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Our studio is in a renovated water treatment laboritory building right by the River Plate Stadium. In Buenos Aires, soccer is king. People of all ages play it, everywhere. Walking around the streets we watched some kids playing in the middle of the street, pausing only to let cars through. Whenever the ball went awry, some pedestrian would invariably move out to intercept it, do some little thing with the ball, and kick it back. I even saw a guy on a bike with a massive basket swerve so he could get a touch on the ball. In Buenos Aires, there are two teams which are major rivals: Boca Juniors, and River Plate. The river plate stadium is literally across the street from our school complex. Last wednesday there was a late afternoon game. Around lunchtime, we went hunting for food, and found ourselves surrounded by all types of police. Not that we were the cause of alarm, but that they were there to maintain order during and after the game. There were a fleet of motorcycles, 20 mounted police, general beat police standing everywhere, and a few dozen special ops police with riot gear. When Argentines have a game, they really have a game. Later that night as we were leaving, we could hear the roar and chanting of the fans inside the stadium.

Speaking of food, our lunch and dinner options near here (studio of course) are pretty limited. Theres an overpriced mini cafeteria downstairs which sells coffee and some other basics. There's also a cafe/restaurant on the near corner which is slow but sells more complete coffee, tortes, breads, and some light meals. Then there is a superpancho kiosk by the car wash about a block away. A superpancho is an Argentine hot dog. Approximately the same width of a standard hot dog, and about a foot long, served on a bun with ketchup, mostaza (mustard), and mayonaise. I usually go for two as they're not that filling.

I've started experimenting with busses here. Normally, I take the Subte, which means walking 45 minutes and riding 15. With the bus, I walk a total of ten minutes and I can ride the rest of the way, dropping me off very close to the school. At least, that was the bus I took THIS morning. Yesterday I grabbed the wrong bus and ended up walking about 8 blocks to get to school. The busses here are actually a little more expenseive than the subte (say 28 cents vs 20 cents) and they are always packed. They're always very decorated on the outside however, and I get the impression that each bus line is run by a different company. A last note about busses in Beunos Aires, they are the leading cause of death of Portenos, according to one source.

Studio has started, as I am sure many of you, my dear readers, have already figured out by my lack of posts. The semester's focus is on the Chicos en la calle. (Children in the street). A typical problem of major cities, there are an estimated 400 pibes (another local name for the teens) who are in that condition. They are typically teenagers who left thier homes due to mostly poverty or violence, and due to that condition, prefer to remain in the street than return to thier homes in the outskirts of the cities. They live by begging, vending, and petty theivery. There are problems with these kids get addicted to inhaling glues etc, then move on to harder substances. There's a few horribly depressing movies I could recommend but I won't.

The general problem is that we're going to be designing a public work. The specific problem or program isn't stated because we have to figure it out for ourselves. The site is fixd: across from the remains of the Club Atletico under a freeway overpass in San Telmo.

Club Atletico is another intriguing and similarly depressing piece of the puzzle. I wont go into its details except to say that it was a secret detention and torture center used by the military goverment during the 1970s, where it "processed" 1500 individuals. The uncoverd it while constructing the freeway. Due to the fact that these events took place in such a short time ago, the feelings are still very raw and the place is very real and haunting for the locals of that generation who are now in thier 40s.

We met down there last friday for a walking tour of the area of San Telmo, the barrio where our site is. We went to the center for assisting the chicos, took pics, talked with the manager and staff, and we all bought a book of photos that the chicos took. It was 25 pesos, but we all wanted to contribute. Plus, its raw material we could use to understand the users of our public works and what they think of where they live.

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INTERMISSION - TAKE A BREAK - GET SOME CAFE CON LECHE Y MEDIALUNAS

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We hit the partial excavation of the Club Atletico afterwards. This is really not a great part of town. From the club atletico, we visited a laboratory and repository of the materials recovered from the torture center. Afterwards, we walked a short distance to Plaza Dorrego, where there's an amazing, huge junk, antiques, and crafts market every sunday. Sundays, there are tango dancers, tango orqestras with thier multiple accordians and violins, and hordes of tourists. Interestingly, theres also an 18th century housing complex uncovered and restored. A really cool museum and gallery called el Zanjin. The original builders during the 17oos wanted to expand thier brick house so they built an arch over the creek in thier backyard and built on that. Over time, thier neighbors followed suit so that the creek became completely covered. The creek no longer exists, but they found the tunnels created by the arches, and we walked along that for a bit which was really cool.

As you can see, this is a really complex project, such that its impossible to jump right into. Our first project for studio is to explore systems of a material. The way studio is set up is that we work in groups of three: one undergrad student, one grad student, and one local student who can vary from undergrad to graduate level equivilancy. My group didnt get a local, unfortanatlely, so Im working with another guy from my year, Adam, whose brother cooked us that great meal.

Speaking of people and connections, I learned that one of the grad students from ASU who came over here went to high school in Beijing. In talking to him, we figured out we were both at ISB at about the same time, although I was in a few grades lower than he was. We knew a lot of the same people and knew about the same teachers. Togather, we lamented the fact that all of our friends went on to much better schools than ASU. Apparently, ISB has become regarded as one of the best international schools in the world, to say nothing of Asia. Wierd, huh?

Going back to our current studio project- we are supposed to work with a material, explore its potential, work with it, and create evolving systems of organization which eventually overtake the material itself. Yeah, and this the conceptual more abstract project. While other groups decided to use materials such as rubber bands, note cards, playing cards, or rolls of corrugated cardboard, we started playing with a bunch of materials ourselves instead of picking one. We tried name cards, wire, etc. but finally settled on a metal binder clip.

These clips are difficult to describe- they're not the black and silver ones you can squeese open to stick pages in. Its two flat peices of metal, used to bind double hole punched sheets togather. One flat piece has two long tangs and the other flat peice has sliding clips. The idea is that you fold the tangs up so the peice has a U shape, stick that through your papers, and then bend the tangs down and slide them into the other peice so they lock togather. Anyway, it seemed like a fun material at the time and we could get boxes of 50 real cheap.

The major downside is that they're made of thin stamped metal, so now all of our fingers and epscially our thumbs, are all sliced to ribbons from working with the stuff. We've worked with the material now for about a week, and come up with some really intriguing designs, objects, feilds, and spacial systems. We just had our review today and they liked what they saw. Our studio is led by Claudio Vekstein himself with another local architect, Sergio.

Whew. I think that brings us up to speed on all the major issues. Argentina is still great, I love Buenos Aires, my spanish is flying along, and I have major readng for tomorrow to finish.

My two lecture classes here are amazing. Theory and enviornmental systems. Three hours each one day a week, with the studio twice a week for five hours. Fridays are feild trip days as needed. Stuff I can really dig my teeth into. Already feeling the strain from studio, but its a familar pressure. Last monday when we got our presentation requiremets, that overwhelmed feeling settled back down on me like a familiar yoke. Its not really that overwhelming due to its famliarity. No, I have no idea how I'll get everything done, but I know I can get through it.

Hopefully, dear reader, you will not have attempted to read this all at once. I just had a lot of catching up to do.