point: alternatives

In the alternatives unit, we began discussing not only buildings, but furniture much more than before. We went over Palladio's villa rotunda and how it's the most copied building in the world. We arrived at a place in time where people began actually writing about architecture, including Palladio's The Four Books on Architecture. To some, the writing becomes more important than the buildings, and architecture itself. Going through Palladio's design process of the villa rotunda step by step, we begin realizing the notion of centrality. The circle in the center is different and stands out from the rest of the building, and is borrowed from antiquity. The structure begins to resemble a compass in a couple of different ways; the way in which it appears in plan, and the way borrowed elements from the ancient world directs us back to the ancient world. The dome is centralized and is reaching heavenward with a vertical axis. This notion of "reaching heavenward" has been seen before. The villa rotunda however, explores a new notion of a facade on all sides of the compass, which breaks away from the traditional single facaded building. Having included the verticality reaching heavenward, and the facades on all North, South, East, and West sides of the building begins to show Palladio's idea of the perfect world.

We also discussed palaces in more urban areas. As in the villa rotunda, the facade becomes a very important part in the building. The facades of these buildings speak a language of symbolism. The different use of spaces in the building are clearly seen on the facade, which faces the street. The facade appears "rough" at the bottom, and moving to the upper levels, becomes "smooth". The bottom level is typically used for storage, the middle for entertaining, and the top for sleeping. The facades of not only palaces, but government and public buildings as well gives a sense of civic pride. Walkways are covered as you travel through parts of a city.

We discussed and analyzed furniture much like we did with buildings, without distinguishing them in regard to form, but focusing on the design aspect. Furniture reinforced the architectural style and period through including the same elements and geometrical forms. An abundance of items or things throughout the Renaissance led to an abundance of furniture to store them in. Much of it was disguised as being storage devices, but rather pieces of art. In viewing images, scale was often hard to dictate due to the level of detail and the elements of architecture depicted as with columns and pediments. We discussed not only furniture for storing things, but also chairs, tables, other pieces. We saw a lot of wood inlays of different colors and different types of wood. This was used in creating different designs, showing contrast, and also creating borders. The location of furniture almost always lined the perimeter of rooms when not in use, and were moved elsewhere if they were being used.

The alternatives unit covered Renaissance, Baroque, and Rococo periods. We learned about the language in which design speaks to people, different cultures, and places in the world. This leads to the discoveries of new ideas, being inspired by different places, and the movement of ideas and objects throughout the world. We also came to terms with the fact that we are still stuck in the renaissance in 2010.

http://www.bergerfoundation.ch/Vertige/images/img028.jpg

I believe this image sums up the unit by the way it flows, relating to the different types of architecture talked about and how they build upon one another and flow into a new style.