(written May 9)

As it usually goes during this time of the semester, I have lost contact with the outside world and begun to concentrate entirely on studio. There is only 12 days left until the final review which is unnerving but also anticipated. My studio project is progressing nicely but at a slow pace because of all of the trips that we keep going on as well as the large May Day Holiday.

Since the last blog entry, the group of us has gone on a 4-day excursion of Central Finland to visit some historic and influential architecture. Cleverly enough, in order to keep track of us all, we counted off using P Mac’s application sentence: “Finnish architecture is well built and well designed. Studying architecture in Finland will make me a better architect.” It was such a successful trip that I wish that we would have taken it at the beginning of the semester however, we wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the beautiful weather which gave us our first taste of Finland’s spring. There were a lot of Aalto buildings that we ran across and honestly, not too sure if I am a fan of his work. The layout of some of his designs made sense but when you came across an Aalto, boy did you know it. Italian piazzas curved tiles, mixture of garden and interior and curved forms got old after a while. However, all of the buildings were a good thing to see in person which I didn’t think that I would be able to run across them ever in my lifetime.

May Day, celebrated on April 30^th and May 1^st, was amazing. The weather was beautiful and we celebrated as the Finns do. The 30^th is a day of drinking where most people gather on the steps of Senate Square and wear their jump suits that represent the different academic departments of their colleges. Along with the colorful jump suits, everyone that graduated anytime during their lifetime wore their graduation caps which looked like ‘Popeye’ and sailor-like hats. It was neat to see the different variant colors of the whites: the more yellow ones were obviously from the more distant past while the white ones were fresher out of college. It was adorable seeing older men and woman wearing their hats and strutting around the city. On the first, you are supposed to go out to the park and enjoy a picnic. Fortunately, the weather was perfect and there was a group of us that sat up near the water and enjoyed people watching. This was a pretty big-deal holiday because many of the stores were closed as well as schools. Lucky us. 

Our design/build portion of the semester is also behind us. We just returned from the small island of Utö which we visited back in February for the first time and installed our pavilion projects. Surprisingly enough, without any Building 101 before we got there, they were still standing when we pulled away from the dock and hopefully will stand until they are taken down in the late Fall of this year. Both groups did a great job and we invited the islanders out to celebrate our job well done with a champagne toast. 'Video-ography' was an important part of this trip and between the flip book of the pavilion going up and the rigged up video on the flag pole, being worn out from the manual labor wasn’t enough. Tim has made so many great videos which we can hopefully grab from him. Coming back to Utö gave us another chance to do our marshmallows over the campfire as well as take another look at our site for our sanctuary studio projects.

My plan for the next 12 days is to work non-stop. There are a lot of things that need to be done before I move onto Paris and Barcelona. Designing needs to be wrapped up today or tomorrow, onto sections and elevations, and then of course the dangers of model building will naturally follow. Hopefully I can post some pictures of some trips and projects.