Salimos a Meson David: We go out to Meson David

So after the presentations, we took a little respite and then we met at the Paral-lel metro stop and walked to Meson David, a restaurants made for groups who want tapa-like plates to share. I was a huge fan of the different types of tortilla that were offered, but a little put off by some of the meat. For the most part, though, it was a way to end the day on a good note before we all take a week off for spring break starting...NOW!

The waiter checks out a picture of himself with Theda, Sean's sister who is visiting...he fell in love with her immediately...gave her a flower during the course of dinner...it was basically a classic night out with CUarch. haha.

The group...in a laughing fit, for obvious reasons!

Me and Tom--WE'RE GOING TO GERMANY TOMORROW!!!!!

Christi and Eugenia at Meson David

Fist-pumping Felipe! Classic CUarch BCN!

Theda (Sean's sister) and Felipe, ready to go out!

Christi and I after dinner

Ben, giving his model looks...*sigh* haha. Nice one Benja! -and check out Rob in the background!

Yes, I live with this kid! Hehe--Oh Rob...(this lemon is probably going to be used as a candle in our apartment at some point...we're basically pyros...don't tell the landlord!

"BOB-We have to get up at 6 am to go to the airport! We CAN'T go out tonight!"-Tom

Tom and I went to studio to get everything we needed and I chatted with Mike, mom's friend from HS, who has been helping us out tons with plans for our trip to Germany for break. I'm beyond excited! Time for bed...tomorrow might be stressful!

El proyecto incompleto: the incomplete project

Ended up being in studio until 8 am, at which point I was hungry from only having eaten a few saltines for dinner. We have a lot done, but not nearly enough. I had to fight with the printer because it wasn't printing to the margins that it was set to on the computer. Then, about halfway through printing our analyses, the printer ran out of ink, so I had to spend another hour figuring out how to shrink the photoshop document to print the correct margins on an 8.5 by 11 sheet...which never did end up correct, but it was 3 or 4 am and I couldn't keep fighting the machine, so we just finished on what we had and continued the other work.

Felipe got the model done. Vic and I had to rearrange the template that we were given to fill. We were missing info that we had planned around, so while our info may or may not have been sufficient, it wasn't blown up to fit the template because we had actually planned to have more to our presentation than we ended up with. We presented anyhow, but I was disappointed in myself. We are definitely going to have to make sure we complete the template so that our project reads the way it is intended to. I like our project, even though it breaks the rules about building in the center of the plaza (which I was originally not a fan of), but the presentation of it just didn't explain it.

Just gotta suck it up and move on.

We're going out to dinner as a group tonight and then....GERMANY in the AM!

la fotografia y un dolor en la cabeza: photography and a headache

Sketching class today was awesome! Eugenia's photographer/architect friend, Adrian, came and talked about photographing architecture. He was poetic in everything that he said...so I have tons of quotes written in my sketchbook as notes for the class, but they are only a fraction of all the great and inspiring things that he said. His work was great, too...very impressive.

I am not doing as well as hoped in sketching class. I think I may just need to try to dedicate time to go back to the sites since I am aware that it takes me so long to do a good sketch. I will also be tackling watercolor again as I refuse to lose a fight with a paintbrush...we'll be friends eventually, it'll just take some patience.

Got lunch with Mon and have been in studio ever since...presentation tomorrow and I'm already freaking out because we had to re-do all of our analyses to make them read together and all of our drawings AND the model...this is bad.

La ciudad: City

The lights change.
Sometimes you are the car, waiting to see what will happen when people cross your path.
Sometimes, the pedestrian, waiting for the little green man to light up and tell you that its ok to cross the street.
Sometimes you don't have to wait at all.

You may or may not look both ways, but you go
without a red light to tell you otherwise.
Still other times there is no waiting, nor moving forward.
Sometimes you are simply the light, directing traffic of all sorts as it comes into and leaves your sight.

Cars, pedestrians, lights.
Whether we are waiting, moving along, or doing seemingly nothing,
be it frustrating, busy, easy-going, or boring,
when we zoom out, and take a look at that view
we see that no matter how we feel, what role we play, or how we change from red to yellow to green and back...
we see from this view that it doesn't matter.
What we see through this view is that the city, with all of its many parts,
its "stops," its "cautions" and its "gos"...is working.
Every piece is functioning as it should, and this is the sign of a good city.

Then the light goes green, and you are no longer stopped, waiting and thinking...
You forget that you are just that tiny piece of the city design until the next red,
when you will again sort out your own role in the machine called "city."

Clase en la universidad: Class at the university

Benja

Victoria

CMYK...the colors of a printer...Esteban would be so proud!

Deseno grafico y Babel: Graphic Design and Babel

Got up early today, hung out a bit at the apartment, and headed to studio. I love being out at midday in the sunshine, seeing the kids teens and aduts alike heading home for their siesta. The sun here is amazing. The buildings are low so you don't feel trapped in a big city. There are tons of open spaces in plazas and parks, not to mention to ease with which one can just hop on a metro or take a walk to either the mountains or the Mediterranean. SOOO cool.

Got to studio, spent hours downloading programs and software for graphic design and studio, then got my feet wet in Adobe InDesign...and let me tell you, the water is FREEZING! I'm worried that my work for graphic design won't get completed let alone well, because it is taking me so long to grasp the program. Christi helped a bit, and Ben and Billy are around to answer questions too. I think I'm just so used to doing scrapbooks and whatnot by hand that it feels limiting to only have certain tools which I am not even sure how to manipulate yet. I'll get it though...it just might take a little while!

Felipe came in and I helped him to get started on the site scale analyses, and when studio time came, we were ready to present and to ask and answer questions.

After studio I met up with Alfredo, who was in the area for a film presentation, and we went to a theater a few blocks away to see Babel. The majority of it was in spanish, but because it has 4 different languages in it, they didn't dub it and they left it subtitled in spanish, instead, so that was cool. I understood almost everything, if not the vocab, then the context. I liked the movie, as well. I had heard that it doesn't have a plot, but I thought the way time was altered was really great and the connections between these people all over the world was really interesting. For me, it was about how we affect people all over the world without knowing it. The only thing I didn't like was that there were a few things left unanswered at the end that would have summer it up a bit more, but it wasn't enough to ruin the movie. Good stuff.

Analizar es asi...: To analyze is like this...

Walked to studio today but no one was there. I sat outside at the basketball courts and sketched the church and watched some kids playing basketball. Bob and Tom got out of mass and I left my seat in the sunshine for my dark corner of studio.

I listened to pandora radio (pandora.com) which matches your music interests wth similar musicians and songs. I got pictures ready for graphic design class and read other peoples' blogs to grab some quotes for "reflection pages" in the book we are making--for the personal touch.

When Victoria got into studio, we did a bunch of analyses on the city and medium scale for Placa de les Glories. Felipe will do the site scale when he gets back from his weekend trip. It should be good, though.

After completing our analyses we sat and started joint brain-storming for the urban design of the spaces. We started with the Cerda block (the city plan in existence for what I would say is the majority of the city), and we came up with a few good ideas, I think. Two heads are definitely better than one on projects like this.

I can't believe the weekend went by so fast.