Obviously, it's Saturday, and I skipped writing about yesterday, so I need to get back to that… Before I do though, I just have to say how *tired* I am! But I slept a full 8 hours ish (I have for the last 2 nights!!!) and even had a 2 hour ish nap today! I don't know why I am so sleepy….
To Friday, 2-12-10 then:
As I said on Thursday night, we had our excursion to the City Planning office on Friday -- and it was really quite interesting!!
As it's been for every other excursion, none of us really understood much of what was being said to us, but luckily, this trip was *very* visually oriented.
The coolest parts, hands down, were: the large, scale model of Moscow Proper (*every* single building, and even lots of trees!!!), and the *hand drawn* map that was probably at least 25 feet tall (maybe 15 wide?) !!!! Remember when I said we don't understand much? -- I definitely understood the "without computers" part of our guide's description of the map. (We all did, and were quite impressed.)
Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, so I have ZERO pictures of the trip!!! I may have to ask John if it normally costs anything/is ok to go visit; in the meantime, I'll try to bum pictures from some of the other students. And, well, worse comes to worse, I'll still *be here* for whenever they go again. Ha ha ha!
I should explain a little bit more about the room where the Moscow Model is located. It is a *huge* room, with the model located right in the center, and located all around the perimeter of the room are models of different buildings, and lots of information on the walls. Each of those little "stations," comes with a building model and information about the area as well as the project; it is like that for many different parts of the city!
It was fascinating to see what is being planned for Moscow's architecture in the future. One project looked like they're going to build themselves a veritable winter sports park (man-made mountain-ish range) -- so that when it snows, voilá! -- instant peaks, ski slopes, etc! I'd never seen anything like it.
On a more somber note, however, I was thinking of Polina (my host family's daughter) a little bit as I was walking around the room, remembering the conversation we'd had about a few of the skyscrapers going up around the part of town she lives in. I wrote it before, but in case anyone missed it -- she doesn't like them at all, because they ruin the "look" of the neighborhood. In another place, they might be pretty, but not where they are now.
I couldn't help but think of that, especially as I looked at one project, full of beautiful, modern-style sky scrapers [I think it was titled something with International Center, but I'm not sure…] -- the buildings *were* beautiful; but I don't see how they could possibly match anything around them…
What do you do when you have designers and designs that want to push the limits of what you can do with buildings, or make something "new" and "astounding," -- but who seem to forget that some of the most beautiful buildings we have today were built hundreds of years ago, with none of our "modern technology?"
Something to think about, I believe...
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