Architecture Grand Finale!

I finally received the piece of paper that certifies by the governor, the dean and all of those people with the pretty signatures that I, in fact, have a Bachelor's degree in Design with a Major in Architecture! [phew! and woohoo!]
Four years of model building and nonstop drafting, endless 3-D modeling and rendering hours, over 380 gallons of coffee and tons of sleepless night finally got me a piece of paper with funky looking, curly font! What a relief!

Sarcasm aside, I thought I'd celebrate [3 months after graduation] with a little architecture knowledge and throw in a couple of interesting projects I've seen lately. I also thought, 'why not dedicate every end/start of the month to ARCHITECTURE!' After all, I did spend forever learning about it, I might as well share a bit of what I know best and love most... But don't worry, I won't drown you in Architecture; I'll keep up with the other things as well.

And in talking about curly font and people with pretty signatures, I was reminded of Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech.

Might as well throw in curly mustaches!

Yes, most widely know as Salvador Dalí, though that was also his father's and brother's name. This eccentric surrealist Catalanian, known for his twisted and highly symbolic art [not to mention extremely hard to understand, and appealing mostly to adolecents of the time] is having his collection moved to... Of all places and very close to home... The beautiful but somewhat uninteresting St. Petersburg, Florida! Lucky us Floridians!

The collection's new house obviously has to be worth of  Dalí's  twisted personality and work, which is where professionals in my field come in, to build fantasy with concrete! Ah.. Architecture!

This time it was the architecture firm HOK, with Yann Weymouth in the lead, who took charge in designing a space as fantastic and surreal a Dalí' and his art.
The building is deeply inspired by Dalí's collection, combining realistic and classical elements with the fantasy of the contemporary. Dalí would be pretty proud.

A combination of his fascination with the hypercube and folding?

The building has already recieved several critics, but if you ask me, although I don't love the tumor looking glass or the chunky cube, the building is very appropiate for what this madman woulld have liked.

The space is very reminicent of Dalí's work, having a touch of his dripy folding clocks on to a cube, which also fascinated the man. The architecs say that the contrast between the "treasure box" which referes to the concrete orthagonal structure, and the "enigma," refering to the triangulated glass, is seen as a “contrast between the rational world of the conscious and the more intuitive, surprising natural world,” which is an element often present in Dalí's Art.

spiraling staircase

 As for the inside, 66,000 square feet and 3 floors of huracaine 5 resistance structures, but the real eye catcher here is the staircase, which really takes Dalí's advice and pushes it to the extreme, defying structure and even gravity a bit. The staircase runs along all 3 floors of the space and takes the shape of a DNA molecule, another fetish of the man. To me, it looks like it was inspired on his funky mustache.

The  Salvador Dalí Museum will open it's doors on January 2011 and it will house Dalí's largest collection of work, which is currently right outside of Spain, but the current building is in really bad shape, such bad shape that stormy, hurricane-prompt St. Pete made a better home.

I haven't been in site to see it with my own eyes, but from the pictures and even the critics, the building seems to be a really good fit to Dalí's taste and work. I am just glad that it is close to home and I won't have to travel all the way to Spain to go see the collection.
 

So with that, cheers to Dalí, cheers to HOK [and hopefully they read this and offer me a job] and cheers to 4 years of school. Let's hope they start paying off [the loans] soon enough.