Category:Architecture
The Musée d’Orsay in Paris is one of my favorite galleries. The building dates from around 1900 but, as a mainline train station, it had become obsolete by 1939. In 1970 is was approved for demolition to be replaced by a hotel but, this being France, it was listed as a Historic Monument instead. In December 1986 the building was reborn in its current role of art museum covering mainly French art from 1848 to 1915 and bridging the gap […]
The Galleries Lafayette dome is just something you don’t expect to see in a department store. I think only the French have the audacity to pull off this type of architecture in a store open to the masses. In it’s own way, Galleries Lafayette is a church to the religion of shopping. Crowds of people flow in and out like the ebb and flow of the tide. It’s like the building breathes in people, gains sustenance from the cash in […]
Back in the fall of 1995 I spent an afternoon wandering around San Francisco. Today, I’d call that photo walking. Back then, I was wandering with a camera. One of the images I took was of this building, the St. Elizabeth. I was taken with the symmetry of it, took one frame and moved on. Now, trying to place the image, I Googled various combinations and came up with nothing. So, I went back to my film strip, started with […]
You can’t miss I.M. Pei’s pyramid entrance to the Louvre museum. I think it works architecturally simply because it is so out of place with it’s surroundings. To have made any structure sympathetic with the surrounding wings of the museum would have resulted in something truly horrendous. The Pyramid works, in my view, but note that it’s often not the fastest way into the Louvre and on a sunny summer’s day the heat outside in the courtyard can be stifling […]
I’ve always been fascinated by tall buildings. Today’s daily photo is of 811 Main St. Houston, TX at night, taken during a photowalk a couple of years back. With some of the stars in the night sky visible at the top of the frame, I can imagine this view as looking along one of those futurist massive spacecraft you see in movies like Star Wars. I half expect to see some X-wing fighters streaking along this channel hotly pursued by […]
Which building in China has withstood over 70 earthquakes? That would be the Small Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an, China, built in 707 A.D.