Back to The Drawing Board
Back to The Drawing Board
Back to The Drawing Board - S3 E5 - Globetrotting Architecture 1: Barcelona and Reykjavik
As your seasoned travel companions, Theo and I whisk you away on an architect's dream journey, first landing in Barcelona where the spirals of Sagrada Familia beckon. We spin tales from our visit, painting a vivid image of Gaudí's masterpiece and how it skyrockets the joy of discovery to new heights. Our conversation steers towards the grid-lined streets of Barcelona, exploring how each corner converges on this unmistakable landmark, while sharing tips on dedicating full days to drink in the marvels of significant structures, like the modernist influence of Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion.
Then, let's swap the Mediterranean backdrop for the cool climes of Reykjavik, where Harpa concert hall's glass façade reflects the Icelandic sky. I'll recount the quirky details that make this city's architecture a feast for the senses, from fisherman's houses turned art havens to the old harbour's metamorphosis into a hotspot for culture vultures. Theo and I promise to leave no stone unturned, from the ethereal glow of the Northern Lights to the charm of the Sun Voyager sculpture, ensuring you're armed with anecdotes and insights for your own Icelandic escapade.
To round off our episode, we muse over the nostalgic lanes of past travels while charting the map for future expeditions. We debate the merits of spontaneous jaunts against the precision of well-planned tours, drawing from our escapades in the story-rich streets of Rome and the meticulous designs of Scandinavia. As we share these reflections, we invite you to influence our next adventures, promising that even the most unpredictable of travel experiences can lead to memories etched in the stone of time. Tune in, and let's journey together through the architectural wonders that have captured our hearts and fueled our imaginations.
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Hello and welcome to Back to the Drawing Board, an architecture podcast for architects and students. I am your host, phil, architect and director at PDBS Architecture and Design, and this is my co-host and intern, theo Howdy. Today we're going to talk holidays. Yeah, not that we do them very often, but what we do, do them.
Speaker 2:When we do do them. We do them right, we do do them right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we're going to tell you how to do. Do them right.
Speaker 1:What we've tried to do in this is limit, because this could be long, yeah. So what we've tried to do is give ourselves a city and this is going to be a long series, I think and what we're going to start on with is a country, a city, so that we kind of narrow everything down, and then we're going to narrow it down into five buildings or architectural interests. We'll give you a little bit of information on that and then at the end we'll probably do a summarise of other things that can be done, either in the area, in the country, in the city, whatever it is. What's so good about it? Yeah, basically, and obviously, let's say this could be a continuum thing.
Speaker 1:So today we've got Barcelona and I've got Reykjavik, so these are both places we've been. Obviously, in the future there's probably going to be ones we haven't been to. I think eventually, if we ever get the opportunity, if you subscribe to our Patreon for £1 a month as little as three pa day we'll be able to actually afford to go on a few more of these city breaks, maybe even start doing daily vlogs in these places to give out people ideas of where they should be going, what they should be seeing and insight into it For £1 a month, you can get us on holiday for your enjoyment.
Speaker 1:But what a busman's holiday.
Speaker 2:What a busman's holiday that would be For your enjoyment. Hey, let's please.
Speaker 1:So should we do it in alphabetical order. Do you want to start with Barcelona?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how we planned it alphabetically.
Speaker 1:It's got nothing to do with the slideshow.
Speaker 2:No, no, oh, conveniently how convenient. What a slideshow we've got. Yeah, so obviously a key thing is these are places that Phil and I have both been to. So I went to Barcelona last year. I've been to Reykjavik twice, have you? Yeah, I've been once, but it's not all about me, except from right now it is yeah, I went to Barcelona last year in 2023. The Sagrada Familia was still not complete. Is it 2026? It's due. That's when they expect it.
Speaker 1:Oh, what do we have here? What might that possibly be?
Speaker 2:It's a picture of the Sagrada Familia. These are I mean, there's so many famous ones in buildings in Barcelona.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did tell you, you can't just have five building buildings.
Speaker 2:We're trying not to do all Gaudi. So when I went, I went for three days and we planned to go and see quite a few and we ended up seeing pretty much all Gaudi. So we've got, we've got. My kind of idea here is you could do this as like a five day tour If you're so into it. You could do like a building a day, because that's what me and my mom did, is we basically spent a day in a building, yeah, and we went there from like just after it opened until we got kicked out. We got there late, which was really annoying because we only had about three hours in it, which was for the biggest building. We spent the least amount of time in it, um, but yeah, obviously designed by Antonio Gaudi, it can be found near itself. If you're looking for a landmark to get you there, it is the landmark. It's the first thing you see when you fly, drive or sail into the city, and it's not even the tallest building. It's just like you see it and you're like, oh crap there it is.
Speaker 1:I imagine it's a bit like the Eiffel Tower and stuff where if you just follow the crowd of people moving, they're going in that direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now, our hotel was about five minutes away, and so we were asking the receptionist who was saying how to get there, and she goes oh, basically you go along that street and then, once you see it, you walk towards it. And they were like okay, but like, is there not a few more turns? And she was like yep, you'll see it from about five blocks away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because isn't a Barcelona set out in lots of?
Speaker 2:like yeah, it's a grid system, so anytime you look up a street.
Speaker 1:You'll see the end of the street because I've seen it from above and you've got all. It basically sort of converges into that.
Speaker 2:Following the directions are great because you follow this street for one mile, turn left, follow this street for one mile. You have reached your destination. It's similar in Glasgow, which surprised me when I first moved there, because it's also a medieval city, but they've laid out in a grid. But yeah, if you're looking for it, you'll find it. It's such an easy building to come across. It began construction in 1882, it opened in 2010 and it's expected to be finished into 2026. It's going to have been under construction for 144 years.
