Week 9: 16/5/2022 - 23/5/2022¶
This is going to be a busy week with the Camp Nou visit on Tuesday and the all day trip to Figueres and Besalu on Friday. Thursday which would otherwise be open for exploring is Dawn’s second demo for Vicenç Piera so we’ll be busy.
16/5/2022 Monday¶
Today started with an attempt to see the lunar eclipse from the Olympic Plaza at 5:30 am. When I got up on Montjuic I found the gates closed which I hadn’t expected. I couldn’t find any place where I could see the whole horizon to the west. Dawn went down to Glories and saw the eclipse in process from the bus stop. Go figure. No other students met me up on Montjuic so I got some early excercise tromping up and down the steps by Magic Fountain. Interestingly they were starting the Magic Fountain at 6:00 am for some reason. As I walked down the steps from Montjuic the fountain was slowly filling and overflowing. I don’t know if the jets at the bottom fountain ran as well.
Got back home and napped for a while and then went off to teach physics. We discussed issues of NIMBY as well as needed technology upgrades to help distribute any renewables we create. We also discussed standard battery tech and compared it to vanadium reflow batteries as energy storage systems.
Had lunch at a Thai place near the Spanish school where we learned more about indefinite and imperfect tenses and their uses. Starting to feel a little overwhelmed. Walked home along a different road parallel to the Arago. Saw some different places but still much the same. Dropped back down to Arago along the rambla that intersects Arago and Meridiana. Very cool under the trees along the rambla. We are expecting a heat wave later this week.
17/5/2022 Tuesday¶
Tuesday we explored Michael Tilson Thomas’s TED talk about classical music and discussed it’s relationship to other forms and styles. His talk gives a nice introduction to the evolution of musical notation as well as some sense of the classical genre for those who may not have crossed paths with it. Shout out to Michael Gesme and a great teacher from the podium of any performance group.
After class Dawn and I went home to catch up on various tasks. Dawn had a kettlebell class while I went to join Jordi at Camp Nou for the tour of the stadium. Very impressive – it’s the only professional sport venue I’ve ever been to so definitely an experience for me. The tour goes through the museum of all the trophies and the history of the club and includes Messi’s Balon d’Or and Golden Boot awards. Amazing player for sure. Walking down to the turf through the dressing rooms was eye opening since (if it was the normal dressing room) it’s much more spartan than most collegiate football locker rooms. This team and these players are as big as any in the US pros but there is a sense of restraint that shows in varous places. The tour leads you down to the turf (astroturf on the edge and live grass on the pitch) which gives you one impressive view of the stadium. They actually attempt to sell little bits of the turf as a souvenir - nuts. Then the tour takes you up the steps all the way to the upper deck to get the view from up there which is still remarkably good. At this point I wouldn’t worry about any of the tickets that you might get for a game. They will all have a pretty good view of the game. One side of the stadium will be much more sunny than the other depending on season and time. That’s the only thing I’d watch out for. On the way out of course you exit through the store and I got a couple of jerseys at ridiculous prices. One for David at COCC and one for me to irritate Josh with.
Camp Nou at turf level
Camp Nou at nosebleed level
After the tour went home and spent the evening chilling with Dawn.
18/5/2022 Wednesday¶
Astronomy and Spanish today. Explored the core features of cosmology in astronomy and continued to be confused by the various past tenses and how to intuit their use in real conversations. I still feel myself having to notice what I say and stop and correct tenses or conjugations. I am able to communicate many things but I must sound a bit like a deranged child much of the time. We had ramen for lunch near Plaça Tetuan which was lovely. Walked home along a different road that crossed below the Sagrada Familia. We noticed this fence around part of the park which was both lovely and simple as well as being thoughtfully designed so the panel height could be easily adjusted to compensate for changes in soil level. Photos included for reference. Notice that the panels are fabricated individually offsite and then clamped to the vertical ‘posts’ using a custom fixture that is essentially a bolt with custom washers.
