San Diego, Slow Down & Enjoy the Walkway

Living in San Diego all my life, I was used to the city life; a fast pace life in which people would look down to their watches and dash to get a bite to eat and make it back in time to clock in. To me, it seemed that San Diego had no peaceful places, were people could do what seemed impossible, sit down and relax. Balboa park, I soon found out, was a utopia filled with museums, nature and tranquility.

The building to the right is part of a walkway in Balboa park, a wonderful piece of architecture that just screams design. The design, as a whole, can be described with a simple word: remarkable. To me it seems like something that is impossible to design in a piece of paper, nonetheless creating it in 2D for people to enjoy. This specific walkway's design shows signs of the Baroque time period where everything was based on simplicity, the simple the better. Although a lot of detail is being shown, the whole atmosphere of the location plus the architecture adds to the design ,a simple design yet being related to the Baroque time period, there is a lot of ornamentation. Ornamentation includes the intricate detail of the shadows that are made from the curves that were made in the architecture and the half domes that are created as a pattern.

Remembering the first time that I went to Balboa park and went through the walkway, two events occurred. The first, I had to go twice through the walkway. Why you ask? Well, simply because I couldn't grasp the beauty of the building the first time, therefore I had to go once again through the walkway to slowly grasp the wonderful design of the structure, the height, the length of the walkway and the nature around the walkway. Secondly, the pure touch of the building was unbelievable; the way that the curves and the broken lines felt through my fingers and the shadows that were made because of the intricate design of the building. San Diego, a fast pace city, minus the design of Balboa park.

dG