Speaker 1:Is that? I'm assuming that's a world record like there's no other building that's taken that long. Well, in recorded history, obviously there's probably way back when there'll have been buildings that were going on for probably. I think I'm thinking pyramids. But I suppose they had that many people working on it, that many hands.
Speaker 2:China, great Wall of China, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1:If that's recorded history, then fair enough, I will it began in 400 BC.
Speaker 2:I don't know Jesus. It ended in AD. I'll say that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was, it already wins. What the hell? Oh, that's impressive.
Speaker 2:But yeah, 144 year construction project is impressive. Yeah, it's got to be maybe the most culturally significant building in the city. It's a Basilica which is like the highest ranking a church can get. It's above cathedral. So no one's converting that into apartments, then no, no, I reckon that might just be a listed building. Apparently, one of the problems they had was Is it not UNESCO? Yeah, I was going to say Stage five listed it. Don't touch that staircase.
Speaker 1:It's in the UK it'd be a scheduled ancient monument, but if it's UNESCO it's even like above.
Speaker 2:It's even bigger. Yeah, bloody hell.
Speaker 1:I'm saying that as if I'm surprised that it's a work of art as well as architecture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you mainly see pictures of the outside, but even once you go in, you're like that's what takes you, and I think you always see it from far away to try and capture the entire thing. But as you get closer, yeah, those details, isn't it? There are details within details. On the front door, they've got this copper vine that they've sculpted and then there's beetles and bugs crawling through it. It's like that level. It's ridiculous. The pillars have like mounted on these giant turtles and stuff. Yeah, I've seen that. Yeah, to go in you have to go through something better than airport security. They've got armed guards and metal detectors. It's like no one's getting in there and doing anything wrong. Fair enough. But what really impressed me of it as well is, once you go in, the amount of respect there is for the space. It's silent. It's like full all of the time and yet no one says it. You hear whispers here and there and it's always functioning as a church, so even when, even though it's not fully built, it's still functioning as a church.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it opened. What do you say? Two-calf-tenth? I didn't know if it opened for tourism, but if it's open for church use, but yeah, so you go in and they've got I'm not sure what the room within the church is, but they've got a room where they do it an evening mass every day. Oh right, yeah, but yeah, they do.
Speaker 1:Can't imagine being able to see you were like one of the.
Speaker 2:I had a little sot down. I think it converted me a bit, so I'm now going to.
Speaker 1:I'll take my mum.
Speaker 2:No man could have, no person could have created this. Antonio Gaudi, what a legend. He was definitely demigod. He must have been.
Speaker 1:Maybe we do a thing on like, instead of star architects, the gods of architecture, gods of architecture yeah, above the stars. Bit like the Roman gods, where you have, like, the god of hate, the god of love, the god of fighting, you have the god of modernism, the god of that's definitely I think I never got when they said Gaudi was modernist.
Speaker 2:I get he was. He was around when everyone was doing Gothic stuff and but it's when you see the sculptures that are on this thing and they're all like so sleek, yeah, and it's like beyond, like all the details, a lot of really like just weird modern stuff, that you think how did this? How was this designed 140 years ago? That's crazy. It was an intense building to be in, yeah, but Like, oh, it was mad. The next one I've gone for is my only of a Gaudi building. It's Casa Viscens, and this is a picture they have inside of the model, because you don't get to see this now, but that's the original site that it was on.
Speaker 1:Oh, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was. This was considered to be his first major work, right, and this was.
Speaker 1:And the former was his last significant work, because it's still going Because it's still going.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the former started construction in 1882. Yep, this started construction in 1883. Right, and it was finished in 1884. It was finished in 1885. And it was considered to be his first major work, even though he'd already started work on the Segrada Familia. How mental is that?
Speaker 1:So his book ended his entire career with the cigarette familiar. Yeah, yeah, literally.
Speaker 2:And then everything else, kind of. So this one's a lot of straight lines. It's his most normal one, but I mean, obviously that doesn't do just the amount of stuff going on there. It's like a sensory overload, and that was another one. We turned up in the morning and we left in the evening. We just, me and my mum, just spent all day. I saw her about two times that day because we both just went our separate ways around this building.
Speaker 1:Yeah, separate directions.
Speaker 2:But it started off in this nice big site and then they sold that site and over time it's moved into this like terraced street and you're walking down and you're thinking there can't be any like building of significance on this. And then you kind of just look up and you're like, oh, it's there and it's like this old Victorian road that's maybe five meters wide. Then you look up because you just see the flash of color and it's like what the hell? But yeah, the fact that this was considered his first and construction started two years after his last, what sense does that make? But yeah, that was insane. He held no punches on that one. It's got like it's got waterfalls running through the building and all sorts. The next one is another one that I think every architecture student would reference and probably be waiting for me to say yeah, that's the one I was waiting for.
Speaker 2:Other than that, let's digraph familiar the Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe. Someone else also built it, but he got a lot of credit. I should have put that on there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's probably one of those. Like every time we did a scheme in university, someone would reference it at some point.
Speaker 2:Mies van der Rohe and Lili Rijk or Reich, depending on what the pronunciation is. So it's called the Barcelona Pavilion, but it was the German Pavilion for the International Expo in Barcelona. Obviously, they've still got it. That's pretty impressive and it must have been one of the starting points for modernist architecture. It was so significant and so influential and it's just one of the original examples with the sleek lines, the basic colour palette, it was like an absolute kickstarter for it.
Speaker 1:It's a beast of a project. I think that image is one of those that where, if I close my eyes, I can actually see it.
Speaker 2:You must have like sketched over it that many times I mean that's what he did.
Speaker 1:Is it the Barcelona chair that's in there as well? I think so yeah, the one with the curved cross legs?
Speaker 2:Yeah and then it's got a little stature around the other side. Amazingly, I missed this one.
Speaker 1:The ones that get people, the ones that because they're cruciform in shape, aren't they when, instead of being square or being circular, I think it's this, it is this. Do you know when you're so confident because I've talked about it that much in my career? Yeah, the mirrored and cruciform in shape, rather than being like a rectangular or like an eye beam or anything. Oh, yeah, yeah, which is just like attention to detail overkill, but it's absolutely.
Speaker 2:That's how the Germans do it. I feel like if you're doing a building in Barcelona, you have to be attention to detail. It's near a lot of other really significant buildings. It's near the International Museum of Art, which I believe they have a lot of, I want to say, picasso in, but I might be wrong, so don't hold me to that. It's also really close to Lassarinas de Barcelona, which is my next building, so you could. What a segue. What a segue. You could do both of these in one day. It's like Sagrada Familia Dedicate your day to it. Yeah, because you're going to be there for hours. But this is an awesome building.
Speaker 2:It was originally a bullfighting ring, built in 19. On my note, I said it was built in 1990 and held its last bullfight in 1970. Did you mean 1890? No, I mean 1900. So it was built in 1900. It held its last bullfight in 1977. And then for this really traditional building. It's really really old style building. They thought who knows how to build like that? The one, the only Richard Rogers, the most ultra-modern, high-tech architect that I've ever seen.
Speaker 1:We get to use everyone's favorite archibolics term juxtaposition.
Speaker 2:I put that in here With a few times I'm happy to use the word juxtaposition and I don't have an interior shot, but you can imagine what it looks like and there must have been like look, you're not allowed to touch the exterior facade, but do whatever the hell you want inside. And he did it. He pulled it off. So well, I'll have to pull up a picture of the interior because it's just like you go in and it's just exactly what you'd expect. It's like the Pompadou Center if you brought it inside. He was like if I can't put it on the exterior skin, I'm not hiding any of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I suppose that was his ball part of his style.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was probably devastated when he found out he couldn't put any air vents around it.
Speaker 1:And he like periscope vents poking at the top of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but imagine going into there and seeing a high-tech shopping center Like what?
Speaker 1:the hell. Well, to be fair, I think it probably does work quite well because, like you say, it's a complete stark contrast.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because I've never been to that. So this is like yeah, I'm interested, I'm intrigued.
Speaker 2:It's such a cool building. Now, the next one I've got isn't really a building, but it's more. It's a market. It's the market St Joseph Labouquière I believe Better than I'd have done it. You go in and it's like one of the most famous markets in Barcelona. It's just absolutely packed at all times of the day. You're like pushing through.
Speaker 1:Even the picture you've got. It's like white noise, but it's people at the moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, literally, and that's got to be like a quiet time picture. But it's got this big, grand entrance and then you go in and it's just lined with all of the food you can imagine. They've got like this giant meat section. You know Granger Market, I'm in, you know Granger Market? Yeah, imagine if all of the paths were like two meters wide and it was like three times, four times bigger and all of Newcastle was shopping there at all times of the day. That's what it was like. And it's about halfway up this Ramblers, which is this obviously like ultra modern, like shopping area with all these nice designer shops. And then just in the middle of it, is this like Victorian market. It started in 1820 when they started putting markets in and then just kind of building, building, building. But yeah, it's kind of. We didn't go there intentionally, we just had this little tourist map and we were like what's that about halfway down? And you turn the corner and you see it and it's like out of context.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you look like the scale of this photo, you can see all the people at the bottom and you can see most of the people as in it's not just their head, it's their torso as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a tall, it's a tall.
Speaker 1:And it probably takes up the bottom one-tenth of the image. This thing is massive.
Speaker 2:I couldn't reach the top.
Speaker 1:That is tall.
Speaker 2:That's very tall, yeah, and then you can kind of go out either side and there's cafes and stuff surrounding it. But yeah, if you're just walking down this Ramblers looking at like just got a pry mark or something, and then you see that and you think, yeah, I'll go get a dragon fruit and I'm the entire pig.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it's so cool.
Speaker 2:But yeah, those are my five and then my honourable mention. If you want to go see a football match, go to what? Cab Nou, which is home to FC Barcelona. I was looking at ticket prices. No picture on there, no matter, it's an honourable mention.
Speaker 1:No, you see I've got photos of my honourable mentions.
Speaker 2:It's the biggest stadium in Europe 93,000 capacity. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's larger than Wembley.
Speaker 2:That's a fair few people, though One or two. But yeah, we didn't get to go up there because there were no footy matches on it. It was on the other side of the city. We were there three days. We did 60. I think we did 70,000 steps. It's not bad. It was a walk in tour. You could walk the entire thing. But the public transport's great as well. But there's so many to say and like if it was just Gaudi alone, I could be here all day going into everything. So I'm going to not do that. I'm going to pass it on to you.
Speaker 1:So much for covering other things in the area, because there's one thing oh, also there's mountains. You could go to Montserrat Is there not a sea front on Barcelona.
Speaker 2:You could go to Montgros, which my uncle broke his leg cycling down. They've got cable cars, they've got a beach, they've got sunshine, the weather. It rained two of the three days we were there, which was great. Which was great because all the other English people went inside, so it was just me and my man walking around in our beach clothes. I was going yeah, we're from the north.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can say, this is warm still.
Speaker 2:Oh was it, it was lush green.
Speaker 1:It's not snow, it's water.
Speaker 2:And then proper raincoats, and we were like no, this is quite pleasant. It's been a bit hot today.
Speaker 1:It was British thing ever, I think. Fair warning, prepare yourself for me to mispronounce a lot of words, because obviously my Icelandic is not fluent.
Speaker 2:So I thought geography, I hadn't learned how to pronounce. I didn't have to learn. I'll make that clear. Do you know E15? I haven't said it in a while A volcano? I'm pretty sure. Let's see if I can.
Speaker 1:If I look at the spelling, See if you can remember how to say it. Yeah, the problem is is most people in Iceland speak English, so whenever we've been over there, we just speak in English to people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um yeah, fjallar, fjallar, fjallar. I looked at I like spent ages just learning it. I was in class and my geography teacher was like Theo, you'll never get any marks. But saying that I'm like, no, I know, but it's a skill, it's all coming handy. And finally, yeah, we've been waiting for a long time to say that.
Speaker 1:So the country I've chosen is Iceland, the city I've chosen is Reykjavik, and then I've gone through five buildings and then we've got some honorable mentions at the end. So the first one is uh.
Speaker 2:I'll wait. I'll wait until you say it. I'm just looking at it going in my head. How many J's are in that word? Only a couple. That's less than usual.
Speaker 1:I'm going with Hal Grim's skirka. Basically it's the main church in. It's basically the main church in Iceland, but it's also the main church in Reykjavik and very similar to your. It's like a different milieu. Can't forget that. It's right at the top of a hill which has probably got some sort of cultural significance, but you can't miss it.
Speaker 1:All roads lead to it. In fact, I've got some photos from when we were there last in 2022 for my wedding, where it was like there's a big rainbow road all the way up to it. You can't miss it, and it's probably it's signposted everywhere. Every gift shop has trinkets of it. It's pretty damn popular. It was designed by, and again, I'm probably going to butcher his name, except for the second one which I can get.
Speaker 2:You see, mine's really easy with book.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God, we're just going to have to talk over it and hope for the best.
Speaker 2:It's really easy to pronounce the names of the architects from Barcelona, because you only have to learn one. Who designed that? Antonio Gaudi.
Speaker 1:Well, this is done by Gojohn Samuelson, and I have another building by him later on.
Speaker 1:The two are very similar in their sort of design principles, but two very separate and disparate typologies and the way they've gone about designing it. Like I say, it's located right at the top of that hill, so the design from the church was commissioned in 1937. It took 41 years to build the church. The construction started in 1945 and ended in 1986. But the landmark tower that you see in the middle there was completely long before the actual church itself was finished.
Speaker 2:I would say that's a really long time, but again, if we just talk about the secret of Amelia, I'll give you that.
Speaker 1:So at 74 and a half meters, or 244 feet if you use the wrong system, it's the tallest and largest church in Iceland and one of the tallest in its entire country.
Speaker 1:It's known for its the spine walls and the side wings that you can kind of see in that image there I've got some really interesting photos of Grace and looking up at it and it's been described as becoming like an important symbol for Iceland since it was completed. The church is named after an Icelandic poet and cleric, a Holgrimer Peterson sorry guys who was born 1614 and lived till 1674 and is the author of Passion Hymns. It's said to resemble trap rocks, mountains, glaciers of Iceland's landscape, in particular the Bassem Balsalum column. So if you look at our wedding photos Hannah and I were stood on them which is has that organ pipe formation that you see there in that in sort of the main part of the building. There's another part behind that that you can't see, which is a little bit less interesting but still really cool, such as the formations at Svartifos, which I don't know that, for else it's close enough.
Speaker 1:I heard it said enough times that I can try and replicate it, but you can go up the spire, which we've done both times we've been there. We went in February of 2016 and we went in June of 2022. And the two views completely different because in 2016,. There was so much like fog around that you had to focus on the near, whereas in July and June, even you could see so much further out of the docks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the you can go. You can go up Sagrada Familia. I wonder how many times I'll say it SF, sagfat, no, but we've got it. Well, we didn't book it in time. We kind of did it all very last minute in that we've go. Oh, we want to go here today. So that's my tickets. And getting up the towers is one of the things that is like just always sold out, like if you're going, if you go on a Barcelona, book your trip to the Sagrada Familia well in advance.
Speaker 1:Well, we went to this and you can buy the ticket from the gift shop and you just kind of wait in the queue to go up the elevator and then you walk the rest of the way. But it's incredible. So speak of the view out over to the sea. Leave me on to building number two, which is Harper, the concert hall and conference center. Yeah, this is one of my favorite buildings.
Speaker 2:That's really cool. Can I guess something that you're probably going to say anyway? Is that based off the Basel columns, I imagine it's probably based off of some Basel columns.
Speaker 1:It's like the ones at Sparta Fos. That's one of my photos as well. Actually, I've realized all the photos here of mine, because I took them.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I've been that many times, I've got that many photos. So the architect is Lenny Larson, sorry, henning Larson, who's a Danish architect. It's located essentially on the North shoreline, so if you travel North from and past the sculpture parks, go North and you'll get yourself to the sea front. If you go East from I'm not going to try and pronounce its name again but from that church you will then eventually 30th.
Speaker 1:London. You can't miss it. No, the Holgrim Skirk yeah, you can't really miss it, it's great. So a lot of what I'm going to do here is give you kind of almost a tour to hit these five landmarks, because they're all the city of Reykjavik. We walked across it every time we've been. It's not massive. The first time we went, we stayed there for one day and we did quite a lot of it. The second time we went, we were there for sort of one and a half two days and we saw a lot more. So this is easily doable in even a half a day. So it was built in, started construction sorry in 12th of January 2007 and was opened on the 13th of May 2011,. So only four years. And now that's here. Four years, I think that's long. Then I remember 41 for this church, 100 in God knows what for yours.
