ALTERNATIVES SUMMARY

For my summary and review of the Alternatives unit, I will use two of the classmates that I used for my review of the Reflections unit: Anna Behrendt and Raul Garcia.This time around I'm also throwing in Blakeni Walls because her blog is one of my favorites to keep up with on a regular basis.

I will begin with Blakeni because the quote she uses to open her essay, in my opinion, is wonderful. She states, "Design is like a cartwheel. Starting at one point, then turning, stretching, shifting, reshaping and fixing back into place after your whole view on the world has been turned upside down." She continues her essay with the theme of defining an "alternative is a choice between mutually exclusive possibilities." She specifically references the Gothic period, along with its cathedrals. She describes this as a time of being "stuck between two worlds, bringing the divided society back to one center and uplifting it towards divinity." Then she chronologically continues on to the Renaissance, where her main focus is the "importance in harmony + unity through the form of repetition using geometric shapes and lavish ornamentation." Her overall theme is that although architecture is built on foundations, it is built upward through alternatives. Through the exploration of boundaries and breaking of rules.

 

Anna chose to focus on a specific detail of the gothic time period, the cathedral. Her thoughts were that the buildings could be used to illustrate what was occurring within the time periods in which they were built. She touches on the intricacy and theatricality of these structures and how this reflected that the, "designs of the structures were branching off from what the normal architecture would have looked like. The religious people were attempting to make the church beautiful to draw people in." She also makes interesting discussion about the importance of basic shapes and how they can be simplistic or altered to create something very interesting.

 

Raul chose to focus more on the Renaissance in his essay. Explaining how this time period was a "rebirth not only for architecture, but for furniture, science, art, and many other fields of study." He relates these explorations to the design of the time, spending a great deal of words on the details of furniture of this time. He mainly focuses on the beds and chests of this time, explaining how rebirths and gained knowledge of this time related into the designs of the objects that inhabited this world. He also explained the changes in personal spaces, such as the Palazzo Medici and the separation of spaces within the residence.