The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,200 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 20 trips to carry that many people.
First and foremost, I would like to extend a huge (belated) HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all of our American readers!
As it is our final blog, we here at Drawing From The Archives are so thankful for all of your collective encouragement, loyalty and interaction throughout our blogging endeavor.
This week we were asked to discuss our chosen city in relation to either Material Culture or Urban Architecture through the use of our own offline materials. We took the opportunity to show off two of our own beautiful cities; Cork and Dublin, as well as prove how well cultured we are here having visited cities like Bilbao, Venice, Vancouver and Marseille!
As always, we would love to hear your feedback on any of the topics mentioned this week, so don’t be afraid to leave us a comment or send us an email!
We hope you all enjoy having a read through – don’t forget to download the ePub for when the Wifi’s down!
Aoife, Jennifer, Katie O, Donna, Katie M and Pierre.
To start off this week’s blog Jennifer will be examining our first case study city; Bilbao.
Hi there! They say all good things must come to an end and unfortunately this is the case, as this is our final blog. For my final Blog I shall be going back to Italy. I just love Italy (must be some connection I have with the place maybe it is because my name is Italian!) It is off to Venice this time. I had the pleasure of visiting this beautiful, romantic and historical city at the end of February 2010. It was during the Venetian carnival, which happens annually two weeks before the Christian denominations of lent begin on Ash Wednesday.
Donna |112755861
person dressed and posing for Carnival with Gondola in the background
The grand Canal
Venice is like stepping back in time and as it is a pedestrianised city you can just loose yourself in the city while walking around the narrow winding streets, over the small bridges that bring you across the lagoon. The Venetian gothic architecture of the buildings are just breath taking. During the late 17th/ early 18th Century an inspriing Architect by the name of Andrea Palladio his architectural designs is based on symmetry and classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greek and Romans. His building designs are still a major feature in Venice.
San Sate Church with its ‘Palladian’ Architecture
Another beautiful piece of architecture in Venice is the Rialto Bridge is one of the four bridges that stretches over the Grand Canal in Venice. The Rialto bridge is the oldest bridge that crosses over the canal connecting the districts of San Marco and San Polo.
‘Rialto Bridge’ The Arch the bridge’s arch is higher than many bridges reaching about 7.5 meters this was to accommodate large galley ships passing through
Just over the Rialto bridge on the Eastern side is the flea market for tourist momentos and souvenirs from here it leads into the food market where you can get reasonably priced fesh produce of fruit, vegatables meat cheese and especially seafood.
Walking down to Rialto Market
Campanile di San Marco stands at 98.6 meters (324 feet) tall and is located near the front of the basilica. Most of the building is simply a plain bricked structure, topped by an arched belfry that houses five bells. While we were there a man was cascading down the tower onto Basilica di San Marco by a zip wire.
Man cascading down from the Campanile di San Marco on a zip wire
I will leave you all now with a few of my favourite photos from my time in Venice. Thank you for taking the time to read all of my blogs. Donna ARRIVEDERCI!
Te Arsenal in Venice
The Canal
A parade walking though Piazza San Marco
Just one of the many small bridges over the canal
Marco Polo’s house
For this last entry, we will stay in Canada but we’ll go travel the country onto the Pacific coast to have a look at Vancouver.
Pierre-Joseph Cancellieri | 114 112 124
Image 1: A view of Vancouver’s Downtown from a public park near the Gastown district
Vancouver is a relatively young city. The colonization of this part of the country is due to the gold rush around 1850. At this time, there were some settlements around the bay of Vancouver. The city has been found only on 1886 but its rapid urban growth transformed the city in a century to become the third largest city in Canada.
First, right after its foundation, Vancouver went through a boom period with the achievement of the Canadian line linking the country coast to coast. Also 3 weeks after, still on 1887, ships started to travel between Vancouver and China on regular basis. This is why Vancouver is such a cosmopolite city, both people from Asia and Europe went to it to start a new life. And there also is a general trend these past decades to emphasize the American Indian culture through public art.
Image 2: Indians totems in Stanley Park which reflect the willingness to revive the American Indian culture.
Image 3: Japanese piece of Art in Stanley Park. It reflects the diversity of the city which is influenced by Asian and European culture.
So as you can imagine the city has been really influenced by the construction of the railways line and the Canadian Pacific railways company. It’s true that city has been shaped by it but it’s not explaining everything. The city also experienced town planning quiet early and instaured a town planning by-law in 1926. The city Council called a firm to make a development plan. This plan was 50 years long but it was never applied. The Vancouverites had an early awareness of planning in order to keep controlled the development (meanwhile the city was booming) and to keep their city beautiful.
In a more recent history, Vancouver radically changed its downtown shape. From the 1940’s to the 1960’s, the buildings in the city centre became higher. Finally, we understand better why Vancouver became the Canadian sister or twin of San Francisco in the U.S. The bay, the bridge, the location of the downtown, and the uneven relief remind San Francisco.
Image 4: A view of Vancouver’ s Downtown area from the North side of the bay, suggesting the increase in the building’s heights
Image 5: View of the night skyline in Vancouver
Source: click here
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by Brian, Meagen, Denise, Gabriele & Kerry
Blogs from UCC student David Smith
GG3043
This is our blog for Historical geographies of the city 2014. The members of this group are Roisin MacCarthy , Steven Guerin , Aine Healy , Sinead Bracken and Aoife Coughlan.
A blog written by six curious students
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Series of blogs by Final Year UCC Geography students, focusing on Historical Geographies of the city
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Drawing From The Archives 