Flaneurs
About to head to bed after a day that went from rainy and
bleak to quite excellent.
After I wrote last, I went and got lunch of some fried fish, fries, and a salad before coming back to the hotel and heading to the gym for a while. Following cleaning up from the gym, I relaxed in my room, watching the rain come down and the waves crash on the beach, as I had afternoon tea. The waves were remarkably relentless and the ocean was white from the pounding of the surf as the rain continued to come down.
I shot Stuart a text (as I knew he was coming in in the arvo) to see if he wanted to head over to the lecture which had been announced for tonight (errr, last night) as I knew he was the only one from the other conference who would be down for it (most people are coming in Tuesday as the conference technically starts Tuesday night). We decided to meet in the lobby of the hotel around 5:30 to make the 25 minute walk to the Gold Coast City Gallery where the lecture was to be held. While rainy and VERY windy, it was a pretty easy walk.
The lecture, “Flaneurs in Automobiles: Urban Perception and the Mobilised Gaze in ‘Learning from Las Vegas’” (see mom, I am not the only one who uses such flowery language in architectural academia) was given by Martino Stierli of the University of Zurich. For those of you who are non-architects (so, I would presume, all of the readers of this blog) the lecture was about Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s book Learning from Las Vegas (which yes, mom, I learned about in school), and the relevant takeaways in present day context which were not necessarily explored in their studio at Yale in the 1960s.
About thirty or forty people attended the lecture (which, according to Stuart was only comprised of five or so people from SAHANZ), but it was a good introduction to my architectural time in Gold Coast (which I have confirmed is actually the name of the city where Surfers Paradise is – so it does not need the qualifier “the” [which I kind of already knew, but have now independently verified]). After the lecture concluded and I had been introduced to all the relevant people, Stuart and I headed back to Surfers Paradise to muster up some dinner. We settled in at an Irish pub (mmmm Irish soda bread, steak and Guinness pie, chips, and a pint of Guinness – like being back in Dublin!) and began to chat about architecture, architectural academia, Australia, and America. The talk lasted us back through the rain to the hotel, and well into the evening once back, ending just a bit ago.
All in all, I have really been reassured about my trajectory and know that I have not only a contact in the world of Australian architectural academia, I have a friend. Which is a very nice thing indeed.
After I wrote last, I went and got lunch of some fried fish, fries, and a salad before coming back to the hotel and heading to the gym for a while. Following cleaning up from the gym, I relaxed in my room, watching the rain come down and the waves crash on the beach, as I had afternoon tea. The waves were remarkably relentless and the ocean was white from the pounding of the surf as the rain continued to come down.
I shot Stuart a text (as I knew he was coming in in the arvo) to see if he wanted to head over to the lecture which had been announced for tonight (errr, last night) as I knew he was the only one from the other conference who would be down for it (most people are coming in Tuesday as the conference technically starts Tuesday night). We decided to meet in the lobby of the hotel around 5:30 to make the 25 minute walk to the Gold Coast City Gallery where the lecture was to be held. While rainy and VERY windy, it was a pretty easy walk.
The lecture, “Flaneurs in Automobiles: Urban Perception and the Mobilised Gaze in ‘Learning from Las Vegas’” (see mom, I am not the only one who uses such flowery language in architectural academia) was given by Martino Stierli of the University of Zurich. For those of you who are non-architects (so, I would presume, all of the readers of this blog) the lecture was about Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s book Learning from Las Vegas (which yes, mom, I learned about in school), and the relevant takeaways in present day context which were not necessarily explored in their studio at Yale in the 1960s.
About thirty or forty people attended the lecture (which, according to Stuart was only comprised of five or so people from SAHANZ), but it was a good introduction to my architectural time in Gold Coast (which I have confirmed is actually the name of the city where Surfers Paradise is – so it does not need the qualifier “the” [which I kind of already knew, but have now independently verified]). After the lecture concluded and I had been introduced to all the relevant people, Stuart and I headed back to Surfers Paradise to muster up some dinner. We settled in at an Irish pub (mmmm Irish soda bread, steak and Guinness pie, chips, and a pint of Guinness – like being back in Dublin!) and began to chat about architecture, architectural academia, Australia, and America. The talk lasted us back through the rain to the hotel, and well into the evening once back, ending just a bit ago.
All in all, I have really been reassured about my trajectory and know that I have not only a contact in the world of Australian architectural academia, I have a friend. Which is a very nice thing indeed.
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