A Means of Egress Reflecting on my experience abroad during the Fall of 2013
Taking pictures of walls... This accurately describes how I traveled in Europe and spent four months studying architecture abroad. This is a story of an adventure abroad that can’t be described in a few short pages. It has taken months of reflection to come to a coherant understanding of what I experienced. I was fortunate enough to experience Europe through the lens of architectural education and with a group of people that shared a similar interest in architecture. I was able to visit many towns, sites and buildings that aren’t on the typical travel itinerary. The focus and goal of my travels was to find depth and understanding of the places we visited rather than a checklist of places to see. Time is a precious commodity. I put a lot of effort into not wasting a second of my time abroad. So armed with a camera and a sketchbook, I attempted to capture the key moments and places that defined my time abroad over the course of the semester.
My name is Marcus and I am a fourth year architecture student at Virginia Tech. I traveled to Europe as part of my fourth year studies and thought it would be best to document my experience in the form of a book. For the 2013 Fall Semester I studied at Virginia Tech’s Center for European Studies and Architecture (CESA) in Riva San Vitale, Switzerland. The architecture school is housed in a building called Villa Maderni, a minutes walk from Lake Lugano. I studied and traveled with 13 others students under the guidance of Frank Weiner, a graduate architecture professor at Virginia Tech. We worked on a studio project throughout the semester, while taking week long trips to various locations of architectural significance throughout Europe. A word about the title… A Means of Egress. From the beginning I envisioned this experience as a “means of egress”. A way to explore architecture outside of the studio as well as explore the world outside of the United States.
Introduction Riva San Vitale...01 Venturing Out...02 Meeting the Swiss...03 Swiss Tour...04 Venice...05 Italian Tour...06 Exhibition...07 Independent Travel...08 Rome...09 Gubbio...10 People Closing
01
Riva San Vitale What can I say? This town is the reason I chose the Residency Program and this town is the reason my experience in Europe was an enriching one. I knew that the chance to live in a European town for four months was something truly special. I knew that, for me, travel should be more than moving from place to place, city to city. To be emmersed in such a unique and foreign environment really gave me a new perspective. It also gave me a perspective on how Europeans live their everyday lives. Riva San Vitale is a town of about 2,500 people in the Ticino region of southern Switzerland. It is a short train ride from the Italian border and therefore the primary language is Italian. It is nestled between to grand mountains of the Swiss Alps, Monte San Giorgio and Monte Generosso. The town itself is small but vibrant and cultured. There is one grocery store, one pharmacy, one post office, three churches, and five bars. Throughout the semester my classmates and I spent a lot of time outside and in the town. Early on most afternoons were spent at the nearby beach on Lake Lugano. We went to a music festival on the beach and went to a small art show in the beautiful town hall. We spent weeks figuring out how to use the post office and what we were allowed to send! We spent many nights going out for gelato or frequenting one of the local bars, the San Giorgio. It’s a town that has gotten used to the semesterly visit of Virginia Tech students and for the most part has gotten used to our presense. I am incredibly thankful to have lived in such a beautiful place, a place that I still like to call home.
There were so many meaningful and memorable spots in such a small town. The river was the site of our semester-long studio project and we crossed it everytime we went to the Capolago train station. I liked to go to the soccer fields near one of the schools and watch some of the games played there. Once a Swiss military helicopter landed right on the field! We frequented the Denner grocery store to try all the different snacks and particularly enjoyed the entire aisle of Swiss chocolate!
Villa Maderni The villa and the land for the architecture school was obtained by Virginia Tech with the help of Olivio and Lucy Ferrari, the first directors of the study abroad program. It was originally built in the mid 18th century and is currently going undergoing significant renovations. The villa honestly became like home. From the first day we knocked on the big wood front doors, to the last day when Daniella drove us to the train station, the villa was a magnificent place to live for four months. Group meals in the intimate dining room, cutting bread in the kitchen, roasting chestnuts and playing cards in the fireplace room, listening to music played in the entrance hall, eating breakfast in the garden, working in studio, reading in the library, gazing and sketching out of the bedroom windows. These were all such simple activities, yet they are what made the experience so memorable.
