2010-11 Student Photo Essays

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Study tours are integrated into the Danish Institute for Study Abroad (DIS) program. This year, I got the great opportunity to study in Copenhagen, Denmark. With its rich history and leading modern architects, Europe has provided me with a great backdrop for a year of immense growth as a person and as a student of architecture.

Study tours are Integrated in the Danish Institute for Study Abroad (DIS) program. Here, a fellow architecture student and I are sitting on a canal sketching the typical row housing in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

In my first days of exploring Copenhagen, I came to realize that while the housing and private space itself is smaller than anything in the U.S., it is the green space that acts as a "living room." Without the same regulations as in the U.S., Sweden has many interesting sustainable installations, like this life-size hamster wheel, which generates enough electricity to charge a laptop while people exercise in it!

A great deal of my life in Copenhagen encompasses studying and working on projects in studio. This is a view from the balcony of my architecture studio. It's extremely therapeutic to people watch and take a coffee break out here.

They call Denmark the land of the sky because of its flat terrain from the tectonic movement of the alps. As such, the sky dominates majority of the landscape. This is a photo from our ferry trip from Germany to Denmark. Rain clouds loom over the shore.

Every year, Copenhagen celebrates its culture with Kulturnatten. All over the city, museums, churches and stores open their doors to the public and make cheers for Danish culture. That night, my friends and I ended up in a church in Norrebro filled with pillows and blankets. As ambient music filled our ears, a ceiling light show captured our attention.

One of my favorite things here is to watch local concerts. This particular night was a free show by the Danish band Penny Police. One of the unique things about the band is that they continuously experiment with new instruments. Here, the pianist plays with radio frequencies to produce a most eerie effect.

One of the must-sees of Copenhagen is the theme park Tivoli. Centered in the middle of the inner city, Tivoli was Walt Disney's inspiration for Disneyland. The photo is of the oldest merry-go-round in Europe.

On our first independent break in Europe, a good friend and I decided to backpack throughout eastern Europe. This is a photo of us sleeping outside Vajdahunyad Castle, the royal summer castle, just after taking an overnight train from Prague to Budapest.

This is a photo of the inside the National Opera House in Budapest where we watched the Tchaikovsky's ballet Anna Karenina, based on Tolstoy's novel.

When the Dalai Lama visited Untersberg mountain, he described it as the "heart chakra of Europe" synchronizing five of the seven chakras. Legend has it that the mountain is also home to a sleeping Charlemagne, who awaits a final battle between good and evil.

Here, I am hiking in Salzburg, Austria on a beautiful autumn day. Having lived the majority of my life in California where there are only truly two seasons, rain and no rain, autumn in Europe is a novelty that I absolutely adore.

This photo was taken in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, Austria. In 1945, as Russian troops marched into the city, civilians began taking fire. The cathedral's roof collapsed, but the brick shells built around the pulpit saved the religious jewels.

This is a photo at Trapolt Museum in western Denmark. We are studying the uniqueness of Danish design.

Olafur Eliasson, an Icelandic-Danish installation artist, remarks on our perception of the world through machine driven fog machines. This particular exhibit at ARoS Museum in Aarhus remakes the unique softness of Danish Rain.

Another exhibit by Olafur Eliasson. Called the Color Room, it is a room filled with a thick colored fog that disorients the visitor into a full span of different emotions based on the color that surrounds them. In a fog of yellow, I felt immense anxiety, but in the fog of blue and purple, there was a peaceful calmness.