Fence at Sagrada Familia
Fence Detail at Sagrada Familia
When we got home it was shopping time and chatting with Jeff about Dawn’s schedule when we get back to the US. Circumstances will mean that our first month back in the US will be a mad dash from place to place to get various important tasks done that have all converged in the last 3 weeks of June. Maybe July will be restful.
19/5/2022 Thursday¶
Today will be a rest and prep day as Dawn has both a kettlebell class in the morning and a demo at Vicenç Piera on Via Augusta at 18:00. We’ll need to find L6 at Catalunya which will be new to us.
In the meantime I’m sorting out a couple of last things to do from Colonia Guell to tracking down some of the sundials on the Sundial Trail. Also need to settle on a provider for healthcare post COCC. It’s a pain trying to make these decisions without easy access to phone conversations. I could call late at night here to catch folks at the office in the US but I’m not focusing well at that point in the day. Ah well.
Dawn’s demonstration went great and all of the staff at the Augusta store are as wonderful as the staff at the Diagonal store. They were all interested and engaged and when there were breaks in the customers they came upstairs to watch. A slightly smaller crowd but just as engaged as the previous demo and they had lots of questions and loved being able to play with the materials to understand what Dawn had just demonstrated. They may not have realized it but part of what Dawn demonstrated was the process of experimenting with new types of paper with the processes in her book. One of the types of paper didn’t support removal of pigment with the razorblade which is part of her point. Learn what your materials do in every setting you can find. It broadens the breadth of your markmaking language. One of the attendees mentioned that she had been told about Dawn’ book at a workshop at CAN (Centre d’Art i Natura) which is an artists residential retreat in the Pyrennes just west of Andorra. The residency program has two spaces which it appears can be rented for personal study (probably with an approval process. In digging into the possibility of visiting it would appear that us normal humans take the train to Lleida and then a bus to Llovorsi which is about a 5 hour trip. Just outside of Llovorsi is Lo Paller de Roc Hotel which is quite close to CAN and could be a way to check it out. Looks absolutely stunning. Getting from Llovorsi to the hotel might be interesting but it is only a couple of km and there is supposed to be two taxi services in Llovorsi.
Below are two views of the demo at Via Agusta. Slightly smaller crowd but very engaged. The woman with the purple head wrap is the one who told us about CAN where she had heard about Dawn’s book.
Dawn Demo II (Agusta)
In the foreground on the left of this image is Anna who is Bernie’s rep in Spain. She took a full video that she will post all or parts of sometime. In the red to the top left is the Polish woman who streamed the demo on TikTok. We’ll have to look for that. A quick check now and I don’t find it but that’s not surprising.
Dawn Demo II (Agusta)
20/5/2022 Friday¶
Boy, today was an up and down day. Started with Tegan calling to say that she has tested positive for COVID the day before she and Tyler are supposed to leave. Tyler is also starting to show the same symptoms that Tegan had a few days ago. They thought about it through the night and decided that cancelling the trip (honeymoon and all) was the right course of action. Huge bummer and we will need to support them when rescheduling is ready to happen. Amazingly they only lost a few hundred dollars on all the cancellations. I’ll have to check and make sure what I need to cancel on this end. The current plan is still for me/us to join Brian and Brenda in Valencia assuming no one else gets sick. The real question is whether Dawn should take this opportunity to head home early so she can be more helpful to Jeff who is currently very sick (not COIVD) and trying to organize the emptying out of the family home. Lots of decision making in the next few days.
Quick hop over to Espanya at 8:00 got us there a little early so we grabbed coffee to go. Same bus and driver from the Zaragoza trip but an extra 9 or so folks from the N Carolina Global Nursing program. Theh are doing a 4 week study abroad here in Barcelona. Almost 2 hr drive to Figueres and the Dali Museum. We had an excellent guide (Sophia?) who was instrumental in helping us understand what we were seeing. This is one museum where I don’t know if you would get it without someone to help you understand what you were seeing and how it related to this remarkable and prolific artist. Hard to explain all the craziness and symbolism though I’m sure any biography will put you in the right frame. It is a remarkable vision of the exploration of the conscious and unconscious mind. Makes you want to pay more attention to your own dreams.
