My Pants Are So "Pigeon" (from sitting on the ground to eat)

This past Monday we had a potluck dinner at Briana's flat in Chelsea. She has more room than any of us so we cooked in our kitchens and took our dishes to her house on the tube! We decided on a southern theme for some reason so I did "fried potato balls" that I found on a Paula Dean recipe site. Very delicious!

This week went really well. Through our independent study professor we were introduced to the Westminster Libraries which are smaller than the Royal Institute of British Architecture which is the other library we visited last month. We also had our first "Economics of Reuse" class with our professor who owns a very large sustainable development firm called URBED. It seems like we're going to get a lot of good information about revamping urban areas through adaptive reuse.

On Tuesday evening about 6 of us had a private tour (there would have been more NYU undergrads but it was raining slightly so everyone bailed) of Soho. It was great! We really got to see how close the Soho neighborhood is to ours. We learned that the name 'Soho' comes from when the rich brits used the area for duck hunting. They would yell "soho" when they released their dogs to retrieve the ducks. London was really a collection of small towns with a lot of open green space we are learning. There wasn't much "city" beyond the actual "city of london." We also learned that there are a lot of French living in Soho because many Hugenot's came to settle there as it was protestant.
Kathleen, Kirsten and Marlee- NYU girls


The highlight of this week was going to the Peckham Rye station with Benny O'Looney! --young-ish architect who went to Yale. He is big into conservation (the British word for our "preservation"). We met up on Wednesday morning where he gave me a tour of the town, where he lives and works. He told me all about the work he and the Peckham council are trying to do to save and restore the station. He bought me a "tea and bacon sandwich" at a local hole-in-the-wall and he gave me a bunch a surveying materials: a large sketchbook and triangle for drafting on site, colored pencils and a big measuring tape. It was so nice! Friday afternoon I met up with him to do some surveying. We did it together, he's working on the plan and I 'm working on an elevation. Then I should be able to do the work in CAD from home and he'll compile a report and request for funds to do things like refit windows etc.


Peckham Rye Station
















Rooftop bar at the top of a parking garage-- a design project for architecture students. all the wood is recycled scaffolding wood. Benny took me here after our work at Peckham Rye.



This weekend we went to "Open House" which is when the city opens it's doors to a lot of places that are normally closed off. We didn't do anything too famous but went to some cool converted architecture spaces. More on that later.

Last a group of the girls went out to a club called "The Social" it was small an intimate but had fun people and good songs. We did a lot of dancing.

And today we went to Shorditch for the weekly flower markets. Very beautiful and amazing how much was there. I'll write more once we go back and actually bring my camera buy some flowers.















This just reminded me of Chris and Zach from last semester.