Piovere

Today we didn't have studio until 3, which gave us all morning to wake up slowly at our own pace. A few hours before breakfast I went to the library and started doing research with Tara,, we came up with so many good topics it was really rather hard to narrow them down today. At lunch time we had two main interests- the dynamic uses of concrete and glass roofing systems. Of course one is structural and the other is a skin question, so we had to decide which path to take.

So in studio we all went around and tried to form our ideas, which had become a little more specialized since last night, but not much. So the four hours of studio was devoted to narrowing our topics down and zooming in on one thing that we wanted to study. What we have decided on (currently) is to study the sculptural qualities of concrete which result from a design driven by architectural design or engineering. We believe that both are equally beautiful, just in different ways, so we mean to see what these differences are using two buildings in our research--- Pier Nervi's Palazzetto dello Sporto and Le Corbusier's Notre Dome du Haut Chapel in Ronchamp. This means we will have to travel to both of them.. The Nervi building is in Rome and is already one of our destinations on our first group trip, but we will have to travel to Ronchamp, France seperately during one of the weekends here. I am pretty excited about our choices because I really want to see Ronchamp, and this way I have to! Also, the sculptural qualities of concrete will make for very entertaining projects this semester.

After about 8 hours of research today with meals in between, I am about ready to collapse. Tomorrow we have our first Day Trip--- which is down to the Porto Antico here in Genova. It should be very entertaining and if the weather holds up,,, we have a boat trip out a little ways into the sea planned so that we can get a great view of the city. Well I have a big day ahead, so I am heading out!

~Heather