Standing in the footsteps of Columbus

Last Wednesday, thanks to the generosity of Tile of Spain and the Spanish Trade Commission, I toured the grounds of the Aljafería Palace in Zaragoza, the capital of Aragon, Spain.

Of course, my camera's battery was dying so I have to use a Wikimedia shot for the outside of the castle. The rest of the photos here are original though.

The Aljafería Palace is the largest, preserved Moorish structure in Spain and it tells a history that won't stop. It dates from the mid-11th Century and it was the fortified palace of Ahmad I al-Muqtadir. Moorish Spain wasn't a single entity, rather, it was a collection of independent kingdoms.

The Moors were a force in Northern Spain until mid-11th century and even after the reconquest of northern Spain, a now Christian Aragon remained an independent nation and the Aljafería remained the seat of power.

Fast forward to the mid-15th Century and the marriage of Isabella, Queen of Castile and Ferdinand II, King of Aragon. Their union formed the foundation of the modern nation of Spain and they ruled over their newly joined kingdom from the Aljafería Palace.

Fast forward another 540 years and some guy from St. Petersburg, FL (me) found himself standing in the inner courtyard of the Aljafería.

I've been fortunate to stand in some pretty significant places in my life and I can't be in a place like the Aljafería and not feel the humanity of the people who've been there before me. So as I was standing there it hit me like a rock that since this was the palace of Ferdinand and Isabella, Christopher Columbus would have passed through this courtyard on his way up to his audience with them.

Christopher Columbus was an idea man. Contrary to popular belief, people had known that the earth was round since the Egyptians ruled over the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Columbus was a visionary and he was determined to find someone to fund his great idea to sail across the Ocean Sea to reap the riches of India. For eight years he'd been pestering royal courts all over Europe and it was in Spain that he found a receptive audience.

It took him years to convince the Spanish Monarchs that his was a can't lose proposition. Ultimately, they decided to fund his expedition from an encampment in Granada but the preliminary meetings took place in the Aljafería.

So as I was standing in that Courtyard, I had a flash of insight into Columbus. I deliver pitches all the time. I'm an idea guy too. In fact, I have another pitch today at 10am. I'm nervous about it and I know Columbus was nervous about his too. The stakes for him were infinitely higher than my stakes are but the anxiety he felt then and the anxiety I feel now are the same.

As different as the world is now from what it looked like 500 years ago, what those two worlds have in common is people. We're the same now as we've ever been. We may know more stuff but our emotional ranges haven't changed. Anxiety now is the same as it's ever been. The same thing's true for love, or joy, or anger, or fear.

It's great to have the opportunity to stand in a truly old place such as the Aljafería Palace and to see and feel those common threads of humanity. Places like that help me put myself into some kind of historical context and to see that I'm really not so important or significant after all. I mean, I'm pretty important in the context of my own life but so far as the big picture goes, I'm not such a big deal. I find that comforting, that perspective.

Places that afford that kind of reflection are a dime a dozen all over Europe but they're pretty uncommon on this side of the Atlantic. I know that the profusion of such places is what draws me to Europe so strongly. But the very fact that I'm drawn so strongly marks me as an American. It's a curious thing.

Tile trends from Cevisama

The Spanish Tile Manufacturer's Association (ASCER) promotes Spanish ceramic tile in North America as Tile of Spain. I was the fortunate recipient of a trip to Spain last week to get to know the Spanish tile industry, Spanish culture and the Spanish people. My trip was built around my attending Cevisama, the Spanish tile, stone and bath trade show.

Cevisama was an enormous show, easily the largest tile trade show I've ever attended. The facility where it was held, the Feria Valencia, was an amazement.

As I walked the show floor and toured the booths I saw a number of overriding trends, many of which will end up on this side of the Atlantic eventually. Tile is the default material for much of the world though it's certainly not in North America and that's unfortunate. It's a great material and I learned more about it in Spain than I ever thought there was to know.

The big news from Spain is that the Spanish have mastered the art of digital printing on tile. The tile above isn't the banded calcite it appears to be. That is a pattern printed on a ceramic tile. The printing was so clear I could swear I saw the saw marks from a stone saw on that tile.

The Spanish use tile in innovative ways. The shelves above are made form walnut shelves with porcelain tile dividers.

All over Europe, builders are using large-format, thin porcelain tiles for sheathing the exteriors of buildings. When used in this manner, the tile isn't held into place with mastic and grout. Rather, it's hung on an aluminum rack with a layer of insulation behind it. This makes for a highly energy efficient structure that never needs to be maintained.

