9.11.14

Berlin, fall of the Wall 25 years

We spent 3 days in Berlin, just for the 25 years anniversary of Fall of the Wall. I was an emotive weekend; Berlin smelled history more than ever.



 Kreuzberg neighborhood




The Berlin Wall, 1,3 km of the East Side Gallery



During this weekend an installation of balloons was showing the path of the Berlin Wall.


DaimlerChrysler (1994-1999) of Hans Kollhoff and Helga Timmermann
Location: Potsdamer Platz, 1

Sony Center

Looking for the Olympic Stadium of Berlin we could see though the trees “Unité d'habitation” of Le Corbusier, it was a nice surprise. Next trip we will have to visit with more time.
Location: Flatowallee 16, 14055 Berlin, Germany
+49 30 30209833

21.2.14

//ISC3// Yogurt Cake with Pear Chocolate

I sometimes cook because today is Friday and because I’m happy. Yesterday someone very especial was born, Laia, the daughter of my friends.

I decided to bake a typical recipe from my family, the Yogurt Cake. It’s super easy one you don’t have to weight all the ingredients. It’s so easy that you take all the dimensions by the yogurt.

Ingredients:
- 3 Eggs
- 1 Yogurt
- 3 Flour (yogurt size)
- 1 Sugar (yogurt size)
- ½ Oil (yogurt size)
- Baking Powder
- Lemon zest
- Pear Chocolate
Oven: 30-40 minutes at 180º


Preparation:
First of all, with a hand-held mixer beat the 3 egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Add carefully and slowly the stiff egg whites with the 3 egg yolks and the yogurt.
After it you can use the packaging of the yogurt for measuring the rest of the ingredients.
Add slowly the Flour and the Baking Powder. Mix the Sugar and the Oil with the cake batter.
Grate the Lemon and the Pear Chocolate in the cake batter. Mix the cake batter carefully and slowly.
Pour the cake batter into the springform pan and bake it during 30-40 minutes.

… and last but not least… ENJOY IT!

8.2.14

Villa Tugendhat - Mies van der Rohe


On Sunday morning we got up super early, at 5.30 p.m., to take a bus and go to Brno. Jan presented me two tickets to visit Villa Tugendhat of Mies van der Rohe as a Christmas gift. I can tell you that when he gave it to me I stared crying! So you can imagine how happy this made me!

Fritz Tugendhat and his wife Grete commissioned to Mies van der Rohe their family home. The plot was given to Greta from her father as a wedding present. They say that Mies was super impressed when he saw the place where the house will be built. The plot is up to a hill where you can be delighted for marvelous views of Brno and its skyline with the Spilberk Castle and the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul.

The house was designed and built in only 14 months. Mies van der Rohe started working on the project in the summer 1929. At Christmas of 1930 the family moved to the new house where they lived only for 7 years.

Tugendhats were a German Jewish family living in Czechoslovakia. After German Occupation they had to leave the country and also the house.

In 2012 the last reconstruction of the house was finished. Now you can visit the house like it was on Christmas of 1930 where the family started living there with the replicas of the original furniture. 




The entrance is from Černopolní Street, the highest floor of the building and where the bedrooms are located. The entrance is emphasized with the stairs’ volume. The door is from Macassar Ebony with travertine floors.



This is the ceiling of the principal stairs in the entry hall.

Mies vander Rohe designed all the furniture in the house and decided where to place it exactly. In the entry hall there are two D42 Cantilever Armchairs and one MR tubular Table. D42 is a classic cantilever chair designed by Mies van der Rohe for the Bauhaus in 1927. The structure is from stainless tubular steel and the wicker-work was created by Lilly Reich, assistant of the architect.

The master bedroom of Grete Tugendhat is next to the bedroom of Fritz Tugendhat, her husband, and with a direct connection with the bedroom of the children. There is a MR tubular Table, a Barcelona Stool and Brno Flat Bar Chair with red leather.


The bathroom of the parents gets the light from windows next to the ceiling. The tiles were manufactured by the Czech tile brand Rako for the bathrooms, kitchen and other services rooms.


This is the room for the smaller kids, the nursery, with the only furniture not designed by Mies van der Rohe. The furniture is from a famous Czech brand. 

This is the room for the oldest daughter Hanna with three D42 Cantilever Chairs. The chairs in this room are in a children size.

This was the room of the governess Irene Kalkofen or for the guess when it come someone. In the case a guess comes for a visit the governess stays in the room of Hanna.

This is the terrace with a direct access from the children’s rooms. The semicircular bench is decorated with roses on spring. 

With a semicircular stairs we arrive to the main floor where the living room space is. It’s incredible the feeling of light you have everywhere on this house, more enfaces in this floor by the white linoleum floor.

This is a photo taken from the studio of the library area where we can see the piano and the stairs that connect the two main floors on the background.

The living room is a unique space separate with walls of different materials and shapes, or even curtains.

The library is from Makassar ebony. The chairs are the Tugendhat MR70 Chair and Brno Tubular Chairs in white leather.

The wall between the studio-library and the main living space is from onyx stone. The onyx wall is the most expensive thing in the entire house. This stone let the light pass through it, creating a unique light in the studio.

In the lateral façade on this floor there is an indoor garden that makes a transition between the room and the garden.

In the main living room space there are three Tugendhat MR70 Chairs in white, three Barcelona MR90 Chairs in green and a Barcelona Stool. The Tugendhat MR70 Armchair is a cantilever armchair designed by Mies van der Rohe especially for this house. The Barcelona MR90 Chair was designed for the German Pavilion on the International Exposition of 1929 hosted in Barcelona.

