At long last, but not least!

In the last week, things have been extraordinarily busy. But there is no lack of things to write about, as a result. In no particular order, since that isn't relevant, I'll cover the following locational adventures: Uffizi, Ostia, Rome, Santo Spirito, Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, Auction Museum, Monastery, Jail. Are you ready for run-on sentences?.......ok.

UFFIZI MUSEUM:

The Uffizi Museum is a huge structure with a series of arches, leading you to Piazza Republica from the river at the south. The museum has a LARGE COLLECTION of mind-numbing (and I use this phrase accurately here) religious paintings and artifacts. The religious painting collection was impressive, of course, but it actually seemed muted against certain works, namely the David sculpture by Michaelangelo and The Birth of Venus by Botticelli. The David is massive-atleast 20 feet tall-and my knees weakened during the first two minutes of looking at its softness crafted from a most impossibly hard material of marble. The spirit of humanism is personified in his grace. His gaze is inquisitive, and he GLOWS from within. Glows, ya'll. And then-The Birth of Venus. I got chills. No. Listen. It is a dream, imagined consciously, and re-dreamed. Infinitely ungraspable, it was like looking into a part of my brain forgotten, but from the third person's (still my own) stance. If you can imagine that, you can understand what I still cannot grasp. It was that. And then, my other favorite painting should not go unmentioned. It is the unfinished Michaelangelo which is mostly burnt oranges, golden yellows, and browns with dark pencil-lined figures on a 10 X 15 ft tall canvas. The layers that he used to build up his painting are realized in this piece. So many layers are there, and yet, it still feels like a million more complete thoughts, a fragment of which I am capable of completing. (We have so far to backtrack, and so far to go). To see his thoughts, laid out there on the canvas looking somewhat like a brain exploded in tones of wounds-to see where his mind changed, and where it committed. It is the ultimate timeline and map all in one.

PONTE VECCHIO:

Tom is having us choose a piazza and analyze it. Though Ponte Vecchio is not a piazza, but a bridge (ponte), it is what I will be analyzing.

Just imagine for a moment, an urban street, 15 feet wide. It is cut off from car traffic. It is sloped at a slight curve upwards (as bridges tend to be curved) towards the middle. Large rectilinear stones diagonally pave the street, and orthagonally pave the sidewalks, which are 5 feet wide. There are shops on the sidewalk edge with tiny 6 foot doors that are 2 feet wide. Jewelry glitters in the all glass fronts, and the buildings are two to three stories tall, protruding off the bridge, hovering and braced by large timber beams, angled down and tied back into the bridge. These little buildings are gold, peach, tan, and cream, with terra cotta roofs. This massing breaks at the center or the bridge, at which the point the bridge (with the absence of buildings) opens up to be a 60 X 45 foot open area. Here, people romance, play music, look out and take pictures, and rest. Ponte Vecchio is, to me, the compass of Firenze. People are always crowded on this bridge, and have been since 1080. Scaled to the human, it is no wonder why it remains successful.

DUOMO:

Short but sweet, this structure annoys me from the outside. I haven't the patience (a little too easily distracting, i suppose) for high amounts of detail. I appreciate the human craftsmanship, nonetheless. And the devilish paintings on the dome are hysterical. The climb was the best part-not because of the destination, but because of the cavernous and steep, twisted nature of the stair system. It was always narrow, and sometimes narrower, circular and sometimes straight. Punctured by tiny windows until the top, this not-so-gruesome-as-it's-made-out-to-be-climb of 436 (or is it 463) steps was more exciting than the view! But the view was good, mostly because I realized that, "Hey, That was IT? That was easy!" I did, however, meet a sweet man from Japan, and we spoke partially broken english. At the end of this, he gifted me a little fan that he had brought from Japan, and gave me his card for me to call him when (and if) I ever make it there. Tom was tickled by this encounter. But he has NO IDEA how much I love meeting people from around the world.


AUCTION MUSEUM:

Happened upon this alone. Art by unknowns. Finally. Some moving, some 'meh'. Enough said.

SANTO SPIRITO:

O M Gee, Brunelleschi. MASTERPIECE. The ratios, the scale, the emotion. They whelmed. Not over, or under, but just. I can't describe it yet. I have to draw it. No photos allowed, ya know? To put it simply- I'm glad I saw it before we went to Rome and saw the Basilica, because I was beginning to lose faith in man's respect for simplicity. This was strengthened today by another visit to one of Brunelleschi's structures, San Lorenzo, which preceded Santo Spirito in its erection and was never finished. The outside was never finished, that is, but until someone told me that, I though it was. Because it's tactile and simple. Imaginable and strong, it is not oppressive.

