- Luke Schneider
“Traveling has become somewhat of an addiction for many of
us. It seems as though every Wednesday has become the “planning” day for the
following weekends adventures. As nice as Lille is, it’s fantastic to leave for
the weekend and see something new. So last weekend I headed up to Rotterdam in
the Netherlands. It was a very welcome sight with all its modern architecture
and tall high-rises. Rotterdam reminded me of a European version of Chicago
though not nearly as large. High rises seem to rise out of the water and the
channels split the city in many directions. It’s a very quiet city and the
street life isn’t as prevalent as it is in Lille but it was rather nice not
running into people every two seconds on the sidewalk. 
Even though it was nice to be in a quiet city I wish I would
have seen more street life down in the business district near the Erasmus
Bridge. It was a beautiful area with huge skyscrapers rising everywhere but no
one seemed to walk due to the lack of street life on the lower levels of these
buildings. After researching and designing high rises for an entire semester it
was almost bothersome that the buildings had no retail or restaurants on the
base floor. These high rises were amazing pieces of architecture but the area
almost reminded me of a ghost town it was so quiet. Don’t get me wrong though,
I did find Rotterdam to be my favorite city thus far. It was a gorgeous city
and a fantastic place to ask Whitney to marry me!…. 
This coming weekend we’ll be traveling to Frankfurt in hopes
to find more European examples of modern architecture. Frankfurt is the “most
international” city in Europe so I hope to see a mix of German and different
international styles in their buildings. In the next few weeks we will be
starting our semester long project, so by visiting different cities like
Rotterdam and Frankfurt I hope to see what modern/contemporary architecture can
look like in an old city. We’ll be working on bringing life back into an area
of the city that has been left since the seventies. By visiting all these
different cities each weekend I hope we can all bring different ideas to the
table in order to create some fantastic designs.” - Craig Martin
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