A Latin American Update
It's been just over two weeks living in Argentina.
We ran into absolute HELL trying to get to Cordoba, with a mid-air diverted flight and a night spent in the Mendoza airport. People rioted for hours, news channels came, and we even got stuck in an elevator before we finally hopped on the right bus to our new home.
It's very soap-opera and kinda ridiculous, so I made a twitter thread for it in real-time. Click on the link below to see my absolutelydonewithtthistrip thoughts about everything happening:
We've been thrown into a new kind of laid-back culture with refreshingly different customs. Nothing is rushed, the world instead operating on Argentina time. The emphasis on everything is placed more on people and culture than timeliness and production.
Also, Rosetta Stone and a couple years of removed high school spanish can only go so far. It's taken weeks to be able to successfully order a medialuna(croissant) without having to explain that I don't speak Argentine spanish well yet (it's SO different than Texas!!!).
Our architecture studio at UNC (Universidad Nacional de Cordoba) began with a week-long competition charette, which was a hectic scramble working with Argentine students to originate and execute an idea for new construction at a local wildlife reserve (more on that later).
Through the communication struggles, 10:00 PM dinners and countless other adjustments, we've begun to come out on the other side with newfound friendship and (in most cases) a love for mate. (mah-teh)
Mate is arguably the biggest indicator of cultural difference; it's a drink that's present in any and every social situation, passed around and shared among friends and new faces alike. We carry around large thermoses of hot water, and pour it into special cups filled with dry leaves called yerba. Then you sip the hot liquid through a bombilla, which is a filtered, usually metallic straw special to the drink.
It tastes like if the earth was coffee.
It's incredibly strong and warms you up really fast. In warm weather it's often paired with juice, which I canNOT wait to try. There's caffeine in it, so it's perfect for keeping you awake and socially engaged. Again, though, although it's a big part of the culture, food and drink are more like vessels for being with each other.
The meat is incredible (I've cried multiple times at its beauty and significance), the people are kind and animated, and the laid-back life of siestas and bread has greeted my soul like a long-lost friend. I'm trying new things every day and haven't felt so happy and healthy in years, both physically and mentally.
To go off for a second on the Argentinian timeliness (or lack thereof), it didn't take very long to figure out that time is not fixed but ranging on an ever-lax scale.
Studio is scheduled to begin at 6:00, but we arrived a little early the first day to a near-empty classroom. My first group member didn't even arrive until 6:30. I laughed and asked why everyone was so late... but I only got laughter back. Turns out a deadline or set time is merely a suggestion. There's always an unspoken 30-minute cushion period. So yes, you have time to get coffee and a medialuna con dulce de leche. And no, you don't have to break into a sweat running to class in the middle of a dust storm.
Now I know how things work, and that 6:00 really means 6:30. And we're lucky to start by 6:45. To be honest, I like this new view on time better than the strenuous go-go-go of academics in the northeast. It's less about schedule and more about people. Everyone could learn something from that.
Back to studio culture in Argentina:
I may be a third-year architecture student at RPI, but here we're working with fifth-year students on an urban-scale project. Rensselaer doesn't put as much emphasis on thinking that way, so this studio is our big chance to really explore a large-scale urban design. And with groups of students at UNC nonetheless, so language and culture start developing beautifully fast.
We don't actually know much about this urban-scale project yet, though, because we've spent the first few weeks enamored in a huge competition to design a multi-use space for a local wildlife reserve. The finalists of the competition went to jury, and one was picked to actually be BUILT. And, believe it or not, one of our own RPI students was on that winning team.
Yeah, you heard me right: my friend Ria Kelsick (pictured here from when we traveled here together) is set to have a built work here in Argentina!!! I am so so proud of her.
I don't actually have pics of her project, but you can come visit Cordoba in a few years and see it for yourself in the flesh.
I had so much fun working with my team for an intense week of sketching, discussing, designing and redesigning. Here are some pics of the project:
It's a project that explores what happens when the 5 elements mix with the 5 senses. Working on it was the best part, because it was my first introduction to how architecture students here work on things.
PSA: ( while editing) I noticed the next few paragraphs kinda go in on the differences in architecture schools so if that ain't your vibe and you came for photos and anecdotes just scroll to the next photo!
