheater. Take a look at these pictures and you'll see why they have been nicknamed the 'beetles,' 'armadillos,' 'computer mice,' etc:










Definitely some interesting architecture. The interiors are pretty amazing in brick though and this map on the right shows the layout of the complex and our site is the strip of land at the bottom: