ArchiReferences

Random stuff to help you overcome artists' block

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_Woodland Chapel (Skogskapellet) // Erik Gunnar Asplund // 1920

This is the second reason i didn't quit Architecture during my second year. The Theories of Architecture teacher came one day and showed us a photo similar to the first one. "What do you think this is?" "A cabin", most of us said.

He talked about Nordic Classicism. The focus was on Asplund, particularly the Stockholm Public Library and the Woodland Cemetery  (Skogskyrkogården). Then, he started talking about the time he visited the cemetery, particularly one place.

How he moved through a forest, surrounded by trees, feeling like they hugged him. How he suddenly found himself in a clearing, watching the building in the photograph, his focus on the golden angel in the entrance, like it was greeting him. How the pillars on the entrance created a place of safety, but also retreat. How the inside felt like an alien place: it was like you were not really there.

He told us the building was a small chapel where every step in the process of getting there was designed to soften the grief of losing a loved one. The porch and its view. The indirect light on the inside. The place out of time and space.

I felt again like I was studying the right thing. I decided to stay.

[archireferences]

_Invisible Cities (Le Città Invisibili) // Italo Calvino // 1972

This book is one of the two reasons I didn't quit Architecture during my second year. I wasn't able to cope with the pressure, I barely slept and I was beginning to think that maybe I had chosen the wrong studies.

This book fell on my hands almost by accident. I saw it referenced a lot in texts about a videogame I really wanted to try, Braid. Later, my father talked to me about The Baron in the Trees (Il Barone Rampante), which happened to be also written by Italo Calvino. And one of the few days I went to a book shop with money in my wallet, I saw it. 

What I found was a book not about what cities are, but about how cities feel. A book so touching, so intimate but also universal, so inspiring, that it made an impression in my mind that still hasn't faded away years later. At that moment, it also meant that I couldn't leave Architecture. Not when I knew the potentials of the city, and the fact that I could be a part of its motion, of its change.

To this day, I still try to read it at least once a year.

[archireferences]

_The Mediated Motion // Olafur Eliasson // 2001

_Link to official website

This is the first non-directly-related-to-architecture reference I received from a teacher. Eliasson captures an atmosphere and brings it to a different environment. What I love about this exhibition is how easy it is to forget that this is the actual inside of a building, how it changes the perception of what the places we inhabit can be.

[archireferences]

Intro

This blog is born because my mid-term memory is terrible. Seriously. This is my sixth year studying Architecture and I always tend to forget references that could inform my projects and make me overcome the so-called artists' block. I wanted to have a place where I could keep all the pictures and ideas that helped me /are helping me /could help me.

I know, it's a pretty egocentric excuse to open a blog. But I know I'm not the only one out there who sometimes just needs to find the right picture to keep going and finish a design. So maybe my horrible memory ends up helping someone else.

Of course, this blog will not be only about architecture. Films, books, drawings, pictures... all of these are as important to me as a great building.