The Depths of Design @depthsofdesign-blog - Tumblr Blog

What Dreams Are Made Of

Getting to relive my favorite The Lizzie McGuire Movie moments? Yes please!

TL;DR: Rome is awesome, classes are great, been traveling and seen a lot of stuff to share, so stay posted. More pics to come!

A view of the Forum from the Capitoline Museum.

Bonjourno!

I know it's been a good while since I last posted, but since the semester began it became hard to do a weekly post. Having already written my first impression, I decided I would do updates at the halfway point of the semester (Spring Break), a post at the end, and post reflections of the time in between.

That said, the semester so far has been very busy and exciting!

The 6 of us from UTK in the Colosseum, L-R: Blake, Jacob, Sierra, Joe, Kae, Me.

Yours Truly!

My classes include Architectural Design (Studio), Architecture of the City - Visual Journaling, Modern + Contemporary Neighborhoods of Rome, and Art + Culture in Italy. All are fantastic classes as they emphasize drawing, historical context, and connecting architecture within its physical context. The best part is that I can see a noticeable difference in my drawing, visual, and deduction skills since the semester began. Besides studio, only the first day of class was actually in a classroom because we have class at different sites around the city each week, so we have the opportunity to draw on site and revisit outside of class to finish assignments and to get out and see Rome in action. We've walked the historic center, west of the Tiber River to Trastevere, south to Garbatella, Testaccio, and the EUR, and Coppedé and Villa Borghese to the north, all of which I’ll share pictures of in my next post. Rome is a wonderful city to study both historically and just as importantly, through its transition to modernity and contemporary living.

First sights:

Our street, S. Maria in Monticelli.

S. Maria in Trastevere.

Motorbikes and cobblestones on a typical city center street.

Piazza Navona (in January)

A view along the Tiber River.

Our travels, besides in and around Roma, since January include: Pisa, Florence, Dublin (Ireland), Tivoli, and a mini Grand Tour over Spring Break to Paris (France), London (UK), and Berlin (Germany). Seeing all of these places and the ones to come are wonderful, especially as we learn in Rome and get to see and compare other cities' infrastructure and solutions to their own growing urban density.

There are a few places left to go and things to see in the coming weeks, so I'll be sure to keep the blog rolling forward with stories and updates - keep an eye out!

Cíao,

Meggie Jane

P.S. Check out my Instagram posts to see what I’ve been up to: @meggie.briggs

P.P.S Also check out our group Instagram: @utk_roma_xvii

#study abroad #travel #writing #Rome #Italy #Europe #lizzie mcguire

See the film, starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson & Auliʻi Cravalho, in theatres now! The Moana soundtrack is available now: Download: http://disneymusic.co/MVO...

I’ve been staring at the edge of the water long as I can remember.

#Moana

05.01.2017 // Roma

Since my 22nd birthday was also my first day in Roma, here are my first 22 observations since I arrived:

1] It’s windy.

2] It’s cold.

3] It’s dense.

4] Still cleaner than Athens.

5] Cobbled streets = nearly cobbled feets.

6] Shiny marble = slippery marble.

7] Streetside cafes smell delicious, even with a frozen nose.

8] Gelato is always popular. Even in winter. Deal with it.

9] Selfie sticks are popular. Even in winter. Deal with it.

10] Everything is recycleable. Probably.

11] If you don’t sort and recycle trash there is a fine.

12] If you flush too much toilet paper, there is a fine.

13] Turn signals are for the weak.

14] Pedestrians don’t matter. Unless there are too many to hit.

15] Any street can be a two-way street if you just believe.

16] Every building is at least 500 years old. Probably.

17] Piazzas [plazas, open areas] come in all shapes and sizes and seem to be required to have at least one water fixture.

18] The Romans applied urban planning to literally everywhere but their own city.

19] Bottled water only.

20] Today was the Twelfth Day of Christmas, so tomorrow is Epiphany and there will be a festival in Piazza Novana tomorrow.

21] Fresh pizza is best pizza.

22] I saw the Pantheon. It is beautiful. That is all.

The only important thing on this list. The Pantheon.

#Roma #Architecture #StudyAbroad #VolsAbroad #Roma17 #UTCoA+D #UTK

TODAY

I have spread wet linen On lavender bushes, I have swept rose petals From a garden walk. I have labeled jars of raspberry jam, I have baked a sunshine cake; I have embroidered a yellow duck On a small blue frock. I have polished andirons, Dusted the highboy, Cuts sweets peas for a black bowl, Wound the tall clock, Pleated a lace ruffle… Today I have lived a poem.

