03.July-05.July_I suggest grabbing a chair

03_Friday

Our weekend getaway in the Blue Mountains amounted to one of the best weekends I’ve had. (How do they keep getting better? Not sure but I’ll take it.) We started bright and early Friday morning, having to be at the train station by 7:30 AM, mind you we normally get up around 9 and we had to take a train to get to the right station, so we were up about 5 AM. You may not be aware of my sociability at 5Am but imagine poking an old bear. So we made it to the station and took a two hour train ride or so to Faulconbridge. Perfect time for a nap.

                

Once there, we met an aboriginal man by the name of Evan Yana Muru who was taking us on a walkabout through the bush and aboriginal country.  Now when I say walkabout , I mean we started on a gravel path, then took a turn into the forest and almost immediately had to climb straight down a hill, then continued along winding paths, through a river at one point, over rocks, under rocks, up, down, side to side, man this path is steep, oh my, my knees are killing me. A few people fell into small rivers or streams, somebody got their foot stuck in mud and almost lost a shoe. We were really in the middle of the bush.

Natural Caves_Walkabout

I must admit, I was quite skeptical when we first met him, and even more so when we hiked to our first destination and put Eucalyptus leaves in our noses, but as the day went on, I understood more and more.  The point of the walk was to learn about Aboriginal Heritage while rediscovering our own personal connections to nature.  When we first met Evan, he told us to “Walk gently”, meaning be aware of where you’re walking, how you step, and taking measures to avoid hurting the earth.  This idea can also be translated to design in terms of designing buildings that “walk gently” on the earth, leaving a small footprint, sustainable materials, etc.

The other focus of the walk was to strengthen our own connections to the dreamtime, meaning “the spirit of all things”, a force that connects all living things, people to nature, people to people, etc.  I don’t imagine anyone reading this who wasn’t there with us can truly comprehend how powerful the day was for me, but if you really focus on the moment at hand and living in the present, the idea of the dreamtime can become a moving experience.  The aboriginal people lived every day focused on the dreamtime, always maintaining a spiritual connection to country, something that most people today probably can’t fully grasp.

Serene waterfall_Walkabout

Walking through the forest, Evan showed us Aboriginal rock carvings, caves the people had used as temporary shelter and even homes, a few rituals they had, and explained a lot about nature and the history of the aboriginal culture.  We saw streams, rock walls, Aboriginal meeting grounds and campsites, and even learned a basic dance, one for men and one for women.  Overall the day amounted to about 8 hours of hiking through dense forest, a lot of new information and a rediscovery of the world we live in each and every day. It was a very intense spiritual day, connecting with nature and trying to really align my thoughts with those of the Aboriginal people.

     

Needless to say, that was a pretty strenuous, exhausting day.  We went to a pub with Evan for a drink and some dinner, then took a train out to Katoomba, where our hostel was for the weekend.  We weren’t sure where the hostel was or where we were once we actually got there (I seem to have trouble finding hostels) but we just kept walking down the main street and found it. This hostel was really awesome, very clean, large kitchen and common areas, friendly staff. I think it was better than most hotels (except for the whole bunk bed thing).  So Gina and I split a cheesecake and a bottle of wine (we need our energy for tomorrow…) and the others played Monopoly and we went to bed.

Dr. Seuss Trees

04_Saturday

Saturday, we got up whenever and hung out for a few at  the hostel, then broke into groups of whoever wanting to do whatever. My group went on a slightly less strenuous than yesterday nature hike again, this time on a public path with railings and a much lower chance of death around every bend.  This hike took us sorta through the woods, but mostly along the top ledge of a cliff with spectacular views of the Blue Mountains, ending at our destination of the Three Sisters, three separate rock formations all in a row. They were nice to look at, but very commercialized and touristy with a large paved lookout area, heaps of people, even a gift shop.

Blue Mountains

From there we headed back towards town, stopping for hot chocolate and cookies and such in a small cabin looking house that’s only identifier was a large sign that said “chocolate”. Can’t go wrong there.  We walked back to the main road in Katoomba where half the group went to take naps. (for once, I’m not the one going to take a nap, gotta have priorities) Being the Blue Mountains and a little mountain town, the main street was full of mountain outfitters and outdoor type stores. Clearly, I need to go in every single one of them. And I did. I didn’t actually buy anything, but I definitely needed to go in each one just to make sure.  We also went into a hattery, famous for their Indiana Jones style hats. Rather amusing, nice hats but very pricey.

