Decision Time

After writing my post last night, a few interesting things occurred. Several of my studio friends were also working on developing the initial ideas behind their projects, and you know what most of them were doing? Diagramming. Heck yes. This is where I usually start, even when I’m with my dad, as I have spoken about before – with the wind patterns and cardinal directions. Just seeing others start out this way helped ease my woes about the project in general. Nevertheless, as I lay my head down to sleep last night, I still couldn’t get over that – I just couldn’t understand how someone could come up with an idea and push it through that fast. It actually kept me up for quite a while. My head still spinning, I just wanted to understand. Could I work with a person who was so artsy? To give a reference, let’s assume that 1 is die hard practical, functionality man and 10 is abstract artist. I would be about a 3 – I am pretty dang real with most of my projects, but I can be a bit abstract if need be. My partner, however, is an 11. That’s right, it goes up to eleven. I really wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out and uncertainty usually doesn’t sit too well with me. However,  I shared a few good laughs a bit later and all was well…ish.

This morning, the woes continued as we made our way to the PosteItaliane to fill out passport info. It wasn’t until the bus ride back that I decided that I had two choices:

1. Talk to the professor and see how plausible it would be to change partners with someone who was more “realist;” aka, “the easy way out.”
2. Deal with the situation at hand – if I plan to have a business of my own some day, I have to learn how to work for and with different kind of people.

Guess which one I decided to run with. I figured that it would be for the best if I just ran with it and do what I know how to do – this would also be consistent with how I started to get over my fear of architecture by working with my father. And, surprisingly, this strategy hasn’t gone too badly so far. I sat down before lunch today and began sketching out some ideas based on the idea that my partner came up with last night in conjunction with the existing layout of the site. The result was a solid one, I think. My partner seemed to accept a lot of the ideas that I threw out there, as well. Lesson learned. A turn out that Dad was right; as always. He has told me several times that taking the hard road will pay off in the long run. So far in life, I have found out that he has been right – it wasn’t cool to be in Boy Scouts, for instance, and still may not be. BUT, I have noticed lately that the skills that I’ve learned from the program are, in a word, invaluable. Something as simple as making sure that we leave no one behind in our group or having the responsibility to tell a friend when something may be wrong – you can’t buy stuff like that. Dad continues to be right – taking the high road definitely isn’t easy (namely architecture school), but in the long run, it will most definitely make the utmost difference in my life.

During studio class today, we again walked around the city, but this time, we went up; way up. We were smart about it though – we took the cable car up the mountain and hiked down. After seeing how steep of a climb the cable car endured, this was most definitely the right decision, as the mountain was nearly at a 45 degree angle. Once at the top, we divided into our groups and began our tour of our individual “salitas,” which are the old trails that connected the medieval city of Genova to the mountains, at the time considered the countryside because it was outside of the city walls. These old trails were used to access the farmland on the mountain, notably olive groves, and were often traveled by donkeys with carts. Today, the paths are seldom used despite the fact that the city has grown past the old walls and leached out up the mountainside. As we started down Salita Carbonara, the first thing that I noticed was the view of the lower city and harbor; the layering of the buildings as they reach down to the sea is really an astonishing view. Farther down, we spy a few old houses (200+ years) that are in arguably better condition that ones built 20 years ago, at least on what we could see of the exterior. It was interesting to compare the construction of the older homes directly across the salita from the more newly built homes. To me, the older construction in general has a lot more character, but who pays for it is beyond me. This is not surprising, however, in this context because people who could afford a house in the “countryside” of the time weren’t doing too bad I suppose. That being said, I feel that this city has a lot yet to offer in terms of history and character, and I look forward to uncovering its decorative past.

A presto.

 -Tyler