{architecture} – Page 143

The Ranelagh Rotunda

Exterior and interior views by Thomas Bowles, 1754.

This was one of the most popular places of entertainment in the 18th century. The Rotunda was vast and features included tiered boxes, a fireplace in the centre and an orchestra pit and the diameter was said to be greater than the Coliseum in Rome. Everyone in society from Princes downwards attended the lavish firework displays, the concerts and the infamous masked balls. Its popularity began to wane and the Gardens closed in 1803.

Interior view by Canaletto.

The inscription in Italian on the back of the original canvas states that the picture was painted in London in 1754 for the artist’s patron Thomas Hollis, and that the view was unique in the artist’s work. The Rotunda in Ranelagh Gardens, Chelsea, was erected as a public venue for various entertainments in 1741 and closed in 1803. Musical concerts were held and Mozart performed there in 1764.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive

Enormous structures II: Tatlin’s Tower

The Monument to the Third International would have loomed 400 metres over St Petersburg (100 metres taller than the Eiffel Tower) had it been built after the Revolution of 1917. The building was intended as a monument, exhibition space and location for the Comintern offices, and included several blocks within its structure, a cube, pyramid and cyclinder, that would revolve at different speeds. Unfortunately for architect Vladimir Tatlin, the Civil War put paid to his plans, although it was estimated that even if the country had been peacable enough to allow its construction, the vast frame would have used up all the steel in the Soviet Union.

All unbuilt structures tend to evoke a “what if?” response and Tatlin’s Tower has been given virtual life through this impulse in Takehiko Nagakura’s 1999 film of the same name. Nagakura uses CGI to show how the building would look against the skyline of the real St Petersburg.

Enormous structures I: The Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural genius rather overreached itself with his 1956 proposal for a mile-high skyscraper of 528 floors situated in Chicago and to be named The Illinois. A building of this size would have severely tested the engineering capabilities of the time (bear in mind that the world’s tallest skyscraper was still the Empire State Building) and would provide difficulties even today. Aside from the obvious fire hazards, the topmost floors would need some form of weighting in order to prevent their swaying violently in the wind. Then there’s the question of moving around the people who live or work there. So many elevator and service ducts are required for a structure of this size that the lower floors are almost entirely taken up by the core shafts that run through the building which makes very tall buildings uneconomical when so much valuable rental space is lost.

Wright was 89 years old in 1956 so The Illinois represented his last hurrah; having changed the face of 20th century architecture he’d obviously decided to go out on a high point, as it were. I often wonder whether he expected that it might eventually be built, just as the medieval cathedral builders drew up plans that they knew they’d never see completed in their lifetimes.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s future city

Ballard on Modernism

A handful of dust

The modernists wanted to strip the world of mystery and emotion. No wonder they excelled at the architecture of death, says JG Ballard

Few people today visit Utah beach. The sand seems colder and flatter than anywhere else along the Normandy coast where the Allies landed on D-day. The town of Arromanches – a few miles to the east and closer to Omaha, Gold and Sword beaches – is a crowded theme park of war museums, cemeteries and souvenir shops, bunkers and bunting. Guidebooks in hand, tourists edge gingerly around the German gun emplacements and try to imagine what it was like to stare down the gun sights at the vast armada approaching the shore.

But Utah beach, on the western edge of the landing grounds, is silent. A few waves swill over the sand as if too bored to think of anything else. The coastal land seems lower than the sea, and fails to echo the sounds of war inside one’s head.

More here.

The Triangular Lodge

England is filled with curious buildings, follies as they’re commonly known, most of them the creation of wealthy landowners with time on their hands and a degree of imagination. Many of them are fake ruins, imitations of antiquity or classical architecture intended to add a degree of romance to a picturesque landscape. Some buildings are simply unusual, however, and one of the strangest of all is Sir Thomas Tresham’s Triangular Lodge near the village of Rushton, Northants. Nearly ever aspect of the building’s design and decoration relates to the number three, a reference to the Holy Trinity and Tresham’s religious convictions.

Continue reading “The Triangular Lodge”