This London trip for me is a totally new experience. The way we are experiencing the city is not like a normal tourist. When I travel before, it’s usually mainly around sight and really get into the details about each sights. By that, I was not paying much attention to the city itself. I walk because I shop, I was transporting from one sights to the other. However on this trip, we walk for a fresh new experience for the city. If I was alone, I will never get to see this large amount of places in just 8 days, I will never go down to the bank of Thames, I’ll never walk into the Temple area since I will consider that’s private and etc. This trip became new and excited for me since it sets up a background, a base-rock for my future trip to London or Britain. I have to admit that I was not so interested about English culture before I took this class, but here I am, wishing to go back and revisit every place I have touched, every sights we somehow missed and every sights that we mentioned. I’m full of the knowledge about their culture and city, their way of living and now I’m ready to rethink about the specific sights in a different perspective.
Author: Jingyuan Wu
Uh. Bath.
I made such a correct choice of staying in Bath for one night to have a whole understanding of the entire town during day and night. I started the trip at Paddington station and rushed to my destination on a bullet train. With the beautiful sunset of Friday, I arrived, at this little town with such a uniformed architectural language. The city reveals itself as a roman town with clear Cardo and a less obvious Decumanus. The Roman Bath ruins are right at the crossing. Originally there is a temple and a forum for assembly at where now the Bath Abbey stands. The ruins shows the roman technology, glory and their sensitivity of space organization for both bathing experiences and the absolute hierarchy to the God (the temple of Claudius at Colchester).
The Bath Abbey is also astounding. I personally love it better than Westminster Abbey when comparing them both as Gothic churches. The Bath Abbey is much cleaner, purer and only designated to worshiping since it’s a pilgrimage church. With too much glory of the royal family and all the power that people want to show, Westminster Abbey give me a sense of showing off. While in Bath Abbey, with all the carving stones white or in light color, all the thanks written in words not represented in golden or colorful symbols, the devotion to Christ is fully shown.
The city itself stroke me the most with its uniformed language. It fully showed the theory that ‘if you have a good design, someone will finish it later even when you can’t finish it by yourself’. Thanks to the Woods, Bath established it’s row house language and carried one for hundreds of years. The Royal Circus is great as a self contained space, trying to establish a center, an inward facing community while the Royal Crescent made a genius move to open the circle up to views. To be honest, I was quite scornful when Jackie was talking about the how the green space in front of the Crescent and the slight change of perfect circle to half oval have brought a dramatic openness to the building and space. The shape seems simple, the green spaces seems requiring little thinking. But only until I saw the magnificent view of the city on the other side of the valley in front of the Royal Crescent, I realized that the lawn is just setting up the foreground. The view is far deeper and richer than I imagined and the slight change to oval shape have made the approaching view of the whole row houses much compelling. I was trying so hard to capture the entire view by camera but there is just no way. The breathe taking beauty of Bath is not describable and capturable. At least not by me.
By the way, I highly recommend staying in one of the Boutique hotel or some Airbnb houses in Bath so that you can get the experience of the typical row house organization.
Pulteney Bridge Night View
Bath Abbey Exterior
Amazing Breakfast included by the hotel!
Bath Abbey interior – amazing fan vaults
Roman bath in the snow
Royal Circus
Royal Crescent
Lovely Room for one night
Finally Sunshine!
I have been to the stourhead for so many times virtually in architecture history and theory classes and now I’m finally here, bathed in sunlight with the freshest breeze. The views are absolutely fabulous and has to be seen by eyes not cameras. The Temple of Flora is at my right hand side with the side view of its temple front, while the parthenon can be clearly seen across the “lake”, calling me to move ahead. As I move along the path, the little island with the tree one it is truly the anchor of the views. The tree became companion of different buildings striking different moods. The Grotto, however, was not as great as I thought. It came up too obvious as a dark place and it ends too shortly. The grand large scale views of the lake suddenly switched to a little framed view is too abrupt. Also the single framed view is so lonely and thus became less powerful of creating a mood. The space also shows itself too clearly with no secrete or mystery in the dark space. It’s simply a dark place with in a bright appealing garden instead of a dark place that can also strikes curiosity.
The Temple of Apollo as the final touch is fabulous. The temple was hidden from the trees through out the entire journey, but since it’s the winter and the leaves are all out, I can get a glance of the overall shape. However, I was not expecting such a robust and large temple when I’m at the “lake” level. The temple reveals itself as a strong figure giving the sense of power and charm and thus became appropriate as the high peak of the story.
Stourhead
Grotto Entrance
Temple of Flora
Final Picture of Stourhead
Candice’s 3rd day
The third day morning is by far my favorate. We first sketched the centeral space in the British Museum before the gallery opens. The space is a great combination of modern architecture and traditional architecture. The curve of the roof structure gives the same elegancy with the temple front on the interior facades of the galleries, and the stairs surrounding the central drum like space reminds me of Polladian villas’ stairs on the front. It brings people in, not directly, on a trip around the center. And this is definitly a conversation between modern and tradition. The display in the galleries are fabulous. But it became quite ironic to me that all the treasures around the world is now at this museum while most of them are actually taken from the original country. I am glad that I can get a grisp of all thr cultures around the world within one single museum, but the more I think about how the treasures got here, the more sad and regretful I feel.
