BUT THERE IS A PLUS, SOMETHING ELSE...

But... there is always a but, actually many of them...

We have been looking and studying materials, working with them and learning about them...And now, with the new project, which begun with our class excursion to Hampstead Wood, we have been introduced to feelings.

It might be obvious, but I think it is not as evident as we think it is. We are surrounded by materials and we live with them, but the places we visit, even if they might not change, can seem to us different from time to time, cause of the way we exist in them, think of them, the people we go with them, the things we do in them. So a space can stay the same but be multifunctional and consequentially have a different impact on our thoughts and feelings: On us being there.

As we have seen in the movie we watched last week, an architect has to think about both: materials and their functionality in the space, together with the different people that will be using and lighting up life in that certain area, the different roles we might play in it.

Back to Hampstead, I personally felt a bit as in a fairy tale... It is a magic and in a certain way undiscovered place... In the city, but out of it at the same time... A mixture between nature and human intervention, but the was a great connection between them, and we have been asked to add a connector... an extra human being intervention on this site, on the basis of the Nymphaeum culture, the mixture between pagan and God, between nature and mythology.

We have to connect Caos to Cosmos, disorder to order, nature to building, people to god, impurity to purity...How are we going to deal with this? Which one is the right idea? I think there is no right idea, there probably is a better one, but generally speaking we are all having such different ideas about a common site intervention!It is an amazing and interesting variety!

But which one will suit it better and be more realistic?

Why did I choose a transparent staircase? Why I am thinking about it at night time and day time? Why simple stairrs and leaves? Light and darkness? All this questions are now running in my mind... So Should it be a strait one o "Cassiopeya Constellation shaped" one?...

I guess we will all have to just wait, do, present and see!!!! Good Work!

A MATERIAL WORLD

Now materials...our eyes get wiser and our thoughts deeper.

We have to look around us and analyse all the surrounding components...

Although it could be evident. we do not usually accept saying we live in a "material world". This expression has, through time, acquired a quite negative meaning. In this case, it absolutely has not.

We, as human being and existing, are material, not only, but we could almost say, to be provocative, we are mostly material.

And also the air, although invisible to our eye-perception, is material too. As a matter of fact we can perceive it when we breath it and it goes through our lungs, so many times a days, to keep on leaving...so we could add we actually need materials..

We are completely both : surrounded and addicted to material, in a way, cause we are materials ourselves. But, actually, I think we do not often stop and look around us, and observe carefully everything. All this different patterns, textures, materials, colours....their use, their proprieties, their reason to be. Some a natural, some are synthethic, some a dull, some are intense, some are ... but the point is they are and they are so many of them!

And this is, I think, what we have been also asked in this material project, together with other tasks.

So I have tried and looked around me, touched, smelled and felt different emotions and sensations, depending on every different material I got in touch with.

Took pictures... And finally decided to focus myself on Plastic.

You're right! Plastic is such a vast and multi optional material, and it is probably one of the most evident and together unnoticed ones. Plastic is all around us, in our clothes, in our shopping, in technology, in transport, in class...

What would the world be without plastic? Yes, it would probably be less polluted, cause it is in fact a very difficult material to recycle...

But are we really able to live without plastic? Are we able to imagine a world without it? ... I do not know the answer. Before plastic, yes...but now?I am not very sure... what we can do, is do are best to recycle it.

I decided to focus on every days plastic bags and bottles. It was such an experience getting them at the supermarket! I ended up going everyday with a friend, buying one can of coke, paying at the self service after having blocked the queue cause of my stubbornness in wanting to pay at the self service, and getting out of the shop with 50 bags!! Lol...And suddenly they started having shape, and becoming a little orange plastic dress! Although I did, to be realistic I do not know how many people would really wear it! Lol

Lambeth Road

I chose to go on a walk I usually do when I want to be by myself, listen to music and try to think, without paying attention to what is going on around me. It is a quiet walk, my usual "meditation" walk. But this time I had to switch of the music, open my eyes and try to look carefully around me.

I discovered myself making an effort to look at everything and realized how many things could fit in such a small piece of land. This made me wonder about how many things there are in the whole world. Which was and is a scary but exiting thought.

I then decided to focus my "observation walk" onchimneys, street lights, and railings. I was impressed by the amount of differences there where between them: colors, shapes,age,materials,positions...I also realized it is a residential street: there are no off-license, no restaurants or pubs, not many busy people around, but houses, a couple of schools,the Imperial War Museum, plenty bus-stops, nature...