in the rosarium: Europe

Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts

2 Days in Paris

Le Comptoir Général, a museum dedicated to ghetto culture.

Museum of Regular (Burgundian) Life

When visiting a new place, a natural curiosity is to find out how people of the area live. How do their customs differ from the customs of the visitor's culture? What foods do they eat? How are their days structured? What do people do for work? What is their history?

In you happen to be in Dijon, the Museum of Burgundian Life can answer these questions for you. I think it's the first museum I've ever been to that is completely devoted to the history of regular life. There are models of former local factories and work places, collections of old objects, and, of course, a lot of history about the production of mustard...

There are also recreations of old stores and interiors, some charming, and some funny and creepy--

The museum is housed inside a former monastery.

Summer camp outside

Vulkan

One of the reasons I wanted to visit Oslo was to see all of the sustainable architecture that the city is becoming known for. I was excited to visit Vulkan, which is a new development project that is going up in a previously industrial area on the Akerselva river. Once complete, the development will include a school, a food hall, a hotel, office buildings, a dance hall, and a climbing gym. Parts are still under construction, but it was interesting to walk around and see the buildings that have been built already. A lot of the sustainable details are of course invisible from the outside, such as great insulation, energy recycling systems, and geothermal wells that will heat and cool the entire development.

Oslo Opera House

As befits what's housed inside, opera houses seem to invite exciting and dramatic architecture. The Oslo Opera House is no exception. The structure looks like a pale iceberg lifting up from the dark fjord waters that surround it, at least in the summer. I'm sure it blends into its environment more quietly in the winter.

It was designed by Snøhetta and completed in 2007. Most of the structure is made out of white marble and granite, and it slopes away from the water at an angle that encourages climbing. If you climb up the stairs or sloping surfaces to the top, you are rewarded with a great view of the city and fjord.