The climate and weather of the Ticino region completely caught me by surprise. The weather was perfect for swimming, hiking, and bike-riding well into October. The river and Lake Lugano brought an almost tropical feel to the area. Additionally, the physical conditions of the valley completely transformed the experience. The power of the mountains on either side determined the way the sun cast light and shadow across the valley, as well as wind patterns. Trees covered every inch of the mountains and never lost their leaves, only a few buildings poked out around the base of the mountains.
San Salvatore Lugano Mendrisio Milan Como Melano Bellinzona Monte Tamero Bosco Gurrin Mogno Vegeveno Varese
02
Venturing Out With many Thursdays off and many of our weekends free to do as we pleased, the studio often went on small trips to places in the vicinity of Riva. Traveling by train made it incredibly easy to reach many of the towns in the region. The ease of transportation throughout the trip really made traveling a lot less stressful than I had envisioned. The first weekend in Switzerland, I joined the group going to Milan, Italy. That was the first time I had one of those “Wow, am I really here?� moments. The week before I had been home in Virginia and now I was walking the streets of the fashion capital of the world. Throughout the semester, we climbed or took a vaporetti ride to many of the mountain peaks around Lake Lugano and got some spectacular perspectives. Most of the time the trips were self-planned affairs. Frank gave a number of suggestions and took us on a boat ride across Lake Lugano. Some of my favorite sites were Bellinzona, Bosco Gurrin, and Varese. Bellinzona is a medival town with three large stone castles, one of which was right in the center of the city with the other two in the hills on the edge of town. Bosco Gurrin is a tiny town in central Switzerland and features classic Swiss stone and wood architecture. Varese is a town in northern Italy and we visited the Panza Gallery located there. It is a large villla-turnedart gallery with a beautiful garden and featured a James Turrel light exhibit when we were there!
Lugano, Switzerland
Milan, Italy
Como, Italy
Melano, Switzerland
Bellinzona, Switzerland
Monte Tamero, Switzerland
Bosco Gurrin, Switzerland
Mogno, Switzerland
Vegeveno, Italy
Varese, Italy
San Gottardo Pass Sumvigt Vals Bregenz
03
Meeting the Swiss The second weekend of the semester was the studio's first overnight trip and it took us through Switzerland and into Austria to visit three buildings designed by architect Peter Zumthor. We all crammed in a large van/ small bus and headed on a two hour journey through the Alps to Sumvigt, Switzerland. The journey was almost as impressive as the destination! Zumthor's St. Benedict Chapel is a small teardrop-shaped building on the side of a mountain, and is one of Zumthor's early projects. The next leg of the trip was to Vals, Switzerland to visit the Therme Vals spa and stay in the Vals hotel. This was easily the best part of the trip! We were there overnight and for a total of about 20 hours. 10 of those hours were spent in the water, 2 hours spent on a four course meal, and the rest relaxing and sleeping! The spa features a number of different pools and baths including a fire bath (107 F), an ice bath (57 F), an outdoor and indoor heated pool, aroma therapy rose-smelling room, resonant sound room, music room, drinking water room, two steamrooms, and showers. And yes I tried every single room at least once! Going from the fire bath to the ice bath was quite a shock to the body and took a lot of mental preparation! The sound room as my favorite for relaxing. The outdoor pool was heated so steam was constantly rising off the water. We swam in the afternoon, late at night, and first thing in the morning; it was not very easy to leave but we had one more destination. The final destination was in Brigenz, Austria to visit Zumthor's Kunsthaus, an art museum. It was neat to cross the border into Austria and the museum itself was impressive. The galleries were beautifully lit and the exhibits were pretty interesting. Each of the three gallery floors was identical, only the artwork displayed varied.
