Peeta (Manuel Di Rita)

Draw the Line, 2016, Campobasso, Italy,  Peeta's works demonstrate the power of
murals to distort or destroy architecture.

When people today think about painters, they usually bring to mind and artist wearing an apron or smock, standing (or sitting) before their easel knocking out modest sized works seldom less than ten inches by fourteen inches and ranging upwards from that to no more than 48 inches square. And, for the most part, this mental image is accurate. The artists are using standard sizes both for pre-stretched canvases as well as frames, all of which would not look out of place on the walls of most homes. Only the most daring and financially secure painters go beyond that to create works only an art museum could handle (or afford). Yet, from the beginning, artists have also painted on cave walls; or decorated stone buildings; or the ceilings of churches or plastered walls of the well-to-do. Artists long ago came to realize that the larger their paintings, the more likely they and their art would stand apart from the crowd. This realization paved the way for the muralist painting walls or, indeed, the entire wall of a building (street art). These murals were sometimes just a step or two above common graffiti.

 

The Big Picture Festival, 2019, Frankston, Austria, Peeta

Over the years, despite the enormous size of their work, even muralists found their road to fame and fortune becoming as crowded as an LA. freeway parking lot. In order to gain much recognition, like their studio-bound colleagues, muralists needed something really special as to style and content to gain the free advertising that a newspaper article, magazine interview, or TV news segment has to offer. The Italian muralist known as Peeta (real name, Manuel Di Rita) seems to have discovered the fast lane with works such as the surreal illusions seen above and below.

 

Almanac, Barcelona, Peeta

Peeta is a resident of Venice, Italy. He's been painting graffiti since 1993, but more recently has really upped his game. A member of Padova-based EAD crew and New York City-based FX and RWK crews, Peeta also works on canvas and with actual 3D sculpture in PVC, bronze, acrylic resin and fiberglass. His experience with sculptural media really shows in his newest murals, which take the familiar forms of letter-based street art and manipulate them into abstractive creations. Peeta combines elements of graffiti and abstract art to paint murals that appear to morph and dissolve architectural structures. Abstract shapes swirl around and cut into walls to form M.C. Escher-like scenes that play tricks on the eyes and change depending on the viewing angle.

 

Mannheim, Germany, Peeta

For the 2019 Stadt. Wand. Kunst mural project (above), Peeta painted a geometrical design onto a building on a street corner in Mannheim, Germany. Using sharp lines, curved forms, and different shades of blue, white, and grey, Peeta visually altered the structure’s edge and created a new impossible façade. As with much of his other work, the limited color palette of the mural helps to sell the illusion and contrast the piece against the surrounding architecture. Peeta created this latest mural for the HKWALLS festival (below). The piece occupies a giant façade on a busy Hong Kong intersection above the Golden Computer Arcade and draws its color for neighboring buildings and signs.

 

Depending upon the distance between the mural and the viewer, Peeta's HKWalls mural in Hong Kong competes quite favorably juxtaposed against the busy, colorful architecture surrounding it.

Metaphorically, Peeta neutralizes preconceptions and urges the emergence of new perspectives. Anamorphism totally embodies this intent, which is always pivotal in his productions. He attempts to reveal the deceptiveness of human perception and the fallacy of narrow and fixed points of view through visual tricks. Proceeding from the attempt to confer a three-dimensional semblance on a pictorial representation, his abstract illusions ultimately reveal their will to deceive. Constantly running in parallel with his murals and painting activity, the role of sculpture comes to be essential for Peeta's overall production. It represents a direct contact with three-dimensionality in order to understand the rules of light and shadows and to reproduce them.

 

Whether working on canvas on walls, or with sculpture,
Peeta's designs all relate to one another.

Peeta utilizes professional 3D design software to design PVC sculptures. That allows him to have a 3D view of the sculpture and, at the same time, virtually cut out all of its different surfaces and consider them on a 2D plane. Subsequently, he cuts the PVC plates and assembles them together. The last step involves coating the PVC surface with a polyester layer to mask imperfections resulting from the building process and to impart singularity to the structure, rather than a collage of components.
 

