the end for real sort of

well. the last time i wrote i was walking on water and now my studio is over and i am fitting everything into my suitcase.

so, my time now in holland is at an end. i am really going to miss it here, both the lifestyle and all of the cool people i've met from all over the world. it is a typical exchange experience to feel like you don't have enough time to develop friendships with the people you meet, i think. when i sit down in america and think about it i will be quite sad actually. but, again, it doesn't feel like i am saying good bye forever. beyond tools like facebook, there is a strong chance i will find myself seeing some of these people again, either in america or in their respective home nations or back here in holland. i've talked with numerous people about coming back to work at one of the many important offices in rotterdam. a few other people are serious about coming to america so i hope they will visit me. another cool thing about exchange at such an international school is that now i have global contacts and people i know in portugal, barcelona, berlin, london, greece, milan, latvia, bangalore, hong kong, shanghai, brisbane, melbourne, and LA. that is a nice feeling. the world is a small, good place.

my studio finished and i am super excited about that. the end result (which probably won't be posted here but may be available shortly elsewhere) is ok but unstable and frustrating and immature as an entire studio. there were strong organizational issues with the teachers and no given situation for us to respond to. most studios are organized around problems: design a building for this, propose a new urban plan for this area, whatever. here it was just sort of a blank expanse: do some research and come up with an idea, especially when the topic is as abstract and philosophical as it was. i think my part is OK and, with some work, could stand as an ok project. in the end it was mostly me and another student trying to coordinate everything together but it turned out alright. i spoke a bit with winy about it and he is aware. he will be at MIT soon so maybe we will talk there. i never quite realized how MIT even as a name is such a global fetish. anytime i would drop that i go to school there, people are frequently suddenly impressed. its reputation is pervasive mostly for its technical and media lab work but i guess people assume it continues over to architecture even though the undergraduate program is tiny and rocky. the problems with the studio are also another reason why this blog has been more travel-oriented than academic. i think for most people that is ok because nobody likes shop talk, especially in blog form.

well, what did i do in my last few weeks? mostly stayed in delft like a slob. in the past two weeks i did some work. i actually stayed up all night on wednesday which made me feel kind of good that i was actually working. anyway, i finished two 8-10 page papers for the two lecture courses i was in. i rode my bike around ypenburg, an area north of delft that is a dutch new town development for the hague. MVRDV has some houses there and everything sits on canals. there will be pictures on flickr or facebook sometime. it was a nice sunday afternoon ride. yesterday i had my final review and ate dinner with jean paul and hannes, the two TUD students who went to MIT in my place. both of them are super cool dudes who i would love to hang out with more. it is funny because we know the same people and places now (we spent a lot of our time joking about MIT and talking about cambridge) but we don't really know each other! then there was a great party here with everybody from the two Msc2 studios at the why factory. very good party, if i am able to say so myself. it was a good way to say good bye without being emotional.

then today i went to amsterdam for the last time and walked around a new area of the city, mostly the east docklands that is a huge west 8-masterplanned housing area. there are the really stylish and now well-known dock houses (pictures to come) by MVRDV and others like EMBT. i am glad i got to see them. i also went inside the new amsterdam public library which is super nice as a place to hang out. it was a nice mix of louis kahn-type wood and brick work with some dutch interiors inside. i also saw the renzo piano nemo museum, a building i didn't know existed until this morning. then i was walking and saw the steven holl addition to an office building along the mauritskade, a green block with thin windows cut out in unexpected places and wrapped with a mesh. pictures would explain more. walking back towards the damrak i unexpectedly discovered aldo van eyck's orphanage, a building that jan wampler worships. it was just ok. i became unexpectedly emotional walking back to the station and through these small streets with snow falling. it was beautiful in a way that i hadn't seen very much here. i will miss that.

but then there is also the future: my last semester at MIT and moving forward with my life. i am excited to return to the treehome and have a big nice kitchen and my friends and cat. my classes this spring will be interesting and hopefully not as stressful as before. playing music will be good. and then i can probably graduate and do adult things and act like i have a position of authority on a topic because i have a degree in it. ok, this will also probably be the last post on this blog too because i will be back home and its purpose will have been fulfilled. i am fine with that. see you all soon in the real world.

