Mechelen, Belgium welcomed the New Year with rain and fog and the strange combination of ancient and modern architecture that characterizes so much of Belgium.
And also a forest of scary trees.
Tag: Architecture
Sunset Light on Bushnell Tower
A great sunset over Bushnell Park is well-matched by reflections from the windows of Bushnell Tower.
Long Walk Indomitable
The monolithic shadowed face of Trinity College’s Long Walk is particularly dramatic as morning sunshine bounces from the leaves of the surrounding trees.
(And yes, I’m still six months behind processing pictures. And autumn in New England looks great.)
LSC and Hartford
With Hartford’s skyline looking on in the background, the brutalist facade of Trinity College’s LSC matches the carefully graded dirt of its adjacent quad before a thick layer of new sod was applied.
Connecticut State Office Building
Bushnell Theater and the Connecticut State Office Building across the street look warm and inviting in the dusk light—friendly in a way I wouldn’t otherwise associate with massive facades.
Clement on a Spring Morning
Clement Chemistry Building is surrounded by flowering plants that complement its red stone structure on perfect spring morning.
Bushnell Tower After the Rain
Bushnell Tower’s stark concrete looks particularly textured and entrancing as it dries after a rain storm
Even the Parking Garages Are Utopian in Belgium
I commented previously that the Benelux countries look like the cinematic vision of utopia, but I was not perhaps ready for that to extend to structures like parking garages. When the option to be beautiful and interesting exists, the alternative seems a bit insulting.
Resilient Dahl/Miyazaki House
The steep-roofed Belgian structure in the distance (now T’ile Maines) is a relaxing venue on a Belgian island in Mechelen, but a foggy winter evening makes it look more like the sorts of charming/mysterious structures that populate the works of Roald Dahl and Hayao Miyazaki.
Clement in Snow
The bold gothic shapes of Clement Chemistry Building are extra-sharp beneath a layer of snow and scattered with golden sunset light.
Rijksmuseum
Bright sky opens to reveal the sun between the spires of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Beneath the museum, a long tunnel reminds me of China Miéville’s “The City and the City” and its passages between overlapping worlds.
Peaking through the glass reveals an otherworldly modern interior that perhaps continues that Miéville theme in its own way.
Long Walk After Snow
Despite any efforts to the contrary, nostalgia sneaks into my life at moments I least expect. Trinity’s Long Walk was my undergraduate home for several years and this particular moment—a winter evening, as the sun goes down and the smell of dinner cooking in the dining hall climbs aboard the surprisingly warm breeze—was so evocative of the experiences that made me fall in love with campus 20 years ago.
Travelers Tower at Peak Batman
Neither the neoclassical architecture nor the rain make this a “peak Batman” image—rather, it’s the interplay of spotlights with fog that creates what I would describe as “Batmanitude”.
Perfect Summer in Amsterdam
The call of a perfect summer afternoon on a bike crossing Amsterdam—dodging crowds, slipping from old building to new building, under a blanket of white clouds and green trees—sounds utopian.
The Atomium
The scale of Belgium’s Atomium seems to be poorly captured in pictures—perhaps because it’s difficult to capture the structure and its surroundings together, or perhaps because the 102-m-tall structure so resembles something we might be more comfortable seeing at 10 m scale. The shrinking lines of sculptural lampposts helps a bit, but it’s night that I believe truly fixes the scale issue. See the band of red in the topmost sphere? That band is the array of full-length windows of the restaurant at the top of the structure, and the red light is the lighting inside.
Decaseconds 