Anyway, we were in Rotterdam! Yay! We stayed at the Bazar hotel which actually sold a bunch of lamps and tea sets like a real bazar. It was very eclectic and I actually liked the hotel a lot. Breakfast was included in the stay and they gave us breads, feta with spices, a hard boiled egg, some lunch meats, turkish wurstel, yogurt, fruit, butter, and a creamy cheese. And, they gave it to us each morning. It was good. I enjoyed the breakfast there. I did end up eating dinner there occasionally and it was good too. So the first day there we went to the NAI - the Netherlands Architecture Institute (translated to english of course) and saw the exhibits there. Pretty much, we did everything I did last time when I was in the Netherlands with the Clemson kids. I actually saw much more last time. When I was with Clemson we rented bikes and zipped around all over the netherlands. This time, we had a guide who didn't prepare for the trip. He kind of knew where things were most of the time, but not really. He didn't know who did what buildings etc. It was annoying. Also while we were in the Netherlands Clemson hired a local architect who would know where things were and what was important about them. My teacher didn't really know either of these things. So from now on I'll try to only write about the new things I did while in the Nederlands.
But anyway, in Rotterdam we took a boat tour. Rotterdam is one of the largest industrial ports in Europe and we saw it by boat. It was a good experience. (We didn't do that with Clemson). That's about the only thing new to me.
In Utrecht we went inside the Rietveld-Schroder house which was really neat to see. It's maybe 2000 sq ft at the most, and the tour took 2 hours. This lady talked FOREVER. But, I really liked seeing inside. The building is all about being flexible. The bedrooms double as the living rooms, all the wall partitions move out of the way, to create one big living room etc etc. It was nice; I would never want to live there. We went to Utrecht on Saturday and the most important buildings are on the University campus, which of course is closed on the weekend. So none of the school buildings were open so we couldn't get inside. Dumb.
We went to the Haag and saw the Richard Meier building and the OMA theater. Those were pretty cool buildings. Also, they have a main shopping street with a parking lot running the main length of the street. This way the pedestrians are on top in the rain, and the cars are underground. It was kind of interesting.
My teacher does know a lot of people though. And, it helped out in the Netherlands because we visited 3 very prominent firms. We visited architecture CIE, MVRDV, and UN Studio. All are very famous firms who are well publicized and well known. It was really good to get an inside look at how they operate, how they function, and just ask questions, and meet somebody from a successful studio.
Erasmus Bridge, Rotterdam by UN Studio
Housing by MVRDV - the competition called for a max footprint, and max height, but wanted too many apartments. The only way to get the proper number of apartments while maintaining the max height and max floor space was to cantilever a few apartments. All the other competition entrants ignored the proposed number of apartments.
The first day in Rotterdam and the first day in Amsterdam were awfully rainy and cold. It was awful. I ended up layering socks, plastic bags, and then shoes to try and stay dry. I did end up staying mostly dry after that, although thats just because it barely rained on those days. One day, the sun even came out. So that was nice.
And no, I did not actually use the can i get a hug expression on a ho in Amsterdam, or to any girl in the Netherlands. As tempting as it was, I can be kind of shy when it comes to strangers so I didn't really meet anybody new in the Netherlands. But, I did learn that the windmills that are everywhere are used to pump water out. Most of Holland is under sea level so they use the windmills to stay mostly dry.
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