We’re now in the shopping week for classes. I’ve explained this before: we show up for all kinds of courses, and decide what we want to take (as our courses decide if they want us). This is proving trickier since this semester, everything I’m taking is either an architecture course, or an history of art course dealing with architecture… that wasn’t the case last semester. Some of these courses will accept one person for every five that shopped the course, including the one taught by my advisor. (More on that soon.) Still, this stuff has a way of working itself out.
This semester is proving to be multiply busy. I’m a teaching fellow for Architecture Since 1945, which means I teach a section. I’m unofficially involved in the Stefan Behnisch studio on the Palast der Republik in Berlin, which is my thesis topic, so I spend most of my free time with the students there. Then, there are the three classes I’ll be taking, which I should be able to name next week.
We have advisors, and I’m going to be working with Emmanuel Petit. He’s a young faculty member (younger than me, in fact), who just completed his Ph.D. from Princeton. He’s also very bright, talented, and focused. We had our first meeting yesterday. I haven’t taken a course with him previously, so we’re just getting to know each other. It’ll be good. It’s also just good to have an advisor — it was hard to figure where to focus my research without working closely with someone.
It appears that I’m going to be in Berlin again at the beginning of February, for research and the studio trip. It’s a lucky stroke that I’ll be able to attend.
FInally, Enrique has an Archincect school blog! He’s one of the few people from a research/theory/history perspective to be keeping a blog there.