Irina Schneid: Melbourne, Invisible Cities, and Fresh Air
Melbourne, Australia
City: Melbourne, Australia. I lived here briefly after I finished graduate school and fell in love with the culture, the markets, the arcades, and the livability of the city.
Bramante’s Tempietto
Building: Bramante’s Tempietto. The approach, scale, and siting of this building is unlike any I have ever experienced. It’s much smaller than you would imagine, and yet there is no way to capture it in one glance because you cannot step far enough away.
Book: Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. As an architecture student this book fueled many of my design investigations, helping me reimagine familiar contexts and communicate meaning whenever I felt stuck within the design process. Currently, I am reading Alexandra Lange’s, Design of Childhood, and am loving it!
Public space: The streets of Rome. Their unassuming portals into courtyards just out of reach will forever be etched in my memory. I keep a framed map of Rome from my family’s immigration in the early 90’s hung by my bedside.
Architect (that is also a woman): Billie Tsien. I really appreciate how material play and discovery is intrinsic to her design work.
Billie Tsien
Artist: Mark Bradford. I am fascinated by his multimedia artwork- some of which takes on the scale of occupiable interior spaces. The materiality, texture, and intricacy of Bradford’s collages convey a deeply rooted sense of place.
Restaurant: I have celiac disease, so I generally find it hard to eat out, but I go out of my way to stop by Hu Kitchen anytime that I am in the area.
Memory: The look on my daughter’s face when she met her baby brother for the first time.
Object: Currently, my AirPods. It’s nice to be hands free when I am otherwise tangled up in my kids and their gear- toddler mittens on strings included.
Podcast: Fresh Air with Terry gross. I try to listen to every interview on Fresh Air - regardless of subject matter. It’s my small window to the world of people and topics that I might not otherwise look into on my own.
Mark Bradford, “Lights and Tunnels”