Botta House

One morning we had a private tour of Mario Botta's first residence he designed. It overlooks Lake Lugano and has a winding driveway leading up to the house (which we walked).  The house is not built into the side of the mountain, the area around the house is actually layered and the house is built onto one of the steps or layers.  The core is a central winding staircase and different planes of floors rotate off of this staircase. The main entrance is the red steel bridge connecting the driveway plane to the top level of the house. In my opinion, one of his only pieces of work that I like...and I dig it a lot.

Como, Italy

We traveled to Como, Italy which is about 30 minutes South of Riva to see a few buildings by Terragni (a well-known Italian architect) for a day-trip...one was a modern, modular building built in the 1930's called Casa del Fascio (house of fascism) directly across the street from an old cathedral (dichotomy at its finest). 

above: sketching while standing b/c we weren't allowed to sit inside

Another of the buildings was a kindergarten he did for the area....wraps around a central courtyard, layers of windows allow natural light from floor to ceiling. Teeny tiny baby chairs everywhere. We stopped for gellato along the water.

Lugano, Switzerland

Lugano is a 15-minute train ride from Capo Lago (Riva's train stop) which is another 15 minute walk from our town. Lugano has a lot of restaurants, shops, gellato stands, water activities, and a fairly good (yet expensive) nightlife. Of course there are beautiful churches and markets, and it's nice to get out of a ridiculously small town at times, especially for a little people-watching.

School Schedule

Studio: M,T,W - 9:30-12:00; F- 2:00-6:00; discussions, pin-ups, work-time
Italian: M,W - 3:30-4:45; I pretend I know how to speak Italian by saying every word in Spanish but adding a different accent (and then the professore telling me I'm wrong)
Seminar: T - 8:00-11:00 pm; talk about philosophy, presentations on cool stuff, conversations about the books we're individually reading, talking in general
Sketch-i-ness: W - 8:00 pm-whenever when we check out our sketches, talk about what we've seen, and talk about how horrible i am at sketching

Thursdays/Weekends are free days...we take day trips to Lugano, Bern, Zurich, Vigevano, Bellinzona, Locarno, etc to see museums or art exhibits or something cool and/or our personal travel

Of course, all of our waking life is split between studio work/reading/being ridiculous, so we try to balance as much as possible.

Meals are cooked by 2 chefs daily and are freshly delicious. Breakfast is self-serve from 7-9:15 with yogurt, fruit, cereal, bread, and nuttella . Lunch is 12:15-1 and 1-1:45 which is salad + a pasta almost always. Dinner is 6:15-7 and 7-7:45 which is a soup and a meat/potato or meat/rice etc. And then dessert. The food is outstanding. We've had different kinds of fish, chicken, turkey, beef, veal, etc. I'm going to be 400 lbs...except the only snacks we have are fruits and yogurt, so it can't be thattt bad.

Our boys and girls showers are next to each other and bathrooms are shared (a little bit weird).

Riva San Vitale, Switzerland

Finally home!

Aug 21/22 - orientation, the realization that I live in the Alps, the realization that the church bells go off in two separate bell towers within rock-throwing-distance approximately every hour (including 6 am); practicing my sketching around town. I can't explain what it feels like to awake every day to something so beautiful out your window; nor can I explain how I can look from a sketch on my studio desk to the Alps to my right (my studio desk is by the window). I feel like I'm going to wake up from a dream really soon, yet it keeps being real.




Aug 23 - went to Lake Lugano all day. Attempted front flips off the diving board into the lake...failed miserably every time - my back is still sore. My cannon ball is pretty good, though. Swans frequent the Lake...they're mean- the locals love to torment them.



Aug 24 - hike Monte San Giorgio - gain of 2700' over 3 miles...2 1/2 hours ascending, 2 hours descending (tripping and sliding a lot on the way down); bruises the next day; probably the most physically demanding thing I've ever done, but it was one of the top 3 things I've done in my life; major realization that I just hiked in the Alps but never yodeled at the top.

Koln, Germany

stayed with Danett's family Gisella and Ulli and their three boys 15, 16, 18...

Aug 15 - took the train into Koln and went to the Dom (cathedral that survived WWII), enjoyed the street fair with venders, music, beer, watched Danett eat bratwurst and got wicked grossed out, and went through old town



Aug 16 - went into Koln with Ulli and Gisella, entered a building with a panoramic view of the city, went into a few beautiful churches, and tried great beer typical of Koln called Kolsh [very good]. It was the opening of a new modern-architecture mixed with old buildings in the port so the festival was that weekend and we ate great food, drank great beer, and listened to some live jazz music in old town and dually saw impressive new/upscale architecture in the port




Aug 17 - Ulli and Gisella took us into Dusseldorf which is about an hour away to see the new port they were renovating. We saw some sweet new buildings including three residential towers Gehry had recently designed + some awesome art shops (and obviously fantastic ice cream). Mom/Dad Severing were so hospitable and really adored showing us the beauty of Germany.




Aug 18 - We took a train a few hours to Stuttgart for the day to see the new Porsche museum designed by an awesome Austrian architecture firm [not finished], visited the housing/residential project that Mies van der Rohe, Corbusier, and Walter Gropius and many other sweet architects of the time produced to study minimalistic/modern architecture in the form of different residential dwellings. I thought this was pretty amazing.



Aug 19 - relaxing day in Koln store browsing, explored the Koln chocolate factory, buying cheap pashmina scarves for 3 euros [duh]. We also got to watch some Olympics/Olympic highlights in English (thank god).

Aug 20/21 - overnight train (people snoring, uncomfortable seats) + 2 day trains through southern Germany and Switzerland (absolutely ridiculous views)

Germany rules because : Gisella's cooking was outrageously good, Kolsh+cola is an amazing drink, progressive architecture in normal areas jives me, we had conversations in Spanish, Germany, and English daily in the household, I looked a normal height around taller people
Germany sucks because : the language is extremely difficult to learn/speak/understand

Paris, France

Aug 11 - travel - flight to Madrid, flight to Paris; explored the city at night

Aug 12/13 - Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Jean Nouvel's new museum, Arc de Triomphe, Chaunce Se Leisure, the Moulin Rouge, the Louve, the Pompidou Center to see a Dominique Perrault architecture exhibit + modern art, and lots of other sweet things.

things i like : baguettes, tall french men, drinking wine in public
things i hate: smelly armpits, waiting in line, carrying luggage to the 5th floor





Aug 14 - travel - trains to Koln, Germany