Moments for Architecture

Today I read chapter three of the book The Architecture of the Italian Renaissance written by Murray. This chapter is mainly about Alberti and Humanism. Leon Battista Alberti was an Italian architect, humanist, scholar, and writer who lived during the 15th century. He is considered one of the most prominent figures of the Italian Renaissance. Alberti made significant contributions to various fields, including architecture, painting, sculpture, and literature. Alberti's architectural style was characterized by a revival of classical elements and a focus on harmonious proportions. He sought to reconcile ancient Roman architectural principles with contemporary architectural needs, blending tradition with innovation. Notable architectural works attributed to Alberti include the Church of Sant'Andrea in Mantua and the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini. Leon Battista Alberti, 1404-1472      In this chapter, I was most interested in the building Basilica di Santa Maria Novella....

 There is an interesting and useful part of the studio course this semester, which is site visiting. Why do I say so? Because I really like investigating different sites and observing the activities and people there. Every site has its own features and culture. I feel comfortable when I get to know the difference from site to site. Fortunately, the places of the sites are all in the villages of Wenzhou. We visit one village per week and learn from that village. This week we went to Xianbei village, which is near our school. There is a river that goes through the village, and the villagers on both sides live on this river for hundreds of years.  Satellite Map      When I was visiting the village, I found a very lively place. There are many people playing chess, chatting, playing majiang there, and so on, especially old people. Then I noticed that it is the culture hall of the village. All of the people of the village gather here to communicate with each other. Th...

 The subject of our Architecture history course this semester is the architecture of the Italian Renaissance. I read a book written by Mu rray, which indeed raise my interest in Renaissance architecture. One of my favorite buildings during that time is the Cathedral of Florence.   It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnoflo di Cambio and was structurally completed by 1436, with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi.  Cathedral of Florence, Italy, 1436 The reason why I chose this building is because I am interested in the construction of the big dome of the building. The workmanship of this dome is unprecedented, and no one can build a new dome more beautiful than that. Filippo Brunelleschi, a craftsman with expertise in ancient Roman architecture, won as chief architect. In the construction of the dome, instead of the popular round dome wooden frame of "arch eagle", the novel "fishbone" construction method was adopted, which was built succe...

 The title of the final project is BIG PLACE, SMALL SPACE. We need to find our own site in GHK hall and find some problems to solve. The site we chose is a corner next to the elevator on fifth floor of GHK hall. The reason why we chose that corner as our site is because we found it is a semi-enclosed sapce with three walls. However, it was not fully used and it was a little waste of space.  Site Photo Site Photo Site Photo After investigating the site, we finally decided to transfer this space into a study and resting space. The solution is making some 1:1 furnitures to set up the space. The furnitures are flexible that users can change them according to their own needs. We also think this space can have different functions during daytime and nitht. In the daytime, this space is more like a studying space. Because there are more nature light during daytime. And it will be more likely a resting space during night because there will be no light in this spcae at night. Section Th...

     This week we are going to start our own "Architecture firm". Each "firm" consists of four people. So I'm going to start our "Architecture firm" with my teammates Ryan, Lori, and Dana. In the next few weeks, we will complete our first project together, which is also our final project for this semester. But we still had a lot to do before that, like designing a company logo, coming up with a company slogan, and writing our own team title block.      The first thing that we need to do is to come up with a firm name. After passing many ideas, we finally decided to use "DLAR" as our firm name. Why DLAR? I promise it is a very meaningful name. There are three implications that are involved in this name. The first implication is that we just took the initials of our four members, Dana's D, Lori's L, Alex's A, and Ryan's R. The second implication is that DLars can also be seen as short for Design Library of Architecture. The thir...