it is that time of the year

when the canals freeze over and become walkable.

if you give a swan a croissant, he'll ask you for a glass of milk...

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.

i trekked to utrecht

on sunday i went to utrecht. it is in the middle of the country closer to amsterdam. i went to walk around the downtown area and to hike out to the university of utrecht that has some pretty awesome buildings by some SUPERDUTCH firms (OMA, wiel arets, neutelings riedijk, others).

it was a cloudy day and i enjoyed the city center of utrecht. lots of people were out on sunday afternoon shopping and sitting in cafes. it feels medieval and almost italian. the church tower is visible from everywhere and the cathedral was quite impressive even though half of it was destroyed some time ago so it exists as half a sanctuary and then a tower. it feels fortified because the canals are set a whole story lower than the street (whereas in delft they are on the same level), so you have another walkway down along the water and catacomb-like spaces for storage or business. lots of restaurants set up in these subterranean spaces and put tables out along the water which at night seemed like a beautiful place to eat. the city definitely seemed magical at night. in one block i passed a music venue that hosted a diverse set of acts from sun o))) to maceo parker and marcus miller, art galleries, a good jazz record shop (i could see a vinyl copy of "water babies" on the shelf) that looked like it also had a hair salon in the back (very trendy), a good-looking greek restaurant, and a comic book store.

outside the main island area it gets more normal but still nice. it was a long walk out to the university but enjoyable as there was a lot to look at. along one of the main routes out of downtown i ate at daily wok, the euro-version of wagamama for some cheap noodles. as you continue out of town, the housing gets more standardized but still with big trees and restaurants in old train stations. i made a detour to see a famous house that wasn't very impressive in person and then kept walking.

once you get close to the beltway, you get into campus land with student housing in squat 2-story brick apartments, a big soccer stadium, and a nice campus for the utrecht college. there is a nice dormitory there that acts as a sound wall between an adjacent highway and the rest of campus. it is a long thin building where each student room gets a floor-to-ceiling window inside their brick bay unit. it is nice because it is sculpted to be a wall, with brick serifs coming off each end of the building, tapering to a point but still with windows as if the building isn't a new building but inhabiting a shell of a cathedral or fortress (there is an old fortress on the campus so maybe it is a reference to that).

i finally got to the university of utrecht only as the really interesting library by wiel arets closed at 6. the place was deserted and no buildings were open. i looked around as the sun was getting low, checking out some of the main buildings i didn't recognize and then rem's educatorium and a research building with snakes in the facade. the dorms were quite varied, from a very cosmopolitan high rise to a very eastern-bloc building made of prefab pods once painted and now weathered. it was interesting though as the campus was on farmland so you have these large projects and then across the bike path, the odor of cows and rabbits hopping down into creekbeds. i took a bus back to the main train station to start over and walk the downtown area (all the way south to the museum this time) again as the sun set.

like i said, the city is much more luxurious at night when people sit outside to eat and the lights reflect off the canals. it is quite a romantic scene. on one dock i passed a thai restaurant next to a north indian restaurant next to an italian pizzeria with tables along the water. i was very impressed with utrecht.










i really liked this bench.


my favorite canal/street, oudegracht.




the rietveld schroderhuis (1924). not that impressive in person. you can see all of the layers of paint. like other early 20th century experiments in modern construction, it seems flimsy. as an object or a set of planes in space it seems interesting but i don't know about as a home. i didn't see the interior though so maybe that is nice. i kept walking.


finally on campus at the university of utrecht.




the wiel arets library (2004) i had seen in some books. the paneled facade seemed pretty cool and the interior, from what i had seen, looked nice though i didn't get to go in because it closed. it takes this one pattern, shown below, and uses it both for an impression in the cladding and on the glass, maybe as a strategy to keep direct light down on all the precious books inside. very herzog & de meuron but it does the job.




also had this pool bowl entrance to a restaurant on campus. on top of the restaurant was a basketball court.



the educatorium by rem/OMA (1997). the diagram of this building is really evident. it is another ramp building and seems pretty successful. it would've been nice to see the interior.


a smaller funky building whose diagram is also evident, directly across the street from the educatorium. it is by UNstudio (ben van berkel), sort of a proto diller & scofidio type thing. i don't know. i don't know what happens inside either. it has some pretty nice circulation though.


building by neutelings riedijk (1997). i have trouble pronouncing that firm's name. i have been saying it out loud for the past 23 seconds. it has sprayed concrete as a facade with some odd tremors-esque worms crawling around. i don't know what happens inside, it is probably a lab building.


this building (the tower) is too sexy to be a student dorm. it should be relocated to miami.


again, i have no idea what is going on here. i think somebody was inspired by a shipyard. this is a dorm. i saw people in the windows cooking though i have no idea what goes on in those beams that go across. too industrial.


modular student housing. sort of crappy and weird. they are spined together and the walkways are covered but outdoors. heating bills must be really high.