                

The stairs we didn't climb down, treacherous  

That afternoon, we went to another book launch for Adrian, this one more a discussion format between her and a professor at Western Sydney University.  It was nice to hear his thoughts on the book and her responses to them. Then some questions from the audience, small quarrel with her own father who was in the audience, then we left to get food. Gina, Jenna, and Emily made dinner while Andrew and I had some wine. (How life always ought to be) Then we ate dinner, drank some more wine, and had a friendly “discussion” about sustainability and what actions we may take in the future.

Three Sisters

05_Sunday

Sunday, we got up fairly early and packed our things to check out of the hostel. We took a train to Wentworth Falls where we again met with Nick from Constructive Dialogue. He has a house in the Mountains that he designed for his parents and happened to be staying at for the weekend, so he kindly agreed to show us around a bit. We met him in town outside the station and he led us on a path through the woods to get to his house. It’s difficult to explain the house and we didn’t take pictures, but every wall in the house has at least one opening, window or door, that slides open, completely disappearing from view from within the house. The focus of the house is on bringing nature in and maintaining the relationship to the site upon which it is situated.  Ask me to draw you a plan of it or sketch it sometime, it was fantastic.  After showing us around, we sat on his deck drinking tea and eating scones that he purchased while we were in town by the station. It was another spectacular morning.

Then we walked back through the woods to catch a train home to Newtown and work on our studio projects. Oh did I mention we have a presentation tomorrow that none of us have started? Yep, we’re presenting our ideas to some local artists, and don’t have anything done yet.

02.July_Beach'n

Thursday was another one of those pretty surreal days where you think to yourself, “Man, school is awesome.” For class today, we took a train/bus to Bondi Junction, where you get off the bus, look to your right and see a wide expanse of beach, cliffs, cliff houses and surfers. Pretty unbelievable.  So the reason we’ve come to the beach is to go for a walk. What did you do at school today? Yea I thought so.  Anyway, we walked from Bondi to Bronti as a group. The walk consisted of walking along a path in the side of the cliffs I mentioned before right next to the ocean. 

Every corner you turn, there is another gorgeous beach and some spectacular view of a cliff, the ocean, cliff houses, or all three. We stopped after an hour or so when we got to Bronti to have lunch on our own. Some people swam, others sat on a rock and tried to comprehend how surreal their lives are at present. It’s pretty hard to believe all this is really happening. A few others just had fish and chips.

_Not a bad place to stop for lunch

We then came back together for class in the middle of a park with Adrian while Michael and his kids had a nap on the beach. Definitely one of my favorite classes. We then continued the walk past Clovelli and to Coogee, both of which Nick Seeman had shown us photos of to sketch from. Along the way, they have pools that are naturally filled by the ocean overflow back into the ocean.  

_Rock Pool at Bronti

_Baths/Pool at Clovelli

Concrete on three sides and one end open to the ocean

At Coogee, our final destination was Wiley’s Baths.  It’s another rock pool filled by the ocean, but it has a really cool sort of rickety old deck built up out of the rocks surrounding the baths.  From there we took a really really really long bus ride back to Newtown and went to bed to get ready for a weekend in the Blue Mountains.

_Wiley's Baths

30.June-01.July_Museum Day

We started this morning with a train ride downtown to visit the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art.  We had a private tour with a museum curator who explained some of the work and the needs of the artists. We then moved to a different floor in the museum to look at a collection of photographs by an Aboriginal photographer, Ricky Maynard.  His work was really powerful and extremely moving.  Combined with select quotes by the photographer, the images spoke volumes about the tragedies within Aboriginal history and their struggles for survival.  I’m sure my description could never do it justice, but these photographs said more than most books could. Really powerful.

 From there, we took a stroll around the harbor and past the Opera House again to visit the art gallery of New South Wales.  The gallery houses every sort of art you can think of, classical to contemporary, but our focus was on a collection of Aboriginal works on exhibition.  Generally, looking at Aboriginal art comes with predetermined opinions of what art is and what it should look like that cloud one’s judgment while viewing these works. Going into the exhibition with a completely blank mind and no preconceived notions of art, you realize how complex and meaningful the artwork is.  For me, the patterns, symbols and imagery in this work carry a good deal more meaning than any classical landscape painting or portrait of a queen ever could.

From there, I personally went home and took a quick nap. Art makes me tired..