Speaker 2:Did. God probably will know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, God probably did know. Only God knows.
Speaker 2:Did your architect design this a couple of years after doing his biggest project ever?
Speaker 1:No, that hadn't been built yet. And what was this at first? I think you win on interesting facts. Actually, no, the next one might get you. So, like I said, construction started in 2007, but was halted for the financial crisis. The completion of the structure was uncertain until the government stepped in in 2008, and then they basically got it finished. At one point, it was literally the only construction project in existence in Iceland.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 1:Just because of the financial crisis in 2000.
Speaker 2:Oh right, no, because it's a tiny country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean that also. It's when you look at it and say they've actually won the most Nobel prizes per capita. They've won the most World's Strongest man titles per capita because the capital is so small Per capita. Because it's such a small country. Obviously they get one and per capita repeats America. So in 2013, they're building one of the European Union's Mies van der Rohe award and in 2017, it held the annual World Yo-Yo Contest where over a thousand contestants from over 30 countries competed for the six championship titles.
Speaker 2:God, you're scraping.
Speaker 1:Oh, it gets better. So the entire facade obviously based on the basalt columns. It's also based on things like the Aurora Borealis, things like that.
Speaker 2:Did you see them over the time as you're peeing, sort of.
Speaker 1:Sort of I've seen them more. I saw a nice picture. We went on a tour which is part of my own role men's vision going tours from Reykjavik. We went on a Northern Lights tour. We didn't see it the first three nights and then the last night there was a moment in which the clouds had about this tiny little opening in them and you could just about see them, and it was easy to see them with the camera. However, we saw the Northern Lights in concert not too long ago and I saw more of them here than I have in Iceland, even though I paid thousands of pounds to go to Iceland.
Speaker 2:When we were there we ended up getting a really, really nice view of them. It was insanely good, but the best holy moment of seeing them, which I'm so upset I missed, was maybe five of us there. I was with my mum and she went across the street to get some pizzas from Domino's. There was this car park in between our little hostel and the Domino's and she said she left Domino's, looked up and just saw the sky turn all different colours. She was like it's the most amazing I've ever felt while holding a box of pizzas. I've done a few Just standing in a car park seeing them that clearly.
Speaker 1:I've done a few dieting down for competitions and then come back out of a competition on a pizza and I felt pretty good there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it felt like you were experiencing the Northern Lights.
Speaker 1:But it was Dine and Design, a conjunction with an artist, olga Ferdelsen, sorry, in his studio. It was inspired by the Northern Lights, the romantic Iceland scenery. As I know, we've mentioned, the largest auditorium, the Eldborg, is named after a famous volcanic crater. In Iceland, eldborg means Fire Mountain, which is awesome. The auditorium sits 1800 guests, not quite as many as your football stadium.
Speaker 1:So the main idea behind the facade concept was to rethink the building of the static unit, allowing it to respond dynamically to the changing colours and its surroundings. It's also lit by I think it's like over 700 LEDs which come on at night.
Speaker 2:Which does it have different colours to represent? Yeah, cycles through, but the glass itself.
Speaker 1:As you can see from that photo, the glass itself tinted in different colours.
Speaker 2:So I can't and I was going to ask it because I was looking at that thinking- that's just.
Speaker 1:Is it a black? And?
Speaker 2:white photo. No, it's blue and grey, which is sad because that's what I see. But yeah, I was wondering if maybe they tinted the glass to go with it, because that would be cool. I was thinking it's a shame they didn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a bit the facade, obviously being geometric, and everything it's formed on like a modular space filling structure called the quasi brick. Oh, do you see it now? Yeah, is that a better angle?
Speaker 2:That's blue.
Speaker 1:Yep, that's not. There's a couple of yellow stuff that go through it. It is really nice to be at. So if you skip to the next picture, you'll see Ta-da, oh, that's one of the things up close and they're called the quasi cube, quasi brick, even Quasi brick I hope you want to do it Quasi model.
Speaker 2:So building number three, the whole facade steps back right.
Speaker 1:So the whole facade sort of comes out at different bits in different ways, and it steps out in angles horizontally as well as vertically. It's really cool from the inside, so is that?
Speaker 2:You see those kind of diamonds in the middle. Yeah, are they at an angle?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, so it all sort of moves and steps up. So all of those sort of longer rectangular shapes are all pretty much vertical. I'm assuming there's some sort of degree in them, but they're pretty much vertical and then it steps out through that way.
Speaker 2:That's cool.
Speaker 1:So building number three is kind of a building. It's a building within a building a building exception. This is settlement exhibition as it's sort of more co-local or willy and free. So this one is known as you can't even say English words. I can't know. So this is the settlement exhibition, also known as 871 plus or minus two. It rolls off the tongue really easily 871 plus or minus two.
Speaker 2:I'll explain that in a minute. Is that the date of when it was found? Yeah, or the date when they thought it?
Speaker 1:was no, no, no. That was when they think it was built and. I'll come to that bit more on that in a minute. So it's inside the Reykjavik City Museum. There's loads of other sort of stuff like this. So this is basically one of the first ever turf houses, long houses, et cetera. It goes through. This would be really good for students and, I suppose, anyone who's looking to do more rammed earth or earth based houses, because it's got a lot of information on how this kind of stuff works and there's a lot of like actually passive principles inside it, which is really interesting to read.