ok. now you're tired and you're just playing with glass, jack. get on that bus and get back downtown before the sun sets completely.


good, i made it back downtown.


then i walked around for a bit and looked at all of the restaurants i couldn't eat in because i am poor. plus it is no fun to eat by yourself at expensive restaurants because there is no experience or environment or umwelt or milieu without (a) friend(s) to partake with. luxurious settings like that are meant to be enjoyed and that is hard to do by yourself, especially for me because i immediately devour my food without poise and am done too quickly to harvest pleasure from the experience. plus i didn't have a book and i didn't feel like drawing. oh, and i am poor. there are some good-looking restaurants though and a couple funky bars. i walked by one with a lot of rockers hanging out and a band that sounded like dinosaur jr. warming up.


the netherlands is the venice of europe.

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in other news, i finally named my laptop that i bought over a month ago. her name is worknesh mega. she is named after a lion i met in ethiopia because both animals are golden and powerful. at first i didn't really like the windows set-up but i optimized some things and now it is comfortable.

also: i found the veggie products at the supermarket. they are kept in the back in between two types of carcass. why would they be there? why would vegetarians even want to venture among the graveyard that is the meat section? regardless, i had veggie burgers yesterday and am planning to cook some tempeh this weekend too.

also: i went to a jam session last night for the school jazz association at a bar and played well on electric bass. the bar was tiny and filled with students. people there were pretty amateur but it was fun to shred a bit. they play the same tired stuff people in america play. people liked how i soloed though, even calling out for a bass solo, getting quieter, and then clapping. i laid down one jerry jemmott line from king curtis's "memphis soul stew" and everybody was feelin' all right. i met some people to play with, even playing this afternoon on a double bass at the cultural center for a while. we'll see how this goes.

school is OK. you can only check out 10 books at a time from the library and even when you do, people stare at you funny like you have a problem or are actively sprouting a second head from your original one. it is weird. the faculty closed at 7 pm today so i had to go home then. i went to a really good lecture this morning by philosopher patrick healy. he is teaching a class about the philosophy of image and its relation to architecture. he gave a mesmerizing talk about schinkel and berlin and the origin of museums as cultural spaces. he talked like a preacher. i looked at the clock a lot but it was honestly to wish that it was moving slower.

domestic life

this post is a visual report on my daily environment.


this is the swan that hangs out in the canal in front of my house. lots of various ducks and birds like to swim here. there are a fair amount of waterlilies too. the next picture documents possibly the above bird with other swans in the canal. they like to squawk throughout the day and even very late at night.


ok. enough waterfowl. down to business.


this is the street my room overlooks. it is called gasthuislaan. i'm not sure what that means. my windows are slightly visible. they are the windows on the 3rd floor with the angled face and the blue roofing. they rotate in the middle of the frame for easy cleaning.


this is my actual street. i would estimate its length at approximately 50 meters.


ik leef op en spieringstraat.


this is how you actually enter my house.


this is the money shot. unlike the other shots, it was taken at night. the entrance to the room is on the right, out of the frame. i am using a spindle of CDRs as a door stop. i also put one of jean-paul's amps there so i could practice. the bed and some shelving is through that dark space on the right where the light blue stand is (jean-paul's dad built that thing). the room is big and faces north so it gets decent light. i imagine i'll work most of the time on the big desk. i could also host a dinner party for six people. the shelving on the left continues behind me and wraps around the final corner back to the door. it is full of jean-paul's books about architecture. he has a lot of really good books, some of them in dutch (it is funny to see kenneth frampton's history of modern architecture in dutch). i will be reading most of these books throughout the semester.


this is a canal along zuiderstraat. there are houseboats and an austere new housing development.


this is zuidpoort. it is a plaza-based shopping development in the southern part of delft's downtown. C1000 is where i buy groceries. it is estimated that there are more bikes than people in delft (and also in holland).


how did another picture of a duck get in here? well, anyways, here he is in a particularly well-greened canal just north of the markt.




this is the markt, the main city plaza. that is the nieuwe kirk there. i don't know what style that is or when it was built, so don't ask. there is a oude kirk too further west whose tower is noticeably leaning in one direction. there is a fish market here some days of the week. people like to sit and drink various liquids along the edge of the markt.


opposite the nieuwe kirk is the stadhuis or town hall. i'm not sure what goes on here.


here is a thin canal just south of the markt. the name of the street is nieuwe langendijk. there are shops on this street. a fair part of downtown is mixed-use, with businesses on the first level and 2 or 3 floors of apartments above.


here is a slick modern house near the beestenmarkt. it is impressive because the street bends and this house negotiates the bend within the building. that is pretty cool. it is sort of an updated take on le corbusier's elevated private residences. the car in the carport is quite nice too, a really old curvy citroen. there is a restaurant in the back of the carport but i wasn't brave enough to go back there because it seems really expensive.

check the flickr link up there to see more pictures if you're interested.