Category Archives: Architecture

Barcelona Part Five: Gaudí’s Sagrada Família

By Jessie | Published: November 25, 2009 Leave a comment
I think this will be my last post on Gaudí and his mesmerizing mind.  It all kind of culminates here, anyway.  One of the many things I learned about Gaudí is the shroud of mystery that still surrounds him.  In all probability, the mist that prevents us from gaining access to his work is the [...]
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Barcelona, part four: Gaudí’s garden city, Park Guell

By Jessie | Published: November 23, 2009 Comments closed
On a piece of land in the Barcelona district of La Salut, Eusebi Guell wanted to build an urbanization inspired by the concept of the garden city.  In this he sought to return to nature, health and an escape from the industrialized city.  Gaudí, assisted by Rubió Berenguer and Jujol, worked on the concept of [...]
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Barcelona, part three: Gaudí’s Casa Mila!

By Jessie | Published: November 22, 2009 Leave a comment
The widow Rose Segimon, heir to a vast fortune amassed by her first husband in the American colonies, remarried Pere Milá, an important Barcelona businessman.  The wealthy couple wanted to build a residence in Passeig de Gracia, so they hired the most expensive and famous architect at the time — Antoni Gaudí.  The construction took [...]
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Barcelona, part two: Gaudí’s Casa Battló!

By Jessie | Published: November 21, 2009 Leave a comment
From 1904 until 1907, Gaudí worked for the industrialist, Joseph Battló Casanovas, reforming a house built in 1877 and located in Passeig de Gracía in Barcelona.   The decoration of the house expresses a fully-fledged modernist language.  However, the Barcelona population was somewhat astonished by the work, given the time period, and coined it as [...]
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Barcelona, part one!

By Jessie | Published: November 20, 2009 Comments closed
I recently returned from a long week in the beautiful city of Barcelona, a place I’d never been to before.  It was warm and sunny and just what I needed as a reprieve from the late-fall (early winter) rain and dreariness here.  I could definitely envision myself living in Barcelona; there is so much inspiration [...]
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Winchester Forever

By Jessie | Published: October 27, 2008 Leave a comment
The exterior tower of the Winchester Mystery House I would like to visit the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California, where Sarah Winchester, the widow of the gun magnate William Winchester, resided for several years preceding her death. The story of this house is as follows: Deeply saddened by the deaths of her daughter Annie in 1866 and [...]
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By Jessie | Published: April 9, 2008 Leave a comment
My brother’s office is working on a project for the DuBiotech Headquarters. From the looks of it, Dubai is going to turn into one great funpark with rollercoasters and tall scary clowns. I wish people would take less notice of the architectural monstrosities erupting over there and consider who is actually building the structures, for how [...]
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On Dubai.

By Jessie | Published: April 8, 2008 Leave a comment
I’m a little tired of seeing the glorification of the cesspool that is now Dubai.  It’s always a shame when people only do what they want to, and don’t consider what’s been going on there from a socio-economical perspective. My brother’s response to my suggestion that Dubai is a dream for architects whose designs might otherwise [...]
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