The Start of Something New

Well..it is now November and a whole month has passed without me even realising it. So much has happened within this time and already so many people have been to visit. This city, that once was just a coordinate within a country in the world has now well and truly become my home. The question that many people ask when they arrive as a tourist is 'what is Barcelona?'. The answer to this only arrives when you live here. Barcelona is made up of the people that live here and how they live. As I have moved here I have realised that I have now become a part of Barcelona and the way it works. I have formed part of the city without even realising it, as I have built up my relationship with the city, walls and buildings around me. 

I started the university here on the 10th October and first started classes on the 13th. Three weeks in and I have really started to appreciate Chelsea as a university far more than I ever used to. I feel almost as if I have taken a step back in life and gone back to school. The first day began with five hours of classes where we sat in a row of chairs behind desks looking at a white board as the 'teacher' told us about our projects for the period of time up until Christmas. 
Our Thursday classes involve two projects. The first of these being a hybrid furniture project, where our tutor, English, studied at the Bartlett and without expressing favouritism, is my favourite tutor within the university and she understands our way of thinking and our way of working and let's us bring what we have learnt at chelsea into our work here. So far for this particular project we have been looking at two actions, mine being reading and working, and one adjective, mine precious, where we have to group all three of these together to make a freestanding furniture object.

 Thus far, we have just had to research into the words in depth and find out what they mean, making word concept models along the way, but not actually starting on ideas for the design..which I personally find very slow in comparison to chelsea. The second project that we have started on is 'project house', where the first task is to research into a particular modern house within the 20s and 30s by a famous architect and find out why the particular design is so unique and how it relates to the context around it. This is a group project, where we are looking at Alvar Aalto- Villa Mairea. The second part is to redesign and reconstruct an apartment in Barcelona, that we went to site survey a couple of weeks ago.
http://www.villamairea.fi/


The transition from chelsea to IED has been very difficult, especially within the first couple of weeks. We have lessons every single day, where we have to sit in a class and look at a whiteboard. It seems much less practical than at home, and at times can become quite frustrating. Almost like you are being patronised. 
Until you leave Chelsea, I don't think you realise how much freedom and experimentation you are allowed with your projects. As much as you appreciate being book taught how to use photoshop, illustrator, autocad and how to draw, I think you forget how much freedom allows your designs to develop and really become your own. With less restriction you can progress more and really strive and succeed within a project design and idea. One thing I am very much looking forward to returning to. 
The classes here are very small, with only 18 in our second year. Despite the course being in English and taking place in Spain, Emily and I are the only English people studying here and there are no Spanish students. On the first day we actually felt like we were a part of the Eurovision song contest, as we had to say whether we were present and then where we were from. 'Hi from Estonia, Iceland and Bulgaria' were only a few of the countries our classmates come from. Hopefully this time England doesn't end up with nil points!!!!