Den Haag

So The Hague, Den Haag, the place where the gnomes gather, er wait, I suppose they call them international judges and officials. Secretly, though, they don't do much during the day - just sit around in store windows posing as gnomes. It's much more fun than international law.
Some of the urban fabric of Den Haag. We didn't get to walk around much as we had work to do. Our work was to address land, transportation and water issues in the historic Mill District of Minneapolis using some Dutch principles. It was a challenging day for all of us, but fun too. Mom, you'll be excited to know the two peaks in the background are a Michael Graves building. I will be in Den Haag two more times and will try to get better photos of it when I'm there!
This was just a cool drawing I saw posted inside of a building we walked through. I like its gestural qualities - which you probably can't see in this small thumbnail. Trust me, it's cool. :)
Along the street - canals are much bigger here than in Utrecht and built differently. I'll take a picture of an old canal in Utrecht soon and you'll see what I mean.
This was a completely white building, done by Meier, an architect. I can't recall his first name right now but he always works in white. It seemed a bit sterile to me, but what do I know, I'm just a girl who likes flowers.
Now this one is done in earthtones.....I like it. :) I just liked the rich wood, the window panes and it served as sort of a marking point for a road we walked down.
The Den Haag train station....I was playing with the camera a bit and liked this one. Too bad my photos always look crooked. It was a busy place early Saturday morning.

So today we officially had the day "off"...which means we all worked on our papers. Our instructor, Julia, also agreed to meet with some of us and work on watercolor. It was a perfect day for it, overcast with the sun peeking through, and not too hot. I learned a ton and will hopefully find sometime to do some more!

Tomorrow I may actually have dinner with a few friends from St. Lawrence! Joost de Laat and Caroline - Joost is from Holland, Caroline from Montreal. They live in Montreal now and just haappen to be here in Holland for two weeks. Imagine that!

Love to you all!

Leidsche Rijn

Today we toured a vinex (pronounced like phoenix, er, feenix) - it's a new development that has been planned at the national level in effort to save some of the green space and make sure development happens near the three big cities (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam). Leidsche Rijn is the biggest development of any vinex planned at 30,000 housing units. It is just on the west side of Utrecht. We biked over, met with a tour guide and biked around...everywhere it seemed. It was hot today, suprisingly, totally sunny too! I anticipated rain or mist every day so this has been a pleasant surprise! Alright, more photos....again in absolutely no coherent order...
The one above is of a stair case made for bringing your bikes up the stairs, how cool is that?
So this one is a bit washed out but thought it was interesting - the old houses (or what looks old) on the left, and the new, modern stuff on the right. Set perfectly along the agricultural border.
Here's my bike, some housing and flowers....I'm in heaven. :)
Some cool models of the plans....the one below even lights up.

This was the beginning of the tour - our tour guide is on the right.
So this area is planned for development - I think it is so cool that even before the development happens, the bike trail goes in. Even before the soil (in this case, sand) is hauled, the bike trail goes in. Cool.
Todd suggested I find a way to have a photo taken of myself.....here I am (you can't really see it but I had pants rolled up and my socks (blue and black stripped long socks) rolled down. Fashion guru, I am.

So that's it for today. Tomorrow we have a charette to design some place in Minneapolis. We'll work with the professionals we've met, put our Dutch hats (and clogs) on and work on the project in Den Haag (The Hague).

Student housing at the Universitiet Utrecht. To the left are massive buildings, to the right fantastic green space and further afield, farm land. Such an amazing setting!
I suppose I should have started with this image above - the quintecential windmill...taken from inside a tour bus...classic, eh? Thatched roof and really, truly working. The windmill system is pretty darn amazing - we learned all about the system and in true Cindy fashion, I'll be sure to bend all your ears about it upon return. :)
So this was trippy. We were in the national park, De Heg Veluwe (don't even attempt it, that words even trips up the Dutch) and you can pick up a bike upon entry (for FREE) and bike everywhere. La, la la, we're biking in the heatherland and happen upon a statue of some dude looking out over the heatherland. Laura Lyndgaard is standing to the left (note: scale). I think he was influential in the creation of the park but the writing was in, well, Dutch and hard to discern.
This is the Rietveld-Schroder house, world famous house that literally feels like you're in a Mondrian painting. I will, of course, bend your ear about this one too - the details inside are amazing - doors collapse, expand (as do windows)....it's surreal.
This is "social housing" - affordable housing in the Netherlands. This guy, a CEO of a company, wanted to create housing for his workers and said it had to be at the standard where he would live there too. Can you imagine? It is quite old (1895) and has since become senior housing but what an amazing thing to do. This house you can see would house four families (all separate but shared walls).
This, on the other hand, is student housing. University of Utrecht. I can't even describe the scale and how it felt to walk through it. You can see signs across the street, those are about 7-8 feet high, so the thing is enormous.
Near the student housing some green space....ahhhhh....and in the background, farmland.
This is a mix of social and market rate housing. In Almere a town built on a polder. A polder is land that's been drained of water for human use. Much of Holland is built on polders - land they call "reclaimed from the sea".
Julia to the left, smiling with the great scarf (she's the instructor), and Candace a student who BROUGHT her bike helmet to Europe. She was sick this day and was a total trooper.
So this is stormwater control, Holland-style. Bricks that are swooping around (the striking pattern) are actually set to be sort of like a swale, all the water runs from the street into this cool feature and then goes to the canal. I actually was praying for rain this day just to see it work.
This is Museum Centraal in Utrecht - one wing of it. Just a typical builidng in the area.
So I mentioned De Heg Veluwe, the national park - this is one place where you pick up a bike to tour the place!
This was my favorite house in Almere (where we biked around) - part of it is canilevered over the water. The green space, you can't really see it here, was a sort of round garden - I liked the juxtaposition of the modular, rectangular house and the rounded garden.
An actual floating house - on a canal in Almere.
This is the garbage-sucker. In Almere's city center the garbage put in the garbage cans are actually vacuumed up right away and are sent to this location. It is bizaare but garbage is such an issue here (in Utrecht), so this was sort of interesting.
So, graffiti is ubiquitous. But is COW graffiti? Seriously, how cool is that?
This was a cool little town on our polder tour - call De Bilk. Hey, look, a canal.
De Bilk again. A woman biking and I tried to capture a woman batting her linens out the window but she was too darn quick. You can see them in the building though.
The heatherland in, say it with me, De Heg Veluwe.
Some of the watch guards on the statue that is posted above - keeping gard over the park or looking for their lost sheep.
This one is of a hunting lodge in the national park. Can't really call it "Camp" can we Skellengers?
The one above is of me biking and taking a photo of a canal. Don't worry my love, I was very very careful with your camera!

Um...they like bikes here....take that back they LOVE bikes here!


Well hopefully this works! Just a little taste of what life is like while I'm here....hope you enjoyed it!

Love and miss you all.

Travels!

Alright, well I think I'm up and running with the internet here. I'm not sure I'll be able to do this often but at least I can post some updates! Utrecht is amazing; a dense amazing town with zillions of bikes going every which way. We've sat by canals, walked through cathedrals and mused over formal gardens. The history you can smell, I swear it (or maybe that's the stench of the canal). Everything exudes history, the brick, the metal, the statues, the canals. It also screams 21st century as it is a university town. I'll try to post some photos here shortly but thought I'd test the blog-ability before I did the photo posting.

Hope all is well!