Moving back inside, the long horizontal wall tiles we see here were all over the place. For the last couple of years, designers in North America have been obsessed with hiding grout joints and it was kind of interesting to see the grout in this bathroom be an integral part of this design.

Almost every tile I saw had a lot of texture. This one was interesting because it's a 12" tile with with a textured mosaic printed on it. This would make installation a snap and I apologize to my friends in the mosaic world for coming close to liking this tile.

This is another 12" tile with textured mosaic printed on it. When done this way, this faux mosaic takes on a character that's utterly different from a mosaic.

I saw a lot of bright colors and very few of them were on flat tiles.

In keeping with the digital printing mastery, what appears to be a wallpapered bathroom is actually, completely tiled.

I saw a lot of tile being used in rooms other than the kitchen and bath uses we're so accustomed to in North America.

Here's another ceramic tile that appears to be wood paneling and wallpaper.

I saw a large number of combinations of natural stone, glazed ceramic and metallic ceramic. That hexagonal shape was pretty popular too. This is not something I'd ever think to do on my own but I think it looks pretty terrific.

I took thousands of photographs while I was there so consider this to be the first in a series on tile trends. What do you think of all of this? Would you ever use any of these styles in your own home?

Thank you once again to Tile of Spain for this once-in-a-lifetime trip to Spain. If you'd like to learn more about what the Spanish tile industry is up to, you can find all the information you could ask for on Tile of Spain's website.

What is storytelling? A Let's Blog Off post

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "What is storytelling?"

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I spend a lot of time in internet marketing and social media circles. There are a number of buzzwords that get a lot of play in that world and the current most-used and least-understood buzzword is storytelling.

In social media and internet marketing circles, storytelling takes on a shape something like this.

via

Ugh. How do people get paid to come up with such meaningless nonsense? Seriously, what does any of that mean?

My understanding of storytelling comes from something other than a dull-as-dishwater seminar or committee meeting. For me the be-all and end-all example of great storytelling is this, Grimm's Fairy tales.

In 1812, brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published their first edition of 86 German folk tales under the title Kinder- und Hausmärchen. That's translates literally into Children's and Household Tales. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm kept releasing new volumes of stories through 1857 when the story count consisted of 211 tales.

Then, as now, the Brothers Grimm and their stories were savaged by critics for being so inappropriate for children. I disagree of course and am happy to report that I grew up with them.

For me, the stories contained in my unabridged Grimm's Fairy Tale collection epitomize storytelling. Each tale is, like all good stories, a personalized morality tale. And I mean morality in the true, non-religious, sense of the term. Morality is the code of acceptable behavior in a culture. Good stories personalize an account of an individual's either going along with those rules or defying them. But more important than the morality tale aspect to a good story is the personalization.

It's easy to get caught up in the buzzwords and catch phrases of the day and to lose sight of what it is we're talking about when it comes to a term like storytelling. Storytelling has nothing to do with terms like "project-based learning" or "technology integration" (again, what on earth does any of that mean?). Storytelling is the uniquely human ability to personalize a situation to teach a lesson, to make a point, sell a product or just entertain somebody else.

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As the day goes on, the rest of the participants in today's Blog Off will appear miraculously at the end of this post. Keep checking back and check out everybody's postss. You can follow along in Twitter as well, just look for the hashtag #LetsBlogOff. If you'd like more information about about the Blog Off or if you'd like to see the results of previous Blog Offs, you can find the main website here.

Valencia's spectacular Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències

Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències is this complex's name in Valencian. In Spanish it's known as the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias and in English it's The City of Arts and Sciences. What ever the language, the entire complex is nothing short of magic.

I was in Valencia to attend Cevisama, the Spanish tile and bath industry's massive trade show and I was there as a journalist. My transportation, food and lodging were taken care of by ASCER, the Spanish tile manufacturer's association. ASCER is known in North America as Tile of Spain.

Valencia is an ancient city. It was founded along the banks of the Turia river by the Romans in 137 BCE. The Romans called it Valentia. Valentia means valor in Latin and Valencia was a city established for the benefit of retired Roman soldiers.

The heart of Valencia looks like an ancient city should and the buildings show the effects of 2100 years' worth of human habitation and development. Like a lot of European cities, Valencia juxtaposes the ancient with the shockingly modern with grace and gusto. That's definitely true of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències. In this case, Valenica let homegrown architects Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela go wild and despite the free form nature of these buildings, they relate to the actual uses of the buildings and they're thoroughly grounded in Valencian culture.


