italia rocks

hadrian's villa with jan. seems so long ago already. ambrose's pointed out the ghosts of buildings past and present, even the ghosts of architectural future. by the end of our tour, new inventions of the modern and contemporary age were pointed to among the ruins: kahn's kimbel art museum, even zaha hadid's newest twists and folds. it seemed, at one level, the nature of one's inspiration depended on whether you reconstructed in your mind the vaulted baths and sweeping gardens, or accepted the forms as they exist now, with their crazy forms valuable in their implication of layered/textured/ambiguous volumes. ambrose O.D., i know. above, hidden behind a dome, is a playfully lit alcove which inspired rauchamp.

these are small baths. at hadrian's villa. gotta love the excess. this guy had a lover who died young, so the emperor commissioned 1,000 statues in his honor, and founded cities in his name. see, tyrants can be sensitive, too.


villa madama. all architecture, it has been suggested, is just a game of morphology. and morphology is a cool sounding word.

when you've been past over for pope, in favor of your arch rival, who then banishes you to the italian-papal-hinterlands where you can rot among the peasants and their thatched roofed cottages while piously, diligently, and ego-lessly continuing to worship god, you gotta take the lemons and make limoncello. this is one of approximately a gagillian fountains that this dimwit built to ice his bruised esteem. the enormous garden's construction required the authority of new london-suppored emminent domain, as it disposed about 50,000 thatched roof cottage residences in order to build this bishop pleasure palace with interesting cross-axial interplay reorienting the sectional & sequential experience both towards a mountain top and st. peter's dome. it also had a sweet grotto. (villa d'este, by the way. great place to go read a book.)

again, sectional sublimeness. this guy must've maintained great calf muscles. or at least his battallion of gardeners did.

(sigh) another fountain, looking out longingly for those papal keys.

another garden. brian kelly's leading this trip, afterall. again, sectionally interesting, interesting sequences, blah x3. this was the big finish for mr. gambara (which is literally italian for shrimp or crawfish) when he had guests over for his hunting parties. it was nice. colleen thought we should show a picture. the guy's name, though, is mr. shrimp.

colleen made a stupendous minestrone soup last night. she bought the vegetables (pre-chopped and mixed) from the fresh market, boiled the water and oil all herself, and added broth cubes and salt. plus some crazy squiggly noodles, and we had an awesome meal, despite all the vegetables. i was impressed, and so were our guests. note: the bottles making an appearance in this picture have been blurred to protect the innocent. we did not imbibe 'four roses bourbon' with our minestrone. we saved imbibing for the spanish steps with the only 15 euro bottle of wine in all of rome.

i've allowed carl the right to use this photo for the cover of his faculty application portfolio in two years. though he looks thoughtful and attemptive, he's actually posing for the paparrazzi, as ambrose ensures no photographers penetrate the bush, and kelly tries to get his fingers untangled.