TORONTO // NUIT BLANCHE

As a senior in college, I have always been a firm believer in education. For the most part, I've spent so much of my life learning through the eyes of others; teachers, books, movies, and more. I'm not entirely sure what switch clicked lately, but I'm seriously questioning the education system - especially the path that I'm taking in architecture. Maybe it's the fact that I've worked in the field, or maybe it has to do with the recent discussions I've had with professors and students alike in relationship to the future of our field, but something has irked me as of late. What I really want to get at is: in a field that has everything to do with spatialization, we do very little actually exploring those spaces that are talked about to us on a daily basis. How much are we really able to apply to our own work if we lack a basic knowledge it what it really feels like to be within a designed space?

And maybe this is why I love to travel.

So, I traveled far north this past weekend to Toronto, Canada to see an art show called Nuit Blanche - an multitude of exhibits that take over the city for 12 hours, from 7 pm to 7 am. A professor I had last year and I'm still close with had a sponsored exhibit (the tentacle sculpture seen above) in it which was one of the main reasons for going and the other was two of my friends who graduated last year had also planned to go so I was able to see them for the weekend as well. Let me tell you, I loved Toronto. It was big, modern, clean, friendly and walkable. We ate some great food (yes, we went to the Loose Moose) and saw some amazing art installations. A lot of the exhibits were interactive, such as the doors seen above, which recorded the door that was walked through and collected the data in an info graphic which was almost a social study. Many played with light, like the Walk Among Worlds which was made up of thousands of inflatable globes. We also took a ride to the top of the tallest structure in north America, the CN Tower, which was absolutely surreal.

Overall I was absolutely exhausted, getting back to Syracuse at 5 am and getting up 3 hours later for my train ride back to Troy. I'm seriously asking for one of these for my birthday so I can start sleeping when I travel because I can't seem to do that.

This semester I only have two more trips planned but both are to New York City; one for a 3 day"field trip" for my design studio and another for an Alt-J concert in November. I'm ready for a weekend without travel.