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Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building
by Christy Hale
Lee & Low Books Inc., 2012
ISBN: 9781600606519
Grades K-4
The reviewed received a copy of the book from the publisher.
The winners of the 2013 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards were announced recently. The nonfiction winner this year was Electric Ben. Two books were name nonfiction honor books: Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building and Hand
In the late-1930s, Walt Disney enlisted German architect and industrial designer Kem Weber to design a state-of-the-art animation studio from scratch. Weber oversaw every detail of the new Burbank studio from the exterior architecture of the buildings to the Streamline Moderne design of the furniture, desks, and appliances, to the custom typeface used on the studio’s signage.
Yesterday, Hans Bacher posted a fantastic series of images I’d never seen before that show Weber’s layouts of the different spaces in the Burbank studio. You can also see some of Weber’s furniture at the Blue Sky Disney blog.
The Burbank studio wasn’t the smashing success that Walt had envisioned, however. It felt cold and sterile to the artists who were accustomed to the cramped and comfortable charms of their old Hyperion digs. Animator Fred Moore complained to Ward Kimball one afternoon shortly after moving into the Burbank studio, “No distinction in the rooms.”
But more than the lack of charm, the Burbank studio’s ostentatious in-your-face luxuriousness suggested a certain tone deafness on Walt Disney’s part. It rankled the hundreds of artists who were struggling to get by on $15-per-week salaries, and who now realized that the company cared more about its films than the well-being of its rank-and-file employees. It hardly mattered to the artists that Walt had had to borrow money from the banks to pay for the construction of the studio. Labor tensions began to escalate just months after artists moved into the studio, and within 18 months, the nasty Disney strike that threatened to destroy the entire studio had begun.
Walt had miscalculated the desires of his artists. He thought they wanted a state-of-the-art facility to create animated films. The average Depression-era artist, however, would have been happier with a few extra bucks per week so that he/she could afford food and housing. Managing the competing interests of studio owners and artists is still a struggle in today’s animation industry, which is why the construction of Disney’s Burbank studio remains an especially instructive moment in the art form’s history.
The first-ever comprehensive exhibition of the landscape paintings of Martin Rico y Ortega (Spanish, 1833-1908) is currently on exhibition at the Meadows museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
The exhibit features 106 works of art, including paintings, drawings, and sketchbooks, with sparkling views of Paris, Venice, and Madrid. According to the
museum, "Rico championed the technique of painting en plein air, famously painting while stationed in gondolas throughout the Venetian canals."
(
Video link) The show is the fruit of a longstanding collaboration between the Meadows museum and the Prado in Madrid. It will continue through July 7.
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"Impressions of Europe: 19th-Century Vistas by Martín Rico"
In architecture and design schools, it's common to hear the claim that "golden mean" geometry was used in the design of ancient buildings, especially the Parthenon.
According to
mathematician Keith Devlin of the Mathematical Association of America, this is a groundless myth, with no basis in fact whatsoever.
The golden mean (also known as the golden ratio or the divine proportion) refers to the relationship of 1:1.618..., an irrational number also known as "Phi." The ratio is found in nature, and has been championed in the last two centuries, but many other claims are unfounded. Although Greek mathematicians knew about Phi, there is not a shred of evidence that any Greek architect used such a system as a design principle. Euclid's study of Phi occurred long after the Parthenon was already finished. Devlin says:
"The oft repeated assertion that the Parthenon in Athens is based on the golden ratio is not supported by actual measurements. In fact, the entire story about the Greeks and golden ratio seems to be without foundation. Numerous tests have failed to show up any one rectangle that most observers prefer, and preferences are easily influenced by other factors. As to the Parthenon, all it takes is more than a cursory glance at all the photos on the Web that purport to show the golden ratio in the structure, to see that they do nothing of the kind. (Look carefully at where and how the superimposed rectangle - usually red or yellow - is drawn and ask yourself: why put it exactly there and why make the lines so thick?)"
In the examples above, the placement of the golden rectangle doesn't agree from one diagram to the next. In the top example, the sides of the rectangle hug the columns, and in the next, they're touching the edges of the pediment. In some, the bottom of some rectangles correspond to the bottom of the columns, while in others, they're several steps down the base. In the middle example above with the white lines, the source photo itself seems to be stretched vertically by about 15%.