Next to this chairs there is a MR Table and a red MR Lounge Chair that works as a landmark on the living space.

The picture was taken from the dining room space. The windows are from the floor to the ceiling and two of them are retractable, they can be open completely on the summer time.  The structural pillars are from a cross-section with a polished steel covert; these columns are an important element you can see all around the house.

The dining room table is made in separate pieces to be adapted to the number of commensals. This table is really similar to the one on the Villa Muller of Adolf Loos. The chairs are Brno Tubular Chairs in white leather. 


A semicircular wall of Makassar ebony separates the dining area to the rest of living space and also the services rooms (the kitchen, the store room or the preparation room).

The kitchen has a zinc sink with a big windows though you can see a marvelous views. 

The steel spiral stairs brings you to the utility floor.


This is an original watching machine from 1930 when the family stared living in the house.

A curious room in the basement, the last room you can find in this building, after crossing the many services room like the laundry room or the photo developing room, there is the fur coats room.

This is the façade of the garden. The garden was designed by Mies with the collaboration of Markéta Roder-Müller.

This is the lateral façade of the garden with the indoor garden area.





The entrance to the building is from this façade from the Černopolní street. The garage of this building is here on the top floor.


And finally here some pictures of some house around the Černá Pole neighborhood, this are the Villa Tugendhat neighbors.

Villa Tugendhat designed by: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Location: Černopolní 45, Brno- Černá Pole
Opening hours: Tu -Su 10-18 

4.2.14

//ISC2// Chicken with Curry


I sometimes cook; today I had a wish I wanted to eat Chicken with Curry. 

I reached in internet and I found a recipe, super easy one! This recipe, it's in Catalan but I will translate. Delicious!

Ingredients:

- 3-4 Chicken breasts
- 1 Onion
- 1 Garlic
- 400g of Cream Milk
- 1 cup of White Wine
- 1/2 Lemon
- Curry
Olive Oil
Salt

Side dish:

- Rise


Preparation:

First of all, cut the Garlic and the Onion in very small pieces. Fry the onion and the garlic in a pan with a bit of Olive Oil.  When the onion is done we can put the Chicken in small pieces too.
Put a cup of White Wine when the pieces of chicken are brown. Wait until the wine vapored and we can salty it.
Add the curry in to the mixt, as much as you want. After 1 or 2 minutes put the cream milk, the quantity you want too.
After 1 or 2 minutes we put more curry and wait another 2 minutes.
When it’s done you can serve with a little bit of lemon and with rice as a side dress.

… and last but not least… ENJOY IT!



Recipe by: Núria "Les meves receptes"

1.2.14

Vinohradský Pavilon. - Praha 2

Vinohradsky Pavilon Prague

We discovered this building one day when we were coming back home from a walk around the neighborhood. We were walking through Slezskà Street, it was already dark and suddenly we saw this building that surprised us. We stumbled into the back façade, it was late and it was already closed. We were walking around and trying to guess what this building was. The first impression was a market, like the typical markets you can find in the Mediterranean cities. In my city, Barcelona, you can find one of these markets in every neighborhood. Then we were looking through the windows and it looked as an art gallery. But we weren’t sure and, what´s more, we were super curious about this mystery place.

Last weekend we finally went to visit the building. It’s an old industrial refurbished building. Now it’s a shopping mall gallery specialized in furniture of design. There is also a cafeteria in the hall, an art gallery (Gallerie Pavilion.) and a supermarket in the basement.

I didn’t have enough of the Vinohradský Pavilon so I decided to search the internet for more information. But I didn’t find a lot or at least I didn’t find what I wanted to know. Who did the last restoration?

Vinohradsky Pavilon Prague

The Pavilon was originally a local factory producing mill machinery from 1879. The architect Antonín Turek converted the factory hall into a modern marketplace opened in 1903 with the name of Vinohrady Market Hall (Vinohradská tržnice). You can see a longer description here

Antonín Turek, the architect, was working around the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Near the Old Vinohrady Market Hall he has two more buildings, the Vinohrady Vodarna (the water tower) and Národní dům (the Vinohrady National House) in Namesti Miru.

Vinohradsky Pavilon PragueVinohradsky Pavilon Prague





Around the 80’s the market was in really bad conditions and in 1986 it suffered a fire. After it, they were considering a demolition but the Old Prague Club (Klub Za starou Prahu) included the Vinohrady Market Hall into the State Register of Immovable Cultural Monuments. They stared a restoration to became a department store called Vinohradsky Pavilon.


Vinohradsky Pavilon was the first shopping mall after the Velvet Revolution opening in 1994. It offered many exclusive design brands but it didn’t work really well. The main attraction was the Albert supermarket. More information about the project here

The 11th of October of 2013 the Vinohradsky Pavilion opened its door again with a long restoration of 9 months. It’s an investment of Martin Leitged, the owner of Stockist, an important Czech Republic distributor of house and furniture brands. Now it’s an exclusive shopping center of furniture where you can find the unique pieces designed by the most important designers and architects.

I found this information here, here, here, here, here (in Spanish) and here (in Spanish).

Vinohrady Market Hall designed by: Antonín Turek
Location: Vinohradská 1200/50 Praha 2
Opening hours: Mo - Fr 10-19.30, Sa 10-18
Public transport Station: Vinohradská tržnice

Vinohradsky Pavilon Prague

Pavilon Prague

Vinohradsky Pavilon Prague

Vinohradsky Pavilon Prague

Vinohradsky Pavilon Prague

Vinohradsky Pavilon Prague

Vinohradsky Pavilon Prague