Chaux-de-Fonds Lausanne Eveux Ronchamp Basel Wil-em-Rhein Berne Zurmatt Solothurn Zurich Lucerne Monte Carasso
04
Swiss Tour The Swiss Tour opened my eyes to both the realities of traveling abroad and how architecturally and naturally rich the country is. The tour had a litte bit of everything. Our bus criss-crossed the entire country of Switzerland a couple times! It brought the studio together as we learned to travel as a group and stay sane on long bus rides. Me, I just looked out the window and watched the world go by. The Swiss Alps really live up to its name. The mountains are so dominant throughout the country and something we encountered many times during the trip. At one point we rode through a 10km long tunnel so we wouldn’t have to drive all the way around the mountain! We ate extremely well with a catered meal following our tour of the USM factory. That was immediately followed by a four course meal at the five-star Omnia hotel in Zurmatt. We were greeted with chapagne and snacks at the Omnia, with a view of the Matterhorn! I definitely felt completely exhausted upon returning to Riva. Traveling with such a full and rich itinerary was extremely exhilerating and rewarding.It was a nine day journey that saw us cross Switzerland three times. By the end of the tour I finally started to master the challenges of traveling light and in a group. But I was very thankful to have a proxy-home in Riva to return to!
One of my favorite parts of the trip was our stay at La Tourette Monastery designed by Le Corbusier in 1957. It has become sort of a mecca for architecture students and sure enough there was another group of architecture students from France visiting the building. The architecture seems so rough at first but a step inside reveals the purity of the architectural elements and the power that Corbusier’s Modular proportions have. All five of Corbusier’s Five Points of Architecture are evident. The studio had the opportunity to sleep overnight n a traditional monk’s cell for the night which is about 6’ wide by 20’ long (based on the proportions of the ideal man). We spent the night in complete silence, no talking was allowed. I got up early to see the sunrise and watch the monastery wake up. As far as we could tell there were about six monks currently operating in the monastery. Frank got us a special tour of the crypt, during which I accidently switched on a water valve! I could have spent a few days there sketching pretty much everything and walking the grounds but more stops lay ahead.
A bus ride through the Rrench countryside took us to Ronchomp, France to see Le Corbusier’s Notre Dame du Haut. It is yet another masterpiece and we only had a couple of hours to spend there! I have found that it is good to have a strategy when you only have a short amount of time in a place. I first walked around the exterior photographing the building from each of the elevations or “horizons”. Then I went back and sketched each of those horizons in pencil. That left me enough time to enjoy the interior space (sneaking a few pictures) and making a couple of sketches.
Berne, Switzerland
Matterhorn Peak
Zurich, Switzerland: Renee Burri photo gallery, storage container store, and Le Corbusier’s Heidi Weber Pavilion.
The trip provided a very diverse range of experiences, from the VitraHaus campus in Germany to a construction visit of a rammed-earth Riccola factory in northern Switzerland to a tour of the USM furniture factory.
Lucerne, Switzerland
Monte Carasso, Switzerland
September 25 - 29, 2013
05
Venice Towards the end of September we planned long weekend trip to Venice! No class on Thursday or Friday meant we left on Wednesday morning after studio and hopped on a few trains to Venice and were there around 4 o’clock that afternoon. Moments after stepping our of the train station in Venice we took a vaporetti ride through the canals to our hotel. It was definitely a great intro to the city as well as a fun way to ride! My favorite parts of the trip was the tour of Doge’s Palace, exploring the Biennale, walking through San Marco Basilica and going up in the bell tour of San Giorgio Maggiore (a Palladian church on its own island). I also enjoyed seeing a Leonardo da Vinci exhibit at the Academia Museum. It had original drawings by da Vinci and his students, including the original Vitruvian Man drawing! We also saw an exhibit of all of his machines and inventions. On our way to the Venice Art Biennale we accidentally took an hour long vaporetti ride around the entirety of Venice when we got on the wrong one from the San Michel Cemetery. At any rate we definitely got our money’s worth on those vaporetti tickets. The Biennale features permanent pavilions specific to many different countries and house exhibits unique to each country. It was a shame that we missed the Architecture Biennale by one year but the art exhibitions provided new insight into issues of cultural importance to the artists.
There were so many tourists in Venice! I probably heard more English spoken in Venice than Italian! Tour groups everywhere made it very hard to walk through San Marco Square and through museums. But that was also part of the ambiance. It was easy to feel like you were somewhere special. It was fun to navigate Venice because maps didn’t help all that much, it was more of just following the winding streets and bridges in the general direction of the destination. I’m still amazed that we made it back to our hotel every night without too much trouble!
