Peter Zumthor's Therme in Vals, Switzerland is the most worthwhile thing I've done in Europe. It was an experience almost beyond words, so I snuck my camera in during "Hotel only" swim and took some photos. Brief intro: Peter Zumthor built the baths in 1996, in Vals, a town that might not even be on a map without them. It's beautiful and in a valley in the Alps. The baths are open to hotel guests most hours, and open for free to residents of the town after 11 am. We arrived Thursday night, in time for the thrice-weekly night swim, completely in silence.The baths are set up so that there are different rooms with different "experiences." Everything is in grey slate, arranged in thin horizontal bands. Rather than a room with a pool, the rooms are the pools. The above picture is the only interior "pool" in the traditional sense; it was the largest one, in the center of the baths. For the rest, you walk down stairs and wade through chest-high water to enter the rooms,which have no windows and are only lit from under the water. One bath has yellow rose petals in the water, one is extremely hot, one extremely cold (14 degrees Celsius - I didn't make it in above my knees), one really creepy that I didn't stay in very long,and one that was actually a water corridor to a heated outdoor pool. It is so surreal to swim outside in Switzerland in February. Note the mountains in the background.This morning, before public swim opened, I swam laps in the outside pool, and it was wonderful.
We got gas around the Swiss border on the way home today, and saw these two guys hitching:
(Ein foto, bitte? Sprechen sie English?)
They were Danish carpenters, hitching to Italy (our van was full or we would've offered) in what they said was "traditional clothing," though we couldn't figure out if it was traditionally Danish or traditionally carpenter. Either way it was a pretty sweet outfit.

11 days of running through central Italy at breakneck speed, and I am glad to be back in Genova, even if it means picking up studio work where we left off. The first few days, we were in Rome, and I have decided that aside from the Coliseum: and the Jubilee Church, I hate Rome. Mostly because I got lost around midnight as a result of misguided decisions (I won't bring a phone or a list of numbers out to dinner with me, and I won't remember the name of the hotel, and I'll decide to leave the group and go home early. Yay me!). But after a fairly stressful evening, I ended up safely collapsed back at the hotel. Next stop was Siena, which I really enjoyed. The weather was like walking through a 35-degree sneeze, but it was a neat, small, easily navigated medieval city, and I enjoyed doing my sketches even in the yuck weather.
After a day in Siena, we went to Firenze (Florence), and I really enjoyed it. Our hotel was right across from Brunelleschi's dome and its accompanying churches, baptistries, and so forth, so not only was it a lovely walk to get to, but it was hard to get lost. :) We walked up to the top of the dome (463 stairs; a piece of cake compared to living in Genova) and the view was beautiful, even when I stood in the way:I really liked Florence, and spent a fair amount of time just wandering around and absorbing my surroundings. We went to the Uffizi museum, which houses a LOT of famous antiquities, and I got my fill of Catholic iconography for a good long while. The hotel was really cool, too -- tile floor, big windows with quaint lace curtains, high ceilings, and good and warm. The best part of Florence, however, was taking a bus with a couple kids up to San Miniato al Monte around sunset and walking around. Construction began in 1013, and it's got a patterned facade that's different from the other ones that we saw.There were neatly planted firs growing all around the exterior wall that we walked through, and it was just beautiful. It was high up the mountain, hence the "monte," and had a beautiful view of the city, despite the haze.
The last place we went was Bologna, and I would be lying if I claimed not to have called it Baloney the whole time we were there, though not to anyone Italian, because I am trying my very hardest to represent the US well. The best part about the last few days was actually not in Baloney proper, but when we took a bus to a winery in Modena: There were tables with lovely food that was supposed to go well with the wines they put out (a sparkling white and a red), and sure enough, it was amazing. They also took us up the hill to the big steel vats where they ferment the wine, which reminded me of the tour of the Flying Dog brewery. Everyone wanted to stay longer, but we had to scurry off to Parma and hit up some museums.
We're now all back in Genova, and there is a long line for the washing machine, but it's good to be back at a home base.
Photos uploaded to Flickr.

So for studio, rather than just a normal studio this semester, we are preparing for a HUGE deal. April 18 is the start of Salone Satellite, a several-day-long design exhibit. It is a design expo held in Milan, and (mostly) product designers from all over the world come and show their wares. Twenty schools, also from all over the world, are invited to participate as well, and show off their best studio projects. We have one of those twenty slots. So we are working on a product-centered housing project, and we've got to have really fancy digital renderings, since we don't have access to the laser cutter or 3d printer. It's exciting, and I'm not going to stress about it, merely do the best I can, go there, and goggle at all the lovelies. If I thought the interiors expo in Greenville was cool, I'm going to be absolutely beside myself at a worldwide one in Milan.

Tuesdays are travel-around-Italy days. Yesterday we took the train to Milan, 1.5-hour ride, which is truly not bad. We'd been told that it would be colder there, and MAN what an understatement. It was FREEZING. No sun, either. Apparently Milan is as such from September to April, then it turns to Sahara-like heat. Delightful. We looked at the modern architecture, which was stark and cold (and soon to be uploaded to my flickr account), and then took a running tour of the city (like a walking tour, but faster, and less enjoyable). WI went with a few kids to a cafe a few blocks away from Il Duomo (to avoid the touristy prices) for lunch, which was a pizza (everyone was eating pizza, to the exclusion of anything else on the menu) and a San Pelligrino -- I'm so Italian.
There was a huge crowd across from Il Duomo, screaming and waving signs and pompoms. I noticed a lot of 14-year-old girls dressed to the hilt, in all their faux Dolce & Gabbana (it's everywhere) finery. After asking around, I found out that it was the studio for Italy's TRL, and Take That (Robbie Williams's boy band) was there today. Hence the screaming.Screaming girls.
Camera crew filming screaming girls.

