a movable feast

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for paris is a moveable feast.” - ernest hemingway
 
upon reading the quote a friend of mine posted on instagram, i grabbed myself the book online and finished it in no time. it doesn't really describe paris the way i expected, but hemingway does mention specifically names of streets and places which almost all of them still ring to my ear bringing me that familiar feeling.

after a short visit four years ago, during my last two years of nomadic life in europe, i went and stayed in paris for like five or six times. the longest for about two months. stayed in at least three different studio apartments. for about two years i associated the city with a person. someone i knew from my first visit. practically the only person i knew in the city almost the whole time i was in paris. (i got to know more people from the period where i stayed in a town outside paris, but it's another story).

as we now have become good friends, i no longer associated paris with this person. although he was a part of most of my memories about paris, i have moved pass through associating the city with a particular person. what's left was a set of memory about a city i once get the privilege to live in. what was left were the memories of routines i used to do. of waking up to breakfast with quatre-quarts. of choosing whether i should go to metró saint-jacques or to denfert-rochereau. of having the best and freshest croissant at the boulangerie. of walking rue d'alésia. of the kids getting out of school in the evening from l'école maternelle across the street. of evening walk on rue de la rouqette. of opting out to walk all the way home across le marais instead of taking the much faster metró ride. of queing for the longest time for the crêpe at the greek place at rue mouffetard. of having the delightful 3 euro student meal at the cité universitaire. of going to some asian diner along rue de tolbiac. or the wonderful japanese along rue saint-anne. of just walking along canal saint-martin and entering cute design shops. of rolling cigarettes at parc de la villette. of walking from the tour eiffel all the way to 14arr the night of bastille day. of having beers on the street around belleville. of the always exhausting hustle on châtelet. of the retro cinemas around pantheon. of that moment when i cried in front of a monoprix after a fight. of sitting on a deck around the bibliothèque nationale. i could go on and on. somehow paris has this something which makes me remember all these names and senses. something that doesn't really happen with other cities i lived in, at least they aren't as strong.

paris will always be a cliché to talk about. some people love it. over-romanticise it. others loathe it. i still think the way as i first visited, people can say whatever but it all ends up being very personal. to me what hemingway said rings true, i'll always carry through with me the tiny little pieces of memories of the city.

urban terrace

i am not at all an architectural geek. as someone with too much interests, i must admit i'm not as deeply knowledgable as most of my fellow countrymen, who studied architecture, who i encountered when i lived in milan. although i will always carry it as my basic way of thinking and i'm still deeply rooted in it on daily basis (also when i go travel), i've long lost my appetite on contemporary architecture in the sense that i don't really care which starchitects do which new projects or who are the new emerging star in architecture. mostly because i'm no longer interested in flashy new buildings which are more often meaningless and out of context. they're just boring. aside from interior design which i've been doing for more than five years now, i paid attention more to urban issues, the city as container of activities. which was actually the subject i studied on my grad school.

one thing about grad school was that i started to learn again, and in the process of learning by doing, i somehow managed to narrow down and reshaped what actually really interest me, how my approach of design is, what my style is like, and those kind of things. it's like putting in structure who i really am architectural-wise and what my philosophy in this realm is. so when i first saw this building here i was immediately drawn to it. the simplicity, the materials, the color scheme, the grid, the transparency. i like how subtle it is, how it doesn't try to shout too much of itself like most new buildings are. and the more i read about it the more meaningful it is, how it's made for low maintenance and to last long.

and also, it's actually an open public building in the complex of paris saclay, which i believe i visited during this workshop, but i'm not sure since it was my first day and i arrived late and we were going from st.-germain-en-laye to versailles. whether i was in paris saclay or there was the director of paris saclay in the conference i can't remember hehe. and also, while the comue of paris saclay is south to paris, my thesis project was the comue of paris seine which is north west to paris. and it somehow reminds me that period of time. oh the good old time.

paris, îl-de-france. (ii)

i stayed in paris way longer than i did compared to two years ago when i came visit, but it's still hard to talk about the city. it still is full of clichè. it's arrogant. it's overcrowded. it's frustrating. yet it's beautiful. and it's inspiring. at least now i can say that paris is the kind of city that makes you feel guilty staying at home and not going outside to enjoy the beauty of the city and the many things you could do and the many places you could go to. and i am beyond grateful to once be able to call it "home", in both possible definitions.

relativity

time works as a very relative dimension depending on so many aspects. four months could feel like a very long time, like forever, while a year passed like a blink of an eye.
 
i brought my 35mm film camera with me when i was in europe. but during months i was there i only managed to shoot one roll. one! i guess i was too busy absorbing everything by just being there and i didn't want to complicate things so i mostly just took photos with my digital, if not with just the phone.

having said that, my one and only roll turned out to be disappointing. duh. these are some frames i took in paris. can't say that i like it tho, but oh well..

#75008

8th arrondissement, paris.

the night 11k km away

paris, île-de-france.

It's hard to talk about Paris. The word Paris is too synonymous with all the romanticism and cliché comes in one package complete with the Eiffel Tower. Trying to avoid all those attributes I initially hesitated going there, but Paris is Paris, one can't help but having curiosity to at least see by oneself to be able to have a personal judgement.