Caca de Perro

   I am sitting at a really cute cafe 2 blocks from my house doing work for comp and just relaxing. I ordered a cafe con leche (coffee with milk) and a salad that was brought to me with bread in a leather square dish and the dressing in a double shot glass with a baby spoon and I love it. They also gave me a half moon cookie for my coffee :) As I sit watching people pass by the other tables outside the window, I see a little white yippie dog poop right in front of me. If there's anything I will miss about this city its watching dogs poop anywhere and everywhere: as I enjoy some nice food, walk around, or just go on my way to work/school. Yesterday, as I was enjoying my day off I walked around Ricoletta (another part of town), I felt the dreaded slide.  This would be when your walking and suddenly you slide for no apparent reason and when you look down you realize you just stepped in some stupid dog's caca. So yeah good times. Im gonna miss it :)

The Buddha Tango

Tango

[Una poema para mi amor] 

I am the sea. Full of emotion. Tirelessly swaying and swinging. I don't know where I am going. I blow strong against my own tide, attempting to hold on to something. Anything. But you. You stand strong and bold. You grab hold of my blowing mind. And I slip away. I no longer fight the movement. But instead, I close my eyes. I trust you, with all my heart. I follow. I follow the beat of your heart. I follow the movement of your feet. I follow the music. I let go and I be. I am that. That I am. I am still. I am free. 

I hold you and you hold me. 

      If there is anything I have learned from Tango it would be balance. I have been attempting the fit my life into a balanced state for a long time. I meditate and do yoga when I can and I've learned from them as much as I could have been able to at the time. These kinds of things take time, its not just something that you decide to do and it just happens. Its a process of finding yourself and sitting at the center of your life from a centered perspective. Relaxing is a hard thing for most people, most of the times you don't even know your not relaxed until you are forced to and then you see the difference. Tango for me is an exposure of who you are and all of your little tensions. 

     The first weeks of learning Tango our teachers told us, in broken english, the man is like a tree. He stands strong and firm and he leads. He knows all the steps and he guides the woman. The woman doesn't think. She flows with the steps always moving from one foot to the other. She shifts her weight and moves from point to point, but her mind is clear. At first we all were like, wait, women don't think!! Some of us had a hard time just going and not thinking, but I think thats what makes it so beautiful. I think women think enough for their own good, so its nice to have a break every now and then and just follow. 

Our very first day at tango. 

yes we are short one girl :) 

Nikul and Mandy more then halfway through the semester. 

   Our teachers told us recently things I think relate a lot to life, not just tango. Even though there is a lot of responsibility of the man to know all the steps and to lead, the woman needs to find her equilibrium. 

This is what they said:

The man stays strong. The woman leans slightly, so he can feel her weight on him. The woman doesn't just do what the man says. He is there to lead her, but she does what the music says. The woman needs balance and to feel her center. She goes "tuck, tuck, tuck" from step to step always finding her balance at each point. Tango is like Buddha. It is the way of the middle. It is always for both people an independent act. Both people need to be in control of themselves. The lean and use each other, but they have to be independently stable. The most IMPORTANT part of tango is the music. Paula said,  "Feel the music, it is the only thing that is important". 

this is actually them telling us that :) haha 

Paula and Julio attempting to tell us how to dance Tango in english :)
There is a lot of metaphors that go on because sometimes they don't know the words.

Paula our other teacher, she is an actress too. 

Its so sad, its our last day. The whole semester we would all go to this milonga called Catadral. Its a place to dance tango, but its really really laid back with a great artistic atmosphere. I think thats the one thing I really did here that I love and that I did often.

Julio, our tango teacher and owner of a dance company called Ladocieglo [blindside]. 

Our class :) 

Studio projects

     Our first project of the semester was to describe in a 3 meter (over 9 feet long) drawing, a map of how we feel traveling to a new place. My idea was to make one line that continues on the page like a time line, but goes through spirals and confusion [representing the body] and another line of leaves flow up and down [representing the mind] and the two eventually meet as the map becomes more clear. Still though only parts of the map are filled and the rest is empty, because these were the only parts I knew at the time. 

mine is the one on top, laura's is on bottom.
[you can click to zoom in]

     My project for studio this semester was an immigration center. We were given a choice of site locations for the project either Plaza de Mayo [city center with tall buildings, picture in the title of my blog is of a collage I made of a test image in this site] or La boca [old italian immigration port, now one touristy road, the rest is really poor, and across the river is even poorer slums]. I chose to work in La Boca. It is a site on the river and their is a historic bridge right next door. The river has a wide pathway that follows around the bend of the edge.

digram of an idea [ rock is the past, being sheltered by a roof]

Idea begins to unfold in a design sketch. 

       The idea is that there is a big gap between the high income population and low income [or no income] population of Buenos Aires. I felt like the La Boca site was somewhere that people were currently in need of help in some way because this is  on of the many places the lower income population is forced to live because of the poor conditions of the area and its location to industrial factories and run down plants. Making an immigration center here allows for an opportunity to help people in the neighborhood. I added program that makes this place a support center as well as a museum, with language classes or financial support, helping them get a job or stills. In other words it brings people in to teach them about the past immigration issues, the present issues and it brings the immigrants in to mix them all together under one umbrella. This is where the roof comes in. It is a unifying structure that relates to the industrial feel of the area, the scale of the bridge, but also shelters the people keeping all that is under it safe and protected. It is unifying. The buildings underneath were spit into the past [gallery] and present [library/classrooms]. The roof creates a 3d public space that wraps the outside of all the buildings and creates a network of outside terraces that are all different experiences in relation to their context and the roof at different levels.

preliminary [1:250 scale] model showing roof over
masses below 

keeping me company while we made our models on our living room floor  all night

Preliminary [1:100 scale] model showing back street of the model
the entrance is compressed through a public passage and is at the back of the site
after the ramp that goes down. 

and then a week before our final ... our glass table broke while I was working at it and Laura was sleeping. 

and tea fell on my computer.
we sat with it on this stand as I could hear its last breaths of life escape from its lips.
it was making funny noises .... and then it was gone.

RIP


[but now its fixed and everything is ok :)]

final model [1:100 scale] process picture 

In order to not waste time I started making my final model first since I didnt have a computer anymore. After a couple of days my teacher helped me borrow my other teachers computer to finish the project. 

These are views of the two gallery spaces, top is the dark permanent gallery, below is the

light open gallery that opens to the outside. The difference between inside and outside is not clear.

my temporary desk :) 

sunrise one morning I looked out and this is what I saw. 

Completely bare before, these trees literally bloomed over night into beautiful purple wonderfulness.  Plus everything to do with nature and sunlight is amazing when you haven't slept for a week. 

taking a break nap on the porch :) so pretty

final model

interlocking gallery space.
This is a view of the entrance of the building, a gallery to the top left and on the right
behind that mass is the library program
and my feets

market/public passageway perspective 

entrance [mass above is the "dark" gallery]

final presentation

A truly amazing discussion after all the presentations with some architects that were left. It was  for about 2 hours about architecture, school, projects, ideas everything. It was really nice .




the end.