In the afternoon, we did a boat tour on Thames to Greenwich. The total symmetry of thr courtyard, the Qween’s house and the Observatory, which we didn’t get a chance to see, is overwhleming. Also the paintings at the Royal Dinin Hall is also appealing but it’s an other pity that we just got one glimpse of it. Greenwich is definitly a place worth staying for longer time and I am planning on visiting back！
A good combination of old and new architecture.
Parthenon Frieze collection
Man sketching the sculpture from Parthenon
A very modern, or contemporary bridge cutting into the temple front.
Candice’s Second Day
Today is really tiring. It’s the long walking tour from Tower of London along the south bank to Trafalgra square and through Hyde Park to our Pub for dinner at Bayswater. It is a great walking tour that introduced me to the history or architecture in London. The first building that stroke me is actually the New Court building by OMA. I totally agree that this building is not like typical OMA buildings but I still see a valuable effort of making a frame out of architecture for the arts, the spaces and the landscape (the courtyard with cathedral view) under the canopy. The view beyond, I believe, is picked deliberately. It’s almost present itself as a landscape painting as things comes in layers with unorganized elements. Almost like English romantic gardens. One other thing that I noticed is their treatment to the roof on the underside of the canopy. The Stone veneer is so nicely done that it shows little details about how they come together. Instead of exposing the detail, OMA choose to hide the detail with a careful finish of the surface. It’s quite amazing that this building that we just walked by interested me the most.
View from the outside to the Courtyard
Candice’s First Day
I’m not trying to exaggerate but everything in London is the best. This is the first day in London and we started it by a fresh morning walking around the city. The Bedford Square is the first place that introduced me to London as a tightly designed city with architecture, streets and landscape organized harmoniously together. As we make our way to the Barbican, the views on the double deck bus totally overwhelmed me. The streets remain a simple Beige and Grayish tone while all the red bus and people with fancy dressing light up the whole picture. The Barbican is also amazing, as it flipped my cognition about typical Brutalism buildings. The solid, dark concrete still remain depressing, but the landscape and green vegetation are so welly blended in, so that the whole place gives a sacred sense. Later on, we visited St. Paul’s. The entire cathedral is decorative with exquisite details and the cathedral reveals itself in a totally symmetrical way. I did two sketches in St. Paul’s. One for the details and one for the amazing light and shadow in the crypt. However, no matter how much I tried, the beauty of St. Paul’s can not be recorded. The most exciting thing is visiting the chinatown in the evening and had some legit Chinese food. It’s unbelievable to find the feeling of returning home in a country that I’ve never been in. The weather is humid but it’s just like my hometown. All in all, London is the best!
Candice’s pre-departure post
Today is Wednesday and I ‘m finally done with all my other homework. I’m just about to pack for this amazing upcoming trip. I have prepared so much for it including all the architecture sites’ details, where to get food, where should we go and experience the culture, where are the amazing landscapes and etc. I believe that this trip will be even more excited than I expected and all the effort that I put in will lead to gaining new valued experiences.
At this moment, weirdly enough, I’m more anxious than just excited. I have just spoken to others for suggestions of Roman ruins in London and some other places. There are so many good sites and ruins that really gets me worrying whether I can make it to see them all. When I look at the itinerary, I just want to squeeze in more places to go in addition to all the amazing places that we have already planned. I really doubt that I’m able to see every thing since London is such a rich city. One thing that I know for sure is that as long as I value this trip and try my best to learn, everything I can or can not get to will be enough for me to digest.
Can’t wait!
Candice’s Bio
Hi everyone,
I’m Jingyuan Wu and I would like to be called Candice. I’m from Wenzhou, a city at the the southern part of China. I’m now a junior, majoring in architecture. My hobbies include swimming, drawing, watching movies and etc.
When I was a freshman in high school I visit US during my summer break. That’s the first time I experience the fascination of meeting different cultures and people. I was visiting most of the important cities in US, including L.A., San Francisco, NYC, Washington DC, and Boston. I stayed in Boston for one week for a summer program that have students coming from all over the world. After that trip, I developed interest in traveling to different places. During my college life here at OSU, I still try to visit different cities on major breaks. Also during the past summer break, I went to Japan by myself. The trip was all planed by me and thanks to it, I can call myself a good traveler now.
The reason I choose England is that the British architecture has always be somehow different than the classical architecture we studied. The Victorian or Queen Annex style and the romanticism landscape designing are fascinating for being both random or nature and ordered or planned. Those characteristics somehow resembles some Chinese landscape designing skills and was actually influenced by East Asian culture. I would love to experience how British romanticism have incorporate other cultural influences by myself.
My selfie from class
Candice’s selfie
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