8.5"x11" ~ watercolor on paper

8.5"x11" ~ pastels on paper

I call these memory sketches.

Caught without a functioning camera at a moment of elation and wonder, faced with a sight so perfect in composition, energy, serenity or movement, I had urge to immortalize what I experienced. So I did these very, very quickly so as not to lose the “impression” of what the moment felt like. These were sketches not meant to be seen by others but I think they are interesting because to you they are scribbles but for me they conjure the scene once again.

The first is a quick sketch of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, late at night. I sat there for a few moments amidst a crowd, and calls of the tea and corn vendors on way back to my hostel on Saturday night. The second is the expansive horizon of Athens, comfortably embedded in the hills, viewed from the Acropolis. The third sketch records the calm ruins of an amphitheater at the same place.

"It was as a grown-up man that I first stood on the hill of the Athenian Acropolis, surrounded by ruined temples, gazing out over the blue sea.

"Mingled with my happiness was a sense of astonishment that came to me as: so it really is true, what we were taught at school! How shallow, how feeble must have been the belief I had acquired then in the actual truth of what I was being told for me to feel such surprise now!"

I read this in Sigmund Freud's essay The Future of an Illusion, in the little book I started after The Counterfieters, yesterday as I had Nargileh at a place near Tophane.

Florence, a city whose size is comparable to the Princeton campus, home to the Medici family, center stage for players such as Michelangelo and Machiavelli, and Galileo and Savonarola, and the birthplace of the Renaissance itself; that is where I headed after Paris.

If Paris is an architectural museum, Florence is a tomb. If the streets of Paris are congested, those of Florence seem suffocating. If it weren't for the colorful facades and intricate window blinds, it would resemble very much a slum. It is saturated with tourists carrying maps and reminds me of Disneyland. I love the shop windows. They are super-modern/contemporary.

In Florence, I had the most divine pasta. It was garnished with the perfect mix of subtle and strong flavours. I also had some really rich chocolate ice cream, which I loved.

The streets are all curved and narrow, "to prevent wind tunnels."
I took the bus to the Carthusian Monasteries at Galluzzo (or Val d'Ema), and took a tour there guided by a monk. Le Corbusier might have taken the same tour several decades ago. I was the only non-Italian in the tour group and though I didn't understand a single word of it, the experience was transcendent.

All the time I was there, I kept thinking that there was some puzzle here that I was supposed to be solving, deciphering, unraveling. Why did Le Corbusier come and spend time here? I began to notice the harmony in the architcture -- a sort of complex simplicity. It was built in 1341 and its age itself gives it a mysterious quality. Individual chambers enclosed monks who vowed not to speak except for 10 minutes each week. Their apartments were all they had around them and in them they meditated. Each chamber has an interior garden with windows opening onto amazing views over the countryside below. Each is furnished only with furniture that is essential and functional, but whose elegance reminds me of the Bauhaus and Victor Horta.

The ceilings are low and the passages intimate, contrasting with the more open courtyard. Was I just imaginging the parallels between this and the Villa Savoye?. Also, going through these chambers, the galleries and the churches, all of which are linked together, you lose your sense of orientation. The experience of navigating through the rooms and courtyards is one of discovery and full of surprises and the architecture subtly guides the visitor around. It is a kind of architecture devoid of overt ostentatious ornamentation and pomp, yet rich in a temprered understated quality of spatial experience in the promenade it creates.

Below: Galileo's house

Yet, despite all this, for my architecture drawing project in Florence, I have mostly sketches of sculptures to show so far. I spent most of my time looking at the sculpture. While architectural styles come and go, and are dependent on the materials, ideas and processes of their age, the beauty of the human body is eternal. Biomimicry has always opened up avenues of inspiration for avant-garde architecture. There are other things such as form, composition, movement and scale that link architecrture very closely with the arts.

It was almost convenient that Italian museums did not allow photography, and that later on my camera refused to function. It gave me an opportunity to slow down and spend time with my sketchbook in the various museums and the outdoor sculpture piazzas.

Below: Three sketches of Perseus (1554) by Cellini, drawn from the sketch version in the Bargello Museum, and the full-size version in the Piazza della Signoria.


Below: Michelangelo's David, in the Galleria dell' Academia.

Below: Brunelleschi, in the Galleria dell' Academia.
Below: Machiavelli, the great evil political theorist, in the Galleria dell' Academia. Seeing this transported me back to Professor Viroli's lectures during sophomore year.
Below: Cyparissus in the Galleria dell' Academia, who Apollo "loved because of his beauty" and who was so heartbroken when he accidentally killed his deer that the cyprus tree was created and named after him.
Below: Three sketches of the The Rape of the Sabine Women (1583) by Giambologna, drawn from the versions in the Galleria dell' Academia and the outdoor Piazza della Signoria. It consists of three figures in frozen in at a moment of vigorous motion. It challenges the idea that sculpture has only one best vantage point, because presents exquisite and exciting compositions in all directions. One could learn more about architecture from this sculpture than many buildings.