After nearly 2 hrs at the Dali museum we loaded back up for a short drive to the medieval town of Besalu. It has to be said that this was a really hot and humid day even by catalonian standards. Nearly 90 degrees farenheit and 100% humidity in the early morning dropping to 40% humidity as the day warmed up. Same amount of water in the air so we were all dripping. Below is a view along the exterior wall of the museum. Hard to capture the sense of the space both internally and externally.
Figueres Dali Museum Exterior
This is the famous image that looks very abstract and has no clear sense of image until you look at it with your phone camera when out of nowhere it is clearly an image of Lincoln. I still don’t understand the mechanism. The clarity of the image doesn’t come through particularly well in this pacture but it does give a sense.
Figueres Dali Museum: Pixels and Images
Besalu is a lovely small medieval town in the the tradition of many such towns we have seen. A lot like Pals that we saw on our Girona tour and many similarities with Civita that we visited in Italy. The 12th century bridge is truely beautiful and almost worth the trip on it’s own. This is the approach to Besalu across the bridge.
Besalu: Approach
The Jewish mikvah seemed to be closed off in the corner of the Jewish Plaza. Apparently one of the oldest extant in the world. Glad we say the one in Girona when we were there. One amusing anecdote from the day. As we were walking across the bridge we spied a lovely terrace with restaurant tables out that looked like a lovely place for lunch. We barely looked at the menu as we got a table on the terrace overlooking the river and the bridge. When the menu came we were basically aghast to see that the Menu del Dia was 40€. Nobody had ever seen such a thing (no wine with the meal either). Even the swanky restaurants on Passeig de Gracia are only 18 or 20 € for Menu del dia. After some discussion we withdrew and found another restaurant on the plaza where we got 6 meals for less than the cost of 2 at the first restaurant. Good food and lots of variety. Enough said. Lunch was a fairly spanish affair that took us nearly 2 hrs and left us with just a few minutes to explore town. Lovely and it would have been more fun to wander around if it hadn’t been so blasted hot. Below is the image of the after dinner ‘cognac’ that was served that is a Catalonian speciality. Supposedly the herbs are gathered in the night the day after the solitice for making this beverage. Rich and complex flavor.
Besalu: After Dinner
As we walked back after lunch to get a quick sense of the town we went down towards the river through this alley.
Besalu: Alley
When we reached the river we could see some of our group rock jumping into the river with others. It was a wickedly hot day so seems totally reasonable.
Besalu: Rock Jump
Finally, as we walked back along the river we got this lovely view of the entire 12th century bridge.
Besalu: Bridge
Modest bummer when Dawn’s phone (the Spanish one) fell out of her pack when she donated to the local buskar on the bridge and the screen shattered in several places though it remained whole. Later on we stopped at i!Fixit on Marina near the kettlebell studio and after some discussion carefully applied packing tape to the screen to stabalize it. Getting a new screen would take a few days and cost almost as much as the phone which we only need for two more weeks. Hopefully this life hack will get us through to the end of the trip.
Dawn is at life drawing and I am heading off momentarily to pick her up. Then it will be off to bed to sleep before heading out to Colonia Guell to see Gaudi’s crypt and the rest of this project.
Last comment – we have been bothered our entire time here by the atrium lights which shine brightly into our apartment at night. This has led to us keeping the door closed and the window open. Until this recent heat wave that has worked OK but without air circulation it get real stuffy in the bedroom. I was moved to see if there was a switch for the lights in the atrium and found that they are automatic flourescents on the front of the elevator. The one on the floor below is burned out so I went out when we went to bed and twisted the bulb to simulate failure. Worked like a charm and we were able to sleep with the door open. This will be the new plan.
21/5/2022 Saturday¶
Today was our laxt planned Gaudi exploration to Colonia Guell. This town is a few stops passed Sant Boi (by Rio Llobregat) on the way to Montserrat. I had purchased online tickets which then needed to be converted to paper tickets for the ticket readers at the Montserrat tourist booth. In this case we took one of the S trains (any S train from Espanya goes this far) to the Colonia Guell stop. From there it’s not a long walk but my phone has decided that to throttle my data so it was a little unclear which direction to walk. The folks in front of us on the sidewalk had similar questions and asked a gate guard who gave unclear directions which sent us both off in the wrong direction. Eventually, when we hit the edge of Sant Boi, we realized we were heading in the wrong direction and backtracked to get going the right way.
