Final Week

The project above is a new housing unit built by Jurgen Meyer.  On our remaining few days in Germany the class was able to visit areas that have were rebuilt shortly after world war two.  Most of these buildings were housing complexes.  We saw complexes from both east and west Berlin, where the two sides were almost in a building war with each other.

At the end of the week we visited the Soviet memorial and learned about the cold war.

For our last weekend in Germany Lindsy and I took a four hour train ride to Frankfurt Germany where we visited the Myzeil Mall by Massimiliano Fuksas and Richard Meiers Museum fur Kundsthandwerk.

We also attended a Mac Miller concert while we were there and then made our way back to Berlin.

Finally the month long experience was over and I did not want to leave.  After all of the things that we were able to see and do, I learned so much and have so many new ideas about my views on the world, people,  and my own life choices.  I am so thankful that I was able to take part in this great experience.

One Week Left, Noooo!

Bus Stop Pavilion by Peter Eisenman

After our nice trip around Germany we finally made it home to Berlin.  Some of us then had the weekend off for some much needed R&R.  The weekend for Lindsy and I was spent traveling to the outer rim of Berlin to an enormous animal shelter that we found in our text book.  Later that night we were able to meet up with some fellow German design students for quite the night.  It was nice to socialize with people our own age that had the same views and opinions about how design should be incorporated into the world.

The next day a few of us went to a art exhibition at a old train station that had been remodeled.  Here we were able to see art by artist like Andy Warhol, Dan Flavan, and Roy Lichstenstein.

EXCURSION Day 2

After a night stay at our quaint hotel and some extremely good, Bavarian, and complementary breakfast we headed off to Munich.  Our day started off to a sorrowful morning at the Dachau concentration camp.  Although this was a work camp for the prisoners it was just as brutal and harsh as the other camps.  From just walking through the grounds one could feel the difference in the environment around you from all of the violence and pure cruelty of what had taken place in this area.  But from there we cheered the day up by going to the BMW Welt and 72' Munich Olympic Stadiums.

The Olympic Stadiums were very nice and from a distance they look as if they had huge cranes lifting up a sheet of glass stretched over.  This stadium is a mix between high tech and expressionist architecture.

EXCURSION

On June 16, we left for our 6 day excursion where will take a charter bus across Germany.  Our first stop was in the small city of Dessau.  Here we were able to have a guided tour through an extremely controversial of its time.  The Bauhaus was a school designed by Walter Gropious.  This advant gaurde art school pushed the limits of the norm in this era.  Eventually it was shut down where it became occupied by the socialist party for various reasons.  Then the building was restored and now is a museum of the Bauhaus arts.

After our delicious meal here we headed down the road to the town of Nurmburg, Germany.  This was the first city the we visited that is apart of the Bavarian state.  This region of the country has a much slower and traditional feel to it from the red shingle roofs to the castle looking down on the city.  

We then ate delicious pizza then settled into Nurmberg by having a little fun watching the Czech Republic play Poland in the Euro cup.

June 5th Too much to see and not enough time to see it

June 5th morning started off with a nice short walk to to Pariserplatz. This is the area in front of the Brandenburg Gate which houses several embassies and the Academy of Art done by architects like Frank Gehry and Gunter Behnisch.  The interesting part about these buildings is that the restrictions to the facades were forced to not take away from the Brandenburg Gate.  So the Architects both of which have very distinct styles were forced to contain there on unique style to the interior spaces of the buildings.

 

 
 
After that we had a private tour of the Philharmonie by Hans Scharoun.  This building from the outside is personally not very attractive.  But once we were able to go into the lifted bowl shaped concert halls the exterior appearance was forgotten.  The best part was being able to sit and listen to a group of four or five musicians practice.  With out a word spoken in their music it seemed as if they told a story with their instruments and poured everything they had into the talent they put out.

Sunday I arrived at the airport rather early to get my trip started.  Airports are fascinating when you have the time to sit back and think about the thousands of lives being lived to the fullest, the business men and women that travel to the ends of the world to live a dream or to put food on the table, or lastly the people that are pushing there lives to the extreme for the sake of new memories.  Finally we board the airplane where it was in the 90 degree range and quite warm.

 We pass through the lower clouds and still we climb until we reach the cruising level where the earth is merely a blanket of clouds.  Throughout my travels around America my favorite thing is to experience something that is so vast it is hard to take in, like when you are surrounded by only land or water for as far as the eye can see.  But this flight was a little different in that I felt like I was able to sit and watch the world turn.  We left Dallas during the day, for several hours during the flight we soared above the clouds while it then turned dark I could watch the moon pass the plane by.  I was able to see as far as I could possibly see with only the light of the moon in the distance.  It was as if the moon was in our line of travel and we simply skipped it.  But it was more than just that, it was the feeling of floating a different level in the atmosphere that allowed me to respect the vastness of what goes on between the earth and space everyday for millions of years.

 

Then the moon disappeared and I watched the sunrise from above the clouds.  I eagerly waited for the flight to land in this new place, a dreary, grey, and cold new place.  The first stop was Amsterdam, for a very short stop, and an abrupt transition into a part of the world that does not understand me and I also do not understand them.  But this new place is something that I could definitely get used to.  With a short hop and skip we made it to Berlin where we spent the rest of the day becoming acclimated with the city and its transit system.  Which is quite confusing if I may say so.  We took our first German bus and train system.  Then we made our way down to the spree, where we had a nice view of the German Chancellory across the canal.  We stopped for our first cold beer or in the German terms that I had to order it were "dunkel weizen beir".  After leaving the beirgarten we were right beside the fire and police station by Sauerbruch Hutton.  This building was much nicer in person with the concrete structures holding up the police end and the massive folding doors for the fire station end.  We had our first view at the operable windows, which are the cities main source of air conditioning.  After the long two day journey we finally settled into our nice apartments.  The strange part was that we went to sleep with the sun up and woke up the next morning with the sun up.  Except for the few hours on the plane, the night sky had not been seen in days.

Very first traditional curry food.  Quite delicious

Cultural art center

Our first beirgarten

Delicious

Fire and Police station by Sauerbruch Hutton

Reichstag

Santiago Calatrava bridge behind the tree

Best brand candy ever