Dinner the first night was amazing. We ate at a restaurant near the Realto Bridge and right on the Grand Canal. I ate the best spaghetti carbonara I’ve ever had! It was probably one of those classic “Venice” moments, eating and drinking while gondolas float by. And every night in Venice after dinner we got gelatto! On one of the mornings I decided to venture out on my own. Sometimes it’s fun to go exploring on your own and be surprised by what you stumble in to. This time it turns out that I woke up early enough to see the gondalas being unpacked and prepared for the day! It was good to get out before many of the tourists crowded the streets.
The Venice Art Biennale 2013.
Carlo Scarpa bridge and gallery for the Fondazione Querini Stampalia.
Mantova Sabbionetta Parma Modena Carrara Florence Galluzzo Urbino Verona Vicenza Altivole-Treviso
06
Italian Tour The experience in Italy was very different from the Swiss tour we took just a month earlier. It still amazes me the diversity between European nations so close to each other. Just a thirty minute ride over the border to Italy and the terrain changes, the sky changes, the food changes and the architecture changes. In Italy we traveled from city to city rather than traveling to specific buildings and sites. The countryside was gorgeous no matter what part of the country we happened to be driving through. We joked that it was no wonder that the Renaissance began in Italy. All they had to do was look out their windows and paint! The highlights of the trip were the beautiful park in Parma that seemed to stretch out forever in all directions, right in the middle of the city! Touring the Carrara marble mines, three days in Florence, and spending five horus in Carlo Scarpa’s Castelvecchio Museum in Verona were also memorable moments.
Sabbioneta is known as the ancient “ideal city�, shaped in a star formation for defensive fortification purposes. It is an old and seemingly-deserted town, it felt eerie walking throught the city gates and dragging our suitcases down the empty streets. But as with almost every place we visited, Sabbioneta was full of history and culture. A five part self-guided tour took us through its church and synagogue, as well as its theater and museum. The hotel didn’t have clean drinking water but the food at the local restaurant was delicous!
Aldo Rossi’s oratory at the Modena Cemetery.
A giant pineapple, the beach, and my first encounter with the Mediterranean Sea in Carrara, Italy.
Our trip to Carrara, Italy included a guided tour of the famed Carrara marble mines. Trudging through the mud we witnessed a block of marble being cut away from the mountain with diamond wire. We were also able to visit the marble factory where the marble is processed into its final form. There was one building filled with hundreds of different colors and patterns of marble and stone!
For our three nights in Florence we stayed in a hotel that was about a 3 minute walk from the Santa Maria della Fiore! I enjoyed how walkable the city is. And the streets were bustling with every block seemingly either filled with tourists or markets selling all of the local goods. And all the food we ate was delicous! At our first group meal we were served “Steak di Florentine”. Needless to say that was my favorite meal. We saw Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library and Statue of David, Brunelleschi’s Dome and Pazzi Chapel, and the Galileo Museum, full of his inventions and studies. The photo below is from the Michelangelo Piazza in the hills above Florence.
View from Louis Kahn’s sketching spot.
I snuck a few pictures of the Statue of David in the Academia of Florence. The security was pretty tight and an aggressive security guard chased people around the gallery to stop them from taking pictures!
A morning spent in the Laurentian Library.
Vicenza provided classic Italian beauty both in nature and architecture. Villa Rotunda was closed when we first arrived so we wandered the “neighborhood� full of gorgeous villas. Eventually we came across a small cafe with a gorgeous patio with a view of the hills. So Frank generously ordered everyone a glass of white wine and we relaxed until the villa opened. By the time we did make it onto the grounds of the Villa Rotunda we only had only 45 minutes before jumping back on the bus! The villa is well known for being formally symmetrical in both its plan and elevations. This symmetry however only further exmphasizes the contrasting views of the horizon gained from each side of the villa.
Another Italian city unsurprisingly featured another encounter with Carlo Scarpa. The studio spent much of our full day in Verona inside Scarpa’s Castelvecchio Museum. Scarpa had complete design control, even designing the stands on which the artwork was displayed! Also in Verona is Scarpa’s Banco Poplare, which introduced Scarpa’s signature gestures in its unique facade. Verona was a very active city! It seemed that people were everywhere in the central market and shopping corridor! This is where Charles found himself buying a 220 euro fountain pen! Verona is also home to a Roman ruin site that overlooks the city! I got a nice view of the foggy rooftops of the city. Some other interesting things that occured while in Verona: we ate at a restaurant that served horse meat (I did not partake) and a drag racing event occured outside the Roman Arena.