amster(damn)

on sunday i went to amsterdam. i didn't leave until the middle of the afternoon because i had to finish some school work beforehand. i hoped to have enough time to walk around before going to see a concert. on the way to the train station i ran into my friend jurrian who was also going towards amsterdam. i asked him about how the canals fill with water quickly if there isn't much runoff. he said it is because the land is below sea level so when there is a void the water comes through the ground to fill it, i guess due to pressure. he said the bigger problem is keeping the water out. there is a massive set of locks and pumps throughout the polders in holland that are controlled by computers to regulate water levels in the major canals. he has seen one of the controller substations. i should check out this infrastructure.


this is what you see when you leave amsterdam centraal train station. lots and lots of bikes.


i walked along the western docks. they are tearing this older building down. there are impressive new condos and apartments being built in the area. some had trendy design studios on the first floor.


ok, this is really why i was walking here, to see silodam. it is a housing project by MVRDV. it sits on pylons above the water. i don't think the tides here are drastic which is odd because of the latitude. anyways some apartments on the first two floors have gangways directly to the street while the upper units have a separate lobby. there is a public deck that you have to cross under the building to find, navigating between the thick columns. in one of the upper units there was a party and the sounds drifted into the road.



the building's visual interest comes from its diversity of cladding and window types. i was disappointed by how flat the building reads. it is just a standard set of apartments (with generously sized windows) with a bunch of different materials slapped on. so its block-ness is a bit deceiving. it would've been more interesting to me if there was more push/pull action going on so you got some overhang, some shadow, some recession, some sense of depth. the building does it twice on the upper floors to create some deck space but it isn't enough. it is odd because stacking as an organizational idea is something MVRDV uses a lot: for references, see their housing block in spain that just finished or the new bank that construction just started on or the fiero milano tower. but maybe this is an early project so they weren't all about stacking yet? maybe the budget was too tight to allow that type of excess? anyways.


ok. now we're talking. this is more typical. i started walking back towards the downtown area.


canals here are wider than anywhere else i've seen in a city. most were lined with houseboats. amsterdam, if you haven't seen a map, is arranged radially outward from its downtown node. canals run in a circular fashion like rings. some frenchman (sartre? camus?) compared the layout of amsterdam to the seven levels of hell. the red light district is on the east side. i wandered mostly in the western areas and downtown. the city is hugely devoted to leisure of all types, from movies to shopping to a vodka museum to coffeeshops (i.e. doobie dens) to galleries to whatever. everybody seemed pretty relaxed. i passed some french hippies smoking joints on the street. in a society where everything is allowed not much is abused.


there is a lot of shopping here. and trams.




after i got downtown i followed the main street south to leidseplein where lots of people where out. i bought a ticket for the concert and kept wandering around, mostly in the oud west and jordaan area. jordaan is the hipster part of amsterdam, with galleries and bars and good-looking restaurants. it gave off sort of a new york east village vibe but here things felt older.




i ate a cheap pizza in jordaan and walked back towards the melkweg, the club where i was going to hear a band. there was a concert in the leidesplein too so i stood and watched a dutch group go through the funk hits of the 70s. i met up with my friend sebastian and his friend helen and we went back towards the melkweg.


i was really excited to hear the dirty projectors live again. i saw them once in june in boston and it was good. seeing a concert at a rock club in holland is like seeing a concert at a rock club anywhere else, with the same etiquette, lights, etc. the opening band (tune yards) was interesting, with just a woman on ukelele and loops and a guy who sometimes laid down some basslines. they both wore face paint. the dirty projectors were good despite a persistent hum in the sound system throughout their set. they played pretty much the same set as i saw in boston three months ago but with some additions in the middle. tempos seemed a bit slow but they have been on the road for a while. it was still a good concert. "bitte orca" means a lot to me.

afterwards we walked to the train station. a woman hit sebastian on her bike and was very angry. we managed to miss the 12:45 train because were distracted and sitting on the wrong end of the platform (15a instead of 15b). what to do? hit the late night albert heijn for some grolsch and wait for the 1:45 nachtrein. good times. and when that train finally came, we sat in a cabin with two kids flying back to barcelona. they talked about how cheap the prostitutes were in amsterdam compared to spain. and the lack of discoteques. they asked us if the security at schiphol would find the weed in their checked luggage. they had it stored in their shampoo bottles. they seemed pretty paranoid, but it was probably the herb talking.