Paris is the city I would love to live in for the rest of my life. The streets, its lights, its people and even its sometimes polluted air make me seriously feel at home. Maybe it is the underlines I put in every detail I see and feel with my constant wandering through its unbelievable rues and avenues, its uncanny {un}-expected urban surprises. Paris has the power to make you dream with your eyes wide open. It was very beautiful my arrival in the "Ville Lumière". Check in at the hotel as fast as possible to be ready for a full immersion experience of the city. Crossing the first bridge with a strange guy playing his accordion made me almost cry of joy! A typical dinner in a bistro with foie gras, warm goat cheese over a fresh-crunchy salad, a casserole and a bottle of brouilly wine! I was then ready to sleep! Excited for what would have come next. Waking up and go cross the same bridge to discover all the hidden "merveilles" of the city!

I don't know why, but when I arrive at the airport I always feel like I am already in the destination I am supposed to travel to. Eventhough the airport is a non-place and doesn't belong here nor there hte fact to be sitting on an anonymous chair waiting for the boarding call makes you feel you are aleady away from "home". Nevertheless the airport is nowhere. Kloten airport is in the Zurich district but yet it is already abroad since you need to show your passport to enter and leave. A city within a city, a heterotopic space where milions of stories juxtapose, cross and disappear as fast as they come. A place where every traveler belongs yet not belonging anywhere. But ultimately who cares! You arrive. You go through the hassel of burocracy and legislations with your luggage, with your body and with your soul! You eat something waiting for the call. But with your mind at the airport you are already gone! And while departing you already dream of what you'll do once arriving at your destination! I shot this picture capturing a moment in time where you are inbetween two phases. The Here and the There! And in my mind I was already thinking about my first dinner in Paris!

I am back at home after a splendid week in Paris. These days I spent abroad were really good for my body and mind. All my energy is back! I now just want to share photos, ideas, stories and maybe even delirious thoughts about the trip. About my point of view about the world that surrounds us. I am ready to rolllllllll! And rockkkkkkkkkkkkk!
So, first thing I did today was changing a little the layout of my FreeForm Blog. Now I just have to put things together and start writing!
I have couple of projects in mind. With photos and writings. Maybe they are not even only in my mind...they are progressing! And hopefully soon I will have a real thing going on...

It has been a very hard week. I said that the weather changes moods and this week it didn't help the fact that, after the snow, the rain started to fall over the city. It's december for god's sake...give us some snow. It is switzerland after all.

Work has been difficult. I've been in court to fight a client who didn't want to pay my work. It ended with a compromise. I got enough but not the right amount. I am not getting along with my associate. And that is a pain in the ass. I play clean he doesn't. And, after all these troubles I got my taxation and the state forbidded me to costruct a huge project with a motivation that makes me really wonder "what the heck am I doing here"..."we just do not like it". I respect every single law, every single code and they tell me they just do not like it. And this is just the last motivation. The worst part is that they have been not allowing me to construct this project since 2004...I have been dealing with lawyers, judges, commitee of genius and so-called experts. Now I've had enough. I started thinking about my old field of interest whne I was in college. Scenario Planning. Strategic methods that help you to make flexible long-term plans. It all starts with a question: "what if....?" let's say... what if I do this instead of that? What if chose this instead of that? Anything you decide to do it makes you draw possible future scenarios. Including the best and the worst. A good thing is to look at the worst case. Whatever happens you know you'll be prepared. We used it and some times it helped. I am just wonderining why I didn't even think to use it in my personal sphere! "What if I chose this associate instead of this other one?", "what if I chose to stay in the US instead of coming back here?" "what if.....?????". I had to do it before, now is pointless. When things do not come out the way you expected them to be it is useless to go back and say what if.

I am very discouraged right now. Many thoughts are flipping through my brain. "what if I chose a different job?" is one of them. But this is the only thing I know for sure. I know the choice I made was the right one. What I didn't calculate is that the world around us is not the one I believed it would be. I need a positive thing to happen to me now. I hope my trip to Paris will inject some energetic creativity in my everyday. Waiting to see the outcome I am wandering through wonders and through many "what if".