According to University of Chicago math professor Phil Keenan, it doesn't matter how you arrange the diagram, because the lines in the Parthenon aren't straight or parallel anyway due to
entasis and other factors. He says:
"One cannot define an exact rectangle on the front or back faces of the Parthenon. Even though the Parthenon is built to extremely accurate specifications, its curvature precludes rectangular measurements of any greater precision than about 1%. This built-in error precludes finding any Golden Mean rectangles, since the required accuracy is simply not attainable."
George Markowky elaborates:
"The dimensions of the Parthenon vary from source to source probably because different authors are measuring between different points. With so many numbers available a golden ratio enthusiast could choose whatever numbers gave the best result."
Keenan points out that, "the presence of the Golden Mean in the Parthenon was postulated by Adolf Zeising in the 1850s, and appears nowhere in ancient Greek architectural treatises."
Devlin concludes: "I am not convinced that the Parthenon has anything to do with the Golden Ratio."
Anticipating some questions and comments:
Does the golden mean appear in nature?
Yes, and I'll get to that later in the series.Is it a useful tool for composition or analysis?
Sure, if it works for you. Busting this myth doesn't take away anyone's candy.Do contemporary architects use it?
Bauhaus training has reinforced both the myth and the practice.
After considering the
Parthenon and
Leonardo Da Vinci, let's see if we can continue taking a rational look at the claims about "phi," (or the "golden mean" or "golden ratio") that has been so popular with artists.
The story gets more complex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as artists begin to consciously adopt it in their work, and so it gets harder to separate fact from fiction. Let's start with what we know for sure.
One of the nineteenth century champions of the golden mean was German psychologist
Adolf Zeising (1810-1876) who found the golden mean in nature, especially in branching patterns, leaves, and seed patterns. These manifestations of the ratio are acknowledged by even the most skeptical scientists.
Over the years scientists have found other places where the golden mean turns up. In 2010, the
journal Science published a paper about how these numerical patterns appear in crystals at the atomic scale.
The golden mean appears most often in terms of numerical relations, such as the
Fibonacci numbers that appear in flowerheads, seeds, and shells.
Zeisler promoted the idea that the golden mean could be found in the Parthenon and the works of Leonardo. He made broad claims that the golden ratio was:
"the universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form."
Whether or not Zeisler's ideas had a solid grounding in observable fact, they caught on with artists and mystics.
A group of painters led by Jacques Villon and called "Section d’Or," (French: “Golden Section”) held exhibitions in Paris between 1912 and 1914. They included Juan Gris, Robert Delaunay and Giro Severini and several others, though not all used the mathematical principles. Later artists such as Salvador Dali also claimed to use golden mean principles.
Above: Architects' Data (
German: Bauentwurfslehre) First published in 1936 by
Ernst Neufert,
Golden mean principles were adopted in extremely different quarters in the twentieth century. Many readers of this blog are acquainted with them in the context of contemporary realist ateliers.
The methods were also embraced by the
Bauhaus school (literally "House of Construction"), founded by Walter Gropius in Germany between World War I and II, and run by influential architects such as
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
The Swiss architect
Le Corbusier, who championed the international style of building design, used the golden ratio and the Fibonacci series as a central tenet of his teaching. He described the patterns as:
"rhythms apparent to the eye and clear in their relations with one another. And these rhythms are at the very root of human activities. They resound in man by an organic inevitability, the same fine inevitability which causes the tracing out of the Golden Section by children, old men, savages and the learned."
Many Bauhaus teachers emigrated to America, where their ideas about the golden section became incorporated in university art educations, where they are taught to this day.
The Flintstones have been duly celebrated throughout the years, but one part of the Hanna-Barbera series that hasn’t received much attention is its iconic architectural setting: those brilliantly appealing and organic circular ranch houses topped with pancaked granite slabs.
The designer of the prehistoric Flintstones universe was a man named Ed Benedict (1912-2006), the same man who designed the show’s characters.
