Reflection

1. Taking this course has helped me realize how many elements play a roll in how a building is constructed. Thinking about how a building has certain styles and that these certain styles all have different meanings for having them. I also never thought about how much thought and time goes into designing a building, space, or anything for that matter. Also the material something is made of has a huge impact on how the building or structure is viewed. Certain materials are more prominent in a particular time period. All the process and reasoning for the way something is designed was non-existent in my mind before taking this course.


2. The crystal palace introduced the industrialism of architecture. The presence of glass, metal, and cement arose. This building is a great example of machine made products. This building reflects on today’s sky scrapers with the class exterior. The presence of huge glass windows covering the entire building is common in large building such as the crystal palace today. The sky scrapers that are being built today are constructed of metal, concrete, and glass with is exactly like the glass palace Because of the trees that were they did not want to cut down the glass palace brings the outside into the interior of the building with the foliage on the interior of the building.


3. In many ways today we always fall back in history in architecture. As stated in class about the church on Walker Avenue, it is full of architecture from many different time periods. The columns and stain glass windows are two of the main elements of this building that stand out to me as to taking from past architecture. Although the past was not brought back exactly the was it was used then it is still present in today’s design. A second example is in the design of school buildings. In today’s society classical style buildings are still used to represent school buildings. This style was used many years ago and is still being brought back today.



4. I researched the Beatnik time period. The housing for the beatnik’s were nothing like today’s houses. They lived in empty apartments with no furniture because they would have rather cut up their couch and use it for firewood rather than sit on it and decorate their apartment. The lifestyle then and the lifestyle today are completely opposite. They would sleep three to five people per bed, which would never happen today. On the other hand the design of their vehicles are much different. They were very proud of their cars and would fix them up. The presence of flames on the exterior of the car was popular. The idea of adding extras and fixing up cars is still a big thing today to some.