Barcelona 1992 Olympic Park

After reading TJ's olympic park post, I thought I would add the stuff I took while at the Barcelona Olympic park. The park is situated on a hill/mountain just on the outskirts of the city called Montjuic. On the top of the hill is a castle and then there are parks all over the slopes. It is quite a long, hard walk up, they have cable cars that will take you, but I don't have money for that stuff. On one side of the mountain is the olympic park for the 1992 summer olympics. The park is a very formal design with strong axes and order. The scale of everything is amazing, and even more so probably because it was not very crowded, as I'm sure it was during the olympics.

I don't know for sure, but the space did not seem like it was heavily used besides a tourist site. The rest of the mountain/hill and surrounding parks and neighborhoods were full of people, but not so much this site. I think the future use of olympic sites has more recently become an issue of focus in design....it will be interesting to see how Glenn and Hargreaves London design will work for the games and in the future.

Green Streets Project

You may remember I made a post a few months back talking about a project I was working on called the Green Streets Project. This was a project that was only suppose to be in the office for 2 week. We don't always go though projects this fast, but I worked with another girl in the office on this project and I was able make the site visit as well and work on the plans and doing the montages for the project. The reason the project went thought the office so fast was the city acquired a large among of trees to be planed in the governmental housing part of Sydney. We were hired to plan the placement of the trees properly, as well as to raise awareness to the community the benefit of planting these tree. A local college in Sydney did series of heat test in the community that showed due to the lack of trees it is warming the area up so much that it couldn't cool off fast enough in the evening. So hopefully by planting these trees it will shade the pavement enough to bring down the temperature over the whole community.... After doing our research on the site and figuring out that it wouldn't be possible due to the power, telephone, and water lines that run though the area. But we were told to just continued so hopefully if we could get the raise enough awareness that one day the community would be willing to raise money to complete the project.

So after all this the client continually pushed the project to the point where we found our selves walking every street in all these subdivisions marking the exact location of each tree along with a surveyor (this was very unusual job for us).

(Sexy illustration, showing site potential)

The project moved very fast and they wasted no time to break ground and plant some trees.

Unfortunately, the community wasn't as excited about the project as everyone else. After just one of the subdivision were planted and 2.4 million dollars of Australian tax payers money spent. Some one went though the entire neighbor hood and chopper on every single tree.

Quote from Michael Wright (Principal) :: "Letting the community see the damage may encourage the tree huggers to beat up the tree buggers ??!!"

Sydney Olympic Park

This is a project that comes from one of our very own professors, Glenn Allen. The Sydney Olympic Park was done through the Hargraves office. As most of us already know the Hargraves office has done several Olympic Parks now. As I am sure the highly developed park lands that are built for any olympic games, the site must be built to become self sustaining long after the games are over. I feel in the case of Sydney's Olympic Park ten years after the 2000 Olympic games the landscape has only just begun to grow into its space. The site is quite large and I feel the best way to truly explore the entire site is by using the well developed bike route that runs throughout the entire site. The site is full of iconic land works that spread throughout the parklands. When viewed from the tops you are given views over the entire parkland. With these largely engineered landscapes you are guided through the site by kilometers of gaben walls that line most landscape embankments, while complimenting the large earthworks giving you the feel that the site was only created for such a large event as an Olympic game. Some of the interesting features I found when passing through the site is how I could find my self passing through large open public space but still feeling completely alone as if I was the first person to ever discover this space, with the path only leading me to a enclosed private space. I also enjoyed that even with the large earthworks there was a great amount of detail that was also put into these landscape features.

Barcelona

Well I am finally back in the states, after a long last month of traveling. I went to a lot of different places and saw so much that I want to share. I'm trying to piece together all the material and pictures I took. I will try to slowly add it on here throughout the summer (as long as everyone else keeps everything going).

My first stop was Barcelona. I stayed in Barcelona for a week and saw so much. Barcelona has a very unique character and culture, especially apart from the rest of Spain. The city and whole region of Catalonia has always resisted Spanish rule and still does to this day, practicing their own language (Catalan) and culture...and hating Madrid. The city is loaded with landscape architecture, both new and old. All the pictures here are taken from all over the city, later on I am going to try to post more on specific parks and projects because there was so much amazing work all over this city. As always, more pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/wbenge/

Besos River and surrounding parks

la Ramblas (main boulevard)

Gaudi apartment building

1992 Olympic Park

Since every one is posting stuff about their jobs I figure I'd post something about mine. Last weekend I went with Jenn and some of her BFF's to swim in some river. On the way there we were driving on this super super curvy road that goes up and down these hills. I got to a certain point and I stopped and got Jenn to drive so I could skate down the hill. It was a really pretty hill and the entire road was paved with really pretty smooth asphalt. I went down for a while then took a turn around some trees. I was hauling ass and i felt as free as a bird until I made the corner. a little bit ahead of me the asphalt stopped and the road turned into this crappy bumpy concrete. WTFuck. There was no way to avoid it. I ate it. As soon as I hit it I flew then just slid across the concrete and rolled a little. If you've seen Zombie Land, it was kinda like that lady who got thrown through the windshield of the minivan at the beginning.

That's my hip... Like my entire hip. It's really big. It's starting to scab over now. parts of my back and knees look the same way

i don't ever wanna feeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllllllllllll

like i did that day

take me to the place i loooooooooooooooovvvvvveeeeeeeeeeeeee

take me all the way

On another note, are we 2 separate classes again? seriously?

I thought...

Nevermind. I don't get paid to think.

It's a risky surgery but maybe. just maybe

ow

separation anxiety

you may be asking what does it have to do with separation?

and I may reply: Shut your mouth when you talk to me

white lady: "what do u think about the newest idea to stop the tiny little accident mr. president?"

obama: "i hope this shit works"

good things to separate:

can't mix lights and darks. duh

basketball players, rappers, etc. never mix well with film

no explanation necessary i hope

yes!

saw this dude rap the other night

ran into him at SXSW a couple months ago too

what else has been going on???

THIS

and this