I have the power

My apologies to all the fans and followers of Jen's blog, but whilst she hits the books in preparation for her after Christmas exams, I have taken over as custodian of this record. You will notice that the blog has adopted a decidedly less feminine appearance, this is for my own sanity and in no way aims to impugn the celebrated femininity of our former hostess. During my tenure you will, no doubt, become acutely aware of my penchant for showing endless photographs of buildings, and it is for this that I made apologies earlier on. For while I do love Architecture and seek to share it whenever possible, I also realize that not all of you will share this passion, but fear not, for Jennifer shall shortly return to fill this blog with the cute and cuddly once more. And now, I post. 19.12.2009 - Barcelona, Spain In the true fashion of the British, Jen and I booked our flight to Barcelona through the ridiculously cheap airline easyjet, which is similar to southwest only lower budget. Because we flew the easyjet way, we were obliged to be at the airport at a painfully early hour, which meant a middle-of-the-night awakening followed by a rather brisk struggle over the icy streets to the train station. If I may be permitted a tangent here, when it snows in Brighton you would do well to stay indoors as there is no real form of snow removal and the end result is many small and hilly streets covered in a smooth layer of ice. We landed in Spain around the time everyone else was finishing breakfast which meant that we now had an entire day in front of us, a day filled with the most exquisite Spanish sun, quite welcome after living in England. The first thing we did, obviously, was to check into the brilliant little boutique hotel that I found online, props to me for finding such a winner.

The staff here get mixed reviews, for while some of them were very accommodating and friendly, others were decidedly cold and unwilling to volunteer information. I found that I got the best results when I chatted up the young blond girl using my ever so eloquent castilian, oddly enough it was less effective against the gentlemen. Poor Jennifer simply could not win and all her attempts to communicate in English ended in miscommunication. She fought the language battle the entire trip and eventually learned to stay close to me and let me do the talking, I wonder how I could convince her to continue doing so...? We can just pretend that there is a graceful segue here and jump straight into the architecture. El Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia - Antoni Gaudi

We pose together here in front of the church because Jennifer insists that some of my photos have people (us) in them, it also serves as evidence that we were actually here and didn't just download all of these images from flickr, or are my photoshop skills just that good? You may never know. You may notice that the elusive "bespectacled" Jennifer has been captured here in this photograph, a phenomenon we are only able to view because of the aforementioned early flight. The doors (above) which may someday actually be used to enter the church, are adorned as seen below.

This is a model of the idea behind the form of the structure. The idea is that you hang string or chain upside down and load it with small weights, then the thing is covered in plaster and turned upside down. The resulting shape is funicular and supposed to be perfect at transferring loads. If that made sense to you, then you're a nerd.

Here Jen is acting as a scale model to give the readers back home an idea of the size of this project.

If you are one of our more clever readers, then you will have noticed that the building is actually under construction. It has been under construction for more than 100 years (since 1882) and according to a sign posted in the church, it is nearly 50% complete. Barring any further setbacks it is scheduled to finish around 2026, so we'll look forward to that.

All joking aside, it is truly a monumental project and we can appreciate the grandeur of Gaudi's vision. There is something to be said about the lofty, soaring structure that seems somehow too delicate and too high. The spaces created here will one day be very grand indeed, but now while the building is under construction and the whole thing has been turned into some tourist attraction, it is difficult to feel.

20.12.2009 - Parque Guell - Antoni Gaudi

You'll notice my sweet camera skills in this shot, Jen is upset that too much of her face is in shadow, her vanity knows no bounds.

We entered the park through the wrong gate and ended up climbing the hill away from our intended destination, but our mistake was short lived and along the way we found this "perfect little Spanish house with an orange tree and everything" and Jen simply could not go on unless it was captured on camera for the whole world to enjoy (now you'll notice my vanity coming through as I actually think the whole world will be reading this post).

Here you see the famous serpentine benches of the park, our favorite part was the myriad vendors with their wares spread out on sheets for the tourist with undiscriminating taste. At one point the word got out that the police might be stopping by and all of the vendors swiftly and deftly packed up their goods and vanished into the teeming crowds.

