Archive for August, 2012

29
Aug

Forrest Gump Should Have Tried Out Rome

By Heidi Schmitt Closed
Categories: Uncategorized

The first couple of weeks here I would get up early to go for a run through the city.  Since the temperature here has been nothing short of sweltering, I’ve found that a six a.m. run is essential in order for me to make it back before my face drips off and cooks on the sidewalk (I learned this the hard way; I witnessed a broken egg frying on the road on my first outing).  Each night, I would find a place to run on Google Maps, which in itself is its own task.  Should I run to the Pantheon or the Colosseum?  Sometimes I would find myself so overwhelmed by the insane reality of running to such monuments that I would close my eyes and point to a place on the map.  Saint Peter’s Basilica? Works for me.

I have found that I am terrible at retaining the map in my head when I am actually on my run, so I have gotten lost a few times.  I can usually find the larger and more frequented monuments, however I am easily confused in the back streets of Rome when looking for lesser known sites.  But even if I do get lost, I am still caught up in the fact that I can pick out a place that I have seen before in text books and lectures and run to it.  I describe myself as running, but a giddy skipping motion is more accurate.  I must look insane (another great benefit to running early), but what percentage of the current collegiate population can do this?  I make it to my destination about fifty percent of the time, and if you can imagine my enthusiasm for simply running through the streets of Rome, then actually finding the place that I intend to see is similar to planning and then forgetting about my own surprise party.  I usually stand on site with a glazed grin on my face, do a little dance, explore, and then head back home.  It is the best way to start a day.

Everything changed this week when my roommate Lily showed me her running route.  We live in Trastavere, which is about a twenty minute walk from the city center of Rome.  In the opposite direction, a residential neighborhood continues up a steep grade.  Lily proceeded to take me up this hill, winding past quiet local bars and grand overlooks on the city.  About a mile away, she led me to the entrance of a park wedged between two lanes of traffic.  We stepped through a rose colored arch and entered a runner’s Narnia.  Everyone must come here when they stay in Rome.  The sun filters through tall trees and highlights a Nike-trodden trail.  Half a mile down the path, a beautiful villa emerges and marks the starting point for miles of trails through wooded fields.  Italians, not tourists, are everywhere.  Upon this sacred ground, millions of kilograms of pasta are being burnt off as we speak.  The park has quickly become my favorite place to go after a full day of sketching facades in the city.  Running amongst the other runners also saved my form; I am forced to keep the hopping, skipping, and jumping to a minimum in order to retain my Italian disguise.  If, however, Chariots of Fire happens to appear on my playlist, I can’t make any promises.

28
Aug

A Crash Course of Rome

By tsw38@cornell.edu Closed
Categories: Architecture and Field Trips
Tags: , ,

At the heart of it all, I’m really just a small town boy with a lot of hopes and aspirations for myself and my future. Coming from a small family and being a first generation college student, I had no idea that in my third year of college, I would be traveling half way around the world. But here I am, in a foreign country, sitting down in my foreign chair, and writing about my foreign experiences.

It’s pretty awesome.

Last weekend, the vast well of knowledge of all things Roman, Prof. Jeffrey Blanchard (pictured above), took us all on a tour of some monumental locations of Rome and although it lasted through the blazing heat wave, every moment was filled with so much interesting history, you almost didn’t notice the heat…almost. But seriously it was scorching hot last week, it was easily somewhere near 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
But I guess the actual tour would be better to talk about. We started our day traveling to the Jewish Ghetto which is a stone’s throw away from our studio, made a quick stop at the Palazzo Mattei di Giove and then continued on our tour. We eventually made our way to the Piazza del Campidoglio which brought us to a panoramic view of the Roman Forum and Imperial Fora. I’m not sure if you’ve ever had that feeling where you have spent your entire life only having the ability to see far off places through textbooks, magazines or some other publication and then you have the chance to actually see those places in real life, it’s sort of like an out-of-body experience. From inside a textbook you can’t really feel the history of the cobblestones and pillars, or the millions of people that once stood exactly where you are standing thousands of years before you. History is really lost inside those pages that were meant to preserve it.

With this in mind, as soon as we departed that spot we headed over to Santa Maria in Aracoeli (one of the infamous churches of Rome), and honestly, nothing I have ever seen before could compare to the detail and artistry that went into this church and many others in Rome. Although Santa Maria in Aracoeli and San Giovanni in Laterano now are highly regarded as touristic locations, nowhere else seems as holy and religious than these divine architectural masterpieces.