If I have to describe my weekend it will be the easiest thing to do! Great food and absolut rest. The snow fell all friday. Unfortunately by midnight the temperature changed and rain came into the picture. I had a nice evening. Amazing wine and a simple carbonara with a friend. Saturday was strange. It was a long time I didn't do such thing...absolutely nothing! Just a fast trip to a bookstore to came back home empty handed. I basically laid down on the couch looking outside the window towards north. The walls of the city castles filled with snow were a sublime spectacle! And I started thinking about going to ski soon!

Today same thing. Beside a long walk in the too wet snow with my dog I rested on my couch reading magazines. Tomorrow is a new day. Hopefully a good one. I will be sitting at my desk and not on my couch but that is another story! Tomorrow story!

It finally came! This morning I woke up as usual with a coffee. Always in the kitchen with my gaze towards the world. Everyday from my window the world keeps moving. Traffic, people walking or drifting through this pseudo-urban town. This morning though it was different. It started snowing! What a beautiful start of the day! Looking outside I could see the traffic even worse than usual. People trying not to fall down on the snowy sidewalk. I was smiling and realized how the weather really changes moods. I adore the snow. It makes me happy! But I had to get ready to go to work. I am really close to it. 16 steps. A stair that divides my private realm from its public side. Happy! Happy until I opened the mail. My taxes arrived. I am sill happy about the snow...but my smile has faded! Damn taxes.

Not long ago I wrote a post about changes I brought into my life. I found myself in a moment where I needed to make couple of choices. Those sort of choices I guess many people find themselves confronted with. Was I living my life in the right way? Was I suroounded by good people? Where these people good in my ongoing path through the future? Well, at that time I did make choices. Did I made them too fast? What were the reasons for making them? Maybe I was projecting my fears, my crazy life my I don't know what onto other people when maybe I was the one who had to take responsabilities for some of my actions! Anyway, as if I owned the eraser of bad things I literally cancelled things and people from my life, but, looking back, I messed it up. I erased the wrong ones!!! As an architect I can tell you that the big difference between drawing by hand or with a computer, especially when you fuck up is simple: by hand you are the only one to blame! When doing it with a computer you can always blame it on external causes! I came t work and everything disappeared, somebody touched it and so on! But in this case is faster to put everything back together! Well, I screwed up but I blame it on others...thank goodness I can still fix it! Can I share with you a thing? One of the few people I thought was a good one turned out to be a complete psycho! What would you think about a person (no names because I am not sure who will read this post!), in her 40's who when speaking with her mother (which is every 5 min!!!) impersonating a 6 years old? Seriously I am not kidding...her voice like the one of a child... She lives in a room that is still the one she had when she was 4. I find this out of control and seriously absurd. Scary? Funny? Psychotic? The psycho-friend who talks like a baby! I thought these people were only fictional...shit, in reality they are even worse! Knock knock! Who's there?...if it's her do not open your doooooooooooor!!!!!!

I just made hotel reservations! I'll be finally going to Paris (7-11 december). This is the first time I am not staying in the Latin Quarter. I thought it was a good idea to change area...but the one I chose is not that far anyway. Île Saint-Louis is amazingly calm, nice and very close to everything. And, of course, Berthillon, known as the best icecreams in town. But it's winter and I am not sure I'll have icecream!
I am very excited...I can't wait to go! With my Sony camera. And an almost empty suitcase...usually I buy soooooo many books that I can't never fit them anywhere!

Yesterday the Venice Biennale closed its doors. I still have bunch of stuff to share, so, here I am!

After visiting the Arsenale spaces, on sunday (now it seems ages ago) I went to the Giardini where all the pavillions are located. This one in particular is the German pavillion. Very interesting. An installation with 50 apple trees and medical facilities. Climate change, consumption and environmental destruction was the main issues behind it. Nice work.

The famous dinner took finally place last friday! We were supposed to be in 10 but, at the end, we were only 5. With food and drinks calculated for more people I realized the morning after that there was nothing left!