Our final stop on the Italian Tour was to see Carlo Scarpa’s Brion Cemetery in San Vito d’Altivole near Treviso, Italy. Scarpa is also buried in the cemetery that he designed.
07
Exhibition The exhibition was the culmination of our semester’s work. We had the nearly impossible task of narrowing everything we had done for the semester into 5 project sheets, 5 sketches, and 5 photographs. Somehow we all managed to do so and to navigate the somewhat precarious printing situation (in which empty suitcases were smuggled into Italy in order to get printing paper). As with many things we did as a group, it took a lot of prior planning and a few delays to get everything done in time. We made fliers for the exhibit, each featuring one of the icons that we each designed for our project. The owners of the bar we frequented even put them up for everyone to see! Some of the townspeople came to see our work and ever tne mayor came through!
All our work compressed down to fifteen 8.5� x 8.5� pages and one model.
November 16-23, 2013 Madrid Barcelona
08
Independent Travel We were given one week at the end of the semester to travel independently anywhere in Europe. That meant booking hotels, finding transportation, planning the points of interests, and of course remaining safe. With the power of the internet and some help from my classmates in the travel program, I was able to plan my trip to Spain and stay within a reasonable budget! Traveling indpendently gave me the freedom to explore the cities at my own pace (which is often much slower than many people’s) and to see the sites that were most important to me. It also gave me the chance to trust myself and my ability to navigate places that I had never been before and didn’t speak the language. In Madrid, my hostel was a short walk from Piazza Major and fortunately also close to the subway. The weather was cold and wet but that didn’t deter me from staying out every day. One of my favorite parts of the city itself was Retiro Park. It was very well maintained and very intimate, yet absolutely enourmous! I took a train ride out of Rafael Moneo’s Atocha train station and arrived in Barcelona three hours later. Luckily the weather was more cooperative and I was able to stretch my time in Barcelona to the limit! It was interesting to see the co-existence of new and old architecture with the Torre Agbar and Museo Blau located within miles of the ongoing construction of the Sagrada Familia.
Madrid, Spain
Taking in a classic slice of Spanish culture, I took a self-guided tour of the Plaza de Toros bull-fighting arena. It was awesome to walk out into the middle of the ring and imagine thousands of fans filling the stands. I also completely enjoyed touring Real Madrid’s Bernbao Stadium during the season in which they woudl later win the Champion’s League Title. Unfortunately they were not in town to catch a game! The day ended with a walk through Retiro Park, an expansive park in the heart of Madrid and home to a pavilion inspired by the Crystal Palace.
The Spanish countryside on the train ride from Madrid to Barcelona
It was a goal of mine to make an architectural pilgrimmage to Mies’ Barcelona Pavilion and was one of the primary reasons I chose to take my independent travel to Spain. I was lucky to get a very intimate experience of the space as there were only a couple of other people there. A lot of things clicked in my mind regarding Mies’ work as I walked through the pavilion and I spent most of the time just walking throught the space and appreciating its purity and dedication to Modernism.
Of course La Sagrada Familia was also on my bucket list for Barcelona. It is impossible to appreciate both the scale of the space itself and the intricate detail of every inch of the basilica without actually being there. The perspective of the city from the towers is truly unique as long as you don’t mind the incredibly tight spiral staircase that takes you back down! Perhaps one of the most amazing things was seeing workers making a scale plaster model of the Sagrada Familia in the basement of the church itself!
Two incredible projects by two architects from two different centuries: La Pedrera apartments by Antoni Gaudi and Museo Blau by Herzog and de Meuron.
