I would like to begin my post with a quote I found for this weeks reading from Kazys Varnelis’, Place: The Networking of Public Space, “All places are non-places for those who have not accumulated lived experience within them. Nevertheless, our era is increasingly dominated by non-place, our existence doomed to solitude.” To be completely honest, when reading the prompt …
Thomas T
Fairly Odd Cosmos Experience
I have never left home for an extended period of time by myself until I came to NYU, primarily when I went abroad. Since staying at home was a consistent activity for me, studying abroad resulted in my mother worrying for me in ways I have never seen prior, such as melodramatically warning me to look both sides across the street …
What Do We Do While We’re Walking?
I was watching a video of Jan Gehl on “Changing Mindsets About Urban Planning and Living” and one line that stood out to me the most was when he was describing one of the suggestions for improving Copenhagen as a city. He said, “In this city everything will be done to invite people to walk and bicycle as much as possible in …
Refusing to roam in Rome
While I was in Florence, I was fortunate enough to travel to many different places in Europe, which allowed me to view my time in Florence with a more experienced eye. I have never traveled outside of the United States before hand minus visiting the Dominican Republic, so while I enjoyed my time in Italy immensely, I was not sure …
My Take on “Urbanized” The Documentary
I want to preface this post by saying that I don’t like suburbs. I have walked around a few and from the short time I have spent I just never got comfortable with how similar houses looked, how quiet it was, and how “fabricated” (for lack of a better word) it is. As someone who is born and raised in …
Il Duomo di Firenze
Sometimes I reminisce about the times I have seen the Duomo in Florence, Italy, for it was honestly the closest image I had of what a “magical” building looks like. This was primarily so not because how detailed the exterior of the Duomo was during the daylight, although it was certainly beautiful in it own right, but because of how …
Atlantic Mall
Growing up, I would always see teenage drama TV shows depicting what life as a high school typically entails, but I knew characteristics of high school life in these shows would not translate well to a New York City high school. One of the tropes of American television is to depict “the mall” as the typical hangout spot, and while …
Almost Lost on Purpose
The best way to adjust to a new city is to get lost in it, literally, at least for me. I remember during the first few days of arriving in Florence during the fall 2013 semester I was lost after taking a wrong turn from the Duomo. While the Duomo serves as mid-point to almost everything in the city, I …
A Place To Play
It’s interesting to think about where can games, digital or not, can take you. It’s easy to think about where a game can take a player in context to graphics, story, and interactivity, but the space that a game creates in the real world is on that is often overlooked. What does “playing a game” look like? While this can …
“Where The Hell Am I?”
My name is Thomas Torchio, and I am currently a senior in Gallatin studying Applied Psych and Video Game Studies. Being the city slicker I am, my experience with nature is limited to New York’s seemingly bi-polar weather and the excitement (no sarcasm) I would get when buses are shut down due to snow and I have to walk around barren …