Day 58 (5/18/11)

On this fine day we woke up nice and early and went in to studio to work on our model. After some more printing issues we finally got our act together and cranked out the site model. Our next goal was to determine “how does it look like,” so using a series of small pieces we began to place them on our site to make connections and observe the moments between the masses. After a little while we attended a lecture by another young Roman firm called Next Architetti. They are a small firm that works in a very interesting way: they all have specific means of communication (some sketch, others model, etc.), so they pass things back and forth to each other for a complete exploration when a project begins. Their drawings were pretty fantastic and really focused on 3-dimensional themes, which was interesting to see done in a flat medium.
After lecture a few of us went to our scheduled lunch with Lisa at a small restaurant near the school. After some drama trying to figure out what items were actually available, I ended up having pasta with zucchini and meat (not sure what kind). It was pretty fantastic and it was a lot of fun to sit down and relax for a little while. After lunch we came back to studio, worked for a while before attending our second lecture of the day. This one was by one of the founding members of Modostudio, which was formed by people who had worked for Fuksas! Their work was pretty unbelievable, their renderings were great and he showed a video of their major projects compiled together that was pretty mind-blowing (and intimidating). It was pretty great to see these two younger firms today, especially since the designs they did bordered more on the truly modern, not the restricted work that we had seen before.
After lecture we got the hell out of Dodge and came home to prepare for our apartment dinner: American Night. After some shopping for last minute supplies, Joe and I started on the potato dish. We decided on home-fry style potatoes with a lot of seasonings and cheese, to go with the hamburgers, brats, homemade fried mozzarella cheese balls, homemade onion rings, fried apples and coke floats for dessert. The ice cream we got turned out to be frozen panna (whipped cream), but much like the lemon bread experiment, this was the most successful failure imaginable! The panna was not only fantastic with the coke, but made the already delicious apples unbelievable! After a hearty meal we shuffled around the apartment to clean, barely able to keep our eyes open. After some blogging and other organizing, it was time for bed!