The differences are surprisingly strong. At RPI, each of us has our own 24/7 desk in a shared space with our entire year—here, the entire school of architecture is around 15,000 people, which is larger than the population of my ENTIRE HOMETOWN.
So they can't do that.
Instead, we get together in cafes and homes to work on drawings and talk through design problems. There's warm drinks passed around, food shared, and a genuine easiness that isn't found in the brutal, let's-make-you-work-here-until-you-break attitude of most architecture schools. I like having my own space in New York, but getting to work in a large group in and out of school among a different cultural/educational climate was enjoyable and eye-opening. And we haven't even started our studio project yet.
Talking through concepts takes up a huge chunk of time here, so strengthening the theoretical foundation for most projects is the focus. Back at home, we're focused more on form and less on context, constantly being pushed to produce a lot of digital and physical work in a short amount of time. One is definitely not better than the other. Getting to see the gears churn in each school is revealing more and more how the parts inside may different, but they both churn out beautiful, meaningful architecture.
Large groups are common here, and I was part of an incredible 7-person team. I'm proud of how our ETER proposal turned out, but more excited to have been paired with 6 incredible people who are now my friends. They showed me how meat is supposed to taste (Lucia's father made the best meat I have had in my entire life in the form of a heavenly asado. I wasted no time in tearing up and letting him know and still think about it often). I tried homemade pizza with ham, palmetto and golf salsa. They laughed when I tried fernet and coke for the first time, and even more so when I kept eating spoonfuls of dulce de leche. I loved all of the food SO MUCH and feel incredibly lucky to have met them. Getting the chance to work with them and really experience new things firsthand is the biggest reason I came here, and it's all been better than I could have hoped for.
^ Lucia, Clara, Ro, Flor, Caro, Cande and I with our project board at the competition entry.
We went out to celebrate after, and the bathroom was like a transcendental fever dream of eternal stickering.
So I loved it.
The school is also insanely beautiful.
We've also been able to experience some more things thanks to Gustavo. He bought us incredible food at a local restaurant. Here are some photos from that (thanks to Soraya Mbaoua for most of these)
Cordoba has some of the most interesting architecture I've ever seen all in one place.
There's older buildings that echo past movements done well, new constructions that excite the surrounding landscape, and everywhere fascinating homes and storefronts that I haven't yet seen in the US. Each and every building is unique from the next in its own ways, with expressions surprisingly different than the sometimes too-repeated styles found in other places/cities.
Anyways, here are some pictures:
We've been walking around the city during the weekends for fun and weekdays for class. I've gotten in some handstands, found some color, and seen the life pulsing here.
behold..
The Bicentennial Civic Center (Lucio Morini + GGMPU Arquitectos)
...and some interesting urban work. They love bricks. They know how to use bricks. Bricks <3
The shadows that come through our kitchen balcony window are pretty sick.
[ f r a m e ]
Above and Below: Casa del Marquis, some of the best old Latin American architecture in the city.
what's an edit without a ///_gl1i+ch :~)
We've gone around the city sketching and eating, which is honestly the dream.
We also went to a site visit for our local technologies class. We're split into a bunch of groups, all designing a pavilion/canopy to be installed in a nearby park's abandoned building. We design, pick one, and actually get to help build it!
We're in the early stages of designing possible pavilions to fit the space. The challenge of it is using material from the scrapyard to build something significant. Here's some of what I've been working on:
There are the 5 classes we're taking:
- Architecture Studio 5
- Architectural Sketch & Drawing
- Latin American Architecture & Urbanism
- Language & Culture
- Local Technologies & Systems
My favorite so far is, unsurprisingly, the sketching class. I've never had a class for drawing before, and I've been learning lots of new techniques. My sketchbook is already half full, so I'll look to digitize it when it's done and throw it on the site.
(Buenos Aires and its sexy architecture)
I guess that's it for now.
We just got back from a weekend trip to Buenos Aires, the nation's capital, so I've been editing photos I snapped there. It is a huge and beautiful city, vast and different than NYC in its architecture and food. We got to travel and have fun with some third-year UNC students, which made the trip even more memorable.
Until next time. Ciao from Cordoba!