What seemed like an eternity after we saw the Santa Maria in Aracoeli (because of the heat, which was probably more realistically closer to an hour) we walked to the Colosseum over a small hill (aka a fiendishly dry mountain to us) and then down a few scenic streets and reached our lovely air-conditioned tour bus. Jeffrey continued to show us more of the Colosseum, Circo Massimo (Circus Maximus), Piazza Venezia and Terme di Caracalla, all whilst sitting comfortably away from the blistering heat.

Right before lunch we visited the Fosse Ardeatine Monument (pictured above) which was an experience: during our time there, it was a violation to talk, and so everyone walked and absorbed the surroundings in complete silence, making it that much more of a powerful monument.
Jeffery ended our tour by taking us to San Giovanni in Laterano (pictured above with Santa Maria in Aracoeli), Piazza del Popolo and then finally, the Piazza di Spagna (Spanish Steps). Although it was a very very long day, and it was so abnormally hot, Jeffrey Blanchard did a fantastic job taking us through many significant areas of Rome and showing us key areas that were not just beautiful, but also had a substantially long and elaborate history. With a simple 7 hour tour of Rome completed on a Saturday afternoon, I can’t wait to see what he does to our week long trip coming along later this semester.

A Presto,
Tyler.

28
Aug

La prima settimana

By Jackie Krasnokutskaya Closed
Categories: Architecture and Classes

At the moment I am sitting in the beautiful Palazzo Larzzaroni, that we call studio, and drawing for our first assignment. This building is very different from Milstein Hall, to say the least. Instead of the floor-to-ceiling glass panels that I am so used to, the palazzo has windows with shutters. Instead of a white ceiling with skylights, there is a vaulted ceiling, ornately painted. What concerns me most at the moment, though, is that instead of having an electronic sensor which controls the HVAC system, the palazzo is back-to-basics, which means opening the windows to get some fresh air. Unheard of!

Classes started this week, and yet today is the first time I am actually spending several hours sitting in the palazzo. This may seem a paradox at first glance, but, in reality, it’s pretty typical of classes in Rome. Every one of my classes went on a “site visit” this week around the city. Textbooks are almost unnecessary here because “the city of Rome is our (free) unique textbook that offers the images on a scale of 1:1 and in 3D”, as Jan Gadeyne, one of my history professors, so eloquently stated in his syllabus.

This semester I am taking studio, two history classes (one about ancient Rome, and one about the Renaissance and Baroque), a theory class, and a contemporary Rome seminar. Studio meets twice a week (a welcome change!), on Mondays and Thursdays. This week we started working on our first project, for which we are drawing and analyzing several palazzi and other buildings from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Thus began a week of walking around in our large group of students, while each professor lectures in situ.

It almost feels similar to walking through Rome with a tour guide, but with several important differences. For one, the walk involves juggling a sketchbook, SLR camera, and water bottle, while avoiding tourists, listening intently, and taking notes. This may seem like an impossible feat, but while there is definitely an art to it, I think I’m getting better. More importantly, the lectures are much more intelligent, relevant, and interesting than what a regular tour could offer, so it’s worth the occasional struggle. Luckily, I haven’t dropped my camera yet.

Excitingly, this semester marks the first time I don’t have class on Fridays. Because studio always meets three times a week in Ithaca, this will also be the only time I get to experience such a luxury. The potential of this is really exciting, because it means I can take short trips on the weekends without feeling as much pressure from my classes. Even without traveling, having a three day weekend allows me to get my work done at a leisurely pace, while still having time to explore Rome.

28
Aug

Photo-Blogging

By Nick Cassab Closed
Categories: Architecture, Classes and Daily Life

PHOTOBLOGGING

Ever since I found out Cornell had hired me as a photoblogger I knew I was going to have to step my game up in the photography department (and in the writing department, but that’s another story).  So I signed up for photo in Rome, bought my first DSLR, and tried to practice as much as I could.  I picked up some tips, and some tools, along the way and I thought I’d share them with you.

Exposure Compensation:

Picked this tip up in the manual of my Canon, basically there’s a tool that lets you bracket the meter on your camera so that you’ll take a series of photos at different exposures.  This is great if the light is really bright in some areas and dark in others, as you can take several shots to test out which exposure might be best.  When paired with continuous shooting, you can take 3 identical shots at different shutter speeds, and I’ve heard that later on you can piece these photos together in an HDR image.

Panoramas:

Panoramas have been very easy to take with my iPhone camera using the app Photosynth, but using a series of 10 MB images taken from a DSLR may not be the best idea, considering your panorama may end up being at least a Gig in size.  But if you feel so inclined, the makers of Photosynth, i.e. a department at Microsoft, have made a desktop version they call I.C.E.  It’s pretty nice in that it let’s you make planar panoramas as well as spherical panoramas.