Speaker 1:I've done quite a lot of I've been to this now probably no, I've been to this twice. I was gonna say three times, but we didn't go back the third time. I just went to the gift shop separately because I needed to pick up a book, the book on Icelandic runes, so. But there's loads of turf houses throughout Iceland, which you can see a lot of this type of stuff from, including some turf churches. There's also a living museum that we went to which is turf houses, and that's fantastic as well. So this isn't the only sort of instance of this, but if you're in Reykjavik which your chances are, you probably are this is a really good one to go see. So I have any written next to the architect, because it was this particular property was built over a thousand years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's similar with my market. I was looking at who built it and it kept going to St Peter. No, st Joseph, but that's who it was dedicated to. It was built by whoever's market was next. Yeah, I was fancy doing it.
Speaker 1:So this is located sort of towards the centre of the city within Reykjavik. So if you take a travel, basically it's almost a straight road from Harper. The last building that goes straight down south and slightly off to the west, but in terms of its actual build day it's estimated to be 871 AD.
Speaker 1:Plus or minus 2, apparently. So the exhibition is actually based on an archaeological excavation of a ruin of one of the first houses in Iceland, as located in 101 Reykjavik. The focus of the exhibition is the remains of a hall from the settlement age, which was excavated in 2001. The hall was inhabited between 1930 and circa 930 to 1080. North of the hall are two pieces of turf remnants of a wall which was clearly built before it's 871, hence the name of the exhibition. Precise data is possible because of a major volcanic eruption and I'm not going to try and pronounce the year.
Speaker 2:Do it, no, do it, which spread across the region. Send it to me so I can do it.
Speaker 1:No, you can try and put it in if you want later on. But essentially, yeah, it can be dated based on that kind of the volcanic activity that came from it.
Speaker 1:But, various methods are employed to explain and interpret the remains of the building. This includes there's a lot of 3D imagery. There's kind of like a lot of electronic stuff going over the top of it where you can press buttons and it lights up certain areas and gives you explanations. Weirdly, at the time Grayson will have been 4 turning 5 and even he was quite interested in, especially when you light up and you can see certain bits of information.
Speaker 2:He's found that interesting, like when you go to the centre for life and you get to play with the Wallace and Gramisik exactly that.
Speaker 1:But yeah, there's a massive multimedia table and everything in the centre of it. But there's more to it than just this building. There's a lot more Kind of goes on around the edges, which is nice, loaded touchscreen information with cultural stuff. It's really good. And then there's additional of an Vikings expansion and how they settled into the new countries and stuff. So it's more about overall things. But there's this building in there which, like I say, is probably really useful for people researching that type of stuff or someone interested in architectural history.
Speaker 1:So if you're a student looking into architectural history as a subject or just want to know more about it, this is a really good example. So, moving on to building 4 is the University of Iceland and you may recognise part of that form.
Speaker 2:That looks a little bit like our Lord and Savior up in Glasgow, but it also looks a bit Baltic-esque.
Speaker 1:Oh, I was going to say it looks like the church because it's made by the same guy. Mr Gutsch and Samuelson.
Speaker 2:The two pillars look like the Baltic and the whole window layout looks very school of art, very Macintosh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a very like art deco-y type building. So this is the university of Iceland. It's basically directly south from the museum above, so if you should keep going south, you'll eventually come to it Starts doing. Yeah, that's not one of my photos, actually, because I realised the photos I had of it were awful. It's very prison-y, I think. It's just the simplicity of it. Obviously, it's repetitive windows and everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think mixing art deco with the colour grey and you suddenly get this big kind of. 1974 is the name of the book. It gives a very kind of 1984 George Orwell-y type vibe of like this big, impressive building, but it's got that one colour that makes you feel like, oh crap, that's where the man lives.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's been there since 1940. So it's got a decent age on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, when did it take the build you?
Speaker 1:can kind of see. I have no idea. I didn't make notes on that, so we're just going to breeze past that one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was probably about 200 years and it will be the one that you missed.
Speaker 1:No, it wasn't that long. But yeah, you can kind of see it's very similar to like the Holgromskirk the church at the beginning because it's by the same architect. So he's obviously got that sort of design language in it where you've kind of got the central piece and the wings coming off it. Similar materials it's. I'd say it's pretty impressive when you go past it. The fours never really do the scale of things justice, but it is on a sort of an active university campus so yeah, it's definitely an interesting one to go past. So, moving on to number five, it's a boat. I've kind of picked an area, yeah, Because there's a lot of things going on in one space.
Speaker 1:I think you can get away with that.
Speaker 2:I think I went for a market but the market's kind of part of Los Rambles.
Speaker 1:So I think that's fine, fair enough I think that fits the criteria. So I'm going to pull this one in as the old harbour, just generally the old harbour that is the sort of the accepted term for the area as well.
Speaker 2:To be honest, if I was going to pick an area, my area would be Barcelona. Barcelona, because there's a lot of people who are going to go to Barcelona. They're not going on in there, but yeah, the old harbour in Reykjavik.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of things that can be done in here other than seeing the architecture. So you've got things like the Lavreschur, the Wales of Iceland, the Flyover Iceland. The Wales of Iceland is fantastic. I've got some photos of that. Really enjoyed that.
Speaker 1:But the old harbour is essentially the old harbour. It's at the northernmost tip and slightly east of harbour. So if you've come from harbour, you've gone down past the museum, as we've just described, and you come back up on yourself. You can then take a veer off and get up to this and there's just so much going on. So the old harbour is the heart of sort of old Reykjavik. Obviously it's probably the main port, where things came in, where everything happened, but it's become sort of like a catalyst of transformation within the city. It grew around the harbour in the early 20th century because it became sort of the trolling industry.
