Bike Ramp Proj (The Boring Stuff)

So before I jump into all of the fun stuff (cough!) I wanted to address some exciting logistics:

I've got a shutterfly site, because I know how tedious words can be sometimes (especially mine) I've added all of my pictures from my trips and such, and put them on a convenient site for you all to go comment, view and follow! 

The link is now permanently posted over to the right -----> 

Directly under the Entries catagory. It's entitled "Photographic Documentation" in keeping with the blog theme. So check it out- sign up to be a member and get weekly updates through email!

So the Program for our first project was to redesign a bike ramp used in the time trials of road cycling. The old ones are generally a flimsy ramp, some stairs, and a tailgating tent. Our redesign is centered around the world road cycling championships that are being held in Mendrisio, Switzerland (which happens to be the next town over). 

I'm not going to talk to much about the ideas behind the design or the mechanics of making it- I'll throw a couple of pictures up and move on with the blog!

This was my life for the last couple weeks:

Above is the view of the bike ramp from the side (elevation style). This is a picture of the model, which is not as photogenic as I would like it to be, but alas.

So as you approach the ramp, it wraps around you, creating space within the floor surface, and opening space in the roof as well. There are view points as the rider transitions through the ramp. 

There were a couple different iterations of the ramp, and the one shown in these couple pictures is actually an alternate iteration than the final one, which is pictured below (it's the one in black).

So to the left here

<--------- You can see the alternating roof that I was fooling with. This is only in the alternate model, the one that I presented has a more serious ramp surface and a more regular roof plane. You can check it out below.

It was a fun project to get back into the feeling of designing something, though because we're traveling around so often, my design work sometimes feels a little stinted. 

Our next project should go more in depth, so we shall see how I deal with Zero time in between traveling and studio. 

So the project is basically over, except for a final pin-up of models, drawings, animations and pictures. We're setting it up in the lobby tomorrow, and it should be interesting to see everyone's reactions to our work. 

Surprisingly enough, I learned a lot from this little exercise, and it feels good to get back into it.  A lot of what I learned was actually photoshop stuff.  

I did an animation too, but it's .gif file, and I have no clue how to get it on here, so until I figure it out (any tips?) you'll just have to imagine it!

Next up, I'm going to post about my free weekend! Some great shots, and all the craziness from Motte, Campodolcio, and Bellagio. 

Touching on Bellinzona

First of all, let me say "Mi dispiace" 

I know I haven't been on in a long while, but it's because this has been two REALLY busy weeks (well, one week and two weekends!)

As you know, We were traveling to

Monte Tamaro to see Mario Botta's Santa Maria degli Angeli Chapel, which--for any of you archi-buffs, is a pretty cool place. And we saw it. In person.

This post is a little heavy on the pictures I know, but bear with me, and we'll get through it together. The next post is on my model/bike ramp projects (exciting...? eh.) So soak it up, it may be a while before I get to the post from Campodolcino that you all are looking forward to.

We took the funiculare up to the Chapel, and I would have liked to hike, but we had no time--we had a lunch date in Bellinzona at 12.

Below right is the view of the Chapel as we approached it. You can see the gears of the funicular in the top of the picture.  

It was an awesome ride up the mountain, and I was definitely freaking out over some sweet alpine views. 

The chapel was absolutely gorgeous, and the views were awesome. Botta is not my favorite architect by any standard, even if he's the trademark architect of the Ticino, but this was really nicely done, and my pictures do not do it justice.

Will even took a nap at the chapel!(It was too beautiful to resist a little mid-morning snooze.)

 In fact, according to will it was just too Bottastic. Which is our new phrase for anything Botta-like in the Ticino. We get to use our lame architectural humor a lot over here, with all 16 of us studying here.

So we began the trip to Bellanzona, on our Mercedes tour bus. (which apparently is pretty common around here.)

We got to Bellinzona in time to wander through the market on the way to the Castelgrande, where we were having lunch. (Hell yes, we had lunch in a CASTLE!!)

Will almost got this sweet backpack, and I picked up a little something for Bleighton that I found at a craftsman's booth. The Market is fun, even though everyone pretty much spoke English, so I didn't have to try out too many of my new Italian skills. Which is probably a good thing, considering my skills are a little questionable...

The Castelgrande was pretty awesome, the interior and entrance was done by Galfetti, who is something of a local favorite, and is also (in my opinion) a thousand times better than Botta, just way more under-recognized.

After lunch, which was spectacular and included Polenta-- a local dish which tastes like a better version of grits and is made of corn, we hiked up to the other two castles in Bellinzona (there are three)

 The first one one the right is Castelgrande but is actually taken from the second castle. The hike was fast, because we basically power walked it. We only had a couple minutes to get up to all three castles (as in 30 minutes for a two-hour hike). I can't tell you how much my glutes and calves hurt the next day, I can only tell you that we did the hike in about 1 hour. It was intense... intensely fun!

(lame, I know-- again, you all most likely know me, and in turn my sense of humor, so no apologies here)

The second castle, Montebello is pictured below, and this picture was taken from Sasso Corbaro which is really more of a walled keep, but is also ridiculously cool. I don't have any good pictures of Sasso Corbaro, so I just opted to leave it off. So here are a couple views from each, and you can tell they're pretty far away (a hefty hike).

I'll leave you with a picture of Alice and I at the top of Sasso Corbaro on the ramparts!

Lugano & Milano!

First of all, your daily glimpse of where I live:

So this is the Villa's Lobby. We hang here when we're ready to go out on excursions, or meet up. 