MONASTERY:

Most memorable of this is the monks quarters, which were more private than the rest of the complex. Thus they were also devoid of overly-elaborate works of art. The architecture spoke at four levels. The largest of these was the roof structure, which was a GIGANTIC hip roof with exposed structural timbers of a golden brown color. This roof structure, however, served as a canopy, and did not touch the second structural tier, which is the living quarters. At the furthest distance of 25' below the roof, the quarters were stucco, same sized, cellular and surrounded the floor. There was a center area, a hallway, and the outside ring lined the perimeter. These cells had their own ceilings, which were 10 feet tall, as opposed to how it was in the hallways, where no ceilings existed (but the space extended up and out to be part of the void created by the heavy timber canopy being SEPARATE from the secondary structure). In these rooms, the third layer was created by the amount of light afforded by the most genius window system I have ever seen. There was one window per cell. It was 1) bars, 2) glass, 3) big door, 4) small door cutout of big door, ALL of which hinged to become little nests of one another, except for the glass, which hinged in the opposite direction. This layering could change not only in the way it lit the space (amount of light), but also in function, which is HOW IT SHOULD ALWAYS BE. The fourth layer, which happens external of the architecture, is the city. When in the monastic cells with the window completely open, the fourth layer is that MOMENT that the outside world can be seen from inside, and vice versa. To me, this is the ultimate experience. Windows and doors are the most important when they DO exist, and must have a purpose (if not many) WHERE they exist.

JAIL:

Not much to say, except that this jail has been renovated into the Alfani al David apartments. They are considered to be beautiful inside, and so, I wonder why a jail cannot be the same. It gives me hope for my thesis, is all.

ROME:

AH, Roma. Big big big. Lots of people. People of all classes and colors. Peddlers, Gelato, Tall buildings, old buildings, people not so nice, Tom speedwalking to see it all with us desperately trying to see it all with him, Trevi Fountain, Piazzas. PANTHEON! RUINS! I repeat. Pantheon. Ruins.

Pantheon. And I stress both syllables when I tell you. MAG IC. I refuse to explain it.

RUINS!!!!!

Playtime! Florence, and especially Rome, lack NATURE. There is very little grass to touch or trees to lean on. I have needed nature. I loved the ruins for this reason, and for the infinite quality of their erosion, which is always an appealing thing to me. I don't like new. I like a story. I like to be able to complete the vision in my mind. I don't like for it to be shoved in my face (ie Basilica), but I like a little "je ne sais quoi". Little traces, completed and in-completing thoughts linger in the vision, intermingled with a skewed understanding of quantity of people, their mutterings, the volume of their mutterings, their expressions, their interactions, what they carried and sought and where, where they walked at what pace and with what gait and posture, and how all of these things affected the architecture they built, and how the architecture was affected by these such things. THIS is what I was thinking.

and to further the glee...

OSTIA:

Michael, Michael, Michael. You lucky duck. From around 1000 BC to 100 AD, a place made of gray tombs and indigo flowers, mosaics intact, one black and white cat, lots of hills and green things, brick arches overgrown by vines, making dream-like passageways from ruins into more ruins (but for a moment, when looking only at passageways, you can glimpse the moment as existing now-the walls reappear and imagined ceilings exist on the other side of doorways, and someone is putting their little Ostian bambinos to bed on a bed of straw on top of a stone pier just on the other side of the brush). The red poppies, the seven stone roads, Decumanus, PERFECTLY STILL FUNCTIONAL most well preserved theater STILL being used (in fact, sound check was happening while I visited). There was a wall. Along this wall, there were about 5 stairways parallel with the wall, spaced about 20 feet away from each other. This wall was overgrown on the other side by green things. Up the steps and back down to the other side, and It was not only a wall at all, but TOMBS! A little doorway was there, I flashed my camera, and there was a rectangular grid of empty graves. Predictably, since Ostia used to flood (which is why it was eventually abandoned), they didn't want the bodies to float away. And the craftsmanship. And the SCALE. THE SCALE. The doorways fit for a person, the ceilings just tall enough to act as shelter, the walkways between houses wide enough for four people, and the main material of red bricks. The use of fingers and force of man directly against objects can be felt in the plan and circulation, and it can be experienced. It is experiential. There was a story-there still is. The image is infinite.