25 Juni 2012

Today we began our day at one of Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitations. It was built as a social experiment where everything a person needed was contained in one space. At one point, it held a school, a grocery store, and 530 functioning apartments. Unfortunately the experiment failed. While people still occupy the apartments, the grocery store and school are both closed now. I appreciate this building a great deal. While not necessarily appeasing to look at, the concepts and ideas that Corb had when creating it were revolutionary and for that, I enjoyed experiencing this Unite.

26 Juni 2012

First stop this morning was the Dutch Embassy by Rem Koolhaas. I liked touring this building because I could see the thought and intent behind the building and its concept and could appreciate the time spent creating all of those ideas. It is a well thought out project that I definitely enjoyed seeing.

We spent the afternoon at Treptower Park, which houses the Soviet War Memorial. It's a perfect example of the attitude that was felt towards the Nazis after the war. The Memorial is a massive statue of a Soviet solider holding a child while standing over a broken swastika. It conveys nothing else except for a message of pride in beating the Nazis. I enjoyed seeing this Memorial if for nothing else except for its sheer size.

That night Liz, Katie, and myself went to a Metric concert at the Postbahnhauf. It was such a great show! Good crowd, good music, good venue. Definitely was a cool experience.

27 Juni 2012

Today was all about the Berlin Wall. We went to Checkpoint Charlie and to the Wall Museum. While the area was full of history and should've been really interesting, it was too crowded and too full of tourists to really enjoy. The museum was cramped and hot to the point where you couldn't even really enjoy the exhibits. After that, we headed to the Wall Memorial which I did enjoy seeing. The footprint of the wall is outlined by corten steel posts that lead to a piece of the wall and no man's land that is still preserved. It was interesting to see some of the stories about people trying to escape to East or West Berlin while it was being built. 

28 Juni 2012

Mr. Caldwell took some of the students to Dresden to see some more modern architecture. Dresden was a city that was heavily bombed during World War II; 95% of it was gone and had to be rebuilt afterwards. Rather than moving past what had happened and creating new spaces and new buildings, they just rebuilt and reproduced what once was. But they didn't rebuild them to what they originally were. It's a very odd city to see. You think all the buildings are hundreds of years old when they've only been built in the last 100 years. The modern architecture we saw was very interesting though. We visited Daniel Libeskind's German Military History Museum and Coop Himmelb(l)au's UFA Cinema Center which was exciting. Seeing architecture in person that I've studied in class will always be unbelievable.