Benedict dreamt up the Flintstones homes almost entirely from imagination. He was once asked if he used any reference to design them. He replied, “No, with the exception of on the interior of one of the samples I made, I did look up some prehistoric stuff—cave paintings. I just looked up in there and got the old typical buffalo looking thing running across a wall, just to get the flavor of it.”
Benedict had had a bit of practice with this kind of work. He had designed cavemen and cavehomes once before for the 1955 Tex Avery short The First Bad Man:
The cave homes in The First Bad Man, built into the sides of rock formations, look uncomfortable compared to the domesticated setting of the Flintstones, replete with garages, front yards with flower beds, swimming pools and living rooms with couches. Benedict probably didn’t come up with the original idea of allowing the Flintstones all the creature comforts of suburbia, but the credit for making the idea work visually belongs to him.
The Flintstones designs in the image gallery below were created by Benedict for the original network presentation. These pieces established the general look and feel of the Flintstones universe and served as a guide for the layout artists who were charged with building out the world in each episode. A rare photographic print set of these drawings is currently being auctioned on HowardLowery.com.
Honored to have this book cover I did selected for the Society of Illustrators Annual 55 (whoo-hoo!)
The opening reception was
last Friday and runs until March 2nd 2013.
Unfortunately my work schedule means that I won't be able to check out the show in person, but if you do go, please drop me a line (and maybe a photo?)
I need to tell a little story about the pictures in this blog's header, particularly the one on the right.
When I first selected it from a collection of pins on Pinterest marked "Libraries", I did not realise that each pinned picture in the collection corresponded to a whole article on the library in the picture.
Talking to someone the other day about this, I went back to my note in the sidebar to check where both shots came from and clicked right through to a brilliant article at Dezeen, an architecture and design blog now in its seventh year.
The article carries several more shots of the Liyuan library, designed by Li Xiadong. It was like opening a door.
Here is the outside of the library, on the outskirts of Beijing:
This next shot shows the rest of the library travelling back from the window shown in my header:
It is rather stunning. The whole library is covered on the outside with firewood, so that it blends in with the nearby village.
Read more at Dezeen: there's also a newer article on this library. Then, enjoy clicking through all their pins on Pinterest devoted to libraries to read other articles, or follow their library tag for some very attractive bookish spaces.
By: shelf-employed,
on 2/8/2013
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On Fridays, you may find many bloggers participating in STEM Friday or Poetry Friday.
Here is a book that covers both bases.
Hale, Christy. 2012. Dreaming Up: A celebration of building. New York: Lee and Low.
As a youth services librarian in a public library, I don't have the same type of interaction with children as a teacher or school media specialist might. I see more preschool than school-aged children, and though my goal is to "teach" the love of reading and the power of information, children and parents often come to the library seeking pleasure and entertainment. Teaching and learning moments are offered in the form of story time programs, book clubs, or crafts.
That's why a book like Dreaming Up is so perfect! Imagine a book that "teaches" architecture, concrete poetry, design, and the power of imagination. Now imagine that book is suitable for preschoolers up to grade 4, that it sparks opportunities for imaginative play, that it is factual (Architecture, DDC 720), that it is properly sourced, that it is multicultural, and yes - it's attractive, too!
On the page facing each illustrated poem is a photograph of the famous or architecturally significant structure which inspired the poem. Featured buildings are from locations around the globe and include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. Back matter includes information on each of the fifteen structures as well as biographical information on each building's architect.
No need to dream; there is such a book and it's Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building. Go. Read it. Share it.
Get out some boxes, and blankets, and pillows, and playing cards, and Popsicle sticks and building blocks. Encourage the young people you know to "dream up."
STEM Friday may always be found at http://stemfriday.wordpress.com/ - use it as a great resource for children's books featuring Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
Join STEM Friday!
We invite you to join us!
- Write about STEM each Friday on your blog.
- Copy the STEM Friday button to use in your blog post.
- Link your post to the comments of our weekly STEM Friday Round-up. (Please use the link to your STEM Friday post, not the address of your blog. Thanks!)
