Opus Entry: P Week

Periphery-boundaries, in my drafting class we are continuing to work on our Boundaries,Pathways and Edges project. My group is called the Oasis group and we are nearly complete with this project. We wanted to construct a pathway for students and faculty traveling from the parking lot to the Gatewood Arts building a better way to navigate through the parking lot. This is a photo of our Oasis area still under construction.


Periphery can also be used in another way as in relations to being spatial . During the French renaissance era residential structures were of three types: manor houses, town houses, and chateaux. Manor houses lacked fortification of a castle yet they did have a wall or moat for protection around the periphery. Town houses came in two types hotels for the wealthy merchants and professional men and Maisons for middle class or lower working class.
The plan for a town house included a court around which a building was constructed on more than one side. A screen wall in which the entrance was placed separated from the street.
Castles and chateaux were get-away places for the aristocracy. These dwelling were definitely protected by moats or drawbridges and circular towers.

Another way of looking at periphery in the Renaissance era was in 1593 when the Republic of Venice began construction of Palmanuova a fortress city believed to have been designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi, p.360 Roth. This city was enclosed by a nine-pointed star, with bastions for artillery around its perimeter. "Antonio Averlino known as Filarete, meaning "lover of virtue" was the first Renaissance designer to use the ideal form of the circle as the basis for a city plan."
Text from Filarete, II trattato d'architettura"
p. 361 Roth. See picture to left.








These drawing and pictures present perspective drawing two on the left are from my Drawing and Communication class we are studying perspective drawing in this class we also had done a perspective drawing and plan drawing of the college architectural building. My group is doing the Julius L. Foust Building. We have just finished putting up a wall diagram of drawings of this building in the hallway of our Gatewood studio building. The Julius L. Foust Building is an historic landmark and is the only orginal facility remaining from the State Normal and Industrial School. The Julius I.Foust Building is officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places as of September 11th. 1980. Located on the grounds of University of NC at Greensboro in Guildford county.

The drawing to the left is a perspective painting used in the French Renaissance era as an optical illusion. Frankly I have never seen anything like this even in my travels to European castles. I find this fascinating. Renaissance artists often used principles of exact perspective to creat optical illusions of three-dimensional spaces. Through the use of fresco techniques painters played a significant role in "trompel'oeil painting of walls and ceilings by depicting the illusion of depth and distance within Italian Renaissance buildings. The style of paintings of whole walls came from the romans as a main way of treating walls.

Four styles of wall treatments were catagorized by August Mau in the late 19th century. Incrustation, Architectural, Ornate and Intricate. Our book used the terms first, second, third and fourth styles. Stucco relief was introduced in the incrustation period for illusionism. The Architectural style used paint and perspective rendering three dimensional construction (trompel l'oeil architecture). Large scale human figures began to be used. In the third style ornamentation began to be applied to architectural elements. Thin columns, pilasters, and friezes were used and in these aedicular arrangements illusionistic landscape pictures were depicted without imphasis on the human figure. The last style Intricate or 4th style no attempt was emphasized with spatial illusionism. In the 4th style bands of Dado divided into segments with illusionistic perspective drawings. The Romans had introduced the screen wall columns arranged in front of a load bearing wall. Columns were the source for prominent wall design.