Peeta often works his illusionary miracles in tightly confined spaces.

When painting on walls, Peeta aims to always to create a dialogue with the structural and cultural parameters of the surrounding context, either architectural or not. The Italian artist transforms static buildings into visually-striking optical illusions, by painting abstract shapes onto them. The artist paints murals that appear to be dissolving, morphing and ever-changing as the illusions depend on the viewing angle. While technological sleights of hand grow more and more sophisticated, it is important to remember that sometimes paint, pencil, and sunlight are all that are needed to create transformative works of art.

 

Without Frontiers Festival, Mantova, Italy, 2018, Peeta

Peeta's work is best suited for corners, (above) where the artist is able to render flat planes and deep visual fields of shape and color that trick your eye into forgetting that these works are layered on top of everyday buildings and spaces. Working both on canvas and on buildings, Peeta is able to dematerialize perspective views of buildings through graphic, colorful, and explosive arrangements that create their own environmental and visual qualities. These paintings, which Peeta dubs "anamorphic works," are inspired by abstracted calligraphy and stem from the artist's younger days as a graffiti artist. Peeta explains that "Anamorphism totally embodies the intent, always pivotal in my production, to reveal the deceptiveness of human perception, the fallacy of narrow and fixed points of view through visual tricks which, proceeding from the attempt to confer a three-dimensional semblance on a pictorial representation, ultimately reveal their will to deceive.

Square 23, Pump up the Volumes, Peeta, Turin, Italy, 2016

Sometimes Peeta's murals seem to jut outward
from their host building.

Walls

No, this is not our front yard (I wish), but it spectacularly displays
the possibilities in turning at site's major liability into an asset.

Virtually every day I spent up to an hour trying to decide what to write about. Today, in pondering the possibilities, I suddenly realized the answer was right in my own front yard. Back in 1977 when we chose a location for our new home we wanted a wooded area. The only problem was that virtually all wooded areas in our area had long since been turned into productive farmland. About the only wooded land available was that which sloped too much for farming. So, we chose about two acres of wooded hillside. We called it "Slopewood." I've never regretted our choice but a sloping lot brings with it a number of drainage problems. Some we recognized and dealt with as I drew up the plans for our "dream house." Some, unfortunately, I didn't. Once the house was finished our contractor worked to level our front yard and slope it slightly away from the house. That solved one problem (drainage) but created another one. A more steeply sloping area some twenty feet in front of the house where the topsoil had had been scraped away leaving a bald spot where nothing (and I do mean nothing, not even weeds) would grow. I've long hated the looks of the hillside but until recently, lacked the wherewithal to do much about it. The solution, of course, was a retaining wall, and not just a modest little line of stones, but one some 42 inches tall in the center section, and stretching out longer than our house itself (below).

 

Our front yard shortly after the first round of landscaping.
The bald, problem area is circled in red.

Except perhaps for something like the magnificent example at the top, retaining walls are not rocket science, at least insofar as designing them is concerned. Ours evolved in my mind long before I put anything down on paper or started spray painting orange lines on the ground. Having set the design in stone (figuratively speaking) I turned to our landscape designer, Jim, to make it happen. He's no rocket scientist either, but he knows about everything there is to know about turning front yards into works of art. Although I would consider my contribution a work of art, the real artist is the landscaper. A wall simply facilitates a growing area. We have a front yard that ranges from entirely shaded to sunlit most of the day. Jim chose plantings suitable for such a site. His crew also removed a large blue spruce (a former Christmas tree) which had grown to be some thirty feet tall, only to have the misfortune of losing about half its height when one of his arboreal neighbors fell on it causing a long, agonizing death. Jim replaced it with a youngster which I belatedly found would one day grow as tall as its predecessor (we plan to keep this one trimmed back to about ten feet).