Speaker 1:The harbour area has been transformed in the past few decades. It's still one of the most important harbours in Iceland, but in recent years it's become a tourism hub for things like whale watching and things like that, and then gradually sort of these fishing vessels have been replaced with shops and restaurants that have occupied, like the old warehouses or the old fishing houses, fishermen's houses and that. So it's like you've kind of got some of it, where it's this old shell with this new interior which is like a lot of architectural fit out. Then there's so much like you've got these small huts that are now also like little kiosk shops, tourism shops, and that with the same purpose as those old ones, but it's like a modern interpretation of that building. Then you've got these modern like office buildings and you've got like restaurants and bars that are purpose built. So it's a very different. There's a juxtaposition.
Speaker 1:I know we're using it again but there's that there's that like jarring contrast between the old and the new.
Speaker 2:This is the old times when you're allowed to use juxtaposition. I think when it's when the exterior was built a hundred years before the interior, you definitely allowed to get away with it.
Speaker 1:I mean, we spent like pretty much half a day here, and it's a really good way to do it, because there's stores, cafes, museums. It gives you a lot of like glimpses into Icelandic history and culture and there's also a lot of the sort of main culinary features and cultures and places that are actually in that zone, so you can really embrace all of the things that are in there. But, yeah, you can sort of stroll around and see a lot of architectural fascination. There's like the old fisherman's house, like I mentioned, converted into shops, ice cream parlours, and then sub-scrille restaurants, avant-garde galleries, art galleries, and then there's the fish meal factory. There's just so much Everything is old and new again in one place and you've got all of these like shiny condos and these like old, wrecked ships in one, like you can stand there and see the two things in one and these decrepit, destroyed wooden ships from hundreds of years ago and these like probably finished yesterday type condos.
Speaker 1:It's incredible to stand in. Yeah, it get pretty overstimulated if you're not careful, though there's a lot to it and you kind of have to take it in little chunks. But, like I say, there's things like the maritime museum, the whale we're watching, and a lot of tourism stuff in there, so you can skip to the next one. That's another shot of it.
Speaker 1:You can kind of see some of the like, the layers of history and information that's in that. It's incredible. So that's the whale museum. So the whale museum is a museum of whales, a lot of them. They've made these sort of like scale models of whales that are held upon like invisible strings from the ceiling and so it's almost like you're in the water and there's women around you. There's a lot of photos that Grace and I took of us pretending to hold up the whales.
Speaker 2:The entire appeaser style, yeah, basically.
Speaker 1:And then there's a really good which we found by accident but Grace and really enjoyed it. Obviously, grace and for those who haven't listened to another episode is my six year old son, who's autistic, has sensory issues and things, and there's a room where it's basically dark, there's a big projector of whales swimming around and whale noises, and then on the floor there's lots of like cushions and stuff you just sit and lay on and it's. I think we were there for about half an hour and he was just mesmerized and I think he came out of that very like relaxed. So it's nice. I mean, even I enjoyed it and so did like Badger and Hannah that we went with, so it was a really good time and then so other things to do sort of around the city. So these are kind of things that are also in the same area.
Speaker 1:This is a really nice sculpture called the Sun Voyager sculpture. It's basically east of Harper, so you could probably. We visited it between the church and Harper. They watched it past it. It's just really nice. Obviously you can tell while looking at it reminiscent of like all of the history of Iceland and Vikings etc. So these are a lot of. These will include non building, so the whale of Iceland tour. There's the Northern Lights Tours, so you can actually book into coach tours as well as sea tours. We did the Northern Lights Tour when we went in February 2016 and the Game of Thrones Tour, but we had a car, so we drove out to things like the Golden.
Speaker 2:Circle and stuff like that. Yeah, we rented a car while we were out there and I think that was really useful, because if you know where you want to go, it's really easy as well. Yeah, I mean there's like two roads.
Speaker 1:No, there's one road that circles, which I traveled on in 2022 for the wedding, but then there's the like. There's, then, basic roads that you can stick to, even in the really poor weather that we had when we went in that February.
Speaker 2:Did you have to get one of the cars with a massive tires?
Speaker 1:No, so the first time, that's only when you go through the middle. Yeah, and you don't. I don't think you can just rent one of those.
Speaker 2:It's genuinely it's like a van with monster truck tires. Yeah, and you stood next to it and it's like up to you, it's up to my shoulders.
Speaker 1:The tires are up to your shoulders, yeah.
Speaker 2:There's a picture of me like lean against and then on top of it is just like a minivan. Yeah, and you're like wait what?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is incredible, isn't it? So, yeah, that's so. There's all those tours and everything you can go on in Iceland, but if you get yourself a car, there's a lot of other things you can do and go circle, which I'll cover. Other places like Akiri, and that was probably in another episode. Oh, I could.
Speaker 2:I could do a whole other thing. When you're saying I didn't do many honorable mentions with Barcelona, I mean there are so many like I could do three different episodes on that same. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, like. So we tried to narrow it down to five things because otherwise we'd be here all week. But yeah, there's those other things that you can do between it. So a lot of people they'll fly into Keflavik and then they'll probably get a bus or a rent a car or whatever go up to Reykjavik. But along that route you've got things like the Blue Lagoon, which you can go in either direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But then there's what people seem to advise that I've found is that they go to the. Which I didn't do is go to the fly over Iceland tour up in the old harbour which I just mentioned, because you can see the entire city, or fly over the entire city. You can see where all those landmarks are and guide yourself to the map.
Speaker 2:We just approached from a weird angle, so we kind of had to yeah on the plane, yeah, but yeah, a lot of these you can sort of navigate between each other.
