#arch recap

[obscurecurse]

i went through a phase obsessed with faces on buildings. who's faces? what likeness? i'm not sure i've left it - if anything i'm just starting to put my ideas into practice. a friend from netherlands, a moss friend, dm'd me and said "hey. do you know about scheepvaarthuis?"

so naturally i had to go there. i told the people i was traveling with "look if i do one thing while i'm in amsterdam, it's going to be standing outside of this thing for about an hour. i dont care what else we do." i needed to taste the kind of budget for sculpture that i will never in my career see.

Scheepvaarthuis was originally designed to be an Office Building for the major shipping companies. it overlooked the water. The world has changed around it. It's a hotel now. the land was filled in, the edge of the city moved.

these companies so relied on the stars for navigation that the ceiling is a massive celestial stained glass. in the shape of the belly of a boat. i was not expecting to go inside but i slipped in and up to the top, to stand under the largest stained glass i've maybe ever set my eyes on. it was ornamented to the teeth. i need to get my hands on the original drawings to analyze the details. if i find myself back in the netherlands i'd very much like to stay the night here.

[obscurecurse]

silo #5, montréal

all i have to say about this one is that my boyfriend brought me here/wanted to show it to me. he understands me so deeply. rollers are my favorite category of graffiti, so rectinlinear, so graphic design, so shaped by the tools they are formed with. i like concrete. i like industrial. i like old things. i like things that make me feel small. i like wandering aimlessly with him while he smokes cigarettes. i like when architecture makes people think about me, and when they are vulnerable enough to tell me about it. this place really checked all my boxes. nothing as romantic as an abandoned grain silo. 🤙

[obscurecurse]

a replica of Gol Stavkirke in Minot, ND. also a business sidequest. i had about 20 minutes to run in a circle around it before catching a flight. stave churches were my first subject of serious academic writing soooo it was an intense experience to go inside this thing. i found out there's a designated area for laying your sword against the wall before entering. swords were not allowed inside the church. and i also learned that they close the doors for mass and they stand. imagine church standing in the dark? (wildly different from the modern american christian experience...) these churches come before the modern advent of windows. i spent a Year reading about them and never knew these details. 20 minutes standing before it taught me more. a weird lesson to learn.

(you can tell i was having a "door hardware" moment. it's the first thing you touch!)

[obscurecurse]

reflecting on places architecture brought me this year...

i am so easily desensitized. these are real images? life is too beautiful. when i first entered the grounds of the hearst castle (side quest on a business trip) i asked my senior architect "...do you think these are tiffany lamps?"

and when the tour guide later drew attention to the tiffany lamps around the pool, he elbowed me lol