 Then we went to a book launch for Adrian and her book, Hijacking Sustainability. It was really cool to hear her synopsis of the book and listen to the discussion about sustainability that followed. It’s nice to know that even though America isn’t doing the best job with sustainability, most people in the world do really care about the future of the planet. I’m not trying to be an eco-hippie or anything but the Earth is kinda important to me.

01.July_Wednesday

We’ll just stick Wednesday in here real quick.  We just had a class discussion and met with two artists from another ARI, “Quarterbred”.  They gave us more information about ARI’s and their perspective on our project and the art scene in Sydney.

P.S. The fact that it is Wednesday means it is “Wine Wednesday” and we will probably need to add to our ever-expanding collection of wine bottles. Good day.

29.June_Some things you just wouldn't trade for anything

 Constructive Dialogue

This morning, we walked over to a small firm that focuses on social projects in Australia, Constructive Dialogue.  We met with one of the firm’s principals, Nick Seeman, who gave us a short presentation about the firm and the work they’ve done.  The firm seeks to generate built form by determining how a building can work as a social entity, claiming that there is no point to design something without a positive social impact. Without this impact, architecture simply becomes a large piece of sculpture. The firm is fairly young, having opened 10 years ago and starting their first major project, which is still in progress, in 2005.

                  Before telling us about the firm, Nick’s first action was to have us all look at a photo and sketch a quick diagram speaking about social interaction within the photo.  It was sort of a surprise that he asked us to do this, but a cool activity to get us all thinking a bit differently about what we were looking at.

Meeting with Nick again hit home the idea that architecture should be much more than aesthetics and iconic form. They now have 5 main clients, mostly not for profit organizations, for whom they have done small projects and renovations. Speaking with him, you realize that he’s part of a group that looks at architecture differently than a lot of people.  Looking for the positives in even the worst spaces before tearing anything down, Constructive Dialogue seeks to retain as much of the building as they can, focusing on adaptive reuse, sustainability and social aspects of design. A really well-rounded firm with the best intentions for humans and nature, Constructive Dialogue should be an influence to any design students.

At this point, meeting with people like Nick and Paul and the architects of Tonkin Zulaihka Greer, I realize how lucky I am to have these experiences and realize what I could do as an architect, work that can actually make a difference in the world, architecture with a small “a” as they call it here. It’s really awesome to see people whose entire design philosophy revolves around helping others and preserving the environment.

After Constructive Dialogue, we walked over to the university to meet with Michael and have lunch, then we met with an artist from a local ARI, Bill and George (named for the streets surrounding it).  The artist was Rebecca Conroy, a writer and divisor of contemporary artwork for the ARI.  She gave us a good deal of information about what an ARI can be and the things they need in terms of spaces, people, etc.  After this meeting, Adrian met us at the Uni and gave a short presentation about contemporary art as a follow up to the first presentation that had no images.  Her and Michael then left for a UNSW College of Fine Arts radio broadcast and left us to work out some ideas of what our projects could be and what directions we may choose.  Michael came back later to speak to us about our ideas.  We finally left studio around 7 or so after a pretty long day, but we finally have some sense of a project starting. Don’t forget, this project is due in 2 and a half weeks now.

28.June_Free time, let's fill it with stuff

28.June_Darling Harbor

Sunday, a day off, what to do what to do? Well Emily, Andrew, Gina and Myself decided to go explore some things we had not yet seen, yes, there are still things we have not seen. My choice was Darling Harbor. Designed to be a great place where all the locals would flock to hang out and have a good time, the result was actually much closer to an amusement park. Filled with Asian tourists with cameras stuck to their faces, Americans in sandals and high white socks feeding their large children, and plenty of street performers, it’s really the epitome of the American theme park, right down to the ferris wheel and the cheesy train tram thing that drives around a group of tired, angry looking parents and their wide eyed children. Don’t get me wrong there’s plenty to see and do, and the view across the harbor is nice, but I certainly don’t need to go back.  We walked around for a few, just to see everything, expensive harbor bars, a Chinese garden, a couple museums, and heaps of people before heading back across the bridge (a bridge, not the bridge) to the real world.

