small but fine

Ever since our return from Germany, we've thought a lot about our project.  The community had selected one of the three projects, and another as a back-up.  We decided as a studio that the first project was too complicated for a group of inexperienced students to build in two months, so we've worked together to develop the back-up project more fully.  We're currently detailing plans, sections, and elevations of the project to submit for permits.  I'll post more when we've got all of the details finalized and the design is complete.

I've been working the past few days on an actual website for the project, instead of just this blog.  It can be found here temporarily:

At this point, we all broke into smaller groups and went our seperate ways.  Some went to Heidleberg and Frankfurt, others towards Berlin.  Four of us continued our European adventure through Austria (not fun) and into Switzerland to visit some more Zumthor projects and spend a day at the Therme Vals spa.  Not a bad way to end a trip.  Everyone would make their own way back to Chicago and meet up in studio to figure out what to do now.

This would be our last day as as group.  We all got some breakfast and eventually made it to the Mercedes-Benz museum and spent quite a while inside.  Apparently Stuttgart is the Detroit of Europe.  We had lunch in the museum cafe and left to visit the Weissenhof museum.  It's a modern architecture development with houses from the likes of Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius.  One of two Corbusier houses was open to the public, so we took a tour.  It was pretty amazing to see such a collaboration of architecture (even though Mies laid down some rules).  If you want to see the modern-day Weissenhof, check out the ORDOS project in Mongolia.  After this, Prof. Flury left to visit some family, and us students were left to our own devices.  We went downtown to the art museum and finally did some shopping, went back to the hostel, bought dinner at the 'penny markt' and went to bed.

We ended our stay in Seckach and went to Buchen for a morning tour of the city.  It has a pretty interesting history (ask about the large man on a barrel).  We had a nice lunch of Doner Kebaps and drove to Maulbronn, a really old monestary that took a few hundred years to complete.  We continued on to Stuttgart where our journey would end.  We spent the evening at the Porsche museum, found our hostel, had some dinner with a soldier (a student's brother stationed nearby), and called it a night.

This day started off with Father Moser taking us to his local church in Bodigheim.  We talked about religion and how our chapel would fit in with the communities, then Prof. Flury took us back to the site to do some more investigation.  We laid-out two of the project to get a better sense of their size and how they would be placed in the field.  We also walked around the area a bit and checked out the nearby sculpture-walk.  We left the site and met again with Ecker Architekten to take a tour of a few of their projects in the area.  We finished the tour and set up our presentations for the local community in Bodigheim.  Over 40 locals came to listen to our presentations, and almost everyone stayed for the discussion that followed.  There was a lot of yelling in German, large gestures, and confused college students, but they were happy and a project was chosen.  "The Light Chapel"  The most modern, abstract design we presented, but the community liked it, and we got the lumber donated, so it was a really successful meeting.

We packed up our stuff and loaded the cars for the next step in our journey - a visit to Zumthor's Bruder Klaus field chapel.  After a bit of a drive we found the parking lot and made the short hike up to the chapel.  It was an amazing experience to see such a great example of something that we are trying to build.  We had a personal tour of the small chapel and were able to enjoy a few minutes alone inside.  We had some more schnitzel with some of Prof. Flury's friends and finally made our way to Seckach where we would meet the person behind this project - Father Moser-Feesche.  We arrived and Father Moser gave us a tour of the facility he runs.  It's a community/school for young children away from home.  He showed us to our residence - The Youth Center "Klinge", in Seckach - and we turned in for the night.

We woke up the second day and went back to the cathedral for a more thorough visit.  Prof. Flury took us on a walking tour of the city and we worked our way over to the Kolumba Museum by Peter Zumthor.  We split up and everyone made up their own tour of the city until we got together for another night of schnitzel.  I remember a lot of chocolate that day...

With our projects in hand (models in shoeboxes, actually) we set off for Germany!  Our wonderful trip began with a 8 1/2 hour flight, direct from Chicago O'Hare to Frankfurt.  We almost missed our plane (even though we got to the airport 2 hours ahead), but otherwise travelled without problem.  We met up with the rest of the group flying in that day and picked up our rental cars (a Mercedes-Benz and an Audi) and drove to Cologne.  We found the hostel, parked the cars, and had our first authentic schnitzel.  We walked around the cathedral for a while until Prof. Flury arrived with the rest of the group and took us to dinner.  First impressions of Germany?  Not too shabby...

We began the semester with a lot of class discussions.  We talked about what a field chapel is, what ours should be, and researched relevant examples of field chapels.  We also researched Germany history, local history, European architectural styles, and religions in general.  After two weeks of this research and discussions, we finally moved on to the design phase.  Each student came up with his or her own design scheme.  Each design was refined for a month, when we narrowed the class down to 4 distinct schemes.  These would be the 4 designs to be presented to the client and the community during our spring break trip to Germany.  Students worked in groups for two weeks detailing these projects and preparing presentations for Germany.  The studio would take a trip during spring break to meet the people involved, present the project, and experience German culture.

Father Moser-Feesche is the person responsible for this whole project.  He's a priest from Bödigheim, Germany.  He got the idea to build a communal chapel that could help link his village with two neighboring villages - Großeicholzheim and Seckach.  He found a site for the chapel on a hilltop in the center of these three villages.  From this summit, you can see the church towers in all three villages.  Father Moser-Feesche sees this as an opportunity to bring these three communities together, or 'building bridges' as he puts it.  Some local architects from the area - Ecker Architekten (www.ecker-architekten.de/) - happen to be good friends of one Frank Flury, a design/build professor at IIT.  So Prof. Flury organized a studio of 14 students to realize this project.  This group of students would be responsible for the designing and detailing of the chapel, and Ecker Architekten are helping us with permits and other legal matters.  Now the design process begins.

Hallo.  I'm Seth Ellsworth, a 4th year undergraduate student of architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).  I'm part of Prof. Frank Flury's studio this semester - "Small but fine: a field chapel in the Odenwald, Germany."  Our project is to design a tiny 'field chapel' in the German countryside.  Our class decided to set up this blog as a journal of our experiences throughout the project.  I'll try to be as informative as I can, and we hope you enjoy following us through this experience!