 

Orthographic Images:

The last tip/tool is something that is still very much a work in progress, but it’s pretty nice that it blends well with taking photos/ studio work/ and history.  Pretty recently Autodesk came out with a free tool called 123d Catch.  It’s a tool that creates a fully textured 3d mesh from a series of photos.  What that means is you can go around and snap a bunch of pictures of anything, and with a little work from this tool, you can produce a 3d representation of whatever you were taking pictures of.  I’ve been using this tool in conjunction with Rhino and Photoshop to make orthographic photos of renaissance facades.  I’m still waiting for one of these things to end up perfect, but hopefully by then I’ll be able to use this to map our site for studio.

 

20
Aug

cinquanta shades of roma

By pbg43 0 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

Before I boarded the plane from New York to Rome, I had a bit of time by myself in the airport during a six hour layover.  I remembered that a friend from home had written me a letter that I was not to open until I had begun my travels.  While waiting to meet up with the rest of my group flight, the lonely terminal seemed the perfect place to read it.  She herself had just come back from abroad and she wrote to me about the culture shock, and about feeling awkward and awestruck at the same time.  She told me to talk to everyone, no matter how strong the language barrier.  While reading this, I suddenly became more excited to go than I had ever felt before.  Until I had read the letter, Rome had been a distant place tossed around in studio when we wished for stronger coffee (i.e. vino).   But the reality of my semester abroad hit me in that terminal and I realized I felt no need to look back on anything.  There was only onward, upward, and the possibilities that lay ahead in Rome.

 

It’s now been only a few days into our four month long stay here, so I am only able to describe the outer layer of this enormous onion.  What I first noticed is that Italians primarily move about in shades of grey.  In Rome there are definite places you should walk, and definite places where you shouldn’t, but the spectrum between the two extremes is very large.  Rather than the black and white zones of road to curb to sidewalk to front lawn to building, everything blends together and it takes a grand gesture (less like a curb and more like a façade) to divert traffic. There are few sidewalks, especially on the back streets, so when a car or vespa is not coming through, the street becomes pedestrian territory and vice versa.  These slackened boundaries certainly heighten my twenty minute walk to class each day; playing real life frogger with a revving scooter is obviously more exciting than dodging students determined to reach the stacks before you do.

 

Though I can only now describe with certainty the rules of movement within the city, I have a feeling that the grey areas go deeper within the social spectrum.   I have met many friendly Italians and already I know that just because you may not know a person’s name or even speak their language doesn’t mean that you can’t learn something from them. I think this is why it seems possible for anything to happen here. Though this idea comes with all new places, perhaps the constant flux in Rome perpetuates it since the boundary lines seem much more blurred.   Justin Bieber may have been too cool for us in Ithaca, but is it too much to think that an Italian pop star may mistake me for his ex-singing partner here and scoop me up on his scooter to perform at the Colosseum?  I think not.

 

-Heidi Schmitt

20
Aug

the 8 euro cappuccino

By Nick Cassab 0 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized
cappuccino on a marble table

My seat at the Caffe Greco

If your waiter is wearing coat tails, and you’re wearing cargo shorts and sandals, it doesn’t matter how daintily you sip your 8 euro cappuccino, you’ll still have an odd sensation that you don’t fit in.  But then again, with Brahms playing in the background and the decor of a 5th avenue apartment, this place didn’t really fit in.  So it seems only perfect that in the least Roman Cafe I’d been to all week, I sat down to write my “first impressions” blog post.


My first impression of the Caffe Greco: this place was here before America was a country.  Stuck halfway between a tourist trap and a living monument, the cafe is a must see for some.  I went specifically because I read somewhere that the likes of Goethe, Keats and Stendhal all had Coffee there.  And if you venture towards the back of the cafe, you’ll notice a large picture of Sitting Bull sitting at a coffee bar identical to the one you passed on the way in.


I sat across from the picture of Sitting Bull, and daintily sipped my cappuccino.  It was the longest amount of time i’d ever spent sipping a cappuccino.  I found myself wishing the experience to never end, and I’m not sure the waiter shared my sentiment.  He didn’t rush me though, and I’m sure he would’ve let me sit there all day if I wanted to, but we all must move on.  So I paid my bill and made my way to the vatican to send postcards.


My first impression of Rome is embodied by my experience at the Caffe Greco.  Rome makes you feel like never getting up from your seat, and that no matter how much time you spend in that seat, you will never comprehend the volumes of importance and history that immediately surround you.  Time is one thing I have yet to attain a full appreciation of, especially if I still think 1760 is old.  But I’m working on it.

17
Aug

And so it begins

By tsw38@cornell.edu 0 Comments
Categories: Daily Life and Events
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Ciao tutti!

