Dennis Hollingsworth

Girona

It was wonderful to have Gil and Daryl stay with us here. I worked for Gil when I was a kid architect (apprenticeship) and I consider him my mentor in that way. He restored historical buildings in California, and this means adobe structures. He has a grasp of the massing of earth and stone and of rough hewn wood. He grew up in the 70's 80's South San Fransisco Bay area, the area that became Silicon Valley. He was able to work out of the tilt-up clean industrial suburban language into his own soulful territory. I was lucky enough to have my hand in the drawings of Mission San Jose and the Presidio Chapel in Santa Barbara. Gil is a lot of fun to work for, and very demmanding in equal measure.

Tossa has a commuter bus to Girona that departs in the morning and returns twleve hours later. We knew we liked Girona but did we like it a whole half a day long?

The answer is yes of course. Girona is a beautiful city, nicely put together, a university in the historical center, clean industry is growing in the outskirts, small but large, great restaurants, cool people, and you can by a caganero sculpture too!

Check out how this building turns a corner. It's hard to see the faux rope decorative motif around the oval openings at the corner arches, freaky tile line from the bottom to the underside of the terrace that sits in the sliced corner, or that vertical window on the side that shoots up to a swollen parapet cum balcony.

Here's a building that's all corners. You can approach this structure from below a flight of stairs that brings people from the riverside paseos to the historical and religious elevations of the city. The techtonics chatter from eaves to rafters to hand decorated tiles and on and on.

The old city is rimmedwith defensive walls that have been reknitted into a grand paseo that can take you from one end of the city to the other with views overlooking the city all the way. You can see it, the great wall of China kind of feature over Gil and Daryl's shoulders. The linear band of clearstories of the university can be seen to the right.

Here, you can see the other half of the panorama of Girona over Stephanie's shoulders. Note the lush green of the park beyond.

Let's have a bite of chocolate (ch=x in Catalan) before we go.