The Harvard Graduate Center was completed by Walter Gropius in 1950. It consists of simple academic buildings made of concrete with brick and limestone exteriors.  It is eight buildings in total, which include dorms, meeting halls, lounges, and a cafeteria. The dorms are made of reinforced concrete but the community buildings are made of steel. The dorms are a simple design: a central corridor and single or double rooms on the sides. The buildings are connected by covered walkways.

            The biggest negative for me is that this series of buildings doesn’t match the rest of the traditional Harvard University buildings. These are modern buildings that exemplify the International style architecture, which clashes against the classical Georgian style that is prominent throughout the Harvard campus. At the time it may have seemed bold and modern but now it just looks like a cheap afterthought in comparison.

In 1940, Walter Gropius designed the Alan I W Frank House, which is a private residence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Gropius also created all the furnishings and landscaping so the home was a total work of art. The home is four-stories, has nine bedrooms, and 13 bathrooms for a total of 12,000 square feet just in the interior. If you included the five terraces and rooftop dance floor, it would be 17,00 square feet.  One side of the exterior is a curved glass façade and the rest consists of travertine and stone. To date, this home has remained the same, never being renovated or refurnished.

Aesthetically, it’s not really my preference but I do like how the curves were repeated throughout the home to tie it all in together. I also like how the landscaping was built up to give the ground floor some privacy and provide a good-looking backdrop for those inside. The biggest drawback for me would be that this building looks more like a commercial building than a private residence. I think you could pull off the glass façade for a residential building if it wasn’t for the massive size of this home.  My favorite aspect of this home is that the roof surfaces support living lawns which help with thermal efficiency and energy management. I have always been fascinated with living roofs and hope to build a home that incorporates this one day.

Walter Gropius designed the embassy that was completed 1961 and is now a protected architectural landmark. According to Nikos Pegioudis, the designs “were supposed to propose a version of an Americanised Modernism that would balance the principles of the so-called International Style with a regionalist sensitivity.” It is a three-story building with a glass façade and central atrium. The roof extends to protect the interior from the sun.

The design was inspired by the Parthenon and it’s very clear when you see the concrete colonnade covered with marble. The Atrium is also a nod to Greek architecture. I like how it is modern building but incorporates features of ancient Greek architecture. Having an open-air courtyard within the building is a good idea, in my opinion. It provides a sort of escape from the office for breaks while remaining on the site. Pegioudis, Nikos. “AN AMERICAN ‘PARTHENON’ Walter Gropius’s Athens US Embassy Building between Regionalism,  International Style and National Identities.” Repositorio Comum, 25 Oct. 2018, comum.rcaap.pt/bitstream/10400.26/24598/1/28%20-%20PEGIOUDIS.pdf.

Mont St. Michel is a tidal island in the Normandy region of France. There is a great gothic style Abbey built on top of the island that was founded in the 10^th century. The island is half a mile off the mainland of France and about 17 acres in area. The buildings on the island were built in a particular order, with the abbey and monastery on top, then below were great halls, then stores and housing. At the bottom, nearest the water were the fishermen’s and farmer’s housing. With only a population of 50 today, this once medieval walled city is now a tourist hub. Most of the buildings have been made into shops, restaurants, and hotels for tourists.

There were a lot of features of the island and within the Abbey that I found interesting. Entering the island through the medieval drawbridge was exciting. Another cool part was seeing the infrastructure they used to bring building materials from the base of the island to the top of the Abbey. Essentially, it was a really steep ramp with a cart on a pulley/hoist system. Also, the Abbey had fireplaces so large I could stand inside. Being surrounded by all the history and buildings that are more than 500 years old really has a way of making you feel small or insignificant.

The Louvre is iconic when you think of France, so of course it was a must do during my trip.  My wife and I visited them a couple times during our stay in Paris. We spent a day touring the museum and another day taking our wedding photos in front of them. So, I have very positive feelings when I think and see this building. We had our wedding ceremony in front of the Eiffel tower early that day and it was rainy and cold. We were freezing while taking our photos and the water feature beside us was misting us with ice cold water. But the weather actually helped with the photos because hardly anyone was around to be in the background. Seeing the Louvre was one of my favorite parts of the trip. 

It was very interesting to enter the main entrance, into the pyramid, and immediately descend down escalators. The pyramid and underground lobby were added in the 1980s to help with the influx of daily visitors. The underground lobby allows for crowds to gather, shop, and eat without clogging up the ticket collections. I thought this was a pretty genius solution, diverting traffic this way. You have to go up another set of escalators to enter the museum. There are also 3 smaller pyramids in the courtyard that act as skylights for the museum collections below. To be in the largest art museum in the world was exciting, especially since we were at the front of the line at opening and got to see the Mona Lisa before the room became swimming with tourists.

Paestum was an ancient Greek city founded in 450 B.C. Today, Paestum has the only Greek ruins left on Italy’s mainland and it is still in great condition. There are 3 Temples, all in the Doric order and dedicated to female goddesses. The largest one, Temple of Hera II, is one of the best-preserved Greek temples in the entire world. Despite all this, Paestum remains off the beaten path. We were one of very few people touring the site. This made touring the site a much better experience. We were able to walk around freely and get up close and feel the stones that made up this 2500-year-old ancient city. The buildings and roads were so well preserved, you could really imagine the town when you walk through the site. Seeing the amphitheater, arena, pubic baths, and public forum really put life back then into perspective.  In my opinion, the lack of tourists and being able to get inside the ruins, instead of viewing from the sidewalk, made this one of the best sites in Italy.

In 1420, Filippo Brunelleschi was tasked with building a dome to sit on top of the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral in Florence, Italy.  This task was a great challenge because construction required that the dome be built without any central support system, like scaffolding, or exterior buttresses. Domes up to this point were constructed as half circles, but this dome had to be 8 sided and taller and wider than any dome built to date. There are several theories as to exactly how Brunelleschi constructed this dome, but we will never know for sure because he left no record of his methods.  However, we do know that he created a hoist system, powered by ox, to lift materials to the top and that he laid the brickwork in a herringbone pattern to help support itself. It was completed in 1436, 16 years later, and it remains the largest masonry dome in the world.

The revolutionary design and engineering that went into this dome, coupled with the fact that he had no formal architecture training, is why I find it so interesting and why I set out to visit it during my travels in Italy.  Knowing the history of the dome beforehand made seeing the dome in person an overwhelming experience. The dome was full of complexities yet Brunelleschi found a way to make it possible and that is inspiring. The cathedral’s location, Florence, also holds great meaning to me, as it is where my wife and I were when we found out we were expecting. So, despite it being an architectural marvel, I will always remember it fondly for that reason.

I explained the history of the dome to my wife as we climbed the 414 steps up the adjacent bell tower to get a birds-eye view of the dome. She was 5 weeks pregnant at the time, but the trip up was even exhausting for me. It is possible to climb up the dome itself but tickets for that sell out weeks in advance so we weren’t able to experience the interior of the dome’s construction up close, unfortunately. But seeing the exterior of the dome from the ground and above, was still such a fascinating experience. All I could do was marvel at the dome when looking at it from above, in the bell tower.