Grammar: Syntax

Revisions

At the heart of all designs there is revision. No design is ever finished on the first try. Designers must constantly revise their project to make it better. The royal chateau at Versailles was originally a hunting lodge but it was revised to be bigger and bigger until the French Revolution. When it was built in 1624 the building was small in size, but in it was enlarged in 1631-1636. The chateau at that time had “Several geometric garden parterres laid out west of the chateau, defining an axis centered on the lodge and stretching westward into the landscape” (Roth 417) When Louis XIV came into total control of the building he ended up drastically changing the chateau even more after his minister of finance made his own chateau much more extensive than the kings. The king had his architects wrap a new building around the existing building and leave that untouched. The plan was to “celebrate the king, his rule, and his military victories through numerous allusions to Apollo.” (Roth 418) He also made the landscape more elaborate by adding more water features like pools, fountains and water basins. To further his extensive building the infamous Hall of Mirrors was added to the west façade to reflect the large outdoors into the massively decorated indoors. Every detail that was put into the revised building that is Versailles radiated the notion that all things were to come back to the most important feature; the king. The revising of the small hunting lodge into a large château is hard to imagine

Audience

In design it is very important to consider our audience when we are designing. After all, we are not designing for ourselves we are designing for the public. The designer has to follow what the customer wants in order for his or her design to be successful. In Versailles I explained over the revisions that took place again and again in order to achieve the king’s goal of showing his power and having it all relate back to himself. The town’s people were the audience, and since the king did not concern himself with the financial aspect of Versailles this caused the people to be in a crisis, which led to the French revolution. The time that it all takes place is important to consider as well for audience. Now that the French revolution is over, Versailles is overwhelmingly beautiful and extravagant. Although it was not appreciated as much back then, it is more than appreciated now. The hall of mirrors reflects back the beauty of the outdoors and brings it indoors to command the space as explained by Roth “Windows face the gardens westward and banks of mirrors on the opposite walls reflect the light throughout the room” (Roth 419) The viewer cannot help but be taken back by the glory of the space. Every aspect put into the glory of Versailles is in or reflected in that space.

Character
Charter I believe is how a space is decorated to give it an appealing look. It is something that is added to a room that makes it a real stunning design. In the Baroque period in the seventeen century the apart from the chimney piece the ceiling was what gave a room character. The ceilings were decorated with plaster and “included such motifs as naturalistic fruit, foliage, curling flowers, putti, and animals.” (Blakemore 206) The ceilings were very elaborate works of art that drew the eye upward and were at such a delicate feature, that it was no wonder why they were on the ceiling. The rooms were overwhelming with the décor of the plaster designs. They were given character to places that normal ordinary people did not have. It shows wealth through the extensive detail put into the work.

Datum
Last week in Suzanne’s class we were to create a board that had a clear datum line. The Mossman building group that I was in, was commended on having a clear and successful datum line. It is an area that allowed the eye to understand what to read first and where to go from there on out. Our board had the groups pictures lined up along the datum line and on the datum line we included the title and group members. If there was no datum line, the project would not read as well and would not be as successful. Instead the eye would not know where to look first and make the board look less professional. As far as history is concerned I believe the line of reference could be that of thought and emotion. In the renaissance the world was concerned with thought and writing down all the rules of the ancient architecture and design. While in the Baroque time period it was all about breaking the rules and going towards emotion and movement. There is no datum line in Bernini’s work. His work had lots of movement, and the eye did not know where to go. The mind is constantly moving throughout his work, although this does not make his work unsuccessful, this is the way he wanted his work to be viewed.

Transitions

During the seventeenth century there was a transition from baroque to rococo architecture. The Baroque architecture broke the rules and was more about “elaborate, embellished, and complex” and focused on decorative elements and deep colors (Roth 398). However, around the end of the seventeenth century there was a transition to Rococo, which had “the use of light colors and the delicate, irregular curvilinear ornament. This transition was partly due to Versailles, due to the cramped quarters that the court had to live in. When Louis XIV died the “nobles moved to Paris, where they erected spacious private houses [and] hotels” (Roth 430) This moving from Versailles to the western outskirts of the city is further explained by Roth “ these hotels were most often painted ivory, cream white, or in pale pastel tints and were paned with delicate frames formed of lacy tendrils and wisps of gilded ornament…the Rococo interiors must have felt like a breath of fresh air after the somber interiors of Versailles, loaded with heavy pilasters and entablatures.(Roth 430) The transition was more towards going back inside the box instead of breaking all of the rules of art. The transitions that happened back in the seventeenth century speak a lot of what happens in design. Many things can impact design to change it into something new. As designers we must be open to changing our designs with the design or rebelling against them to create our own transition into something new.