Speaker 1:And then also in Iceland there is a penis museum.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's pretty good. Yeah so they don't have a penis museum in Barcelona. So I win. Yeah, I tell you, one thing I'm impressed about with that is if you would ask me or, to be honest, anyone who's been, or anyone who wants to go the five things they're most most excited for or the five things they like the most. It would probably be five geological features. All right, nice, yeah, so to be, able to pull out five things which aren't geological in one thing nine things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's quite impressive and it's something I didn't realise is how much they've kind of put into the building. Obviously, like the museum, the university is not the most impressive thing in the world, but it's still very much like it's a unique building.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think as well, a lot of it's significant to where they are.
Speaker 2:I mean, I could literally do an entire podcast on the churches of Iceland, because that's a beeline for about 12 it's so. Yeah, sorry, it's all very context-based and very culturally significant, as you say, with that office building where it's all based off them basalt pillars, even even with just this corporate building that puts so much into where it is, whereas you look at somewhere like Well, just anywhere else eating. Where is the geology? That's significant for a city and for it, for a whole country.
Speaker 1:There's. If you go to Ireland I've got a butcher the name because it's something to do with it's like walking giant giant calls. Course it is, yeah, giant's cause where they've actually similar thing. But I mean I'm looking out of a window over the rolling hills of the Derwent area and think there's no buildings here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like a tree in a valley. Yeah, basically, which I mean? Fans try it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why not? Yes so the big question, then, is where should we go next? Why should we?
Speaker 2:who's next? Who won?
Speaker 1:you decide. But yeah, that would be. The next thing is to work out where we'll go next, whether we want, whether people want to see what we were, whether or not people want to see where we'd go next. Places we've experienced, because we're never really gonna run out of places We've been.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've got very limited city tours. We can do one of my favorite things if I was to do something similar to you at go for lands or rotting. I don't know what the major city is there, but they're very. Everything there is very geologically relevant. They have this Artist who I'm pretty sure is dead, but he's called Caesar Manrique and he kind of like Determined the cultural style for the whole island, yeah, and so it's so like set in this one way. They're a really religious place, but they've got this like one significant artistic style and it's all like about the volcanoes. They've got that form. This island that was. That was an amazing place to visit, but that would be one of them where I'd be like how would I pull up the buildings on me? I want to talk. I want to talk about that restaurant where they cook their food over an active volcano. How do you get the insurance on that? Yeah, impressive. What's your biggest risk? Oh, the ground underneath it might explode, all right that's pretty significant.
Speaker 1:What's the chances of death from that?
Speaker 2:pretty high, yeah, 100, 100% at some point someone this is someone's in trouble. It's not dormant.
Speaker 1:But yeah, so that's anyone wants to see anywhere in particular. Obviously, we'll probably keep making some on the places we have been and then after that we'll probably do almost like a wish list for us Rome is a bit of a wish list, I think, but that would be like God.
Speaker 2:That must be overwhelming for an architect who's, for someone who studied the place to go to and then go oh crap, it's all here. I've seen that before.
Speaker 1:Everything I've studied is here, yeah but obviously I'll cover, I can cover a lot of Scandinavia because that's my, that's my thing. I can do Paris.
Speaker 2:Europe and Newcastle. Oh good, we could do that, we could do some UK city tours as well, because that's, that's a really realistic we can get away maybe to a different city.
Speaker 1:Maybe we test that as the the vloggy vloggy type.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you come over to Glasgow, we have a walk around, I come over the Newcastle, we have a walk around and. But yeah, it'd be really interesting. Maybe we could put some type of pull up in them. See, see what people want to hear about for places. Yeah, because it says one of them interesting things of like, I was see me and man went to Barcelona and we knew enough about it that we didn't plan anything. Yeah, and then got there and went oh, we should have planned something.
Speaker 1:We planned Iceland meticulously. Yeah, only because we knew wedding it kind of well, it's not why I had the wedding plan to do the wedding. So we had a day where we didn't have anything planned other than get married.
Speaker 2:Which?
Speaker 1:I would probably argue, quite a significant Other than that we had, like everything else, bullet pointed and then we have.
Speaker 2:If you're circling a country, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean we had the major points in, so like hit Harper, hit like these bits. And then here's some nearby things.
Speaker 2:If we have time or if Grayson's willing to go or whatever, we just Well we, we got there on the first day when, at high speeds to the hotel, they told us where the crowd Affirmatively was, they were like, oh yeah, it's like a five minute walk. So we're like, screw, let's go. We looked him like we're gonna have to do this another day. This needs planning.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We impressed. We impressed the people at reception because we said, because we kind of told them about where we walked and they were like You've just walked across the whole city and we're like, yeah, we're really tired. It's one of them of like, cause it's a grid system, so you like never turn, so you can kind of just walk. Yeah, you just walk for like five miles. You kind of realize you're there because you haven't, you haven't had to think about walking.
Speaker 2:Yeah you're just looking at, you go, okay, we're going up this road. You get there and then you're like we've been going for ages, so it's incredibly walkable, but I would recommend getting the bus. Yeah, and it's what it's one of them of. Like you learn how to say I would like to go here how much in Spanish. And then you can pretty much do it go anywhere. Yeah, tres Savesa's for both, or they bring you three beers, you go. I wanted a white wine, he didn't. I wanted whatever. They were bringing me Tapas, both of all country under a. But yeah, um, I think that pretty much does us for this one, doesn't it? Yep, thanks for joining us in this episode. If you're listening on any podcast and platform, please consider leaving us a review. If you're watching on YouTube, please like and subscribe and leave a comment. Follows an Instagram.
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