By:
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I partook of The Enchanted Kettle and before I knew it I had delivered a fresh Moon to the Hawaiians. Unfortunately the islands were abandoned: the inhabitants had been severely traumatised by reading
Tales Told to Polish Children. Several queer and lowly creatures carried my brushes away.
Watercolour, gouache and biro. A4 size. Click to enlarge.
By:
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on 6/14/2012
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The day the kinema arrived in my remote village.
Ink, gouache, watercolour on sugar paper. A4 size. Click to enlarge.
Last Sunday, while my wife sang sacred harp music with Bard College students in the meeting hall, I sat outside nearby painting the burial vault.
As the shadows flickered across the stones, I could hear the music and words of a song called "Greenwich" drifting out from the chapel.
Lord, what a thoughtless wretch was I,
To mourn, and murmur, and repine,
To see the wicked placed on high,
In pride and robes of honor shine!
But O their end, their dreadful end.
Thy sanctuary taught me so;
On slipp'ry rocks I see them stand,
And fiery billows roll below.
—Words by Isaac Watts, 1719
Bard's sacred harp (Shapenote singing) club is led by Benjamin Bath and is open to all.Bartlett Burial Vault.Sacred Harp music on Wikipedia
See and hear a group singing Greenwich 183 on YouTube
By:
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on 7/13/2012
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I decided to design my own tombstone.
Pencil and pen. 16cm x 16cm. Click to enlarge.
This is the second image I created at the
Illustration Academy for the first project (for more details scroll down ever-so-slightly and check out yesterday's post). I probably created 50 different thumbnails for this because I wanted to ditch linear perspective and yet still give the viewer the sense they were above the guy on the stairs. Alas, it was a no go. Turns out you still gotta' use a couple vanishing points sometimes (but god bless
Brunelleschi for figuring it all out)
In the 19th century, several museums assembled collections of full-size plaster casts of architectural details, such as doorways and choir stalls. The philosophy was that "a replica of a masterpiece was superior to a mediocre original."
I made these pencil studies in the 1985 at the
Victoria and Albert Museum in London. At left is an ornate Celtic wood-carved ornament. On the right is a 15th century Spanish cloister doorway.
In an age when travel to Europe was a rarity for average Americans, cast collections gave everyone a chance to see masterpieces of architecture. They also provided architecture students with fine examples to study, especially when the original detail is high up or otherwise inaccessible.
According to the Carnegie Museum, which has a fine collection, "In the 19th century, the demand for plaster casts skyrocketed. As centerpieces of the great international fairs, casts nourished nationalistic pride, while independent cast galleries served the Victorian fervor for education by providing instruction to both the amateur and the art student. Also, the dominance of historical styles in premodern architecture required that the architecture student study the outstanding buildings of the past; in this pursuit, plaster casts played an essential role."
Unfortunately, twentieth century trends conspired against architectural cast collections. Making casts from fragile originals is no longer possible. The study of ornament fell out of favor in architecture schools. Museums came to prefer originals over reproductions. And casts take up a lot of space in museums.
In 1949, the Art Institute of Chicago intentionally destroyed their cast collection, and many other museums and universities followed suit. In 2005, the Metropolitan Museum dispersed its architectural cast collection. Two of the lucky recipients were the architecture school of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and the Institute of Classical Architecture in New York.
If you live near London, Edinburgh, Pittsburgh, South Bend, or New York, visit their collections with a sketchbook, and make sure you let the museums know that you appreciate them keeping their collection on view.
-------
More info and links:I just finished writing an article on plein-air studies of architecture for
ImagineFX magazine, so that will be out in a couple of months.
------
Victoria and Albert architecture collection/ History of the Cast CourtsCarnegie Hall of ArchitectureUniversity of Notre Dame Cast CollectionView the UND collection online via gigapan technologyInstitute of Classical Architecture and Art in NYCEdinburgh Cast CollectionGeorge Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum in Springfield, MassachusettsPrevious GJ post on figural plaster casts
For fans of brutalist architecture, feast your eyes on this beautiful slice of Brasilian modernism conceived by architect João Filgueiras Lima. The Edifício Morro Vermelho complex, aka “Red Hill” housing. features a series of swiveling bright orange fiberglass panels that are not only pleasing to the eyes but also act as a functional shading device.
