Our next studio project’s site is in Dundee… it was time to take a class fieldtrip an hour and a half north of Edinburgh to the mighty city of Dundee.
Four of us decided to hire a car (AKA “rent”) which would be cheaper than taking the train. We met at the Enterprise across the street from Napier’s “Sighthill” campus.
Kirsti (from New Zealand) drove, with Sharon (from Manchester) as navigator. Kim (from Canada) and I (from America!) got to ride in the back and take pictures. Besides the obvious strangeness of driving on the wrong side, and having the driver on the wrong side (although I am getting used to this), the fuel gage shows “1/1″ instead of “Full”.
Got to see some new terrain since Dundee is now the furthest north I have been in Scotland. I am pretty sure it is officially in the “highlands”, north of Fife.
The first thing I noticed when we came into town was the “Olympia” city council building and fitness center. Secondly, they make it easy for you to call the local “Mob”.
Our class finally met up in Baxtor park, to take a closer look at the Baxtor Pavillion. We will be working with this building for the next studio project. We are still a bit unclear as to what we will be doing exactly, but at least we know what is there now. There are a lot more pictures of the pavillion on Flickr, no need to post them all here.
Next we stopped by the Dundee Center for Contemporary Arts (designed by Richard Murphy). Some neat architecture going on there. We had a brief class meeting (where in this picture it looks like we all just found out our beloved dog has died), a few decided that noon was the perfect time for a few pints, and we were then on our own to explore Dundee.
Of course the first thing we did was head over to the “Tonic Cafe” for lunch. They feature 52 varieties of burgers. You can have anything from a salad burger to a burger with hashbrowns, sausage, cheese, and brown sauce. I decided to have the classic bacon cheese burger. Although I keep forgetting that “bacon” is more like a slab of ham over here. But I enjoyed my ham and beef cheese burger!
Next we walked around the town for a bit. Nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there.
On our way out of town, we stopped by Frank Ghery’s “Maggie Center” Cancer Research building. So I took a bunch of pictures too. People started making fun of me for taking so many pictures so I toned it down a bit. Probably for the best.
Then we came back.
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