Ravenna!

 

A trip made on a whim. By far, my most spontaneous decision. The craziest and the BEST thing I had ever done, albeit unknowingly.

I signed up for an 8-day trip through grad school for an international lab in the summer of 2007 – extended into a total of a 27 day semi-European excursion.

Stop #1: Ravenna: the harbor city. The City of Mosaics. The City of Plazas, and amazing history.

Presenting my first taste of Italia: Ravenna’s version of Piazza del Popolo: the focal point of the entire city; the place that gave us the feeling of being in Old Italy, without the craziness of the tourists and the commercialism. The slow city pretty much seemed to remain the same here – Slow and lazy with a need for an afternoon siesta!!

It was so beautiful to see the sun washing the plaza in such amazing hues – every day in those 8 days was different.

Goodbye LA!

 

The exit of an era. The end of a time.

Goodbye LA.

And the minute I see the ocean and the sand, I dance and play, like no one is watching.

♫ Circles in the Sand… Round and round…
Rising of the moon as the sun goes down!! ♫

Let there be Light!

It’s been quite a hiatus since I posted anything here. But thought it was time I picked this back up.

Still in Los Angeles, still on the land of the beaches, sun, sunshine, and beautiful people… but alas, on my way out to a place I love far more now (and I think I always did).

On the day after my graduation, I went to my very own Mecca in the US…. Santa Monica Beach. Why Mecca? ‘Coz every time I was upset, or pining for home, and morose; I would go to the beach… where the gritty sand would remind me of Chowpatty, or Kihim – of “home”.

Standing on the pier, I saw the sun setting, and played around with my exposure settings…. and Voila…. came to my series of what I call “Let There Be Light!”

Almost like God beckoning to it’s subjects, along the shore.

Beautiful!

 

 

 

And the subjects Stop to see where the light is coming from. Coz there they are, beholding their supernatural belief.

Ahhh sunshine!

Gehry’d

 

The Walt Disney Concert Hall… One of my favorite structures in LA.

Very Frank Gehry, very fluid, a mass of steel contorted in the middle of LA Downtown. The one thing that I don’t like about the structure – it has no vantage point for a proper picture. Built on a corner, the traffic signals, cars, etc all disturb the structure itself.

But overall, the structure is exactly as expected from any other Gehry structure. Lots of angles – each that seem different because of the way the steel glints and catches light.

Piece of Trivia: The structure was made and erected in polished steel initially. After a while, each panel was painstakingly brushed finished off to a matte version since the residents and passerby’s complained that it shone like a beacon in the strong California Sun.

Blue ocean… Beautiful Pier

 

Living in California, one can’t avoid the beautiful beaches (who wants to, anyway?)

And no one can really avoid the beautiful blue ocean, on a clear day, and one can easily have a collection of pics of piers. I know I have.

It was a serene day at the edge of Ventura, CA, and we were gazing at the ocean (I was earlier mesmerized by the stones, though)… And the stark blue of the entire view hit me. The sky, the ocean, the shadows….

So serene, so beautiful, so peaceful…

Stone henge

 

Ha ha. Not exactly that, but close.

Same day, in Ventura, and I am noticing all these different random things. We were near the pier, gazing at the blue clear water, and here I was, noticing stones on the beach, where someone seemed like they had stacked them.

Round, smooth, clean, beautifully shaped, different hues (but kinda the same).

Why does this appeal to me? I do not know.

But it does.

Blue and white

Sometimes different, completely inconsequential items look and speak differently to you – out of the blue.

Who would have thought, that on a sunny day, while out on a field trip with my Planning classmates in the “perfect” city of Ventura, we would take a breather, and I would sit on a fountain, and notice a mosaic of blue and white tiles, at two different levels, two different patterns, with different angles – and it would make an impression on me?

Maybe the blue, white and black skull & crossbones band-aid stuck on the rim of the fountain was what caught my eye.

The Cross, the Sky and the Bells

 

Just something that I think was good composition, and spoke to me.

Why? Not something that I ask myself too often.

I guess it was probably the textures of the cathedral structure, the simple cross and the chiming of the bells at that hour.

Step Symmetry

So, we were yet at the Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels, and the fountain still fascinated me.

Somehow corners, and steps bring back memories of 3-point perspectives that I had to make while in architecture school, and maybe that’s the reason I still get fascinated by them. Here, with the water streaming down, the strong lines were slightly softened, and a lot more fluid.

As for the sepia – I don’t know why…. Somehow with the existing color palette of the cathedral, this struck the best for me.

Lady of the Angels

As part of the SPPD Planning Program, we did lots of field trips, walks, call it whatever. The fun part was, that for someone who did not have any car, it was the one way, I could see different parts of this huge place that everyone called Los Angeles. It encompassed a huge number of cities all around, but the one place that I went to many times for a different walking tour each time, was Downtown LA.

Trying to show how this City had ‘some’ history, and that it could be commutable, and that it had it’s own charm – I first went for a Downtown LA Orientation Tour through the International Students Association, and later as part of our Urban Design Elective for Streets and Urban Spaces, taught by my favorite professor, Tridib Banerjee.

One of the stops was the Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels. A stark, modern structure, not looking anything like how typical “churches” or cathedrals should look… Placed at the edge of a busy freeway… but somehow it instilled a certain kind of peace, and reverence.

At the edge of the plaza, near the freeway side, there was a fountain. What struck me, was the saying on it…

“Three Pillars uphold the world: Divine Teaching, Ethical Service, and Loving Kindness” – by Ancient Jewish Sages.