This is a very different sort of Gaudi experience. Colonia Guell is an example of an historic trend during the industrial era (same time in history as the Museu del Ter in Manlleu) when entire factories and towns were built by the company to house and support their workers. Seems similar in some ways to company towns in the coal regions of Appalachia back home. In this case Colonia Guell is the company town created by Sr Guell who was a Andrew Carnegie level industrialist at the time. Guell was also a fan of Gaudi. When his workerd outgrew the modest chapel he originally built for the town he reached out to his friend Gaudi to design and build a bigger church for the community. After nearly 10 years of design work the project started but was defunded after only 6 years. The language implies that Gaudi mysteriously abandoned the project in 1915 but if you get defunded there is nothing mysterious about throwing in the towel. This timeline helped me understand a little better how the various projects overlapped. In any case all that got built at Colonia Guell was the crypt (lower level and the very beginnings of the main level. Never the less it is a fascinating precursor to the forms of the Sagrada Familia. If it had ever been finished it would be equally famous.
The exploration of Colonia Guell is not limited to Gaudi’s crypt though that is perhaps the important draw. Again we had to exchange our electronic ticket for a paper one at the information booth (down a side street), pick up our audio guide, and then return to the crypt to explore it. When I get the images in this document I will describe some of what I thought.
Colonia Guell: Approach to Crypt
The portion off to the right is called the porch and I will return to it later but this gives you a sense of how it relates to the rest of the structure.
Colonia Guell: Porch from Front
Stepping under the main entrance you see the entry to the nave of the crypt. The ribs of this project are much lighter than what we saw in the Sagrada Familia. What is the same are the overall techniques and the many embedded symbols and references.
The columns everywhere are similar to the ones at SF but instead of being solid stone columns they are brick columns covered in various materials from Colonia Guell. Generally it is a mix of slag and clinkers from industrial furnaces with basalt and tile (tencadis) to form the exterior surfaces of the columns. Where he did use basalt columns they were pieced together usually as larger sections at the top and bottom with a longer more slender part in the middle. Apparently the joints contain lead sheeting to distribute the load across the uneven contact surfaces. It also appears that after installation the steps between the larger and small parts of the column were ‘struck off’ to create a smoother transition. The central column combined with the thin exposed ribs forms a clear palm like structure.
Colonia Guell: Palm Form
There was a large tour group in the porch when we arrived so we headed up to the terrace above which would have been the floor of the main sanctuary if the structure had been finished. All that stands are some of the entry porticos and a bell tower. Partially completed wall are stablised with long slate tiles to easily distinguish the restoration and stabilization work from the original work.
Colonia Guell: Original walls stablized
Fascinatingly off to the side you could see from the terrace the ‘boneyard’ where stones and materials that were left at the site when Gaudi abandoned the project (because Guell withdrew funding). It appears that materials for the next weeks or months of work are sitting waiting for the project to restart.
Colonia Guell: Boneyard
According to the audio guide the belltower was a quick project that isn’t consistent with the bigger plan for the church but even so it’s lovely.
Colonia Guell: Bell Tower
We returned down the steps noticing evidence that Guadi was clearly developing structures to manage water runoff from the project with gutters and trenches along the back of the terrace. When we arrived down at the porch we were almost alone as we sat inside. A lovely calming space that reminded both of us of the fireplace feature in Casa Batllo.
Colonia Guell: Porch Interior
From the porch we entered the nave which was pretty quiet since the tour group was up on the terrace. It is a beautiful and intimate space which is what images we had seen suggested. I have many other inmages but this one gives a sense of the space. The pews are replicas from the 60’s so you are allowed to sit on them and they are quite comfortable.
Colonia Guell: Nave
As you enter you can see that Guadi created a receptacle for the holy water (holy water font) at the entrance that he reused exactly at the Sagrada Familia.
