As an interior architect, I greatly relish designing staircase due to the fact that they are always problematic. I’m not talking about just sticking on a prefab. Perhaps, many architects do not like them for this reason. My father tells me that architects shows their worth through their staircase designs. At any rate, today, it is not truly compelling, thanks to software. This staircase sketch was from a picture taken at Longy. The staircase has carried people since 1889, having high quality woodworks.

Needing to transfer a great deal of passengers for Red Sox games at nearby Fenway Park, Kenmore Square is one of the most important places in Boston, and has two MBTA stations. Moreover, two major avenues intersect here, that is, Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue. It is also the starting point of the Boston University campus. A major landmark of Boston is the neon Citgo sign sitting atop the Boston University bookstore. Although the logo of a Venezuelan oil company, the sign complements well with the cityscape. This sketch was from the square.

I went to Cyprus to receive an award on architectural competition from Eastern Mediterranean University, having a tough time with the heat at that time. While awaiting the ceremony, I wandered the whole area as much as I could. Saying that Cyprus is abundant in beauty. For many years, people have live in an ongoing conflict along  ethnic and religious lines and still continue in the country to a degree. In fact, some zones are still No Man’s Land. One of the interesting buildings to which I needed to pay attention was the Lala Mustafa Paşa Mosque in Mağusa. This is due to the fact that the mosque was originally a cathedral. Later, the Ottomans turned it into a mosque. The funny thing is that the cathedral and the mosque were designed with different prayer directions. Churches are built so that worshippers face East. Mosques, however, are built to facilitate prayer in the direction of Mecca. From Cyprus, this means Southeast. This sketch was from in front of the building. Note the later addition of the minaret.

One can appreciate how concrete can cause a great deal of undescribed feelings within spatial areas at the Yale University Museum. I think that Louis Kahn was truly talented to use materiality upon forms, especially mass and heavy forms. We can even envision his works as “monumental beyond modernism.” This sketch, which was from an old photo, was of Yale University’s Museum from the courtyard. As the art gallery is the oldest university art museum in the western hemisphere,  it has a great deal of precious pieces over there. The museum has ben collecting them since 1832. It was truly a good time with one of my cousins, also a graduate student of architecture, until we heard students getting rowdy in the pitch black New Haven streets

I really did not relish the route, on the green line, I took when I was going to a crappy language school, but I did enjoy looking around while taking the subway as part of it runs as a trolley. This lent itself  to exploring new places. One of them is the Boston University central campus, seen here. The Martin Luther King Jr. sculpture was truly appealing for those who are keen for art. I wish I could have seen it when the sunlight creates the shadow which appears on the ground. There is always next time.