I know, it's pretty amazing. I don't know if I gave you any background on the Villa Maderni yet, so I'll do a little blurbing now:

The Villa Maderni was commissioned by the mayor of Riva San Vitale, who also happened to be the man that led the small area to become the Republic of Riva San Vitale, for probably about two months. The house is over 200 years old (250 actually), and almost everything but the furniture we use daily is just as old as the house! all of the doors, fireplaces, clocks, floors, and rooms are unaltered and original. A lot of the paintings on the ceilings and of the details on the walls are restored to a similar state. It's amazing to live in a place like this. 

I still can't believe it's real to wake up to all of this! It's so strange to see the alps out your window every time you wake up! (that's the view out my window!)

Alright, so again: we've established this place is gorgeous! 

So Friday night, we went (about 30 of us) to a silent film festival in Lugano which is just north of Riva S. Vitale. We walked around the whole city and into the park area, which is... you guessed it: Gorgeous!

After that little trek in the park, we decided to go hunting for a bar, or a club, or anything really. Well, I decided to play sheep for this one, and let the more...intense personalities take the lead. Let's just say we walked around forever. I think that would cover it!

In the end we did make it to the bar, where we spent a lot of the night, just hanging out and having a couple drinks. A lot of us are still getting to know each other (aka the business kids are still getting to know us, and we're still getting to know some of them-- there are a lot more of them!). So then we split a little bit: about ten people went home, and the rest of us elected to stay to go to a club and take the train back early. Well, split we did, but approx. 15 people is still a lot to take from place to place. I swear we look like a mob wherever we go!

It was a ton of fun, and I (typically) spent the whole night dancing. All in all, it's not bad to spend hours walking around when the place you're walking in happens to look like that 

<-------

Eventually we did find our way back to Riva San Vitale (at 4:30 in the morning!!!)

Saturday was (thankfully) low-key, and we spent most of it just hanging out at the Villa. I think everyone needed a break. I went back to the Lido (which is actually how it's spelled, and also how it's pronounced, so please excuse my misspellings from earlier posts) and Julie and I just swan around for a while, trying to ignore the preteen boys being obnoxious (I guess that's the same in every country).

Later that night we started a puzzle of the map of switzerland, but needless to say, that one's going to take a while!!  Everyone just wanted to do something fun (not to mention cheap) so we decided to have a night game of capture the flag. About 20 of us ended up playing, and it was pretty cool. We played in the local elementary school grounds, which is cooler than it sounds. My team won 2 out of 3, so that's enough to make anyone happy!

We called it a night pretty early (especially compared to Friday night) because we were all getting up early to get to go to Milan in the morning at 8 AM!

So today was Milano, and it was really fun. It wasn't too exciting, as we mainly did a fast moving tour of the city. We're supposed to go back with a smaller group, but this time was just a feet wetting for the urban setting. Thankfully, we reverted back to 5th grade and adopted the buddy system. What else can you do when you have 50 people through the streets of Milan?!

So Will was my main buddy, 

(that's him napping beside a bridge when we took a bar break halfway through the day). We basically whipped our cameras out and played complete tourists. It was great. I mean, what else can you do in a mob of so obviously American students?

So this next week we spend in classes and it's Bellinzona on the 29th! 

So until then, Ciao!!

I'll leave you with a picture of the Duomo in Milano [the fourth largest cathedral in the world!]

A little walk around...

So I promised I'd have a couple pictures for you, and so today I'll begin by putting in a couple pictures of the Villa, and the grounds. 

It's been ridiculously hot here for the Ticino, so on Wednesday, we all went to the Leito (beach in Italian) to cool off. I think the whole town was there! 

We mostly kept to ourselves, though I know that once I know more than 5 words in Italian, I'll feel better about going up to them. 

I only know one whole sentence, and that is: Vorrei uno bicchiere di vino bianco, or, "I would like a glass of white wine."

I know, just the important stuff, right?

We started classes yesterday though, and we'll spend an hour sketching each day. I think there's a sort of theme here, where we do each project twice. That means every sketch twice, every project twice. I think it must be about the process. 

There is an elementary school by Galfetti about 50 Meters from the Villa, and we've been sketching that for the last two days (including this morning) though we've been assigned a block of Riva San Vitale per person, and we'll sketch that block the whole semester. My block happens to include the Temple di Santa Croce (my Italian is atrocious, I'm sure), which I'm ecstatic about sketching- it'll be hard to do well, so I'm really glad I've got a whole semester to sketch it!

I love living in the villa so far, though I keep on sleeping through my alarm, because at 7 o'clock AM, the bells at the church ring for mass. It is so intensly loud, that I can't help but sleep through my alarm that goes off at 7:45. Luckily enough, the bells ring again at 8:15. 

It's my own personal alarm and snooze, I suppose.

This just happens to be the view from the computer room attached to the studio. It's from the top floor of the villa, and yes, those beautiful bells would be the bane of my dreams.

So we've established that the Ticino is beautiful... but it's incredibly surreal to wake up to a view like this!

It's impressive to say the least, and from my studio desk, the dome and tower of the Sante Croce are just visible over the classic, tiled roofs of the Ticino. 

All of this, painted against the Alps, stretching off into the sky.

Like, I said...It's kinda pretty here.

Tonight we are going to Lugano, which is a little north of Riva. There's a film festival, and I'm assuming this means, wine, music, and nice weather. So I hope that I'm right about it. 

So for now, I'll bid you adieu, because I need to be at the train station at 7:40

Ciao!!