 

The new wall is the upper one. The lower wall was built some ten
years ago. The upper wall will eventually age to match the lower
one. Notice that the wall under the balcony has changed little.
 





Historians tell us Rome wasn't built in a day. I presume that goes for its walls as well. Our wall took two men the better part of two weeks. Construction started with a six-inch deep trench filled with compacted limestone (not con-crete) as a footer, upon which was laid the all-important first course of concrete stones. No mortar was used during the entire process, though the capstones were glued into place. Because of the topography of the area, each end of the wall petered out to just two or three courses of stone. The central part, however, rose to seven courses with a three-inch capstone on top of that (below).

 

 

 

 

 

The wall in profile along with

typical choices as to stone and

patterns. The top row is natural

stone, the others are cast using

tinted concrete.

 

The height and placement of the wall was limited by the
existing trees which could not survive with topsoil rising
above their original base.

With flat building sites at a premium these days, many homebuilders have chosen to cope with the problems inherent in a sloping lot. Although there are various means of dealing with the negative elements of such a site, the most common is some form of a retaining wall. One of the best ways of revealing the manner in which creative landscaping can overcome a worrisome or nuisance slope is in studying "before and after" photos, and the manner in which other homeowners or landscape designers have overcome such obstacles to actually add curb appeal beyond what might be seen with a flat lot.

 

Keep in mind, the cost of elaborate walls and landscaping can
quickly add as much as fifty percent to construction costs.

Our own before and after photos illustrate what a radical change our serpentine wall has made to our front yard. Though not cheap, studies show that professional landscaping can add twenty to thirty percent to the value of the home. The straw area will eventually be grass (I hope). The driveway gets paved later this fall. A new curved, (fake) stone sidewalk is the next phase of the project, hopefully next year.

 

Some landscaped slopes add character to the home,
turning it from bland to interesting. In other cases, such
site adjustments become a virtual necessity.
 

One of the key factors in landscaping, and especially designing a retaining wall, is knowing when you're in over your head. A project like ours was relatively simple. However, once you begin contemplating steps, lighting, pools, ponds, and waterfalls, it's best limit oneself to the role of homeowner, making suggestions, limiting costs, approving plans, and knowing when to say "no." Below are several creative solutions to frequently encountered problems involving sloping lots. None of them were designed by the homeowners.

 

Retaining walls--part art, part science.

If money is no object (rarely the case) a landscape architect unleashed to not just solve a problem, but to create a masterpiece (below) is truly an rewarding experience for both the homeowner and the designer. I have to wonder, if the backyard displays such extravagance, what must the home overlooking it be like?

 



In unleashing a landscaper, keep in mind that artistic endeavors only add to a home's value up to a certain, after which the "law of diminishing returns" applies.

I would be remiss to suggest that all walls bearing plants must be made of stone, or some manmade equivalent. Not so much anymore, but for many years, heavy timbers (below) were frequently used in creating retaining walls. Likewise, good, old-fashioned, concrete (sometimes called "cinder") blocks, if carefully engineered and constructed, will also suffice. Best of all, they can be "decorated" at some time in the future with a number of stone veneers (bottom, either natural or manmade) so as to be virtually indistinguishable from other such materials used alone.



Timber retaining walls are somewhat less expensive.

A stone veneer over block. This is not a
do-it-yourself undertaking.

What happens when you hire an
artist to build a wall.

 

The Kremlin, Moscow

From the river, the Kremlin wall, now decorated with a forest of greenery,
at best, appears to be a retaining wall guarding a riverside highway. The
 architectural contrasts are jarring.

It would be something of an understatement to say that Moscow's Kremlin is impressive. It would also be an overstatement to say it's beautiful. Individually, the Kremlin has some churches and palaces that one might go so far as to mention their architectural beauty. However, there is one aspect of the Kremlin, so typically Russian, that robs it of any potential beauty. It's that damned brick wall around the sixty-eight acres perched on its knoll overlooking the Moscow River. There were times, during the city's thousand-year history when the wall--first made of wood, later white limestone, and now red brick--was absolutely necessary. However that hasn't been the case for over three-hundred years. It didn't keep Napoleon out in 1814, and most certainly wouldn't have stopped Hitler (if he'd made it that far); and today, would only pose a minor nuisance to any invading enemy besieging the place. Yet it persists, as much a part of the Russian psyche as onion domes and the gold leaf adorning their many palaces.