Today // Ethel Romig Fuller Starry Night // Van Gogh

This Year // Caroline Pennell • Aaron Espe // 2016

allofherdays

There are hermit souls that live withdrawn, in the peace of their self-content; There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart, In a fellowless firmament; There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths Where highways never ran; But let me live by the side of the road And be a friend to man. Let me live in a house by the side of the road, Where the race of men go by- The men who are good and the men who are bad, As good and as bad as I. I would not sit in the scorner’s seat, Or hurl the cynic’s bar; Let me live in a house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. I see from my house by the side of the road, By the side of the highway of life, The men who press with the ardor of hope, The men who are faint with the strife. But I turn not away from their smiles nor their tears - Both parts of an infinite plan; Let me live in my house by the side of the road And be a friend to man. Let me live in my house by the side of the road Where the race of men go by- They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong, Wise, foolish - so am I.

Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat Or hurl the cynic’s bar?- Let me live in my house by the side of the road AND BE A FRIEND TO MAN.

The House by the Side of the Road // Sam Walter Foss

I miss my time in Greece. Athens // July 2016.

The World We Live In // The Killers // 2009

#the killers #world we live in

http://www.ted.com The legendary design team Charles and Ray Eames made films, houses, books and classic midcentury modern furniture. Eames Demetrios, their ...

Also this.

#Eames #Charles and Ray Eames #Design #TED Talks

A short film made by Charles & Ray Eames of their house, Case Study House #8, after five years of living in it. You can find out more about the house and the...

I’m studying modularity and materials of the Eames’ Case Study #8 House to include in my final project for my Representation 421 class, and I found this to be a really lovely and helpful insight.

#EamesHouse CharlesandRayEames CaseStudy8 Architecture Design #Modular #Materiality

C'est la vie.

[10.21.2016]

Hello Dear Readers!

I haven't forgotten you. I stepped foot back on US soil and hit the ground running. It's been a busy two and a half months since I began Integrations Studio. It's intense. And frustrating. And everything I expected. I find myself in a constant state of "be a designer, no an engineer, no A DESIGNER." C'est la vie.

As promised in my last post, thoug

h much more delayed than intended, here are some pictures from my last few adventures in beautiful Delphi, Greece:

The Temple of Apollo, where the Oracle of Delphi prophesied.

Indentions of the structural columns of said temple (as mentioned one or two posts back).

The Athenian Treasury (if memory serves).

View of the theater and valley.

The (long) Stadium at the top.

Another view of the breath-taking valley.

The life-like bronze Charioteer statue in the Museum at Delphi.

A view of the modern city of Delphi.

My first time trying full-size octopus (on our lunch break).

Lee on the pier in the town we visited for said lunch break.

The view as we ate lunch.

Exterior view of the very nice museum at Delphi.

I can't believe it's already been months since I fell in love with the mountains and sea, the ambiance and culture, the grandiose of the details. I'm now in the midst of preparing for studying abroad in Rome in conjunction with the University of Arkansas School of Architecture. What a conundrum. There are so many hoops to jump through and fees to pay just to apply and commit and so on, and we haven't even begun the visa process yet...but we'll get there. Though it is arduous, it is the light at the end of this long, dark tunnel of a semester. I can't help but be excited to think that I'll be able to fall in love with another place and culture all over again.

That all said, I hope to share the project my group and I have been working on this semester once I find a moment to sit and condense my thoughts on it. Until then, don't you forget about me!

TTFN and all my love, Meggie Jane

#Travel Greece Architecture Archaeology StudyAbroad UTK #Adventure

reflections on Greece and such.

[07.30.16]

I’m down to my last 24 hours in Greece. In cliché fashion, I can’t believe it. Forgive the sappiness and grammatical errors; I’ve met some incredible people and seen incredible things. July has come and gone and honestly, it’s been one of the best months of my life. I left the States expecting to come back with just lots of pictures and sunburn, and I am- but I didn’t expect to come back feeling more myself than when I left.

That also sounds dramatic and cliché but it’s true and I’ll explain. My last week with the Greeks has been pretty great in and of itself. Friday evening the dream team [Abby, Lee, Isaac, and I] went to Athens to run some errands and have dinner out at James Joyce, which is an Irish pub that Lee recommended and home of some of the surprisingly best and unhealthiest nachos I’ve had in my life [totally worth it]. Prior to the nachos we visited the Byzantine museum which was bursting with artifacts and icons and illustrated manuscripts and paintings with some of the most beautiful pigments, not to mention the museum itself seemed very well preserved. It was fantastic! Unfortunately, we had to leave early because it closed too soon after we arrived. Saturday, we visited the new museum at Thebes, which had a great collection including a model of Glas that I mentioned in my last post and some really cool Cycladic seals. There were also some great mosaics and ceramic pieces preserved that I could have studied for hours at least, in part again because of the quality of the pigments in the tesserae and glazes.

