Field Trip to Northern Italy: Milano, Pt. 1

The entirety of last week was one part field trip, three parts architectural history lecture. We left Termini at 6:45 am Monday morning; a group of thirty tired and disgruntled architecture students blindly following the professors onto a train leaving for Milan. After being seated, everyone fell asleep once more, trying to reclaim the lost early morning hours that should have been devoted to slumber instead of activities. Thus, the rest of the train ride was uneventful.

We arrived in Milan around 10:30 am. Our group stumbled off the train and walked across the street to the tram station to get to our hotel. Upon arriving at the hotel, we dropped off our luggage and immediately left for our first destination at Piazza del Duomo, an area with magnificent medieval architecture. Our analysis professor and Milan native, Luca Molinari, met with us and showed us buildings that we as a class had only seen on a projector screen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We saw the Grafton Studios, a beautiful project that allowed for many photographic opportunities because of its consideration of light and how it interacts with the space. Just as true architecture students do, we flooded into the building that was opened to us and started snapping photos, desperately trying to find a shot that hasn’t been photographed and somehow capture a moment in the building that hasn’t yet been noticed before. After going through the studios and being carefully watched from afar by security, we exited Grafton Studios and headed towards the Fondazione Prada.

Fondazione Prada was more impressive in person than in pictures. It partially encompasses the Golden Palace; a 20^th century building that has a gold-coated façade. I am not sure if the allure of gold was too much, or if one tired archie was too exhausted at this point to even lift their head, but only a few minutes after our arrival, the security was scolding someone who had chosen to rest their face on the shiny gold wall face. This demonstrates the authenticity and value of the building’s façade.

The professors told us that after we toured the Golden Palace and saw the entirety of the Fondazione Prada, we could make our way back to the hotel. Keep in mind, we had been going non-stop since about 5:30 that morning, so my friend and I decided it would be best to go to the top of the gold tower and immediately afterwards go to the hotel. We fell asleep easily that night, wondering what we would encounter the next day at the Milan Expo.