Everyone wanted to get their picture taken in front of the dragon, frankly we couldn't see what all the fuss was about, but like good American tourists we simply followed the crowd.

This is the Jaume Fuster Library, not very interesting and only deserving a single image.

Edificio Forum - Herzog and De Meuron

Torre Agbar - Jean Nouvel

21.12.2009 - MACBA - Richard Meier

After two days of the most beautiful Spanish sun, the rain came, and so the rest of my photos will all be rather gloomy and wet I'm afraid.

This is the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, now you may be thinking that the name doesn't look entirely Spanish, and you would be right, it's actually a language called Catalan which is the principal language in Catalonia, or the region of Spain to which Barcelona is the capital. This strange language was my bane for the entirety of our visit, for while I had thought that I had a firm grasp on the Spanish language, these odd words kept taunting me with their unfamiliarity. Luckily it is mostly used in writing and the good people still spoke Castilian with me.

I shot this building in black and white because it is a Richard Meier building and it is, in fact, all white.

This is the world famous Mercat de Santa Caterina inside which we found a veritable cornucopia of Spanish foods and delicacies...actually, it was closed, but you can imagine what might have been.

While we were wondering aimlessly through the old part of Barcelona we stumbled upon a building proclaiming to be the Museu de Xocolata. Now, up until this time Jennifer had seemed to struggle tremendously with the language barrier, but some form of divine intervention blessed here with the ability to not only spot the sign from two blocks away, but also to translate it instantly, and she turned to me and said "I think that's a chocolate museum down there, can we go, please?". Unfortunately this photo fails to capture the extreme joy that was emanating from her every fiber.

Arc de Triumf

22.12.2009 - Casa Mila - Antoni Gaudi

I thought this project was really about the roof and penthouse, which are actually dealt with in a an interesting way. Below you will see photos of the rooftop which is formed by placing a series of catenary arches of varying sizes and shapes in sequence around the roof of the building. This gives the rooftop its undulations and allows the surface to rise and fall. It also creates an interesting penthouse space which has become a sort of museum for the house. The apartments are very ordinary and lack much of the interest seen in other parts of the project.

23.12.2009 - Montjuic

We waited until our last day to visit the olympic park because we thought that the rain would let up, after all the rain in Spain...how does that rhyme go, oh yeah, never freaking stops. Actually it does, which brings me to a rather amusing anecdote. You see Jennifer and I had just visited the olympic stadium and all of its surrounding treasures when it started to really come down on us, we didn't worry though because according to our calculations we were getting quite near to the pavilion and would soon be under cover. Much to our dismay however we continued to wander up the longest road in all of Spain while the rain grew heavier and heavier. We waxed tired and wet very quickly. At long last we did find shelter under the canopy of a closed snack shack, and what a welcome sight it was. We ran and ducked under the welcoming cover where we were prepared to linger as long as necessary for the rain to quit. Much to our surprise and dismay, not more than 2 minutes after our finding shelter, the rain stopped completely. How lucky we were to be caught out in the worst of it, what a fun story it has given us to share.

Telecommunications tower - Santiago Calatrava

Barcelona Pavilion - Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

The German pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona

I'll let Mies do most of the talking here, but I would like to explain why the pool is white. As part of an artists intervention the pools at the pavilion were filled with milk and coffee, this larger pool with milk and the small pool with coffee.

Here you get another sample of my highly professional photography skills, I didn't notice that my own reflection was in the picture until I looked at it several days later.

This is the pool filled with coffee, in case you forgot why the water is a terrible shade of brown

I like the sign that tells people not to sit on the Barcelona Chairs, it really adds something.

For this sweet photo I placed the camera on the small table in the entrance where the logbook and pamphlets are kept, which seems like an innocent enough act, but we got some seriously dirty looks from the security guard afterward, although in retrospect, he may have been upset that we never paid our entrance fee.

Yes, that is a "caution wet floor" sign on the marble at the Barcelona pavilion

Jennifer ponders on the beauty of it all, luckily the little shop was closed or else we might have come home with that T-shirt in the window.

And now you are all tired of looking at my photographs and reading my nonsense, if you actually made it this far you are to be congratulated for you truly have an endurance above the rest.