Allora, mi chiamo Tyler e sarò il vostro residente artista.

As much as I would love to write this entire blog in Italian, I think for both of our benefits it’s probably for the best that I refrain…At least for the time being.

So let me tell you a little bit about myself before I chronicle the next few months in Rome. I come from a very small town out in the middle of nowhere in southwest Florida, called Punta Gorda. I’ve got an older brother and younger sister, two really small really hyperactive dogs and two extremely supportive parents. Back when I was applying to colleges one of the most important things for me was to be able to study abroad; you see, because I’m a first generation college student, the only information that I was able to get on the subject was from TV shows and second hand stories from my friends’ older siblings.

As clearly jaded as I was, I kept an optimistic outlook for my future while in college. I was really fortunate to get accepted to Cornell, primarily because the last time a person from my high school got accepted into the university was 5 years prior to my own, so I thought my chances were slim-to-none.

I’ll just skip the first year, in short it was fantastic, eye-opening and freeing.

Last year I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to spend my spring semester in the AAP New York City program, and I can honestly say that it was the most fun I ever had…well, until now. It was really the first time I was able to live on my own, without much help from school and my parents. But now that I’m about 5500 miles away, being free is such an understatement. I’m living in an apartment with 4 other art majors, about a 15 minute walk away from all the studios, and I’m living in ITALY!!!!

How often do you talk to someone and they say “Oh yea, I spent 4 and a half months in Italy, and I got to go travel to Venice, Naples, Tuscany….etc”? Never. So I had to take it upon myself to be that person in conversations.

But in all seriousness, it’s been one of the greatest changes in my life, and I’m the happiest I have ever been. The food is fantastic, the buildings are beautiful and the history is just something you can’t forget while you’re strolling down one of the many cobblestone streets. The students this semester have the opportunity to study architecture or art, travel to monumentally historic locations you only get to read in textbooks and see online, and for a short time, be a part of something bigger than themselves. I’ve only been here since the 3rd of August, but Rome has already started to become a part of me that I will never forget.

So that’s me in a very abbreviated nutshell, and if you’re reading this and have any questions or comments, feel free to shoot them our way and one of us bloggers will be more than happy to respond.

A Presto.
-Tyler Williams

16
Aug

Le Prime Impressioni

By pbg43 0 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

Ciao, Italia! After years of anticipation, I am finally here. I spent this summer doing a traveling architecture studio and then traveling with friends, so to do laundry and to hide my backpacking backpack in the darkest corner under my bed have both been exciting aspects of settling into my new home.

 

I live with seven of my architecture friends in a great apartment overlooking the Tiber River on a street called Lungotevere de’ Cenci (“lungotevere” literally means “along the Tiber”). Although being alongside the Tiber also means being alongside a busy street which gets loud at night, and although there is an old lady downstairs who notoriously complains about the slightest noise, this is by far the coolest living set-up I’ve ever had. Primarily, this has to do with how huge the apartment is. In collegetown (oh, that faraway place), it is fairly common to live with seven other people in one disintegrating house, but it is unheard of for so many people to live in one apartment. Here at Cenci, though, the wide hallway, the high ceilings, and the huge rooms make it completely possible and even great. Granted, most of us have roommates (I share the room with my friend Carly), but the size of the rooms makes that easy.

 

One of the first things I noticed in Italy, and this rings true of other European countries I’ve been to this summer, is that Italians make extended eye contact on the street. However, this is usually neither inviting nor aggressive. It seems to be because they are genuinely curious about other people they see, and don’t think there is anything wrong with showing it. In the United States, if I ever wanted to take a closer look at someone I see in a public place (hypothetically, of course), I would have to be sneaky about it. Here, it seems culturally normal to look at others and not feel obligated to smile or say anything. Good thing, too, because Rome seems to be a people-watcher’s paradise.

 

I have now written what seems to be the majority of a blog entry, and I haven’t even touched on the city itself. In fact, I am rather avoiding the issue, because I don’t know where to begin to describe a metropolis so layered with history and culture. I have been here for a week now and I spent the last three days with my parents, who were visiting me before school starts. I have been going on extended walks every day, with either my parents or my roommates. By now, I’ve seen most of the touristy sites and explored a few monasteries and back alleys, but I feel as if I am just beginning to get a grasp on this city. The more I see, the more I want to see. I can’t wait for September, when the majority of tourists will go back home and Italians will return to Rome from vacation. As an architecture student, I search for authenticity in every place I visit, and so far it’s been hard to catch more than glimpses of that in Rome. When the masses of tourists are gone, I hope to find more of the “real Rome”, whatever that may be!

-Jackie Krasnokutskaya

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