Gindroz Travel Award Sketches
Pen + Watercolor
2018
The Ray and Marilyn Gindroz Foundation awards an annual travel prize for Carnegie Mellon architecture and music students to be immersed in European art, architecture, and music.
Thanks to the Gindrozes, I traveled to 8 cities over 2 months, documenting architecture and urban spaces that are either of a singular era or of many, finding tension and joyous variety in the juxtapositions of eras.
Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Past the classic image of quaint canal houses and bridges cluttered with tulips and bikes, you will find a contemporary city, fast-paced and dense. The section of the city originally delineated by the Singel feels like any other European city, with a bustling atmosphere, trams whizzing through wide streets, and narrow seventeenth-century rowhouses clashing against more formal Renaissance- and Baroque-era institutions. But it’s not difficult to imagine that this intensity is not a foreign import, but a lingering piece of Amsterdam’s Golden Age, with trade and culture flourishing. Surprisingly for me, those postcard-ready canal homes and cobblestone streets didn’t tell the entire story.
Rotterdam
The Netherlands
Walking through the yellow-lit Maastunnel under the Nieuwe Maas river, sitting atop a stall in MVRDV’s Markthal, I couldn’t help but imagine that I was a protagonist in a 1960s movie that envisioned the year 2080: the city felt like it represented an outdated version of the future. Architecturally, so many buildings try to out-do each other; when every building competes to be the iconic object amongst a field of other iconic objects, it was the few older buildings and Gothic cathedrals left standing after the world wars that actually stood out. To me, it seemed that Rotterdam is simply a giant museum dedicated to preserving and displaying the hubris of the architect, swathed in a cloak of gray skies.
Berlin
Germany
For three weeks, I took a course in Berlin to study the city through drawing and to learn the craft of bookbinding. Here, I focused mainly on facades, detailing the tiny ornamentation that textures the city and gives a voice to an institutions’ programs inside. I was primarily interested in Berlin’s history of regime-era building, which is still, architecturally and socially, quite explicit: remnants of the Berlin Wall still seem to define a clear difference in expression from East to West. Some institutions – mainly government buildings and museums – attempt to regularize and formalize this narrative, while other structures, like Kotbusser Tor, permit spontaneity, growth, and informal activity.
Paris
France
At the architectural and urban scales, I was most interested in the places where, within the strict formality and regal air of Haussmann’s oft-romanticized facades, remnants of an older, Medieval Paris were revealed. I was struck by the incredible sense of enclosure provided by arcades, manicured trees, and well-proportioned buildings that form the edges of the places, allowing Parisians and I glimpses of activity from a relaxed, polite distance.
Vienna
Austria
Wandering through the densely ornamented pastel-palette city, it is not difficult to understand the headache that Vienna Secessionists like Adolf Loos must have perpetually suffered. Loos’s belief that “ornament is crime” essentially birthed Modernism, with its clean lines, stark white, and light touch, epitomized in the Looshaus on Michaelerplatz, which faces off against one of the perpetrators of the crime. Next to the Viennese tradition of extravagance, elaborate detailing, and flourish, even the floral-adorned Secessionist buildings feel clean in comparison. These fascinating contradictions and juxtapositions densely lining the surprisingly wide Ringstrasse, surrounding the generously scaled parks, and tucked away in the Medieval center provided me with plenty of inspiration for my sketches, while the complexity of details provided plenty of headaches.
Brussels
Belgium
For me, the architectural makeup of Brussels represents a fascinating intersection between French, Germanic, Flemish, and even Dutch styles. Tiny references from each of these regions appeared throughout the city in the floor articulation, rooflines, and ornamentation – evidence of Belgium’s history that is intertwined with its neighbors’.
Bruges
Belgium
A picturesque Medieval city, Bruges is dotted with massive churches and tiny lace shops and networked by quiet canals. From the train station, I felt that I had entered a city stuck in time – but as I wandered deeper through the labyrinthical streets lined with two- and three-story brick homes, I encountered the enormous scale and activity of the Grand-Place at the center of the city. Bruges seems like a model European city – an amalgamation of cultures and eras, continuously readapted to contemporary uses.
Rome
Italy
What is Rome if not a pleasant set of widely contradictory urban principles? This chaotic organization, occasionally regulated by a modern-day highway, impeccable Renaissance axes, and ancient routes, allows for pockets of open courtyards, like Sant’Ivo, or grand piazzas like the Piazza del Popolo that push against the crowded city and expand a moment in time. There’s nothing in the world like traipsing through any random alley in the tangled web of Rome, amongst ancient arches and cobblestone streets, and suddenly stumbling upon a breathtaking view of the Forum, or the Pantheon, or Campo de’ Fiori. Rome has mastered an element of surprise paired with a feeling of harmony that few cities have achieved.
