Dennis Hollingsworth

Friday in Florence

Yesterday, Stephanie heard of the London bombings in the convention hall. She said all of the vendors were cell phoning their friends and families in London to see if they are alright. She heard that the police shot a suicide bomber on a bus before he got to ignite the bomb belt. It turned out that this was bad information, the effect of too much communication and too little information. I'm glad it wasn't that bad... but it was still terrible as it was.

That evening, we heard sirens in the streets, police and ambulances. It was hard to tell if it was due to the terrorism in the air or normal ambient mayhem of civilization (note here that I don't want to attribute terrorism to a normative condition).

Against this, we ate a rather fine meal at a restaurant that I would like to recommend to you all: "Parione" at via del Parione, 74/76r, Via della Vigna Nuova 17, tel 055 214005. Nice shopping around there too.

It's Friday in Florence and here I have a smattering of shots to download for you in this blogpost:

My general attitude in shooting pics is not to replicate the tourist shots that you can find everywhere, and these are mostly in better form than I can provide in this blog anyway. So here is a shot with my back to the Palazzo Pitti and the Boboli Gardens, a view of the wall of buildings that enfront the great sloping plaza. One of the nice things about the design of the plaza is that it is featureless and straight up plain. The fascade is severely rusticated and the lack of detail makes a place where people can adorn it in a special way. I liked it.

One thought, standing here is of the concept of "fabric" architecture -as opposed to feature architecture. In traditional (historically European) city planning and design, there is a consideration of the role of architecture as either the chorus or the actor on the urban stage. In modern city planning (America and any city that is expanding in the suburban manner today ... which is the only way we know of, by the way) every building tries in some degree to be the feature player.

But in another life, I'd like to create an architectural firm by the name "Fabrica" and therefore specialize in simple building types: mixed use with commercial ground floors and apartments/condos for multiple floors above. I'd keep it to five to ten types and tinker with each type to fit into each specific urban context. That's it.

I think that cities like Los Angeles are thickening. This would be an architecture for that process.

In another life, not this one.

On the walk back through Florence on the other side of the Arno River, I spot graffitti. Well, well.

Stencils, drawings with x-acto blades. They're fun and fast.

After the Uffizi foto experience, I gently approached the guard in the Medici Chapel, who was sitting and reading a magazine. "Excuse me sir?" He looked up to me, eyes like a basset hound: "Prego." My body language, most diplomatic: "Can we shoot pictures here with no flash?" He pounds his magazine into his lap: "NO! NO PICTURES ARE ALLOWED IN THIS CHAPEL! IT IS IMPOSSIBLE!" His eyes trembled, all jelly they were.

Okay, okay, Tio.

So, I drew... as I should do anyway. I have left my drawing hand behind for a few years, I must confess. I used to draw all the time from the mists of childhood through my Navy days and into the architecture years. But less and less from the mid 80's onward. Maybe this is why I paint so abstractly nowadays. I've been thinking about drawings lately, about the need to recuperate the practice.

A tentative hand, but ultimately it's like riding a bike.