The complex consists of seven principle structures and they are:

• L'Hemisfèric — an Imax Cinema, Planetarium and Laserium. Built in the shape of the eye and has an approximate surface of 13,000 m².
• El Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe — an interactive museum of science but resembling the skeleton of a whale. It occupies around 40,000 m² on three flats.
• L'Umbracle — a landscaped walk with plant species indigenous to Valencia (such as rockrose, lentisca, romero, lavender, honeysuckle, bougainvillea, palm tree). It harbors in its interior The Walk of the Sculptures, an outdoor art gallery with sculptures from contemporary artists. (Miquel from Navarre, Francesc Abbot, Yoko Ono and others).
• L'Oceanogràfic — an open-air oceanographic park. It is the largest oceanographic aquarium in Europe with 110,000 square meters and 42 million liters of water. It was built in the shape of a water lily and is the work of architect Félix Candela.
• El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía — an opera house and performing arts center. It contains four large rooms: a Main Room, Magisterial Classroom, Amphitheater and Theater of Camera. It is dedicated to music and the scenic arts.
• El Puente de l'Assut de l'Or — a bridge that connects the south side with Minorca Street, whose 125 meters high pillar is the highest point in the city.
• L'Àgora — a covered plaza in which concerts and sporting events (such as the Valencia Open 500) are held.

I walked around it for a few hours on Friday afternoon and I was struck mute by the experience. It was great to have the chance to be alone with these buildings and I could let the complex affect me without having to worry about other people's reactions to my oftentimes emotional responses to what I saw.

I'm standing under one of the support structures of El Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe, the Science Museum. That's El Puente de l'Assut de l'Or bridge and L'Àgora in the background. The entire structure of L'Àgora is covered with deep blue Trencadís mosaic. Trencadís is shattered, ceramic tile and is a very traditional material all over Spain.

I'm looking to the northeast of the complex in this photo. To the right is El Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe and to the left is the underside of L'Umbracle. To the rear is L'Hemisfèric and behind it is El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía.

The first shot I ran is one I took in the opposite direction to this shot. Here it is again.

So looking to the southwest shows L'Hemisfèric and El Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe to the left, L'Umbracle to the right, and El Puente de l'Assut de l'Or bridge and L'Àgora to the rear.

There was an art installation going on along the walkway next to L'Umbracle and like a fool I didn't write down the name of the artist. I apologize to the artist, the work was exuberant and cheerful.

I'm standing on a bridge directly in front of El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, the Valencia Opera House. The Palau shines because it's covered entirely in white Trencadís mosaic. Here's a detail shot of Trencadís.

Here's another shot of the Palau.

The cantilevered roof over the Palau is nothing shot of miraculous. The building itself is enormous and its unsupported roof is the largest cantilever I've ever seen. That it arcs down over the course of its run defies every rule of physics there is.

Here's a shot of the concrete work of El Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe. I kept marveling the whole time I was there, how do you get building products like concrete and steel to behave like this?

I've been following the building of this complex since it started in the late '90s and that I've now seen it with my own eyes makes me wonder whose life it is I'm living all of the sudden. I cannot thank Tile of Spain enough for the chance to experience the wonders of Spain.

Spain was spectacular

The Reign in Spain tour ended Friday and I flew home yesterday. While I can't say that it's good to be home I will say that it's nice to set aside my suitcases for the time being.

Spain was spectacular in every sense of the word. Prior to leaving, I used the following stock photo a number of times to illustrate what I was going to see in Teruel.

Well as luck would have it, I was in Teruel last Wednesday. I was walking through the Teruel Museum and walked out onto their fifth floor balcony. I was hoping to get a better perspective on the city but what I got was the chance to stand where the photographer who took that stock shot stood. How cool is that?

Now that I'm back, for a month anyway, I'm going to go back to my regular schedule here at good old K&RD. I have learned volumes about the global design scene in the last few weeks and even more about the world political and economic situation. I'm going to start sorting through my findings tomorrow. At first I'll start with the sights and sounds of Spain, then the things I learned about Spanish tile. I'll probably loop back to some other things I found in Germany and Canada after that.

This has been a crazy, wonderful last few weeks and I owe you guys a huge debt of gratitude. Thanks for reading and commenting here and I'm looking forward to being a blogger again.