Reading Response 9: 3/21/11

Architecture and language

There are several different buildings throughout architecture that speak the same language even if it may not be exactly the same. For example the Barriere de la Villette speaks the same language as the Pantheon.

Ways they are alike:

• circular center structure
• front porch with columns
• oculous in the center of the buildings roof

Ways they are different:

• the Pantheon only has one porch at the very front whereas the Barriere de la Villette has a porch on each side more like the Villa Rotonda with its four identical facades
• the Barriere de la Villette although it has an oculous just like the Pantheon it does not have a dome in the center circular space like the Pantheon does

The Pantheon, Rome

Barriere de la Villette, Paris

Villa Rotonda, Vicenza

The Pantheon is a building that was designed in a way that keeps people on axis because there is only one way to enter the space and then there is a clear path shown to move in and around the space.  Whereas with the Barriere de la Villette and the Villa Rotonda do not have a specified entrance out of there four possible entrances and therefore it makes it difficult to remain on axis.  I would say that the Villa Rotonda and the Barriere de la Villette seem more like they could fit in with the Baroque style of architecture because they broke the rules of being on axis and while the Pantheon is a very clean and plain building and so is the Barriere de la Villette but the Villa Rotonda has more decoration then both of the other structures but still not as much as Baroque style architecture.  However, in different ways each of these buildings is unique and reflects a little bit of the time periods before it and the time period in which it was built.

"The old, Christian preindustrial, predemocratic way of life has progressively broken away around him so that he has come to stand in a place no human being have ever quite occupied."

-Vincent Scully, Modern Architecture, 1961

Images from Google Images and information from Roth textbook.