The Black Taj

The legend of the Black Taj has been around for ages. In the past, hardly any publication failed to mention the story of the unfinished piece to the Taj Mahal complex. 

Those familiar with the Taj Mahal will know it as one of the most striking, brilliant architectural works in the history of the world. A structure which transcends culture and geography to leave a lasting impact upon all who see it. A grand mausoleum in bright white marble, built by the Shahjahan in honor of his beloved wife who had died in childbirth. 

Unfortunately, the building of this monument to his lost love was a trespass both upon his religion and his office. Islam forbids the building of monuments to human beings as sacreligious, and Shahjahan drained the resources of his people in order to build the Taj Mahal. Thus, he was ultimately overthrown by his son, and for this reason some people claim he was unable to complete his project.

The myth supposedly arose in 1665 from the fanciful writings of the French merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. From his reports the rumour arose that Shahjahan had originally planned the construction of an identical structure (to the Taj Mahal) on

the opposite bank, in black marble as opposed to the white used on the latter. The discovery of black marble ruins was supposed to have supported this claim, however it was discovered during excavations in the 1990s that the marble had originally been white, and was simply stained black over time.

These findings did not deter researchers, however, who argued that the inclusion of the area referred to as the "Moonlight Garden" in the Taj Mahal complex would be congruent with the tradition set by other garden tombs, allowing the Taj Mahal to form the standard cross shape as a whole. The Moonlight Garden had been assumed to be a part of the gardens built by Babur, 

the first Mughal ruler, between 1527 and 1530 C.E. However, advanced archaelogical and scientific findings in 1995 and 2006 have proven the Moonlight Garden to have indeed been a part of the original Taj Mahal complex. The reconstruction of a fountain in the Moonlight Garden area has provided new evidence as to the potential source of the Black Taj myth. 

With the completed fountain, the white marble structure of the Taj Mahal would have been reflected in the standing water on the opposite bank, forming a dark twin, a mirror image of the bright white mausoleum standing across the water.

Flying Buttresses Defy Gravity

Flying buttresses were one of the great architectural innovations of the Gothic architectural period which last fom the 12th to the 16th centuries, and was perhaps most spectacular in France. Alongside the pointed arch and the ribbed vault, the use of flying buttresses was a definitive characteristic of the Gothic style. 

Flying buttresses allowed cathedrals to  exceed previous height limitations without harshly darkening the massive interiors, by strengthening the structure enough to allow for the structural weakness of vast stained glass windows, allowing light to enter the towering vaulted halls. 

Flying buttresses worked to strengthen the huge

gothic cathedrals because they extended from the walls of the structure to the foundation, thus transferring the horizontal thrust of the arches and domes, vertically, down into the ground.

Muqarnas: Islamic Tradition

Muqarnas are the decorative architectural feature that facilitate the connection between such geometric shapes as a square base and a dome. They can be employed in the creation of a concave semi-vault above a building entrance, or in the provision of a decorative cornice to a ceiling perimeter or beneath a balcony.

Muqarnas are Islamic in origin but have proven a unique contribution to world architecture on a whole. The feature has great potential in the realm of modern-day applications, including interior decoration, lighting and cabinetry. Their unique beauty makes them adaptable to a number of architectural and design uses.

J.M.W Turner: Professor of Perspective

Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in 1775, and stands among the finest landscape artists in history. He had already been included in exhibition by the time he was in his teens, and by 1807 he was elected "Professor of Perspective" at the Royal Academy.

One fault for which he has been noted is a slight problem with the regulation of vertical convergence. However, Turner was also known for denouncing the unnatural straightness of standard perspective, and perhaps he had reason for the irregularity in some of his depictions.

His last days were very strange indeed: In 1850 he exhibited for the last time. Some time later, Turner disappeared from his house. After many months, his housekeeper finally found him hiding in a house in Chelsea. He had been quite ill it seemed, and he died the following day--December 19, 1851.

As a legacy, Turner left a large fortune in order to help support what he termed as "decaying artists." His entire personal art collection was bequeathed to his country. He was buried in accordance with his requests in St. Paul's Cathedral.

Linear Perspective

Artists in the Renaissance did not in fact discover linear perspective, persay. In fact, the ancient Romans had depicted depth in their paintings hundreds of years earlier, but the technique was lost to artists in the Middle Ages and the early Christian Era. It was only once society's attention was turned back towards our world and ourselves, that artistic attention could be given to men and the man-made. This led naturally to the need for depth expression in art, and the rediscovery of methods by which three dimensionality could be depicted.