Grand Kremlin Palace, Andreevsky Hall. The Kremlin Palace, as do those in St. Petersburg, compare quite favorably with Versailles. Andreevsky Hall is kind of like Versailles' Hall of Mirrors...but without the mirrors. It doesn't need mirrors, just look at that floor. 

Inside the walled triangle of the Kremlin is a small city within a city, only open to the public within the last fifty year. Within, is an opulent environment that is eye-popping and jaw-dropping, in line with the Russian penchant for not knowing when enough is enough. Yes, it could be said to be beautiful, but only in the 18th-century context of the royal palace competition sparked by Louis XV's Versailles. Should the Russian's redecorate the whole place? Of course not. As I mentioned before, it's part of who they are as a people; and who are we to impose our aesthetic values upon an entire nation. It's designed specifically to impress visiting heads of state (not to mention tourists); and that it does magnificently.

Russian President Putin's quarters are either just behind Lenin's tomb (bottom-center)
or in the Kremlin Palace (sources differ).

Only in surveying a detailed, annotated map, such as that which I've enhanced (above), can one gain any sense of the scope and nature of this ancient Russian bastion. Though it's several hundred years older, in some ways the Kremlin has seen some events not unlike our own nation's capital. The Kremlin fell to Napoleon (briefly) in 1812. Washington, D.C. was invaded by the British during the War of 1812, though the Capitol and the Executive Mansion were not burned until 1814. When Napoleon retreated (disastrously) he left orders to blow up the Kremlin, and to some extent it was. Damage was extensive. Hitler, on the other hand, had in mind to obliterate the entire city of Moscow.

Moscow Kremlin, damage in the wake of Napoleon, A. Bakarev, 1812

I mentioned earlier that the Kremlin was like a city within a city. In fact, the very word "Kremlin" means "fortress within a city." It should be noted, therefore, that other ancient cities in Russia have their own kremlins. The Moscow Kremlin was went up about the time the city developed around 1090. At the time it was little more than a modest, wooden stockade. Until around 1313, the fortress was known as a "grad" (or fort). It was destroyed by the Mongols in 1237 and rebuilt in heavy oak in 1339, and thought to be impenetrable. It wasn't. Just twenty-six years later the Kremlin fell to raiders. The city was burned. The following year (1367) they began rebuilding, this time with white limestone hauled on sledges in the dead of winter from a quarry thirty miles from Moscow. This walls withstood two sieges during the Lithuanian–Muscovite War (1368–72). A few years later, the whole city was adorned with beautiful white-stone walls. Despite the new walls, the city fell to the Tatars in 1382, though the massive Kremlin fortification suffered no damage.


Moscow's Kremlin has had something of a tortured existence.

The Assumption Cathedral and the bell
tower of Ivan the Great.

Despite its useless, obtrusive walls, the Kremlin today rests in a park-like setting that is relatively recent. Landscaping the Kremlin was not near the top of Lenin's to-do lists when the Bolsheviks took over the former Tsarist fortress in 1918. Strangely enough, most the Kremlin we see today was not built by the Russians, but by Italian architects, engineers, and skilled builders between the years 1485 and 1495. I also find it quite strange that, for an atheistic country, there are so many churches within the Kremlin. I counted five, and that doesn't include St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square just outside the walls. Of course, religious ceremonies are seldom held in any of them, but to the government's credit, they are now (since 1955) open for the public to admire the characteristic Russian tastes in ornament-ation and architectural ideals. The Ivan the Great Bell Tower (left) is the tallest structure within the Kremlin.

Largely the same view as the night scene (top) but from the air. The whole fortress
was once surrounded by a moat where now is the park and Red Square.

