L & J Adventures...: Malmo, Sweden Visit

Today we were headed for a day trip to Malmo, Sweden. We ate breakfast, same items as a the day before and had to be ready at 9. Before heading to Malmo, we had a scheduled visit with an architect and friend of the the other studios professor from BIG at their firm. We had to take a train there; it was only a 10 minute ride and then a 5 minute walk. The firm BIG, which stands for Bjarke Ingels Group, is located in an old factory building in Copenhagen and also has an office in New York. Their architecture is produced from careful analysis of how contemporary life constantly evolves and changes and are currently involved in a large number of projects through Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East. They designed a few of the buildings that we visited yesterday which was 8 House, The Mountain Dwelling, Maritime Yacht Club, and the apartment complex with the triangle shaped balconies. It was interesting hearing the concept behind a lot of their models throughout the firm, they have a lot of ideas that I have never seen done, very out of the box! A lot of their projects are produced for competitions and they rarely get built or waiting on funding to come through, which is a shame. After about a hour, we headed back to the train station and back to the main train station in Copenhagen. Because it was around lunch time and we all had Danish money, it was smart to eat lunch here than in Malmo where we would have to get out Sweden money. So Josh, Kevin and myself walked outside of the train station to a gyro/falafel place that was recommend by Dana. It was a few blocks away, not in the best part of town but it was cheap! We only has 30 minutes, so we quickly ate our food and returned back to the train station. The train ride to Malmo was about 35 minutes and uses the Øresund Bridge to travel over to Sweden, which is the most convenient way when traveling to each country. Fun fact, the high bridge part of the Øresund Bridge has the longest cable-stayed main span of all bridges in the world. That goes for both road and rail traffic! And, the tunnel part of Øresundsbron is the world's longest underwater tube tunnel, also for both road and rail traffic, pretty cool! We got to the train station and then boarded a bus to visit a residential area and the famous Turning Torso. As we were heading in that direction, you could not miss this tower. The Turning Torso is the tallest skyscraper in Sweden and the Nordic countries. It was designed by Santiago Calatrava and began construction in 2001 and then finished in 2005. Our objective today was not to admire this structure but realize that it was out of place. The area around was residential, lots of apartments, condos, town-homes and homes that made up a community (can't remember the name). It was situated along the water and the skyscraper just stood out like a sore thumb. The studios each had their own homework assignment to do while here so the professors gave them some time before we met up at the water for a tour with a past student of Henry's that is studying in Sweden. Josh was on a mission to see how people interacted in a public setting and had to measure the item (tape measure came in handy) and record his findings. Since we were along the water, the wind was fierce and cold. I didn't walk around with josh much, just stayed in a non windy zone and tried to keep warm and focused on taking pictures of the area. It was well designed, every building was different but flowed together nicely.

It was then time to meet up with everyone and walk around the area with Henry's past student. We walked around for a while, looking at different areas and he explained reasonings behind some ideas for example, for their drainage system, they use rainwater for all of their water features and then eventually it will runs back into the ocean. It was nice to walk around and see the different areas and in one spot, there are 2 rows of homes that are each built by an architect from a different country. So there were at least 15 different styles of homes depending on the architecture in that home country.

After ending up where we started, the studios were given more time to work on their homework before we started heading back to the train station. We met up at the Turning Torso and began walking back before Henry asked if anybody checked out the cool playground across the street. And of course no one did, so everyone wanted to go and check it out. We walked over there and some students immediately went to go and play. The slides here were incredibly steep, and to me, looked quite scary to go down. It was fun to watch them slide down, screaming and coming down at a fast speed and then watch the little kids slide down them and weren't phased by the slide at all. After 20 minutes, it was time to head back. On the way back, we stopped at a skate park and watched skateboarders and rollerbladers for a few minutes before walking back to the train station. We hopped on a train and headed back to Copenhagen. At the hostel every night, they make dinner and put it out at 6:30 and is basically first come first serve. Since we missed it the first 2 nights, we were hoping that we would make it there so we didn't have to buy dinner out. We walked very quickly to the hostel, it was 6:45 by the time we got there and there were only a few more plates available with limited spaghetti and sauce. But thankfully josh was able to get us some food and we took it upstairs to our room to eat because it was packed downstairs. We ate the spaghetti, it was quite delicious and free for all we cared, had a few snacks that we brought with us and I think that we were asleep by 8.