Sunday, May 02, 2004
Upstart Architect Webmaster
I've surfed architecture sites for just about two years now, since I had an architecture seminar as a senior undergrad. The seminar was a cross-disciplinary capstone course for honors students, and has absolutely been one of the most important classes I walked away with from my college career.
Well, not all architecture sites are created equal. My long-time favorite has been Great Buildings, which is put together sort of like the architectural equivalent of the nearly-peerless Artchive. Great Buildings has its good features--an expansive list of styles and examples, a mix of floor plans, elevations, 3-d models (admittedly a bit gimmicky, but fun), and pictures. It also has its problems. The main one of these, as far as I'm concerned, is that they're quite stingy with the pictures. I'd love huge, expansive photos. Additionally, the commentary and pictures are sort of separate from one another, though the commentary is indeed very good. There also, really, isn't any help for architecture newbies; with all that information, it would have been quite simple to include a glossary.
So the other day I was looking for such a thing, and found a real gem of a site with Ontario Architecture. Granted, it's a survey of only Ontario architecture, and thus cannot hope to have the breadth and depth of a site like Great Buildings. But it's a great project. The Glossary is really magnificent, with examples of many different architectural features, as well as a great combination of defining text and example pictures to both show and tell a definition--really important for architecture. The glossary is not completely thorough (there are terms here and there that are missing), but it does a lot quite well.
I was also impressed by the Building Styles portion of the site, where one can select from a large list of styles and their representatives in Ontario. This is where it gets more local, but the site retains a more universal feel, as the discussions of the buildings really shows how they individually demonstrate the style. Another genius feature--hot points on the pictures show what it is you're looking at; for example, roll your mouse over the dentils on the Kingston Courthouse under the Classical Revival style, and it will show you that you're pointing at the dentil, and even take you to the definition if you want.
Amazing! I was shocked to learn this site is the brainchild of one individual, a Shannon. If Great Buildings were Microsoft, they'd buy Shannon and her website, put her to work, and be unstoppable.
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