After that, we set out to find Hyde Park and hopefully a bit more low key place to chill for a smidge. On our way however, we got sidetracked, due in large part to Gina, by a market that Adrian had told us about a few days ago.  The marlet is situated in the basement of the David Jones building. Now I know what you're thinking, “A market in the basement?!” “Obsurd” But it was really awesome. They had a bunch of individual counters for different types of food, meets, seafood, vegetables, anti-pasto, pastas, need I go on?  Cakes, pies, cookies, olive oil, smoothies, a noodle bar, and my favorite, one entire counter dedicated to sausages. I’d tell you about the different kinds of sausages but you wouldn’t even believe it.  So the market was pretty spectacular, though we didn’t purchase anything, we’re planning to go back and buy some things then have a picnic in the park, cute.

Hyde Park_Chess Chaps

Next we made it to Hyde Park, not that it was hard, walk straight from Darling Harbor and you hit the park, but we made it. So this park is supposedly home to a life-size chess set. To me, life size means the size they would be in real life, you know, people the size of people, horses the size of horses, some Harry Potter stuff you know, what a let down. That knight couldn’t even bite my kneecap. On the bright side, the gentleman playing the game of chess were fantastic. I could sit for days photographing them and not capture how intense this game was. It was actually really cool to watch, even if they were a bit smaller than advertised. The rest of the park is nice too, they’ve kindly erected a statue of me naked slaying a Minotaur, a few of the details are off, but the likeness is pretty good.

                

Across the street from the park is a church, interesting looking but probably built about 300 years after what it was modeled after and plenty of clues to suggest that this is true. Yes mom, I went to church in Australia. I thought you’d be proud.  Next we walked down the street to the botanical gardens, meandering through the trees and flowers, careful not to touch any of the native species. Later in the garden we found some bats in a tree, also called flying foxes, which turned out to be terrifying. They were just sleeping in some trees, but I felt as if the end was quite near. Terrifying, I’m telling you.

TERRIFYING!!

So we continue through the park and the sky turns blackish. Oops, didn’t look at the weather, but it turned out that the other side of the sky looked amazing, and then there was a serious rainbow. Words can’t do it justice, but see the photos for a special experience.  After that, we tried to see the sun setting by the harbor, sprinting through the park with our bags in tow in the pouring rain, ending up on top of a hill adjacent to the opera house and completely missing the sunset anyhow. Running through the rain however is invigorating. I suggest you try it right now, I’ll wait. So we ended up stuck under a giant tree trying not to get drenched by the pouring rain. It wasn’t so bad.

Downtown in a rainstorm

Two rainbows folks, count 'em, two.

27.June_Paddington

Saturday morning we got up fairly early to head over to Paddington Reservoir. It’s another adaptive reuse project by Tonkin Zulaihka Greer. This time, Tim Greer, one of the firm’s principals met us at the reservoir to give us a tour and explain the project.  The project, as you may have guessed, was a reservoir that TZG redesigned as a public park, leaving the remains of the reservoir as a ruin and adding new materials that play off the existing to create a really interesting space. You get the ideas implied by the ruins of the reservoir creating an interesting dialogue with the new materials and generating a very relaxing environment to spend time in, interesting that it gave me this feeling with materials being brick, concrete, steel, aluminum and heavy timber.

We then walked down the street to the Australian Photo Gallery, then Paddington Market, full of odd trinkets, jewels, artwork, wooden bowls, and some pretty delicious looking food (mmm cheese steak). The market was pretty overwhelming and quite odd, but an interesting experience.

Reservoir_Illustrates Existing vs New Materials

Lower Level

Upper Level

Lower Level from Upper Level

26.June_Pretty Standard

                  Friday wasn’t overly exciting, we had class, discussed the project we need to do but still aren’t sure what it’s going to be. Mind you, we’re a week into the 4 weeks that we have here in Sydney, final project now due in three weeks, and we aren’t sure what our project is going to be. It’s alright, we’re flexible.

                  Friday afternoon we met with two artists from Matchbox Projects (we think this project is going to have something to do with artists and artist run initiatives). So the two girls, Naomi and Leanne, identical twins mind you, are artists in Sydney that talked to us about their work and what they may need for an exhibition space. We then spur of the moment left the university to go on a walking tour around the area to some local ARI’s (artist run initiative, a work/gallery space for artists run by the artists).

                  Friday evening we celebrated the end of our first week with a few Aussie beers, Little Creatures, Toohey’s New, and Pure Blonde. They were all pretty good, but Little Creatures (my choice) was the best.  The worst part is that a sixer of beer here costs generally close to 20 bucks. Not cool.