The “Central University City Campus of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)” has been designated a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO. This is great news for Mexican Architecture and Culture. We (architects and general public) should all enjoy it. (Photo of me in CU back in 1996)
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1250
This is starting to appear to be the “goodbye series” to Auburn… This is the main downtown street correctly named “College Street”. The main focus of my drawing is supposed to be “The Bike Shop”. My bike place.
The Amsterdam Cafe located in South Gay Street is one of the best places in town.
Our future address starting August 2007:
“The Vale”
1101 W. University Drive, #2002,
Tempe, AZ 85281
Design by Will Bruder:
http://www.willbruder.com/workmixeduse_vale.htm
(Photo by “Arrangement” @ Flickr)
Aspiring architecture students take a Summer Studio where they are selected to be either accepted into the program, or, discarded (or like the say here “cut”). Auburn is ranked the 01 school for architecture in the Southeastern United States. This Summer they received 90 aspirants and tomorrow they are going to cut it down to 40. More than 50% are not accepted. I think this is a lesson for many schools down in Mexico to understand how to achieve excellence and quality; not quantity.
Just for the anecdote. Adriana and I usually have lunch in a lawn at the side of the school of architecture. This space is defined by an outdoor auditorium, a parking lot, and dominated by tall pines. Unfortunately is somewhat -not to say completely- detached from the life of the surrounding buildings; but it makes for a nice spot to rest at noon. Today was a day of clouds and scattered rain. At noon it was almost a clear blue space above us, except for a menacing grey cloud. I was walking to Adriana with water and soda in my hands (as I said we were going to have lunch and our source for liquid is the vending machine at the library / dean’s office wing), she was laying in a metallic bench when suddenly a lightning struck a tree just about 20 meters away from us. I perfectly saw for an instant how an uncontrollable force circled the trunk of the tree -a rather tall one-, downwards, peeling off the thick bark like it was some kind of oily fresh paint, leaving the clear bowels of the tree naked to light. The sound was equally frightening. But everything lasted an instant. Immediately after, Adriana did not moved, she was still laying in the bench, marveled at what she had seen from her position. She saw the lightning form on top of her and then land into the tree. She saw it vertically, I saw it horizontally. I yelled at her “move!”. I thought the tree was going to collapse, I just saw the freshly unburied flesh of the tree as a precise cut from nature’s sword. But it didn’t fell. After we understood what happened we looked again at the tree, just at its base, about 5 meters away from it, a young blonde student was standing, crying. We asked her if she was ok. She said in between her tears she believed so. She was so impressed. She couldn’t move. “I was almost struck by a lightning!”. She walked back to the building in unconsolable weeping. Now she can tell her grandsons that she was spared by the sky. Adriana knows how a lightning is formed as a centripetal gathering of rays in the sky. And I know now how a tree can be beautifully scratched.
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