My friends Gio, Lelia, Filippo and Giacomo "Jack" had fun. We all had fun! Started the evening with couple of Mojitos (maybe more than a coulpe...!), Blue Chips and funky conversations! Then my enormous roastbeef came into the story! A portion for 10...nothing left! Roasted potatoes and some salad! All accompanied with (too) many bottles of wine! Sorbets and coffee. Cookies and Amaretto. More wine! And then the conversations started touching different topics. Architecture, art, food, politics and it was seriously fun! Black white, left right, sweet and salty... different people ( 2 engineers, 1 architect, one lawyer and one Ph.D) with different opinions, animated discussions, especially when talking about politics. But a very beautiful night!

The morning after was something totally different!!! Went to sleep at 4 and had to wake up early! Very heavy! Considering that I had to go to a family reunion! Heavy day!

I am drinking coffe and eating some dries bananas and I am already stressing out!! Right now, some thoughts are in my mind: I need to eat less since Christmas is coming and you all know how much you eat during those type of holidays. I'm organizing a dinner/party at my home this coming friday and the only things I know for sure are those related with the drinking part: good coctails (Americano, Negroni, Mojitos), amazing wine for the dinner (I will post the funky list as soon as I have it all planned out!), and the Passito for dessert. Obviously lots of water, but I have no problem since I do not have to drive afterwards. Anyway, the problem is what am I going to cook? Tired of pasta. But maybe homemade gnocchi will be great...but I am lazy! Roatbeef? Lamb?

I still have to go to our friends awesome farm to buy homemade icecream (no additives, no milk, biologic, super healthy). I was thinking about many other things for dessert but good icecream will do it! I found these german cookies in a store yesterday. They reminded me of my childhood and Christmas. It's funny sometimes how food takes you back in time through fantastic memories! Elisen-Lebkuchen. Stupidly, I didn't read what was in them, damn me! 3 ingredients out of 4 made me so sick I will never eat them again! But my friends love them, especially at 3 am with some grappa! So many things still to plan. I will have to concentrate and plan the night!

It was indeed a bit strange how the weather evolved these past couple of days. Initially we were all happy that the snow could already be seen on top of the mountains. The past years it had been aweful not to ski a lot since the lack of snow was the main issue here in switzerland! But then, the weather suddently changed. It started raining like crazy. No sun for a long time. I do love the rain but enough is enough!

Then yesterday the weather changed again. It was warm like summer was knocking again on this strange year's door. It was just the prelude to what's happening today. Freezing and raining. The colors seesaw is back! Today is still gray. I captured some of the colors that surrounded me yesterday inside and ouside my home. Dry, colorful and warm moments! Today I am just happy that I have my Hunter boots! At least I will have dry, trendy and warm feet!!!

Still wondering if the famous chestnut cheese I bought saturday was more about taste or aesthetic formality! I took it with me through my daily readings! Maybe it is true...it is good, really good, but it is indeed more amazing to take picture of it! Especially when wandering in the food section of this italian magazine! Unfortunately (for me) it is gone now. Today, the only thing left is the chesnut leaf!

Another weekend is over! I've never appreciated the lake house as much as this year. Maybe because this year was different. Many things have happened and knowing the fact that having a house where I can escape to makes it a lot easier! Yes! I guess escaping from my city is what I do! But only during weekends!

During these days I am constanly searching for good things to eat and good things to see. Sometimes it happens that those things are just one: good things to eat that look amazingly interesting. Artistic culinary creations!

Since winter is almost here mostly all swiss people are happy because it is the time when we all have big dinners with friends eating fondue and, my favorite, raclette! But, I was so "lucky" to become allergic to diary products and it is quite tragic that I can't eat these winterly recipes anymore! Thank god there are goats and sheeps! I can eat cheese made with their milk without passing out! Even fondue and raclette! And, to tell you the truth, they are even better! Saturday I went in a popular italian store on the lake boardwalk and discovered an amazing cheese! Goat cheese covered with chestnut leaves! Very good and very beautiful to look at. But are the leaves just to make it look good or do they actually put a particular fragrance into it?