Photos via Seier + Seier
Also worth viewing:
Kurokawa Nakagin Capsule Hotel
The architecture of Gomorrah
Space age soviet architcture
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By: Alice,
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By Jilly Traganou
After attending the “Because” event at the Wolff Olins office on July 4th, I was once again reminded of the big disconnect that lies between designers and their public. Wolff Olins is the firm that designed the London 2012 brand, a multifaceted design campaign that included much more than the London 2012 logo. Readers may remember the numerous complaints that the logo generated. As my research revealed, this was caused partly due to International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s restrictions and the corporate unwillingness to allow for the full application of what might be seen as a “no logo” campaign.
Wolff Olins proposed an open-source framework that would integrate the public by providing a design language that could be shaped into new forms and messages. The designers’ intention was to “hand over some tools that would allow people to make everything they wanted.” Design would be “off the podium, onto the streets.” But neither the public nor the broader designers’ community were ready to accept that the Wolff Olins team showed no compliance to the usual set of corporate instruction and that what they were trying to achieve lied beyond the creation of beautiful forms.
London 2012 event. Photo by Gary Etchell. Used with permission. All rights reserved. http://www.flickr.com/photos/gary8345/557769058/
The designers’ goal was to evoke an effect similar to that of the Mexico 1968 design: a visual language designed by Lance Wyman that was not only appropriated by the counter-Olympic movement, but also marked future visual languages developed by local designers in Mexico. In a way, Wolff Olins’ design succeeded in its adaptability, even though its multiple viral deconstructed versions that appeared on the streets and online were meant to primarily express conspiracy and protest, or even a disdain for the very visual language that the designers provided (and which these “dissidents” are now using).
But why would designers today strive for openness and participation? And why should IOC, London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), or the general public be indifferent or even hostile to these intentions? After all, are there any designs that would meet the aspirations of all stakeholders: Olympic organizers, designers, and their multiple publics? The Olympics, as indeed most public events, are complex platforms that bring to the surface deep social conflicts and generate heated debates about the notion of public good. The new temporary or permanent configurations that are designed for the Olympics express these tensions and often become the targets of opposing voices.
Everyone today recognizes that the modern Olympics only partly concern sports. Few, though, are aware of the multiplicity of the design engagements that are mobilized for their realization. Being characterized as something between urban festivals and quasi-religious events, the Olympics have a strong ceremonial character that design generates. Hundreds of designers are mobilized to create a series of objects (logos, posters, uniforms, mascots, souvenirs) that are indispensable for the Olympic ensemble. This may seem to some a contemporary distortion to the original 19th century idea of the modern Olympics’ founder, Pierre De Coubertin, but Coubertin was keenly aware of the importance of design for the identity of the Games. He designed what has been credited as the most recognizable logo in the word, the Olympic rings, and spent considerable energy in prescribing the ceremonial characteristics of the event, with writings on subjects that ranged from attention to lighting and decoration, to specifications on the architecture of the venues.
Photograph in newspaper (unspecified) of Richard Beck working on the design for the Olympic poster. This proto-version differs from the final design, particularly in its typography. Collection: Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 92/1256–1/4. Used with permission.
The design for the Olympics has been an overlooked subject in the fields of design history and Olympic studies alike. Olympic design’s role as an instrument of modernity becomes obvious, for instance, in the way
British athletes’ uniforms were designed for the early Opening Ceremonies, expressing but also helping to shape the identity of modern Britain. The Melbourne 1956 poster designer, Richard Beck,
abandoned the neoclassical body of the male athlete that characterized earlier Olympic posters for a non-figurative composition along the tenets of modern design.
As it has become only too obvious with the current case of London, in late modernity the Olympics are also an opportunity for new infrastructure projects and major real estate enterprise, which leave a debatable legacy to the host-city. Planners, architects, and urbanists play a major role in this process, as well as those who sponsor, lease, or invest in the projects in the longue durée of the post-Olympic era. The design for the Mexico 1968 Olympics had significant ideological implications for the social segregation that marked the future of Mexico City. The architecture of the Athens 2004 Olympics is emblematic of ‘instant monumentality’ and a lack of legacy planning that has characterized many modern Olympics.