Sunday, we went to Delphi. It sealed the deal. It was amazing. On the drive up I saw Mount Parnassus and the views were more and more stunning as we climbed. It’s no wonder they thought it was the navel of the world; the valley alone was spectacular. The remains of the architecture were just as much so. Up into the early 20th century, the ruins had been retrofit as needed as dwelling spaces for locals and passers-by alike, so much of them had been moved, looted, or altered by the time the ruins were deemed a historic site to be preserved. Even so what is left is enough to appreciate their abilities to manipulate space for wealth, power, and grandeur. The Temple of Apollo still has visible markings where the priestess’ cauldron was suspended and there are footholds in the monoliths where the columns and outer supports once stood. They didn’t use screws or nails; simply gravity and geometry. At this point I was in awe because it’s one of the most relatable moments with architecture I’ve ever had. Any of my peers and classmates can quote Sullivan’s “Form follows function,” or Mies van der Rohe’s “Less is more,” in their sleep and here was the proof. Somehow I don’t think the person that designed this temple knew how to Photoshop a great rendering or build a Revit model, but they did know how to use their available materials and communicate their idea in the right context so that it became a physical reality for others to experience. Sidenote: the definition of architecture is pretty ambiguous on the academic level but I’d like to think that’s pretty….close.

The rest of the week has been productive, relaxing, and uneventful besides finally setting foot on the island which I’ve been studying the entire month and having time to reflect. I understand now why Mitrou was a hotspot. It’s elevated and has excellent viewsheds of the surrounding islands and it’s fairly fertile as far as Greecian soil is concerned. Context is everything when you’re looking for a place to settle and the ancients of Mitrou found it.

I’d like to think more than anything else I’ve picked up this month I found it, too. Not just physical context, but historical, social, emotional, religious; not only pertaining to what I understand from an architectural standpoint either. I’m more aware of when I should be conscientious of others and my surroundings or what I can do to be there. I feel more mature and accepting it is hard because it means I’m standing on my own two feet and I’m responsible for where I put them. In future, my job is going to be being responsible for more than just my than my own two feet. No pressure. Not to mention now that I know I’m looking ahead, I can’t un-see it. I know I’ve got to be responsible and I know I’ve got to be informed and aware of the situations I’m in or where they could go. I also know that I could become a giant ball of stress, but I’m not going to because part of the whole thing is acknowledging what’s in front of you and having faith that you can face it accordingly. And ya know, not to be cheeky but I’ve gained some self-confidence from it. If today’s the day, today’s the day and I’m ready for it.

On a final note, this isn’t my final note [Bazinga!]. I hope my writing doesn’t seem too sporadic or dramatic, I’m just really bad at proofreading and bothering to not sound like I haven’t taken any of my experiences personally. I’ll be back with more regular posts as the year unfolds and I hope you’ll be eager to read the thoughts I write. I’m going to post the pictures for this blurb in another post so as to not bog the website down with too much data at once. Enjoy!

TTFN and all my love,

Meg

#Greece #travel #life #architecture #Delphi #Thebes #Mitrou2016

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPUzUXfGWBQ)

A good intro and/or refresher to architectural thinking and concepts.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIoKr9VDg3A)

For What It’s Worth [Buffalo Springfield, 1966]

The depths of design

[07.23.2016]

This past week has flown. I got to see quite a bit and it was all very fascinating and thought provoking, particularly when you consider the design and thoughtfulness behind what I saw. I find it even more interesting how well much of it still relates to modern design and how we approach it today.

This past weekend was well spent just driving around Greece and seeing it up close. On Saturday afternoon I took an unexpected adventure with Lee and Isaac [both of whom also work with MAP]. Lee studies geo-archaeology, so he was looking for rocks and things to help decipher his work, and the other two of us tagged along. We first stopped at Thermopylae, which is the historic battleground of the 300 Spartans against the Persians. It wasn’t quite as grandiose as I’ve heard the movie portrays it but it was still cool to see the monument. After, Lee took an educated guess from the map and we headed back southwest to a rural area and we got a very nice surprise. We kept driving down yet another dusty old road taking us uphill and I looked left while the view was still expanding and said, “Is that a castle?!” We were adventuring so obviously we had to go check it out. A quick drive and a short hike later we found ourselves at the top of a hill in a small village. The view was phenomenal. I think rather than a castle it may have been a fortress or lookout because it had a clear 120-degree view all the way down to the sea and we were a good few miles inland. There were traces of stairs I wish still existed because I bet the inside was really neat, too. The ground surrounding it was covered with thistles which looked intentional and pretty ingenious. You couldn’t see them until you were already there and even with shoes on you felt them. On the way back down and to another stop, we were successful in finding Lee’s stones but ended up getting lost on a road that turned into a field…someone should probably tell Google Maps about that…

On Sunday, a few of us took the ferry to the island of Evia just up and across the sea from Tragana. A few other ladies took a spa day there while we ventured out looking for rocks again. Man, was it beautiful up there! We mostly drove around this time to no avail, but I thought just seeing the place was cool enough. The water was blue and clear and the beaches were full of smooth pebbles and shells. All in all, a pretty successful weekend.

