peter zumthor pritzker prize 2009

‘Architecture has its own realm.It has a special physical relationship with life.. I do not think of it primarily as either a message or a symbol,but, as an envelop and background for life which goes on in and around it, a sensitive container for the rhythms of footsteps on the floors, for the concentration of work, for the silence of sleep.”

peter zumthor , thinking architecture

link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/arts/design/13pritzker.html?_r=1&hp

” I know of no other city where a single street is so important. From sex shops and souvenir stalls to the opera house and, La Boqueria, the best food market in Spain, Las Ramblas caters-in one way or another- the most elemental desires of life.This is where Barcelona celebrates, protests and riots…it is almost as importantly, where Barcelona meets itself.”

from parc guell

from montjuic

paseo de gracia casa batllo by gaudi

“….for if any place in the world could make  me levitate , it would be the Catalan capital.”   Giles Tremlett

and  I could not agree more.

north campus palmetum

” A garden was, in the biblical story, the first home.  Garden is a potent and complex symbol; it embodies pleasure, fertility, sustenance, and renewal.Gardening is a life-embracing act, an act of faith and hope, and expression of commitment to the future.”

Anne Whiston Spirn, The language of landscape

Lone survivor  on Edgewater, a 1920′s bungalow. The resilient, reliable and too often ignored Miami  bungalows.

link :  http://www.americanbungalowmagazine.com/AmBungalow/miamifeature.html

At the corner of miami avenue and 3rd street downtown miami…no more

Architecture….haunted by nature sacred trees that holds up the firmament…

gaudi’s  sagrada familia barcelona

The last two weeks have been somewhat hectic at school. Just to get back into the rhythm of the blogsphere I would like to share some of my first year architecture design students work. The objective behind this assignment was to introduce the students the study of the inter-relationships between form and perception. Using typography as a starting point the project aimed to find common principles shared by these two fields.( projects: Kathleen Guede, Shareiry Rivera, Victor Ordaz, Esteban Alvarez, Tonika Barbary, Clarissa Martinez, Clayton Cowell)

architectural element #1

“A flat lintel expresses stability but not movement. The arch is alive, tracing the line of force and meeting it with and equal and opposite force. In the words of the old masonic proverb, ‘the arch never sleeps’. As the column, with its capital and base tended to separate one element from another, the arch tended to unite them.” roloff beny

santo spirito firenze italy