Nature and the City

It's amazing how much one person or place can teach you. Since I've been here in Barcelona, seeing all of Gaudi's work, I've been especially impressed by his particular style - the integration of elements of nature into his designs. It's certainly interesting to see how much one thing can impact one person's outlook on life and subsequently their designs. I'm also impressed by the great level of detail in Gaudi's work. For example when we visited Casa Mila, he planned the apartments to a "T" so that each room would have a great deal of natural light, using a courtyard to allow light into the center. And just as interesting was the level of detail he put into the handrails on the facade of the house around the balconies and the amount of attention he paid to the experience on the roof by making the chimneys themselves sculptures.

Also, in terms of nature, I've enjoyed seeing how often trees and natural elements appear within big cities. It's a refreshing change from city life in the U.S. where the most natural thing that can be said about a lot of places is that it's a "concrete jungle." Seeing this time and time again in Spain has really been helpful in terms of affecting my designs - it's pushed me to more readily include landscaped, natural elements. It has especially done so for this semester's studio design where I know that I need to be relative and sensitive to the urban aesthetic already created in Barcelona.