A Little Site Visit

The following Monday we met at school, got on a bus, and drove up into the hills, to see a newish project by a Catalan architect Xavier knows, who spoke at UIC last year, Carme Pinos. It is a large spread out mausoleum type cemetery. Interesting, somber, respectful, quiet. Made almost entirely out of concrete. The weird thing is, apparently it was a cemetery for snails too- there were TONS of little snail shells on the ground, bleached and crushed, and lots of snails who like just dried up and died while stuck to plants. Cool looking but creepy. Looks like the snail apocalypse.

We saw a wind farm across the top of the hill from our bus...

Here's a small part of what the whole complex looked like, with each square being someone's loved one. You descended down into the ground all around you, an interesting experience.

The snail is dead, remains stuck to this wall he was climbing.

These are ALL smashed snail shells. Really weird.

After (or was it before?) The mausoleum place, we went to a place called Colonia Guell (pronounced "Wayy". It was an old workers colony that was basically a self-supporting village built around a factory of some sort. We went there to check out the architecture and such of course. This colony is the site for one of the three Studio groups this semester- they hafta design their project on this site. More on that later.

This was just a cool little road with kinda creepy or interesting trees. Reminded me of Wizard of Oz.

A castle up on the hill that Janis and I explored while others got lunch. The stairs up in the tower were gone though sadly. When I get the pictures from Janis I'll post em, of the inside. It was mostly collapsed and destroyed inside and full of mounds of dirt and random trash and graffiti- apparently a nice secluded hangout for some high school kids.

Some of the cool architecture we came to see. Really amazing brick work like I've never seen.

Once again- pretty amazing. Brick!

Gaudi's Crypt at Colonia Guell, a pretty cool but mostly unrealized place- this was just the Crypt below what was to be an actual church up above.

This is what it looks like from farther away. You can see the flat top and the doorways that were to be the real church that never happened. Shame.

This is what it was supposed to look like if it'd been built.