Photo: Lily Penelope. Sony Digital

After weeks of constant rain, today is finally sunny! Even the cold weather that we have been experiencing has disappeared. Outside it feels like the first day of spring. Colors, the odd warm climate but still, on top of the surrounding mountains you can see snow. I had to take advantage of this beautiful day! I took my camera at lunch. Nice!

Photo: Lily Penelope. Sony Digital

Get into the car. Drive to Lugano. Buy an Ipod cable to attach it to the car. Get some new DVDs, including the one ML told me. Buy grocery. Mint and sugarcane so I can fix some Mojitos tonight. Go back home. Cook. Bring the food in the living room. Sit down in front of the tv. Eat and watch a Dvd. Well, that was my plan for last night. I didn't calculate that something would completely change it! And this is what actually happened:

walked in the park with my dalmatian Tiger. I didn't pay attention to his wildness. I didn't see the freaky cat coming. I didn't realize the dog starts running like a maniac. I just felt my arm detaching from my body! Damn it hurt! I couldn't move it! So, bottom line I had to change my perfectly structured plans for the night! I didn't move from home. Took a bath. Started a new book (Borkmann's Point) and had a fantastic dinner: nettle gnocchi with a gentle sauce! But the pain is huge! Damn-crazy-dog!

Photo: Lily Penelope. Sony Digital

I have to say that lately the many changes I brought into my life were really good. I sometimes see my life as a closet! How many times during the year you open your closet/wardrobe and realize that you need to put some order in it? How many times you ask yourself "oh my god, what was I thinking when I got this?" or "I need to be strong and just throw this thing away...I will not wear it aanymore anyway!" or "maybe I should put the t-shirts on the left side and the sweaters on the rght one" or "damn...it's getting cold out there, maybe it is time to put the spring stuff away and finally bring out the warm winter clothes". Life is sort of the same thing! There comes a time during the year when you start wondering if things are ok, if instead of going on with a certain routine maybe it is time to change it, to evaluate if certain people are as you've always believed they were or if you simply need to put them in a box and give it to the Salvation army. Well, I am in the middle of the yearly cleansing routine! It is funny because I realize that these thoughts also come in other people's mind! Every morning, when I sit at my desk, before starting my workday I read couple of blogs. My friend form Manila, Mel, I guess did her cleansing!! She started a new way of looking at things, and it is nice to read her thoughts and see her daily amazing photographs. Then I read another blog from a friend of Mel. Paolo is such a creative person and this morning I was reading about his thoughts on the 80's generation (damn you are young!!!!)! I come from the 70's but I was smiling quite a lot reading it because it doesn't matter how old you are and where you come from, ultimately we all have sort of the same thoughts regarding life! And we all agree...life is fun! And when you realize it is not...just make it as such! Do the things you really love, read a good book, go to the movies, hang with people who respect you and share at least couple of your interests, enjoy your day! That's what I am doing right now. I had to do the yearly cleasing routine though! Cleaning and put some order throught the drawers of my life!

Photo: Lily Penelope. Sony Digital

Greg Lynn-Form's project is about constructing prototype furniture and toys with recycled plastic. It is ultimately a project about the re-use of a material for functional things. The forms and structures of these toys are colorful, rough, curved, big and funny because ultimately that's their function: a playful function!

Photo: Lily Penelope. Sony Digital

S1NGLETOWN by Droog & Kesselskramer, is an event based on the world of contemporary single people. It investigates on ideas, desires and fears of this huge category of our society. Ultimately it studies products for them!

S1NGLETOWN asks: why are we single? Are single people lonely or free? Rich or poor? The action field of this resaerch is a city, obviously called singletown. It is composed by 9 types of housing of modern singles with products made especially for them! I loved this work, not only because I am single (!!) but because it was one of the few you could feel very close. No extravaganza, nothing impossible, nothing weird. Realitiy as it is but displayed in a very interesting way by having all these people and objects hanging around the room. And it made me smile quite a lot!