Colonia Guell: Font
One feature of this interior is that when you look up you can see all the structural thinking that Gaudi did. Later on when we visited the exhibition space you could see all of the same forms and lines evident in his gravity guided model for the space. Dawn noticed that the ‘spine’ of the ceiling undulates in one continuous thread throughout the entire nave.
Colonia Guell: Ceiling Structure
In this crypt there is a separate space behind the altar for the choir. I would be very interested to know how a choir sounds in this space. There are lots of hard surfaces but few flat ones. It probably has a reasonably long reverb time but the sound would diffuse relatively quickly compared to modern spaces of the same volume.
Colonia Guell: Choir Loft
A lovely curved stairway leads you up to the choir loft and the view back into the nave through the arches is wonderful in it’s own way. In several places you can see Guadi’s characteristic door forms but they are made of much more pedestrian materials than in Casa Batllo or some of the other high end projects. Lots of small signals that he was working out various techniques and understood that this project had a blue collar feel to it since this was a company church in a company town.
Colonia Guell: Into the Nave from Choir Loft
When you return your audio guide to the info booth you are then admitted to the small exhibit space they have. It mostly covers the same social period and issues that the museum in Ter did much better. Go there if you get a chance! However, on the second floor is the most fascinating display. Another replica of the inverted gravity driven design that we saw in the museum at the Sagrada Familia. In this case it has been tidied up a bit being made of chain rather than string with weights attached. Whats very cool is that they have mounted a huge mirror under the model so you can see what Gaudi saw in his mind which is the final structure flipped over. Very cool. Along the wall they also clearly describe and articulate the materials and where they were sourced for the crypt. This exhibit alone made this stop valuable. If you look hard when you’re there (not in the image) you can see the undulating spine that Dawn noticed in the actual ceiling.
Colonia Guell: Gravity form Reflected
From the exhibit we walked a few blocks back to the park and had tapas at a local bar that was well populated with locals. It was a very hot day today (heat wave in western Europe) so everyone was hunting for shade. Along with the Gaudi crypt there are a number of wonderful buildings from this same period that are scattered about town. After lunch we walked slowly past them and marvelled at the intricate brickwork and urban design. In spite of being built 120 yrs ago roughly they still function as effective spaces for folks now. By modern Barcelona standards they are probably even generous space wise. One can’t see inside all these buildings because they are actual residences but they are well cared for which implies that the residents enjoy living in them. None of them are Gaudi projects so they provide a neat counterpoint showing how craftsmen of the time were working with basic materials. Some really lovely stuff as you will see in the images. One large building at the top of the town appear like it might be vacant and it would surely make a fabulous art or design school if the government would support the project. We are not going to make that proposal we decided.
Colonia Guell: Possible Art School
As we walked back back down we were very impressed by the brickwork and the overall effects that they were able to produce.
Colonia Guell: Awesome Brickwork
Colonia Guell: Brick Facade
As we headed back to the train station to head home we again noticed the lovely hillside of flowers shown here.
Colonia Guell: Flowers
Wilting in the heat we headed back to Barcelona. On a lark we decided to try and get to the Barcelona Polo Club to see if we could at least see the pitch. It’s up at the last stop on the L3 (green). When we got there we were allowed into the club to walk over to the terrace that overlooks one end of the pitch. Fortuitously the last game of the Negrita Cup was being played at 2:30 (we arrived at 2:10) so we hung around and watched the game (4 chukkers of 6:30 each). I suspect they shortened the chukkers from the usual 7:30 to keep the horses/ponies from overheating. It was kinda cool to watch. Dawn got some pictures with her big lens. Pretty clear that the general level of financial success at the club was well beyond our social class.
Barca: Negrita Cup Polo
22/5/2022 Sunday¶
Sunday we made two explorations. The first was up to Maria Cristine and the Plaça de la Reina to visit one of the sundials in Barcelona. This is a relatively modern one and is fun because there is no installed gnomen. You have to place yourself at the appropriate point on the sundial and you form the gnomen and cast the shadow. In this particular style of sundial the temporal markers are fixed and the gnomen moves to account for the tilt of the earth and the location along the annual path. Sundials with fixed gnomen have to create different temporal markers for different times of year. The sundial down at the beach at the bottom of Poblenou is of this type. This is the overall layout of the sundial (reloj de sol).