On Wednesday, we visited the site of Glas [the ‘s’ is silent] in the Copais Basin [sp?] and the things the ancients achieved without all the heavy mechanics we use today were spectacular. Actually, it was likely volunteered labor for farmland. The basin itself used to be a lake with six rivers flowing and they drained it. They managed to drain an entire roughly 500,000 square acres of land, if memory serves. How? I’m glad you asked. As my dear Professor Aleydis Van de Moortel explained it, they dug canals, and with that earth they built dykes, which were lined with monolithic stones cut from the surrounding mountains. Why? 1] Because it was fertile land, 2] the area was crawling with diseases like malaria. And you know what else was cool? While they did that, the dykes they built also served as highways for their chariots that could easily be blocked in case of an attack or invasion [HIGHWAYS FOR CHARIOTS!!]. How cool is that? Not only did they create a space for agriculture surrounded by monolithic fortresses, they simultaneously created a transit and security system. That, my friends, is design. They used it to survive and to live. Not just to create cool buildings or cool technology [which they did have, just not ‘digital’] but to shape everything they did as an after-effect and to control the chaos that came from afar. Though it may not be huge, I think there is a lesson in it – they were efficient and thought ahead.

Now, I’m pointing this out because usually when one begins to talk or first think about design, the assumption is that it only extends as far projects like buildings or technology. Not many people bother to look much further and unfortunately it’s a missed opportunity because it seems so vague. Design is much more than objects before you and it certainly isn’t a small part of civilization. It forms our infrastructual systems yet it isn’t deemed important enough to be taught as a pertinent part of our basic education. It’s a way of thinking and a way of looking at the way life has formed around you. It’s forethought and afterthought and the thought and care as you do and experience something. In other words, it’s the process of planning, learning, and reiterating. So why don’t more people understand design? Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s worth looking into because designing is the difference between causing chaos and controlling your reaction to it [I’m looking at all the political and social ruckus in current events]. The word itself [design] is derived from the Italian word ‘desingo’ or “to draw.” It literally means to plan out and draw the idea you have before you execute it*. To design is to have ideas and to document and then experience them; to actually think about things before you do them in the hope that they will be beneficial. I titled this blog “The Depths of Design” because it isn’t just a school blog and it isn’t just a travel blog or a themed blog. It’s a blog about the experiences I have from the decisions I’ve made; it’s me documenting how I’ve designed my life from a point onward; how I absorb, deliberate, and react to the chaos around me. Looking around, it seems more people need to understand this before blindly reacting to the most recent thing flashing before them on the news or social media. I’m not saying I have it all figured out either; I fall prey just as often as everyone else and I’m only recently warier of it.

So there’s my blurb on that for today.

Speaking of social media, I have some treasures from my camera to share, and I hope you enjoy! Until next time TTFN,

Megara

The monument at Thermopylae

Part of the battlefield

The ‘castle’

Isaac on the ramparts

*swoon*

Scenes from Evia

From the walls of Glas

If you look closely, you can see that the bottom off the mountains have been carved away an are now the walls.

Scenes from Glas

Last but not least, a snipet from our trip to Athens the following Friday. *cue ‘Friends’ theme*

#greece #design #travel #architecture #archaeology #mitrou

Hello, Welcome, etc. etc.

Until I figure out how to pin posts to the top, the blog description shall reside in this particularly handy post.

Hello, and welcome to a blog dedicated to sharing and discussing experiences from a student navigating the depths of design. Among many facets, I study architecture, archaeology, anthropology, landscape, preservation, photography, drawing and…you guessed it, design. I am an undergraduate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in the College of Architecture + Design [UTCoAD]. I took a wild leap into architecture in the summer of 2014 and haven’t looked back since. I’ve learned more in two and a half years than the rest of my school years combined and I don’t intend on stopping anytime soon. Here I would like to share my knowledge, my travels, experiences, thoughts, adventures, and potentially gain more insights in return. Happy travels! - Meg

A Day In the Life [The Beatles, 1967]

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