On the topic of Penn architects doing big things, PennDesign Professor and Chairman of Landscape Architecture James Corner and his team at James Corner Field Operations, designers of New York City’s famed High Line Park, recently won the commission to design the public spaces for London Olympic Park South.
The design team, which includes fellow Landscape Architecture Lecturer Richard Kennedy and a host of other PennDesign Alumni, beat out over 100 teams to win the commission. This counts as the United States’ first win of the 2012 Games in our book.
This is part two of an ongoing series to introduce you procrastinators to the wonderful world of the blogosphere, one blog at a time.
This one is quite simple: Bananas + London = London Bananas.
The following is the description of the blog from the blogger him/herself, found in the About section of the website:
I have lived in London, UK for about a year. When I arrived I noticed something straight away: there’s a lot of banana skins around.
I see them everywhere. They’re languishing on doorsteps, hanging out in the middle of the road, dangling off street signs, peeking out of piles of garbage, reclining in the middle of the sidewalk, riding the bus for free. A great number of them are bright yellow as if they’re fresh and have just been dropped, although they appear in all states of decay. I don’t know how or why they caught my attention, but within a week of being in London I couldn’t get my mind off these banana skins. Where were they coming from? Who was eating all these bananas and leaving the skins around? Why was it always bananas I was seeing, and not, say, oranges? Was it a sign? Was there something sinister going on? Apparently these little hazards were a covert operation going completely unnoticed; everyone I asked about it said that they had never noticed anything of the sort and looked at me as if I was nuts.
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Welcome back to our abroad blog (=abrog) feature, Gentlemen, Scholars and Study Abroggers, in which we showcase one transatlantic blog each week. On the menu this week is Rachel Knight Squire’s blog, Squiring Around London.
Rachel Knight Squire is spending the semester in London, and doing an admirable job of translating U.K. culture into West Philadelphia terms. For example:
Goldsmith’s is another London university that Penn kids can go to – it’s a little farther south of the city (like a 45 min bus ride from us at UCL) but has its own neighborhood charm going on. Think Market Street between 40th and 43rd, without the liquor stores and with better architecture.
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