Saint Gatien's Cathedral

(Continuing our field trip from the Vinci Conference Center...)

If you haven't noticed, we had perfect weather for this weekend. Cloudless blue skies every day.

To wrap up our afternoon at Tours, we walked over to Saint Gatien's Cathedral, another structure built over several hundred years due to fires, financing, wars, etc. You would have to zoom in on the high-resolution version of the above image, but you can see many slight ornamental and detailing differences between the two towers. The north tower (if I'm remembering correctly) was built first at the very start of the 16th century, followed by the south tower several decades later, and even this change in time was sufficient to warrant new details and an upgraded facade.

One of the most striking aspects of the church is the organ, a massive thing placed just below a beautiful rose window at the south end of the transept.

As usual, more pics here.

And the field trip continues here.

Vinci Conference Center

(Continuing our field trip...)

We stopped in Tours to see the Vinci Conference Center. This building took us back to 1993 when Jean Nouvel designed this structure-with-a-baseball-cap that overlooks a major intersection of the city.

I think this played a key role in the weekend to keep things balanced with the many "old" places we were visiting (churches, abbeys, cloisters, that sort of thing).

One of the interesting aspects of the building is that it hangs the interior assembly areas, and therefore provides column-free, multi-level interior spaces.

That shiny "ceiling" is actually the belly of a large auditorium. Kinda cool huh? And of course, more sketching:

More pics here.

And the field trip continues here...