Blog

This is an architect's blog: cities, buildings, cultures and stories are main ingredients. Cities results from sounds and colours, life and energy, voids and busy places, are built up by time.

Yes, is time that built them.

Every building, as part of the city, is the keeper of a personal story, then, cities tell tons of different stories.

I've tried to live my life with the will to discover these stories.

Stories rarely open to newcomers. Than when was not possible to get to know them I've wondered and walked cities, with my nose in the air, looking at the sky and the buildings, trying to catch their rythm and breath.

Then, this is a blog about cities and stories.

21/03/2017

About the will to break from routine.

One day I got on a train and left to the north of Italy, final destination: Verona and Garda Lake.
In my h%ands I only had a guide book from the early '90s and no sure plan. I started from a cemetery and an exhibition. There north, november is cold, the strategy is to spend as much time indoor as outdoor, walking the streets and then back inside for a coffee.

panorama of Verona

Ponte Pietra

Garda lake

Shakespeare turned on the turistic fortunes of this tiny courtyard, where nobody can really picture a bratty Romeo climbing up. Now left there's a breast to touch and a corridor filled with declarations of faithfull love and passers-by signatures.
The day to Sirmione and the lake was definitely a surprise. Around Garda I was explained there's a microclimate that make possible to have warmer weather year round. I sat on the white stones on the border of the lake and enjoyed the sun. Seemed already spring, just chilling, with no need to keep on walking to warm up. The best thing to do is to stroll all the way round the cliff and enjoy the walk, would be impossible to get lost and worse thing to happen can be to get wet feet. Sometimes is important not only to look far, trying to catch the other side of the lake but up to discover something unexpected. To notice the roman ruins on top of the cliff, among vegetation, made my heart beat faster. Really, in the last expected place and moment one may realize how special Italy can be.

25/01/2017

Reflections....

Amalfi alley

Sao Remo

On the left was shot summer 2016 in Amalfi, climbing from the beach of Atrani and passing through some small and poetic alleys... steep indeed! On the right is a sketch of a street in Sao Remo, favela of Sao Paulo I've studied for my thesis.

Are they really so different?

Once I've dared make such a comparison and I was told some professor of Architecture History would have got goose bumps... but let's carefully reflect on this issue.

20/01/2017

An author's random note

Niteroi_arri perreira

speaking in terms of time should have been the last (I've so many previous notes, collected, waiting to see the light) but i was inspired!

Working on a paper about urban poverty, thus inequalities I thought to post this. It was shot while waiting for the bus in Niteroi (state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), on a sunny day.

Keeping in mind Tuca Vieira Paraisopolis' picture is one more memorable and clear expression of disuequalities.