These methods were overlapping, changing size and placement, linear perspective, relative hue and value, and atmospheric perspective. 

Overlapping was the simplest of these, and the subtlest in effect. While intersecting the lines of an object in the background, the artist was able to produce a very subtle sense that the one was layered on top of the other within their not-quite two-demensional plane.

Placement had already been employed, but with the addition of the principal that objects shrink in all directions with distance from the eye, changing size was applied and the impact of placement was far more fully appreciated.

Linear perspective took the changing size element a step further with the introduction of the vanishing point. This tool allowed the painter to use a real or imagined point as the terminal of what the viewer could see in the painting. It allowed the painting to represent along lines of perspective in just the way that the painter would see it before him or in his mind's eye. Once coupled with the mathematical discovery of the rate at which the size of an object seems to change with distance and place allowed for dynamic representations of architectural elements.

Hue and value also have an impact, as warm hues seem closer to the mind of the viewer, and cool hues seem farther away. Colors near to each other on the value scale also appear closer when interpreted by our brain, whereas sharply contrasting values suggest definition and separation, distance between each other.

The Tea-Tree House

Takasugi-an: A Tea-Tree House

Half tradition, and half innovation: this is Fujimori's Japanese tea house, built atop two relocated Chestnut trees, held aloft by a single trunk on one side and a split trunk on the other. The trees seem almost to have been selected for a look of imbalance, or fragility, alike to the style of an informal upright bonsai.

Takasugi-an translates roughly to mean "a tea house built too high" and the structure certainly wasn't built for the faint-hearted tea enthusiast. The building is only accessible via a freestanding ladder (conspicuously missing from most pictures of the tea house) up to the little wooden platform two-thirds of the way up the single trunk. Upon reaching the platform, visitors are expected to remove their shoes, then climb a second ladder the final third of the way up.

Fujimori built the tea house personally, for himself, following in the tradition of the tea master carefully conducting the building and design of his tea house. It was built on family land in Chino, Nagano Prefecture, with three windows looking out upon the city where the architect grew up.

Simplicity and purity are two of the integral themes to the design of a tea house, thus tea masters have not usually employed architects or artisans in building their tea houses. Fujimori uses constraints in an attempt to test the balance possible between architectural innovation and the traditional tea house. One of these constraints is size; Fujimori designed the tea house 

to be very small, just 29 sq ft. He also limits himself to the use of limited materials, such as the plaster and bamboo that

make up the interior composition. 

These factors are what ultimately lend the greatest sense of purity and beauty to the structure. Tradition is what allows Fujimori's innovative tea house to succeed.

NE Connected Farms

The classic New England Connected Farm consisted of a group of four buildings connected such that they formed a partial courtyard within their grouping. The four connected buildings are referred to as the Big House, the Little House, the Back House, and the Barn.

Originally, these buildings would have served as a contained farm fully capable of being run throughout the harsh New England winter without the farmer setting foot outside. The Big house served as the formal dwelling for the family, with rooms for sleeping and others for entertaining on occasion. The Little house was the more heavily utilised, including the kitchen, workroom/"summer kitchen", and wood house (for firewood). The Back house connected the Little house to the the Barn, and consisted usually of a bay for a wagon, work and storage space, and the privy (situated closest to the barn in the back corner). The Barn lay at the end of the line, and served as the nexus for farming activities. In the winter, farm animals and food would be stored indoors for the entire season, the Barn providing shelter from the extreme New England climate.

You may not think that you have ever seen a Connected Farm before, but this building style was incredibly popular, and in New Hampshire and Maine it was almost the architectural rule for rural areas. Inevitably, a number of these farmhouses have survived, though many have adopted the guise of contemporary dwellings:

Timeline

Mammoth House - neolithic (pre-Stone Age) - 16,000-10,000 BCE

Skara Brae Dwelling  3180-2500 BCE

Crete Plaster figures + bronze "votives" of sheep & cattle - 1600 BCE

Bronze Age Tholos Tomb (Treasury of Atreus) at Mycenae, Greece - 1300-1200 BCE

Kouros (male) and Kore (female) statues representing the Individual - 700-600s BCE