At the same time, the high visibility, budget, and scale of the Olympics have provided designers with opportunities to realize ambitions that are not possible through ordinary projects, and to envision ideas that are often too advanced for their times. Katsumi Masaru for instance insisted in compiling a design manual for the Tokyo 1964 Olympic Games (a set of prescriptions that would secure the unified application of the graphics, and thus a cohesive Olympic image), even though he knew too well that it could hardly be applied in the Tokyo Olympics per se. Indeed it was completed just before the start of the Games leaving nevertheless an important legacy for all forthcoming Olympics for which a design manual became a staple. Should we similarly expect that the “no logo” idea of the London 2012, with its openness and lack of corporate compliance, is signaling a new paradigm shift?
Jilly Traganou is Associate Professor in Spatial Design Studies at the School of Art and Design History and Theory, at Parsons The New School for Design in New York. She has published widely in academic journals, has authored The Tokaido Road: Traveling and Representation in Edo and Meiji Japan (Routledge, 2003) and co-edited Travel, Space, Architecture (Ashgate, 2009). She is currently working on a new book Designing the Olympics: (post-) National Identity in the Age of Globalization. Traganou has recently edited a special issue titled “Design Histories of the Olympic Games” for the Journal of Design History, where she also serves as Reviews Editor.
The new issue of the Journal of Design History titled “Design Histories of the Olympic Games” introduces the Olympics as a multifaceted design operation that generates diverse, often conflicting, agendas. Who creates the rhetorical framework of the Olympics, and how is this expressed or reshaped by design? What kind of ambitions do designers realize through their engagement with the Olympics? What overall purposes do the Olympics and their designs serve? ‘The Design Histories of the Olympic Games’ brings together writings by a new generation of scholars that cross the boundaries between traditional disciplines and domains of knowledge. Some of the articles look at the role of Olympic design (fashion design and graphic design) in representing national identity. Other articles look at the interconnected area of architecture, urbanism and infrastructure and the permanent legacy that these leave to the host city. You can view more on the Journal of Design History’s Design Histories of the Olympic Games Pinterest board too.
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Architect and industrial designer Michael Graves, in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, laments the lost art of drawing in architectural practice. His thoughts have obvious parallels with the world of computer animation, though thankfully, drawing still plays a major role in many CG creations.
Grave doesn’t have a problem with computers “as long as it’s not just that.” He talks about the creative possibilities that are opened up through the act of drawing, and uses as an example a drawing jam session he once had with a colleague:
Our game was not about winners or losers, but about a shared language. We had a genuine love for making this drawing. There was an insistence, by the act of drawing, that the composition would stay open, that the speculation would stay “wet” in the sense of a painting. Our plan was without scale and we could as easily have been drawing a domestic building as a portion of a city. It was the act of drawing that allowed us to speculate.
As I work with my computer-savvy students and staff today, I notice that something is lost when they draw only on the computer. It is analogous to hearing the words of a novel read aloud, when reading them on paper allows us to daydream a little, to make associations beyond the literal sentences on the page. Similarly, drawing by hand stimulates the imagination and allows us to speculate about ideas, a good sign that we’re truly alive.
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The new
ImagineFX magazine is on the newsstands in Britain, and soon will be in the States. It has an article that I wrote on sketching architecture on location.
Since ImagineFX specializes in fantasy, science fiction, and concept art, I emphasized how on-the-spot work fits into my imaginative painting, and how I sometimes give a surrealistic twist to what I observe.
The article has quite a few images that haven't been published before, and I hope it will be inspiring both to digital and traditional artists, whether you do fantasy or not.
The magazine includes work by the 2011
Rising Stars winners, Marta Nael, Jean-Sebastien Rossbach, David Gaillet, Eric Deschamps. And one more extra: The magazine comes with a free DVD with one of my painting videos on it. By the way, when you're at the bookstore or newsstand, look for the magazine in the computer section, not in the art section.
