Geometry Fun!!

            I’m pretty sure everyone in this class had heard of the Louvre before we took Humanities.  However, if you are like me, you knew nothing about it or the magnificent architecture that encompassed the museum.  Not being a huge artsy guy, the aspect of learning about an art museum is almost nauseating for me, but after taking a look at the work of I. M. Pei with the Louvre, I think I could spend a day simply admiring his work and not even bothering with the famous art inside.  I’m a math major, so anything dealing with geometric shapes in architecture is really cool to me, which I guess is one reason why I love the pyramids done by Pei.  The largest of the pyramids is comprised of 673 glass segments (geometric kites) and is seventy feet high.

            After researching a little more about the pyramids, I discovered that the Louvre pyramid has a sister pyramid that is in an underground shopping mall in front of the Louvre.  It is called the             Inverted Pyramid and is basically the Louvre pyramid turned upside down.  The base of the pyramid is even with the ground and the point goes straight down into the building.  It serves as a super extravagant skylight for people inside and a really cool glass floor for people to walk on outside!  The point of the pyramid is actually suspended almost 5 feet off the ground.  Underneath the point is a small stone pyramid that almost reaches to the point of the inverted pyramid.  These are both simple looking pieces of architecture, but they are also extremely complex and extravagant and some of the coolest looking pieces of architecture I have ever seen.  This even surpasses Wright’s Falling Water in my opinion!

Trippy!!

            I never considered optical illusions an art form until I read about it in the text, but I suppose it does deserve the title of art.  It doesn’t look like the traditional “art” that most would think of as far as paintings and such, but it does take an incredible of artistic and creative talent to be able to do it.  It baffles me that something that is inanimate and immobile can appear to move just sitting on the page.  Whoever was the first person to realize the potential or possibility of optical illusions is a sheer genius!  Beyond the thought process and ingenius design, I think that optical illusions take as much artistic ability as a great painting.  They aren’t nearly as beautiful, but to be able to draw lines that are different widths and distances apart and make it consistent across the page just is truly impressive to me.  The one example they have in the book is Current done by Bridget Riley.  It is awesome and does resemble and even appear to flow like a current!  I was impressed enough by this piece that I looked up other pieces by Riley.  She has some other crazy works such as Movement in Squares, Cataract, and Blaze.  Each piece is the same general idea of lines and shapes that appear to move when you view them.  It almost gives me a headache looking at these, but it is worth it as these are truly amazing works of art that are extremely aesthetically pleasing.

My favorite - Blaze

Movement in Squares

Calatrava rocks!

            The Milwaukee Art Museum got a huge boost in greatness in 2001 when Santiago Calatrava came in and added his own work to the museum.  The museum had been around for a long time, but it didn’t have the aesthetic appeal that it has now until Calatrava added the Quardacci Pavillion.  Besides just looking really amazing and complex, it is very functional and obviously, a lot of thought went into the design to give it more meaning than just looking cool.

            The design does immediately make people think of sailboats, which is what Calatrava was going for.  He “worked to infuse the building with a certain sensitivity to the culture of the lake – the boats, the sails, and the always changing landscape.”  But there is more to the pavilion than just meets the eye.  After looking more into the pavilion, I found that there is a lot more to it than just the really looking design.  For one, there is a brise soleil, which is simply a really fancy way of saying a sun-blocking device.  The device has a wingspan comparable to a 747 and opens and closes several times every day.  It has automatic wind sensors that close the sunscreen if the wind speed surpasses 23 miles per hour.

            Looking deeper, I became even more impressed with Calatrava as I saw how much effort he put into the structures surrounding the pavilion that made it possible.  The footbridge that you take to the museum has a look similar to the museum and is appealing to the eye and very functional.  Even the parking garage was made to look fancy and impress people!  It is temperature controlled, has painted flowing support ribs, and has skylights in it!  It is amazing that he went to the effort to even make the parking garage an attraction and impressive.

The Footbridge

Parking Garage!

Less is a Bore!!

        I am a huge fan of the philosophy of Robert Venturi.  In his book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, he counters the statement that less is more with his own views that less is a bore.  I have to agree completely with him.  While simple architecture does have its place, I am a huge fan of the extravagant architecture that was displayed in the information age.  For example, the Piazza d’Italia done by Charles Moore is a really cool piece of work that is the opposite of a bore and has a lot going on.  This public plaza in New Orleans is the result of a combination of motifs borrowed from Pompeii, Paladio, and Italian Baroque architecture.  It may look gaudy at first glance; it is really a fantastic architectural collage.  I’ve never seen anything like this, where the architect took so many influences and threw them together for a crazy result such as this.

            When you hear the list of materials he used, it doesn’t sound like he could incorporate them and make something decent out of them.  The plaza is made up of fountains, neon lights, and polished aluminum railings.  But, put together, they bring out a look that just works.

            Unfortunately, the plaza was not kept up and was not even known by many New Orleans residents in the early 2000’s.  But, it was restored, which brought it back into the spotlight.  The restoration was completed in 2004 and brought the fountains back into functionality and cleaned the whole thing up.  Unfortunately, there were components of the plaza that were too far gone to fix and were removed, but it did end up looking almost as good as when it was new.