I like simple and boring..............

 

I watch financial markets every day because I think they’re a window into culture and behavior. They’re so fascinating, so beautiful, like art. But my personal finances are simple and boring. They will win no awards. But they’re practical for me and my family. They provide what I need them to do. Isn’t there beauty in that?

-Morgan Housel, concluding this post

Barcelona................

 

        We landed on day-one in Barcelona, a fairly sizeable city.  Depending on where you stop counting, there are about 2 million people living there.  We barely scratched the surface of seeing the city.  Many of the highlights required pre-booking. We only pre-booked one thing: a day-two guided tour of The Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi's amazing masterpiece (still under construction).  We got on one of the hop-on, hop-of tour buses and saw a considerable amount of the city, without any understanding of much of what we were seeing.  Did drive past Camp Nou, the home of the Barca football team, looking unsuccessfully for the ghost of Lionel Messi.  Did spend an afternoon walking along the Mediterranean Sea.  Was amazed by the amount of graffiti—it was everywhere.  A piece of advice about visiting Barcelona: know what you want to see before you get there, and pre-book it.  But, do go!

The Sagrada Familia

Construction began in 1882.  Expected completion date: 2026

Gaudi loved the play of light.  Stained glass windows create the color pattern

Gaudi loved nature.  The support columns are designed as trees

Another Gaudi designed building

The Catedral

The Catedral

A hotel on the Mediterranean

Spanish architecture seems opposed to straight lines

We were entertained.  A group of younger folk sitting behind us were
singing along with this street performer.  Lots of laughs and smiles

No sense having a beach if you can't enjoy it.

Andalusia.......................

 Probably should understand the internal governance of Spain better than I do.  Andalusia is the main reason I wanted to be in Spain.  It is considered an "autonomous community," that includes the cities of Sevilla, Cordoba, and Granada.

We hopped on a regional airline and flew from Barcelona to Sevilla, where we spent four nights.  Loved Sevilla.

We took a day-trip from Sevilla to Grenada to see the Alhambra.  Did this one right.  Pre-booked an English-speaking driver for the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Sevilla and pre-booked an English-speaking tour guide for the Alhambra.  Lots of learning.

Cordoba.........................

 

      An easy cab ride took us to the Sevilla train station where we caught the high speed, non-stop train to Cordoba.  The historical tug of war between Islam and Christianity in southern Spain is well displayed here, especially in the Mezquita.

along the Promenade of Kings at Alcazar of Cordoba

the gardens at the Alcazar of Cordoba

a monument for Averroes

A remodeling project is on-going..................

 ...........................at Sippican Cottage:

So, we were presented with a common design dilemma. A Victorian house is laid out differently than a more recent pile of sticks and bricks. The rooms are too big, or too small, or not where you expect them. Bathrooms are always in short supply, although a Victorian bathroom in good repair is a wonderful thing. They invented bathrooms, after all. They pretty much got it right on the first go-round. Everything was white, for cleanliness. Toilet, sink, tub, lots of white tile, with interesting patterns on the mosaic floors.

A Victorian house with two bathrooms was a rarity. For instance there used to be a pecking order of poshness for Boston Irish, which I am, sorta.  They knew a thing or two about Victorian houses, and pecking orders. They had to mop the floors in them at first, and eventually they lived in them when the structures were run down enough to afford the rent. The bottom rung of the Boston Irish social climbing ladder was ignant bogtrotter. Then came shanty Irish. If you rose further in the world, you could become cut-glass Irish, also known as lace-curtain Irish. Middle class. The pinnacle, of course, was two-toilet Irish.

if you seek his monument, look about you......

................................................................Sir Christopher Wren:

St Paul's Cathedral during the Blitz

St Paul's Cathedral, the aftermath of the Blitz

St Paul's Cathedral, London

Deeper clearer pools of thought..............

A new architectural language is being brokenly, variously, and often falsely spoken by youths with perspicacity and some breadth of view, but with too little depth of knowledge that can only come from continued experience.  Unfortunately, academic training and current criticism have no penetration to this inner world.  The old academic order is bulging with its own important impotence.   Society is cracking under the strain of a sterility education imposes far beyond capacity;  exaggerated capitalism has left all this as academic heritage to its own youth.  General cultural sterility, the cause of the unrest of this uncreative moment that now stalls the world, might be saved and fructified by this ideal of an organic architecture, led from shallow troubled muddy water into deeper clearer pools of thought.  Life needs this deeper fresher pools into which youth may plunge to come out refreshed.

-Frank Lloyd Wright,  The Natural House

image via

No mere aggregation.....................

     "Now there can be no organic architecture where the nature of synthetic materials or the nature of nature materials either is ignored or misunderstood.  How can there be?  Perfect correlation, integration, is life.  It is the first principle of any growth that the thing grown be no mere aggregation.  Integration as entity is first essential.  And integration means that no part of anything is of any great value in itself except as it be integrate part of the harmonious whole."

-Frank Lloyd Wright,   The Natural House

One touch.................................

      "It is not too much to say that as a young architect, by inheritance and training a radical, my lot was cast with an inebriate lot of criminals called builders;  sinners hardened by habit against every human significance except one, vulgarity - the one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin."

-Frank Lloyd Wright,  The Natural House

Not just yet...........................

After the long night, and longer twilight, we envisage a dawn-era: an era in which the minor law of tradition shall yield to the greater law of creation, in which the spirit of repression shall fail to repress.    Man at last is become emancipated, and now is free to think, to feel, to act free to move toward the goal of the race.    Humanitarianism slowly is dissolving the sway of utilitarianism, and an enlightened unselfishness is on its way to supersede a benighted rapacity. And all this, as a deep-down force in nature awakens to its strength, animating the growth and evolution of democracy.  Under the beneficent sway of this power, the hold of illusion and suppression is passing; the urge of reality is looming in force, extent and penetration, and the individual now is free to become a man, in the highest sense, if so he wills.

-Louis Sullivan

Architectural......................

It may be just my opinion, but in redeveloping an old building, the choice of an architect matters.  I think we made a good choice.  The better the plans, the better the sub-contractors can bid, and the easier one can get a building code permit. 
      Fixing old buildings may resemble building new ones, but it actually is a very different undertaking.   Old buildings have their quirks.  It has been my experience that honoring those quirks is a good thing.  So, flexibility and adaptability are fairly key, especially in a historic tax credit project where the historical folks have some significant and specific demands on what the result must be.   I won't tell you that the renovation has exactly followed the architectural drawings (I wouldn't want to speak untruths to faithful readers), but for the most part the results align with the plans.  I will tell you that our architect, a true team player, was consulted regularly when issues and questions and changes arose.  I do believe he will be proud of our creation.  Here is a quick stroll through the drawings:

The title page with all sorts of important information

The building code people care about this stuff

a basic site plan

A fairly old photo.  I have no recollection of that fencing

The design for the basic one bedroom unit

The first floor

The re-design of the old boiler room.  Should be a
pretty cool, and very large, apartment

Giving the electricians something to do

The new elevator shaft, part 1

The new elevator shaft, part 2

Your basic bathroom and mezzanine plan

Kitchen plan

One must go to plumbing school to make sense out of this schematic