Below: Fisherboy, but I forget whom, in the Bargello Museum.

Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion

In a blog which has to do with Le Corbusier, and which is called works-in-progress, it is fitting to post some sketches from my carnet.

I want to get this out of the way before I write something about Ronchamp and Barcelona. Yes, Barcelona!

We start with everyday objects. Missing here are the trash can studies. I want to do a whole series on them later on, with some thoughts about the significance of their design.

The Paris Metro monitor has screens that allow the driver to ensure everyone has boarded before he or she closes the doors. Sometimes they close the doors anyway, crushing old ladies' shopping carts.

On my way back from Germany, I noticed the drastic change in object design. Straight perpendicular lines gave way to ornate curves.

Often, when I take a break from AutoCAD and Illustrator at work, I look through magazines and books from the library and sketch. Drawing is the act of making a mark, but it is first a form of seeing, or reading. Even the most widely known buildings and objects can be better understood when read through drawing.













And here, finally, are four of the five classic orders. Apparently, all architects should know these. Even though I think that is silly, I still drew them because I was curious and because Andy would say (that Paula would say) that it is good to know and understand the rules before breaking them. And Ed would say (that Claude Perrault would say) the same.

Real innovative progress took place in the small industrial towns of Germany, spreading from there to the larger cities, and then to the rest of the world. Stuttgart is one such town.

I headed to Stuttgart right after Dessau. Situated on a big hill, Stuttgart is home to the Weissenhof Housing Estate, a model neighborhood where several modernist architects were invited to design workers’ homes in the new International Style in 1927 under the supervision of Mies van der Rohe. It is home also of the little-known but extremely important Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, a thriving force for Architecture and Industrial Design in Germany, as well as of the Porsche Museum which I had no idea existed.

I had spent a little more than 24 hours in Berlin. In those 24 hours I had visited and got to know my two main destinations in the city: the AEG Turbine Factory by Walter Gropius, and Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Altes Museum. I had walked along the river, had a nice lunch, walked into the closing ceremony of a certain pride parade, saw much more of Berlin’s architecture at night, and ended up spending several hours of the night at a huge party called GMF which took place on three levels at the top of a Berlin skyscraper. I had had to take a cab home and had spent half the night at the bus stop right outside my hostel. I am glad it was Germany and not France or Italy. Finally I had passed out on my bed at 4am.

I was woken up at 10am because that was the check-out time at the hostel. I had missed my 7am train to Dessau and Stuttgart. I would have to renew all my reservations and contact my workplace to let them know I would be taking Monday off.

I arrived in Stuttgart at 11:30pm on the ICE train, which is Germany’s TGV and is much more impressive and comfortable than the TGV. I took a taxi to my hostel, and it pulled up on a mountain street overlooking the town below, with just a small entrance on the cliff. The rest of the building was on lower levels on the slope below.

I’ll go directly now to the three things I wanted to write about in Stuttgart. The first is the tram system. It was extremely impressive how these trams glided smoothly up sloping streets, through tunnels, on regular streets alongside cars, and down steep slopes. The map and guide was crystal clear and intuitive and it must have been the easiest train system to use that I have ever encountered.

The second is the Weissenhof Housing Estate. The Germans are not ashamed of Modernism like the French or Americans. The housing project was well maintained. The most remarkable thing was that these houses – most of them small and not luxurious – were occupied by real people living there. Each house had a small sign outside it, explaining the concept and displaying the plans. People parked their cars, got out with their groceries and walked into their home, even as others took pictures of the neighborhood.

Mies van der Rohe’s building was highly reminiscent of some of the dilapidated architecture I had seen in Clichy-sous-Bois. It made me realize that renovation and maintenance plays a very important role in the perception of architecture and, more importantly, that the same forms may have different symbolic value in different places.

Chair on display at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste

After walking around the Weissenhof Estate, I stumbled upon the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart. I reminded me of Harvard GSD and the Indus Valley School in Karachi and other places that seem to exude a spirit of creative energy. It is the Bauhaus of the 21st century. I was so excited to walk around inside that, for a moment, I seriously considered trying to learn German and applying here for grad school. Earlier that morning, I had met three German students from various parts of the country who had come to take an admissions test for the Industrial Design program at this school. They had had to send their portfolios earlier on for a preliminary selection process. They were super-impressed that I was a Pakistani studying architecture in the US here just to visit a housing project that they didn’t even know about.