July 16, 2009 -Paris

View from Arc de Triomphe

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Started out today at Villa Savoy. It took a train and bus to get there. It was different than I expected. It is a plain white house that was designed by Le Corbusier. I wish that it was brought back to its original state. It was quite run down. You can get everywhere in the house by ramp but it also has an awesome spiral staircase. After going through the house we all spent some time sketching it. Then most of us went to Kong. It is a restaurant that was designed by Philippe Starck. It sure has his flavor of design embedded into it. He used bright colors and ghost chairs throughout the design. It is quite the expensive restaurant so I split a meal. But it was fun to be in the environment and see the design. Then we went to the Museum D. Orsay. This has been my favorite museum so far in Paris. It is so fun to see all the recognizable paintings from my art history class. Most of the paintings are huge, it is hard imagining the size when seeing it in a textbook, seeing the original makes it so much better. Then a couple of us walked to the Arc de Triomphe. It was awesome. We climbed up the 300 stairs to the top. We got up there as the sun was setting, which made some awesome pictures.

Me in a chair designed by Le Corbusier

Interior of Museum D. Orsay

Villa Savoy

Arc de Triomphe

Kong

July 15, 2009 -Paris

View of Paris from Pompidou

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Up again nice and early today. This morning we started off at the Cathedral of St. Denis. The chapel was full of stained glass. It is amazing to think about how much work went into making the cathedrals we’ve gone to. So many are so ornate. Later we went to Centre Pompidou. It is a modern art museum. It was not my favorite. There was too many bizarre works of art that were not pleasing to my eye. The exterior is pretty awesome though. It looks like it is not finished with all the piping on the exterior but it is finished. It did have some great views of Paris while going up the escalator, which is also on the exterior of the building. Then after having a nutella and banana crepe I headed with the group to the Louvre. This was definitely more my style of art. We went into the Napoleon apartments which had beautiful furniture and chandeliers. Then we went and saw the Mona Lisa. It sure is quite small. It was very crowded and hard to enjoy the beauty of it. We also saw the sculpture Venus de Milo. There are many more things that we saw and there was also not enough time to see it all. Afterwards I came back to the hotel all museumed out. I just took it easy and got some homework done.

Dining Room in the Louvre

Centre Pompidou


Louvre


Metro Station

Cathedral of St. Denis

Piece of Art at Pompidou

Museum Patterns

V&A Museum

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This pattern was inspired by the top of the crystal palace model. After combining several together it created this pattern.

Tate Museum

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This pattern was inspired by a 10ft sculpture. I was not able to take photographs in this museum. It looked like a bulging cylinder with a cut taken out of it.

British Museum
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This pattern was inspired by the design carved into a stone. With some manipulation and subtraction this pattern evolved.