Castiglion Fiorentino

I studied in Castiglion Fiorentino with the Cal Poly Landscapers for a semester--it was a way to get back to Italy after I had come home and finished up my thesis project in architecture. I had spent my 3rd year studying in Florence, and going back to the So. Cal. area was bloody torture. I had some remaining elective units I needed to complete my B. Arch, so I opted for taking the entire curriculum the landscapers were offering and calling them electives. Here are some of the sketches I found in the book I was toting around in my purse during that academic semester. This book is obviously bound, but I obviously didn't care much about it because the paper quality was pretty bad, and I only seemed to write/draw on the right hand page. These are sketches made in Montepulciano, Ravello, Pompei, Positano, San Gimignano, Vicenza, Cortona, Fiesole and Firenze.




















Check it out! There's more info about some of this area here, if you're interested










HIDEOUS! Trip to Vicenza to see Palladio's Villa Rotunda, and I had to break out the pastel pencils...dummy.







The cover of this sketchbook was my favorite--I wrote the poem "Last Laugh" by the author Sir John Betjemen and a bit of grafitti carved into a park bench outside San Gimignano which reads "if the sky were a canvas, and the ocean were ink, they would not suffice to write down in words, how much I love you." My people are hella romantic ;)

Finally, I was cleaning out some papers and found this folder with a few drawings and renderings that were part of a presentation I did for the final project of that academic semester. While I was with the landscape architecture group, I designed a small museum to be inserted into a nook next to the library, accessible from the inside. There was a huge load-bearing wall, and behind it a small courtyard that I intended to access. The museum would hover in the corner, without touching down on the ground, and would offer a view to the small courtyard in front of the library. Here are a few renderings and sketches







and here is proof I have never been fond of rendering trees...



Small church in the Valley below Castiglion Fno.




This is a very quick sketch of the main piazza in Castiglion Fno. This was the view from the proposed museum site.


A watercolor sketch I was going to render over (using trace) depicting the wall where the library was and where I proposed the museum



And, if you're interested in the lovely little walled city of Castiglion Fiorentino, you can look here at some lovely views around town