NY 03 Times Square

We tried to walk by this space most of few NY nights. A very energetic place.

NY 02 Olmsted

Now that I’m studying landscape architecture in the US the name of Frederick Law Olmsted appears recurrently everywhere in our classes and discussions. Even today, in the preface of the latest and only landscape book by Inaki Abaños “Atlas Pintoresco” the initial argument starts with an analysis of Olmsted’s park, a natural realm, in the city. Related and confronted, the park is just a beautiful and overwhelming experience. Polos opuestos se atraen. What’s the point of thinking so much of the “in between” (the interstitial) in architecture when this example exists? I guess today that the “in between” is the architectural (designer) will to emerge from the existing, not really negotiating relationships in environments.

NY 01

Adriana and me wanted to stay in one of these hotels called some years ago “Boutique-hotel”. The Hudson was an affordable option for this. Although the hotel is very nicely designed and trendy, it doesn’t scape a general feeling of banality, placed in site mostly by the people and not by the building, which can be in many aspects really functional and austere (as all of its corridors, the lobby, and the bar).

It’s a very dark hotel, with some lightning accents in furniture pieces that make them empty all day. This is funny because in the darkness of the lobby one the few lit places can be a chair, this attracts people like moths in a nightlight, but just one second after seating you realize now you’re the visual focus of the surrounding humans and you leave.

The rooms are tiny, as are most of hotel rooms in NY. The real dimension problem is in the bathrooms. Specially in the toilet, where there are 10 inches between the edge of the bowl and the wall in front of it. I could barely maneouver. Any person a little bit taller than me (as maybe more than half of caucasians-americans) will have serious problems sitting there.

This is the elevator finish.

EWR

Our first time in NY went over Newark. Missing the view of Manhattan from the air, we were at the other side of the plane, but also in the other airport. My brother told me that is better to arrive to Laguardia Airport at night. Planes that fly over or at the right side or closer to Manhattan are the ones arriving to Laguardia airport. Take a late plane and not an early one, like us.

ATL

We spent a couple of days in Atlanta waiting for our flight to NY. Lodged at a hotel near the airport and this put us far away from the centers of the city (of which ATL apparently has some). We used the airport shuttle and there took the Marta urban train system which is empty in many stations and wagons. Along the journeys you’re accompanied by heterodoxal and excentric characters, most of them derived from the abuse of substances such as alcohol or drugs and socio-economical situations such as poverty.