The throne of Peter the Great.

As in most other major Russian cities, the churches with the Kremlin function today as museums. And while the Communist government did its best to erase all vestiges of Imperial rule from their capitol complex, many tsarist relics have crept back, including the grand throne room (below) and the exquisitely ornate throne of Peter the Great (left). Despite the grandeur of the Kremlin Palace, Cathedral Square is the heart of the Kremlin. It is surrounded by six buildings, including three cathedrals. The Cathedral of the Dormition was completed in 1479 as the main church of Moscow where all the Tsars were crowned. The massive limestone facade, capped with its five golden cupolas was the design of the Italian architect, Aristotele Fioravanti. The gilded, three-domed Cathedral of the Annunciation was completed next in 1489. It was reconstructed to a nine-domed design a century later. On the south-east of the square is the much larger Cathedral of the Archangel Michael (1508), where almost all the Muscovite monarchs are interred.

The Kremlin Palace throne room.

Along with all the walls, towers, churches, palaces, and tsarist whims, it must be remembered that the Kremlin is first and foremost the governmental center of modern day Russia. It's where President Obama goes when he visits to meet with his Russia counterpart (below). When long motorcades became a problem tying up traffic on Moscow's broad avenues, President Putin had installed a heliport, much like that on the south lawn of the White House. The Palace of Congresses meets in a relatively new building within the Kremlin's ancient walls; the Russian President lives here when he's in town; and numerous government bureaucracies are headquartered just aft of Lenin's Red Square mausoleum. Yet it's also where you would go to see the biggest bell in the world and the largest canon ever cast (bottom), two tsarist whims that didn't turn out too well. The bell cracked during casting and the cannonballs, each weighing one ton, were too massive and heavy to make the gun practical. It was, however, fired at least once.

American President Barrack Obama meets with then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
in his Kremlin office, July, 2009. It's not the throne room, but it's close.

The Tsar's Bell and his canon rest within the Kremlin as imperial curiosities.

 

Wallpaper

Is it real or is it wallpaper?

When I was growing up, every year, around late winter as I recall, there came in the mail one or more wallpaper catalogues. Sears had one, and a couple others. They had my mother pegged. She loved to redecorate, and every two or three years, whether it needed it or not, our living room got wallpapered. Cracks in the plaster? Enough layers of wallpaper disguised or obliterated them. Walls weren't too bad but ceilings! That wonderful little undertaking would test the bonds of even the strongest marriage. By the time I left home for college, I hated wallpaper. Never would I have the damned stuff in my house.



Foil wallcoverings today flash forward another thirty years from those on the
late 1970s which won me back to the art and craft of wallpapering.

Flash forward fifteen years, I'm married, college educated, a working artist, decorating a newly built home I'd designed myself from the footers to the faceplates. My wife suggested we use wallpaper on a wall in the foyer. I suggested we not. She dragged me kicking and screaming (figuratively speaking) to a wallpaper store. (They have whole stores for this sort of thing now?) Well, let's just say it was not the stuff of my mother's Sears Roebuck wallpaper catalog. By the time she got me out of there, we were not only doing the foyer, but had purchased two wallpaper murals as well. Sticking the stupid stuff to the wall was still as onerous a task as I'd recalled, though tricks and techniques I'd learned as a child came flooding back to me as we worked. The marriage survived. 



By the early 19th century, the French became quite adept at block printing
mural-like wallpaper made to look hand-painted. This one had ten panels.

When our medieval ancestors built castles of stone, they hung huge tapestries to cover the walls, and warm the place up a bit (both figratively and literally). They hired artists to design them and nuns to weave them. However, because of this, tapestries were extremely expensive. Paper was too, but not so much. Medieval interior decorators began hanging paper images (hand painted or block printed) on walls as a cheap(er) replacement. Later, they decided wheat paste was a good idea (over breakfast porridge, no doubt). Thus the wallpaper industry began. The French had a lot of castles so they, naturally, developed the first wallpaper printing presses and the delicate technical expertise to run them (below). By the 18th century, they sort of had a corner on the market. England had a lot of castles too so they imported the finely designed, finely crafted decorating commodity from their neighbors across the channel. Which was all fine and dandy until war broke out (the Seven Years War and later the little ruckus with Napoleon). The French decided the Brits could print their own damned wallpaper. 