November 23-27, 2013
09
Rome The days in Rome that we spent at the end of November were probably the most gratifying of the entire study abroad experience. Having traveled independently in Spain for the previous week, I didn’t realize how much I relied on my classmates and professors when traveling. Needless to say I was extremely happy when I walked into the hotel from the rain and saw Charles had already moved into the room and most everyone else had made it safely as well. I’ll admit that Rome was the only city that I couldn’t navigate very easily. I got turned around more than a few times and was thankful that at least some in the group knew where they were going! We stayed in apartments on Campo di Fiori (relatively close to the Pantheon). It had a buzzing market place every day, which made it very interesting to navigate when we first arrived in the rain! One night Frank took us out for a fancy dinner, as he often liked to do as a group but the other two nights most of us chipped in and made a nice pasta dinner ourselves in the apartment. Rome was a wirlwind of activity. It really is a place you must come back to because I think we did as much as we possibly could have and still could have spent weeks more there. The following pages will show the highlights of my experience of the city.
Other than a meeting on Sunday morning to get rare access to Sant Ivo alla Sapienza and a meeting on the last night in Rome to tour the Campidolio Museum, Frank let us roam the city on our own. The tour of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica took most of our first full day. The Roman Forum and Colosseum took most of another full day. The size and scale of the Forum and Colosseum was truly incredible and seeing how modern day Rome exists around its ancient ruins was fascinating.
Some of us went outside the city walls to see the catacombs (underground burial grounds) and we may or may not have accidently gotten a free bus ride there! I took a picture next to my famous former self, Marcus Aurelius in the plaza of the Campidolio Museum. And of course I threw a coin into the Trevi Fountain so I guess I have to go back!
November 27-28, 2013
10
Gubbio After Rome, Gubbio was our last pitstop on our final trip back to Riva. I could feel the semester slowly coming to an end. The bus ride was bittersweet, knowing that all great things must come to an end. But I can look back and see what a good ending it was. So, it took until the end of the semester to encounter our first snowfall but it couldn’t have happened in a more beautiful place. It was a slow and slippery ascent to the Piazza Grande and on to the hotel. After we all dropped our things off at the hotel, we did the only logical thing: went to the piazza and had a snowball fight! I only had a light coat and tennis shoes on with very thin gloves but somehow I didn’t feel even a little bit chilly. After two weeks on the road and a few hours on the bus I think everyone needed to release a little energy! There was just one rule: don’t fall down or you’d be immediately bombarded! Tired and soggy, I got back to the hotel and savored the two hour meal that followed. Course after course just piled out of the kitchen, nice and warm with the snow still falling outside. The meal was a our makeshift Thanksgiving and it really felt like it. The morning view was spectacular on our way back to the bus. The trees were covered in snow and the sky was a beautiful color of blue and pink.
People The only thing more memorable than the places I saw were the people that I saw those places with. The Riva group consisted of 7 graduate students and 7 fourth year undergraduate students. This provided me a unique opportunity to meet new architecture students and to learn from the graduates, some of whom were working on their thesis. Being around the same people for this amount of time in a new and different environment made it much easier to get to know everyone.
Some of my favorite times were when we all shared meals either at the Villa or on the road or sat through long bus rides and exploring new cities as a group. It’s hard to look back on the semester and not remember all the times we helped each other along the way. It was rewarding to travel through Europe with a diverse group of people who all shared an affinity and respect for architecture and design.
Virginia Tech Architecture Residency Program Riva San Vitale, Switzerland Fall 2013 Professor Steve Thompson, Charles Wysor, Nathan Fay, Andrew Economou, David DiFuccia, Sira (Champ) Ungkasrithongkul, John Sturniolo, Jenna Hoffman, Laura Green, Marcus Confino, Kelsey Dressing, Erica Knaebel, Kalee Hartman, Lucy Ferrari, Professor Frank Weiner, Martin Hedrick, John Bohlmeyer I would like to thank Professor Frank Weiner and Steve Thompson as well as Lucy Ferrari for her continued support of the architecture school and study abroad programs. I would also like to thank the CESA staff at the Villa for making the semester go by smoothly, safely, and deliciously!
“To break into pieces in order to launch oneself on a road with an uncertain outcome demands such heroism that it is primarily children who are capable of it. But, children must, moreover, be seduced to engage in it...Depart. Go out. Allow yourself to be seduced one day. Become many, brave the outside world, split off somewhere else.� Michel Serres The Troubadour of Knowledge
Riva San Vitale 2013