I'm considering going with a group of kids back to Milan this weekend, just for a day, to check out the shopping. I've gotta check and make sure it's doable, but Italy has sales only twice a year, January and August, and while I'm here, might as well check out the fashion capital of the world for some cheap fancies.
I love you all!

Pencil sculptures mentioned below made me remember these. Everyone saw them a million years ago, but that makes them no less cool. The low-res pictures do make them a little less cool, though.

And while I don't know where this is from (found it in the Fark forums), it is neat:

File this under "things that take too long for the end product to look like this." It's pencil-point art, and while I can entirely appreciate the fact that this took serious precision, skill, and patience, it looks like something you would find in that mountain house. Most fit into 3 categories:
Flowers:
Sea life:
Wallace and Gromit's runaway pants:

Here's to hippies who like good design, and for lovely substitutes for petroleum derivatives! Monacca has created a line of lovelies, including furniture and bags, that use well crafted wood instead of plastic. This aligns with what I've been thinking about a lot lately -- purchasing fewer, nicer, more durable things, as opposed to throwaways. You'd be surprised at how far you can take it if you just think a bit.

WOW, this is apparently one of the most blogged things to happen to the internet. Here goes one more.
Knitting by Quentin Tarantino. Or Patricia Waller. Whichever you find more apropos. (Note: some may be NSFW or NSF people with a soft spot for stuffed animals)

James Lileks is a veritable pioneer of internets snark, and applied to a design-related topic, it's enough to make a lady split at the seams. Interior Desecrations is a hilarious review of various and miserable design trends from around the 1970s. He has them in book form, too, but there are amazing ones on the site (ay, me, for want that I could ever write such captions) :

"The ever-popular 'explosion in the consignment store' look is achieved quite nicely here." (Note: everyone knows someone with a mountain house decorated like this)
"No unauthorized cameras allowed, says the Old-Timey sign. Oh, don’t worry. Not when this hue and this pattern is described in most technical handbooks as 'the lens-cracker.'"


"This is the Age of Aquarius. If it’s moving, offer it a bong hit. If it’s not, paint it. "

The only thing better than fancy artsy stuff is fancy science-y artsy stuff.

cluster of wildflowers:

staple through paper:
Velcro (pictures of Velcro never get old):
Broccoli!
Sweet stereomicroscopic shots from Trazy's Zoomified Flickr set, courtesy of Core77.

Souvenirs from around the world as juxtaposed with their formsakes:Michael Hughes' site has them, but if you get irritated with the ubiquitous designblog Flash, here's the Flickr gallery.

This would be really good wallpaper for a telephone nook:Made by Duncan Wilson in collaboration with Sirkka Hammer, it's interactive design that's both practical and attractive -- imagine! Wallpaper made of four layers of mildly tacky squares of grey paper, on top of a bright background. The patterns created as more and more notes were used, especially once it got really used and the only light greys were at the floor and ceiling, would be pretty fascinating. It would make for a really neat time-lapse study.
(from core77)

Tanning made useful:It's a bikini made of 1" x 4" photovoltaic film strips sewn together in series with conductive thread. That is so fancy. It terminates in a regulator into a female (duh) USB connection. They're coming out with a dude-bikini that keeps your beer cold, too, although truly, the two functions could be interchangeable, as dudes like music as much as ladies like cold beer.

Hanukkah a-go-go:
Minimalist, quick-burning menorah for your Festival of Lights on the run. 9 X 1.5 X 1 cm.
Thanks to Inhabitat.

After all the simplicity and concision I've seen recently, this project addles my brain. "Falling garden," by Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlinger, is complex and beautiful. I can't decide if the wording on their site is poorly translated or an accurate verbal representation of their artwork. The materials they used are as eclectic as the rest of it:

Plastic berries (India), cow pads (Jura), waste paper (Venice), baobab seeds (Australia), beech, elder and magnolia branches (Uster), thorns (Almeria), nylon blossoms (one-dollar-shop), pigs’ teeth (Indonesia), seaweed (Seoul), orange peel (Migros shop), fertilizer crystals (home grown), pigeons’ bones (San Staë), silk buds (Stockholm), cattail (Ettiswil), cats’ tails (China), celery roots (Montreal), virility rind (Caribbean), wild boar quills (zoo), banana leaves (Murten), rubber snakes (Cincinnati)...

Another of their projects, Meta-jardin, features junk juxtaposed with nature. "Growing and decomposing structures live in the same territories hand in hand. Values dissolve. A dense vegetation after the big crash!" Not unrelated to my post about Detroit.

The V&A and PlayStation have sponsored a fantastic interactive experience: Volume (totally surreal and worth clicking). A grid of about 7-foot-tall pillars with LEDs respond to the people walking through them with sound and varying light patterns, taking it one step further than Dune 4.0. United Visual Artists collaborated with Robert Del Naja (3D from Massive Attack)'s music production company, one point six.

More intuitive/interactive installations (and more alliteration) from MoCoLoco:
This one's Dune 4.0, by Daan Roosegaarde, featured at Montevideo, in Amsterdam. It consists of hundreds of fibers that dim or brighten separately in response to 70% motion stimulus, 30% sound stimulus. And it doesn't just glow happily -- based on the amount of motion and noise, it can turn into a veritable lightening storm. The video should be online in early January.