Photo: Lily Penelope. Sony Digital

This is one of the work I liked the most at the Arsenale. Guallart Architects designed a model that allows to redefine the physical world by assimilating it by the digital world. Everything begins from the components of a computer network. These components will define a multiscale structure that contains all the elements of the physical world that have a digital identity.

The room was absolutely impressive. They redefined basically everything: beds, tables, chairs, clothes and every other thing that belongs to our daily routine. Very imaginative and very interesting!

I have to say that Hadid is one of my favorite architects. No wonder I was ec-static when I saw her "Lotus". Her work here at the Biennale wants to be a system of furnished-spaces that want to capture the immediate world, the closer one and the more distant one. The Lotus space wants to be as programmatic as our actual everyday. Rest, amusement, study and so on. Many folds as many are this programs. Formality and functionality.

But still...I had a problem here too! I mean: you talk about seducing the viewer, you talk about this being a space for the everyday where you have incorporated a bed, a desk, cabinets and every other piece we all have in our homes...and all you can see on every folds was the "Please DO NOT TOUCH" sign!!!?!!?

Beside that a very beautiful job!

Asymptote Rock! What else can I say??

Aaron Betsky, Director of this year Biennale said:

“what should be an obvious fact: architecture is not building. Architecture must go beyond buildings because buildings are not enough. They are big and wasteful accumulations of natural resources that are difficult to adapt to the continually changing conditions of modern life”.

Wise words! There is one thing, in my opinion, that must be said: architecture as we know it, and I speak not only as an architect but also as a inhabitant of it, can be felt, seen, sometimes even heard, smelled...my god how awesome is the smell of concrete after the rain! and, obviously, architecture can be touched! It is unfortunate that during the entire walk through the Arsenale's spaces, you could yes look at the pieces, photograph them, but you couldn't be an actual part of them. This piece for example was under glass so I am wondering: you want to make people dream, hope and think and you dont let them touch their possible probable future???

The theme of this year Biennale is "Out there:Architecture Beyond Building". Obviously many of the participants expressed their vision of space and spatiality beyond the ordinary transforming their final piece into extra-ordinary compositions.

The work made for the Biennale by David Rockwell, Reed Kroloff and Casey Jones is one of those. A work that takes you in a new dimension created by fragments of a reality we all know. Of movies, of history, of culture recombining them to into a new way of creating and perceiving a new space. A space where no real architectural elements are actually used. That's why the group used fragments of famous movies where architecture was portrayed and constructed in different ways. With technology, with virtuality. From Metropolis (Fritz LAng) to Blade Runner (Ridley Scott), from Playtime (Jacques Tati) to The Truman Show. Technology, capitalism, future, 50's modernism, perfect urbanism. No wonder that some of the best visions of architecture and urban planning ever were made by writers, movie directors and production designer!

I adored this piece...and I was at the first one!!!!

Before entering the Arsenale, there was this amazing space! So amazing that I didn't even bother to look who did it! I therefore have no absolute clue about ts author! Still, I want to share with you some images about it! Then it is up to you to make up whatever you want out of it. Because it is true that "we do not see things as they are, we see them as WE are".

Before entering the actual space of the Arsenale, heart of the Biennale, I stopped at this space where this extremely attractive piece of Eric Shuldenfrei and Marisa Yiu got my total attention. Their work tries to find a dialogue between nature and artifice in Hong Kong. They try to alternate the high density of the city in opposition to the extremely rural aspect of other regions around it. This is their proposal: a vertical landscape that incorporates more nature in our daily lives.

"Here we grow firecracker plants that entwine with th balconies, we place a trellis to hang our daily herbs and plant bauhinia flowers, an emblem of Hong Kong first classified here in 1908"..."we encourage inhabitants of Hong Kong to farm in their own urban space. In fabricating a vertical landscape we promote the potential of an Urban Pastoral, where artifice and nature fully complement each other".

Very beautiful the vases made of plexiglas. Wonderful piece.