Maria Cristine: Sundial
The analemma is the shape that corrects for the location of the earth on it’s orbit and looks a bit like a distorted figure 8 or infinity symbol on it’s side. Notice the months are labeled along the analemma.
Maria Cristine: Analemma
Here is a gnomen (a really big garden elf) standing in roughly the correct place. The time was off by a bit over 1 hr. Part of that is because of daylight savings time (1 hr) and partly because the local commercial time is off by as much as an hour relative to solar time depending on where you are in the time zone
Maria Cristine: Gnomen
The globe in the corner was a nice integration telling the viewer where they are on the planet.
Maria Cristine: We’re Here!
After exploring the sundial for 15 min or so we decided to walk all the way back to town since we hadn’t had a lot of walking this week. It seemed like it might be fun to walk back along Avinguda Diagonal which is where the Maria Cristine metro stop dropped us. An opportunity to watch the transition from high end and more recent housing to less resourced and older housing on the way home. This is the same area where the materials meeting for the Model Architecture conference was held. As we walked one of the first things we noticed was yet another example of stairs for tall buildings being an external textural feature of the building. This makes a lot of sense when you are rehabing old buildings and you design an external stairwell (like La Farinera) to avoid using up limited interior space. In this newer building it is possibly an homage to that same visual style. Here is the one that caught our attention.
Maria Cristine: External Stairs
Along the way we stopped for a coffee at a place that happened to also have lovely quiches. One of the best morning coffee/snacks we have had in Barcelona.
Maria Cristine: A best version of our ‘normal’ midmorning snack and coffee
Elizabeth (thanks E!!) had posted a note that the Castellers were having a thing at Plaça de la Vila de Gracia at 12:00 so that fit perfectliy with our walking schedule. We arrive at 11:30 and found a wall in the shade from which to watch the event evolve. Three teams began to arrive, the red, blue, and lavendar, around 11:30. Not much was happening until just before 12:00. We got to watch as a number of the team members wound themselves into their sashes. This is definitely a 2 person job as you can see to maintain the tension on the sash to get it tight. It needs to be tight partly because climbers are going to be sticking their toes in it to climb up the tower.
Casteller: Wrapping I
Casteller: Wrapping II
Around 12:00 two of the groups paraded onto the plaça with a linear tower of 3 or 4 that moved. Tough enough to just get into position let along move forward as well. There is video that I will link later when I have time.
Casteller: Warmup
At this point the musicians that support this competition for each team were playing directly in front of us. We never really saw them again but you’ll here them on the video.
Casteller: La Banda
We had a great vantage point along the same wall where the teams staged themselves. Most of the time the teams took turns standing up a tower with great excitement and support. In the begining the towers were shorter which is why they could all go at once. As the towers become taller more support is needed at the bottom and all the participants help stabilize the base for the safety of all. Mostly they started with two on a level and only built 5 levels high. Shortly each group moved to 4 on the lower levels and built 7-9 levels high. The last two levels became very abbreviated since they were little kids (maybe only 5?) one of whom crouched on top (counts as a level I assume) and the other crawled over the top and put up one arm (counts as the last level). Some of the towers used the space in the core to create a linear tower within and then disassembled the outer layer to reveal a very tall linear tower. Finally one group built a tower with 5 or 6 on the lower levels (I’ll have to look more closely at the video) that was very pretty. Afterwards I went to purchase a t-shirt to support the lavendar team but they only wanted 3 € so I don’t understand how it could be a financial support strategy.
After the Castellers (castellers is the plural and it is a catalan word for which there is no spanish equivalent) Dawn and I walked home passing E, Jed, and the fam at Sagrada Familia. We stopped for gelatos on the Clot Rambla due to the heat. Got home and turned on the AC to cool off before Dawn headed off to Life Drawing.