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ImagineFX magazineVideo produced by IFX about the entire issue,
"There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection," wrote H.G. Wells. One gets the feeling that Oregon master bridge builder Conde McCullough read Wells and took his exhortation to heart, because Conde didn't [...]
When I was 12 years old, Aunt Sophie gave me my first book on architecture: Sir Banister Fletcher's A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method. I think Aunt Sophie liked it because it was elegant and English. I liked it because it had 3,500 drawings. Originally published in 1896, running to 20 editions (Aunt [...]
By:
Ellis Nadler,
on 4/30/2012
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You need those red/cyan glasses to view this in awesome 3D. My eternal gratitude to
The Wagman for performing the conversion.
Pen and ink with watercolour and 3D conversion. Click to enlarge.
(
Video link) Antonín Langweil began as a painter of miniature portraits. Then, starting in 1826, he began his big project: a detailed model of the city of Prague.
He measured each building and then drew the elevations on stiff paper.
Then the paper could be folded and attached together. This is a good way to make reference maquettes, too.
Langweil's Prague is scaled at 1:480, and includes not only an accurate portrait of each building, but also tiny details such as signs and sundials.
The model is a valuable document for historians of the city because it shows how things looked before 20th century modernization efforts.
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Granada really captured my imagination, and I’m not the first. The city’s ancient Moorish palace, the Alhambra, was brought to worldwide attention by American author Washington Irving, who stayed there briefly in 1829. Yes, that’s Washington Irving of Sleepy Hollow fame. Read more about the Alhambra’s history, starting in the 9th century, here.
After his visit to Granada, Irving wrote Tales of the Alhambra, which sparked interest in the beautiful, crumbling building complex. Fifty years later (it wasn’t the age of the internet, after all), the movement to restore the Alhambra had begun.
Nice to hear about an American writer doing something good abroad!
It’s easy to see why he was so inspired. I found myself wanting to move into the Alhambra. While the castles in northern Europe are impressive in their own right, the Moorish palace made me want to hang out on a chaise lounge, write a novel, and throw a party when the sun went down.
A good spot for a window seat, no?
This was one of my favorite views of the Alhambra (there in the distance). This tower in the foreground, we discovered, is an 11th century minaret, the only remains of a mosque that was destroyed after Isabella and Ferdinand’s army conquered Granada. As in many places, a church was built right where the mosque stood.
It seems to be fairly common that one minaret was left when a mosque was destroyed (for instance, you see it also at Seville’s cathedral). If anyone knows more about the story behind that, I’d be interested to know.
As one of the last holdouts of the Moors, the whole city of Granada has a very strong Moorish influence. The ancient Muslim Albayzin quarter is particularly fascinating, with its maze-like cobbled paths and tangle of ancient white-stone buildings. And as I mentioned before, the food was great!
I threw some more Spain pictures up on my flickr gallery, so hop over there if you like. I went gaga over the tilework at the Alhambra and at the palace in Seville, the Alcazar. Sooo gorgeous! And I kept thinking: quilts, quilts, quilts! So many ideas, so little time.
Travel Tip: if you’re interested in seeing the Alhambra, make sure you book tickets well in advance via the Alhambra website. We did book ahead but we still ha
By:
Ellis Nadler,
on 5/29/2012
Blog:
Ellis Nadler's Sketchbook
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"In April come he will
In May he sings all day
In June he changes his tune
In July he makes ready to fly
In August go he must"
That's my summer sorted, then.
Pen and ink with watercolour. 15cm x 36cm. Click to enlarge.
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which presented a grid system based on the golden mean. The system was picked up by artists such as Maxfield Parrish, whose preliminary drawing for the famous painting "Daybreak" is above. 
by Coy Ludwig
Thanks for bringing Christy Hale's book to our attention. <br />Your piece shares how it has such an inviting premise, to guide kiddos into a topic usually not covered in nonfiction. <br />Little children are natural builders but then as they grow up, so few go on to be architects & builders, especially girls. <br />This book incorporates visual art & the literary art of poetry with
This sounds wonderful. I find that boys and girls are interesting in buildings and architecture but there aren't many books that grab their attention. This one looks perfect! Will be hunting it down!