Winged Victory of Samothrace - 600 BCE

The Sacred Temple of Delphi - 530 BCE

Treasury of the Siphnians, Delphi, 530-525 BCE

The Parthenon at Athens, Greece - 447-432 BCE

The Sanctuary of the Great Gods, Ancient Greece - 200-100s BCE

Teotihuacan, Mayan City, 1st Century-->750 CE

Rock cut chaitya hall, monastery at Karli, India - 100-125 CE

Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli, Italy - 118-125 CE

Pantheon, built for Emperor Hadrian, Rome, Italy - 120-127 CE

Santa Costanza - 300s CE

The Ise Shrine, Ise, Japan, late 5th-6th Century (late 400s-500s CE)

Asuka period (beginnings of Buddhism in Japan) - 552-645 CE

Visigoths? (Plundering Rome?) - 400-800 CE

Cordoba, Constantinople & Mexico City=really important places - 8th, 9th + 10th centuries (700s-1000s CE)

Carolingian architecture - 800s CE

Pueblo Bonito - 900-1300 CE

Mosque at Djenne, Mali - early 14th century (early 1300s CE)

The Alhambra ("Red Citadel") Granada, Spain - 1340s CE

The Court of Lions, the Alhambra, Spain - 1354-1391 CE

The Friday Mosque, Mali, Africa - 1400s CE

Cluney Abbey - 800-1100 C.E.

St. Gall Abbey - 817 C.E.

The Baptistery, Florence, (1000-1200 C.E.)

St Trophime, Arles, S. France, 1170 C.E.

The Church of our lady of Chartres - 1190-1220 C.E.

The Tempietto for St. Peter, monastery - 1502 C.E.

Guilio Romano's Palazzo del Te, Mantua, Italy (1526-34 C.E.)

Della Porta's Gesu Church, Rome, 1575 C.E.

Chiswick House - 1735 C.E. - Palladion architect Lord Burlington

Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, 1768-82 C.E., 1796-1809 C.E.

Inigo Jones, The Banquetting Hall, 1619-1637 C.E.

Imperial Villa, Katsura, near Kyoto, Japan (1620-37 C.E.)

Royal Palace and Gardens at Versailles, France 1624-1778 C.E.

Church of San Estevan, Acoma, New Mexico, 1629-33 C.E.

Taj Mahal - Agra, India - 1631-1641 C.E.

Hall of Mirrors - Mansart - 1678 C.E. (ceilings le Brun, Engineer le Notre)

Parson Capen House, 1683 C.E.

MacPhaedris-Warner House "Georgian" Portsmouth, NH - (1714-16 C.E.)

Chiswick House - 1725 C.E.

Gardener Wentworth House - 1760 C.E.

Keddleston Hall, by Robert Adam (1770s-80s C.E.)

Apollo and Thetis, Versailles Gardens, Richard Mique - 1778 C.E.

Slater Mill, Pawtucket, RI - 1793 C.E.

Yin Yu Tang - 1800 C.E. --> Salem, MA - (1800s-1840s)

The Crystal Palace, London, England - Joseph Paxton - 1851 C.E.

Red House - Philip Webb for William and Jane Morris - 1860

Trinity Church, Boston, MA - 1870s C.E.

Home+Studio, Oak Park, IL, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1880s-90s

"The Rookery" - 1888 C.E.

Gamble House - 1907 C.E. - Henry + Charles Green

The Bauhaus - Walter Gropius - 1919 C.E.

Usonian House Designs - The Zimmerman House (1950 C.E.)

The Ise Shrine, Japan, Most recent rebuilding: 1993 CE

Lofty Design

The house on stilts is iconic of traditional Japanese architecture, the style coming into prevalence with the advent of Buddhism in Japan. The essential impetus for lifting the building was to remove it from the natural ground moisture. This was especially important as Japanese architecture relied so heavily upon the use of wood as the primary building material, which of course resulted in buildings prone to or at least faced with the constant threat of rotting. By raising the building off of the ground, the wind was allowed to whisk under the structure; air flow along the ground more quickly relieved ground saturation, reducing the risk of rot to the wooden stilts supporting the house.

Another benefit of raising the building up off of the ground is that it reduces the impact that the construction has upon the environment, since so little ground need be broken on the site. Far fewer problems are encountered with issues such as ground permeability and rainwater runoff, as are frequently created or impounded by the pouring of concrete for massive foundations and rolling out pavement for driveways.

Images Cited:

(1) www.japanlinks.ch/traditional_japanese_house/english/building_environment

(2) mikecash.aminus3.com/image/2008-01-21.html