Porsche, Mercedes and Zaha Hadid.

So the excursion is winding and down and we are getting closer and closer to Berlin. However, we had to make sure the trip ended with a bang. So I give you Stuttgart, home of Porsche and Mercedes.

As one can tell from the pictures, the Porsche Museum (above) was nothing short of incredible. The building, the cars... all just mouthwatering. So before I get entranced by the cars again, I'll give a quick rant on the building. So wipe the drool from your mouth and get ready. Situated across from the factory and dealership, the Porsche Museum was designed by architects Delugan Meissl. The museum is situated on five structural pillars that lift the entire museum off the ground creating an inhabitable "underbelly." The exhibit was quite clear and impressive as everything was arranged chronologically along outside wall. Possibly the coolest part of the exhibit to me was a display made of Corian with embedded LEDs that wrapped up from the floor (above).

If the Porsche Museum did not get your pulse racing, hopefully this one will. The Mercedes Museum was designed by the firm Unstudio and features a double helical layout in which one has two possible experiences within the museum. The exhibit, however, seemed a little scatter brained for my tasted as I prefer the simpler layout from the Porsche Museum. The museum though was still sweet as the concrete twisted around every project Mercedes ever embarked.

Above is the Weissenhof Museum by Le Corbusier. Le Corbusier is one of the fathers of modern architecture so this was a pretty big deal. It was Corbusier's goal to create a modern housing community in Europe, participating with other greats Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, however he was far ahead of his time.

The last day of the excursion was mainly spent driving (10 hours to be exact), however, we did stop in Wolfsburg for the afternoon. Wolfsburg was created created by the Nazis and meant to be ideal industrial city where inhabitants spent 8 hours of their day working, 8 enjoying themselves and 8 sleeping. The entire town was laid out based on this idea as it was divided with the industry on one side of the tracks and the rest on the other. Nowadays, Wolfsburg is a major commerce center as Volkswagen is based here as well as many factory stores, etc... Our main concern here was the Phaeno Science Center (above) by Zaha Hadid. The Phaeno Center is made entirely of self compressive concrete with no expansion joints to speak of. The idea sounds intriguing, but the execution was not. Due to zero tolerance for error, the concrete work was a really patchy and took away from the form. The inside, on the other hand, was a completely different experience. Though the architecture was nice, the main focus was the "toys." It seemed that the second we walked in, the class' maturity level dropped by about 10 years as we couldn't resist pressing button we saw. So needless to say the tour was the least of our concerns... The tour continued past the Phaeno to a library and church by Alvar Aalto but after a science center, a library seemed like a little of a downer.