CORBU WEEK with William J. R. Curtis!

 --Beth Nowicke

It’s hard to believe that we’re closing in on the end of the first month of the spring semester already.  It’s definitely been a bit of a change from the way things worked last semester.  For design, the class has been split into three groups and we are all working on different projects depending on our professor.  We’re still working on improving our French and this week we will be testing our engineering smarts by participating in ENSAV’s portico project assignment (stay tuned for more on that).

One of the biggest changes this semester has been our history class.  Instead of a class we attend on a regular schedule, we spend two whole weeks with the renowned architectural historian, William J.R. Curtis.  William is an expert on modern architecture.  He lives in southern France and makes the trek to Paris for the week to teach us.  He has taught all over the world and written many books, including Modern Architecture Since 1900 (words of wisdom to future SAPVers, we suggest looking into this book before asking William to spell anything). Above all, he is very passionate about architecture and I think we all enjoyed our week together.

The subjects of our first week of study included Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalto, Mies van der Rohe and a few other modern influences. William gave lectures on these topics and accompanied us on site visits in Paris and the surrounding area.  All but two of our site visits were works of Le Corbusier, creating a sort of Corbu-mania, resulting in the fond renaming of the history intensive week to “Corbu Week.”

First on the list of site visits was Villa Savoye in Poissy…

...as you can see, we sort of took over the place for our sketching assignment.

Our next site visit was to Maison la Roche, tucked away on a Paris side street.

Some of the students got a private tour of the Maison de Verre, a modern house in Paris that inspired a lot of Le Corbusier's work.

One day was spent at Cité Internationale Universitaire in Paris. It’s the closest thing to the Urbana-Champaign campus most of us have seen since we’ve been here. Le Corbusier designed two residential buildings here, the Pavillon Suisse (Swiss Pavilion)…

…and the Maison du Brésil (Brazil House).

The only non-Corbu building we saw all week was Alvar Aalto’s Maison Louis Carrée.  I think it’s safe to say it was a favorite for many of us.

Our last site visit of the week as to the apartment building in Paris that Le Corbusier designed and lived in. The apartment where he lived and worked is on the top floor of the building and has some really amazing views of the city.

It was a long week jam packed with Corbu and modern architecture but I think we’re all looking forward to our next encounter with William J.R. Curtis in March. We will be closing out the course with a fieldtrip to Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel in eastern France. I don’t know if we’re more excited to see more architecture or hang out with William for another week!

End of the First Semester

Our first semester in Versailles finally came to a close in mid-December, and only now, finally having caught up on sleep, do I have the energy to write about it.  Our classes were tough, but the prospect of befriending the French students and traveling on the weekends made the semester a good one overall.

Design class dominated our lives for the last month of school, our assignment being to create a multifunctional theater on a site near the Bastille in Paris.  Before our fall travel break, it had been difficult to really focus whole-heartedly on the design of a building -- all of Europe lay before us, after all, and we were eager to explore it -- but once we returned, it was time to crack down.  Working in pairs, and divided amongst three different studio professors, 24 different theaters were finally designed.  We presented our final boards on the last day of class to all of the SAPV professors as well as some guests.  I hope to start a new page for student artwork on this blog soon, so that everyone back home will be able to see our progress.

Final reviews

Our other classes also ended well.  In history, we made a few more trips to Paris (for example, Henri IV's Place des Vosges and the magnificent Louvre museum) before the final exam.  Structures class featured a fun exercise in which we were grouped into teams and competed to build the tallest possible structure out of spaghetti, clay, and string.  Our "independent study" was graded based on our performance in French class and the quality of our sketching assignments (most of which were done during the week-long travel break).

Structures class

Outside of academics, life continued to get more and more interesting throughout the semester.  Despite various problems with housing and some unfortunate weather (French people don't know how to shovel snow!), we managed to have a lot of fun and hang out with the French students more often.  We threw them a party in one of the big ateliers (studios) in early December, which they absolutely loved.  And right before winter break began, some of us attended their huge Christmas party (along with a delicious dinner beforehand), which lasted all night long.  But we still tried to keep up with our American customs, so our directors organized a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at a local restaurant for us.  The food wasn't what we were used to, but it was delicious nevertheless.  Almost all of the students went to see Harry Potter that afternoon, so it was a long, fun day of traditions.

Thanksgiving dinner

French Christmas party

A few students went back home for winter break, some students' families came here to visit, and some continued to travel throughout Europe.  Soon, we'll be starting up a new page on this blog for everyone's travel adventures (there are a ton of good stories!).  Hopefully everyone has caught up on their sleep by now, because come Tuesday, it's time for us to get into school mode once again.