To better orient us in the layout of the city, I booked a four hour guided bike tour of Barcelona. The students are in groups doing an urban studies assignment this week. Landscape architecture education is from the micro to macro scale which is both fun and challenging because of this range. Students are taught the details of design like a step tread profile (the sideways view of the flat part of a stair), to community design, to urban infill, to the macro level of watershed management that is typically done with GIS and satellite imagery. Many of the students are interested in working for an urban design firm or going into city and regional planning.
Riding through the streets of Barcelona, I felt like Fraulein Maria and the von Trapp family (I was only missing Gretyl on the back of my bike). And riding a bike through this large city is much faster and easier (probably even more than the Metro) than any walk might have been. We saw how during the 1992 Olympics, Barcelona retrofitted many of the streets to create a very bicycle friendly city. We rode through the major parks, saw lots of Antonio Gaudi's buildings, through the Gothic section of the city to the "new area" from the 1850s. Gaudi's pinnacle design in Barcelona, the cathedral called Sagrada Famillia, has been under construction since 1896 and is due to be completed in 2026....The tight Medieval section of the city was challenging to get through on a bike because of the tight corners. The Cathedral square in the heart of the old section of the city has Roman walls still standing and was the end of our journey. Great day for an overview, though a bit chilly. We finished our ride literally as the rain drops began to fall.
Riding through the streets of Barcelona, I felt like Fraulein Maria and the von Trapp family (I was only missing Gretyl on the back of my bike). And riding a bike through this large city is much faster and easier (probably even more than the Metro) than any walk might have been. We saw how during the 1992 Olympics, Barcelona retrofitted many of the streets to create a very bicycle friendly city. We rode through the major parks, saw lots of Antonio Gaudi's buildings, through the Gothic section of the city to the "new area" from the 1850s. Gaudi's pinnacle design in Barcelona, the cathedral called Sagrada Famillia, has been under construction since 1896 and is due to be completed in 2026....The tight Medieval section of the city was challenging to get through on a bike because of the tight corners. The Cathedral square in the heart of the old section of the city has Roman walls still standing and was the end of our journey. Great day for an overview, though a bit chilly. We finished our ride literally as the rain drops began to fall.
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