Parts:Whole, week 4

Heirarchy
Heirarchy has been playing a huge role in all of our classes. It deals with a transition from important items to less important items. With drafting, a thick, solid lineweight indicates a higher importance than a thin and/or broken line. With other drawings, objects that are closer, or otherwise have more significance, might have bolder lines or color, or more detail than other areas. Heirarchy often puts into mind a triangle with the few elite on top and the common mundane at the bottom. In societies, there is usually a sense of social class, with the richest being on top and the poorest at the bottom and as you go down in status, the more company you have. Patrick talks constantly of the importance of heirarchy. In architecture, the idea of a centralized plan is very common. Stonehenge is a series of concentric circles with the smallest, center circle leaving room for only the most important participants of ceremonies. Pyramids have large bases that come upward into a point, where pharoes and priests would inhabit.
I kept all of these ideas in mind when I designed my tattoo last week. I decided on three rings of concentric dots which get small towards the center. In the middle of the center circle I included my artist symbol just like a Greek artifact/statue in the middle of a temple.


[My image is a sketch of the Roman Colosseum which implements the use of three types of columns developed by the Greeks: Doric on the bottom, Ionic in the middle and Corinthian on top.]
Source
Noting citations is very crucial to giving people credit for their work. We have been told time and time again to cite our sources whenever using images from the internet and other places. When referencing the work of someone else it is important that you don't seem to take the credit for the image or information.
In ancient Rome, it was well known that ideas were taken from Greek and Egyptian designs. The ever popular Wu-Wu form used in Rome as a symbol of masculinity and victory is actually a hybrid idea that came directly from Egyptian obelisks. Greek-inspired columns are found adorning facades of Roman structures, though in Greece columns were used more structurally. The Romans even borrowed the idea of orthographic planning, "and they soon made this the basis of laying out army camps," (Roth, 219).


Order
Orders are frequently associated with certain types of columns. Doric columns are the earliest and simplest order. They were slightly curved and were fluted. Their capitals had "annulets, an echinus and and abacus," (Blakemore, 26) Ionic columns were more slender than Doric columns and rested on a pedestal. These capitals had "pairs of volutes which were deeply furrowed and ribbed," (Blakemore, 27) and were spaced by a carved echinus. Corinthian columns were very ornate and were the most slender. They are most easily distinguished by their large capitals which were adorned by carved acanthus leaves and volutes which stem from the center of the column and are positioned on the corners.


Entourage
We have been working for a while on drawing vignettes. Vignettes show a moment in time. A brief glimpse of a space. Entourages take it a step further. These last few weeks, our class has been drawing scenes that take a step back from the moment and capture the setting of the moment. This is a sketch that I did while in one of the dance studios on campus. The moment I included was the three dancers watching the television. Stepping back I created a setting by including surroundings like the wall, windows, light reflections, chalkboard, etc. The Romans had a great understanding of entourages.


[This is a sketch of a Composite style column which is a hybrid of Ionic and Corinthian styled columns.]
Prototype, Archetype and Hybrid
The idea of a prototype is that it is something which is the first of its kind. A prototype becomes an archetype when the idea is reused and recreated. A hybrid combines both new and old ideas and technologies, or ideas from different sources, to fit the commodity of the user. Greek architecture is considered the prototype of all architecture. They felt that "Measure and [reason] [were] firm in a changing world," (Roth, 188). They sought balance and symmetry in every aspect of their lives (e.g., hot and cold, light and dark, health and sickness, left and right.) The archetype of Greek architecture has influenced all periods of design. They have provided us with marble columns for our legislative buildings as well as temple layouts. We have also carried on the ideas of symmetry and balance.