Even as late as 1877, the French were still "hand-blocking" wallpaper
at a time when the British were printing the stuff by the mile.

British wallpaper of the Victorian
era was heavily floral. This is mild
compared to some designs.

They did, though often as not, they found it as easy to paint their images as to print them. Also they found they could import Chinese wallpaper, which was just as good as the hated French stuff and cheaper. Besides, it matched the popular Chinese Chippendale chairs. When the industrial revolution came to England during the early 19th century, it began with textiles, then quickly spread to the making of paper and printing. By the Victorian era, wallpaper was-dirt cheap and and almost literally everywhere. Rotary printing presses demanded repetition, so textile designers were called upon to do their thing on paper, which quickly became a race to see who could make the most fanciful, and convoluted, configuration of cultural constipation conceivable. The worst of it they shipped off to the former colonies where the pseudo-Victorian parlor pasters ate it up.

 

Wallpaper as I remembered it.

By the time my mother came around, American wallpaper manufacturers were taking the scraps generated by their printing processes and cutting them into squares to form the sample pages of mail order catalogs. Then came the housing boom after WW II. Wallpapering took time and no small amount of skill. Simply painting walls was quick and easy, and to my way of thinking, looked immeasurably better in any case. Moreover, in the midst of the post-war baby boom, with the exception of my mother, who had time to wallpaper? Wallpaper nosedived in popularity. Wallpaper catalogs became the stuff of children's craft projects. A new wallpaper as well as a new ways of marketing manufacturing wallpaper became necessary if the industry was to survive.



Our foyer now sports a slightly less
textured version of this extreme.
Note the door at center.

As young Benjamin Braddock in Mike Nichols', The Graduate, was informed, plastics were the way to go (or in wallpaper jargon, laminates). No more sloppy wheat paste, just peel and stick. Or, if you liked, there was polymer sticky stuff. The burgeoning chemical industry revolutionized wallcoverings. Foils were feasible. Textures were tasteful. Photo-murals were phantasmagorical. Stores were stupendous. Decorators were delerious. My wife was mollified. I was gradually converted.

 

Getting to sleep might be difficult.

Having once felt the economic distress of not changing with the times, the wallcovering industry is not going to let it happen again. Today, you can choose your wall decor online from a bewildering array of designs and images that would have made my mother's eyes pop (top); though beware of Websites featuring "wallpaper" which has come to mean the digital background of your computer desktop. Today you can purchase wallcoverings which prevent walls from collapsing during earthquakes, or conserve heat, or block wi-fi signals, or conversely, serve as computer interfaces, turning an entire wall into a giant monitor. Today the heroes and villans of computer games seem to burst forth from the walls of boys' rooms while little girls sleep amid artists' renderings of fairy tale castles...presumably hung inside with medieval tapsetries.

Children's wallcoverings are quite gender specific.

 

People Who Live in Glass Houses

Carlo Santambrogio's glass house, Milan, Italy, (an ice cube?).

There's an old story about a jungle king who grew tired of his antique marble throne. So he went on line at Ikea.com and ordered up a new, modern, vibrating recliner. When it arrived via FedEx, he was overjoyed with his new throne and had the old one stored away. One night, as he was having dinner with some guests, there came a violent earthquake whereupon the old throne came crashing down upon the king from the attic making an incredible crack in his crudely crowned cranium. The moral to this story: those who live in grass houses should stow thrones. That's an incredibly long way to go for a bad pun, but an apt introduction for a piece on those who live in glass houses...or at least those who design them. In the case of American architect, Philip Johnson, they were one and the same.



Philip Johnson's Glass House--more like a cottage, actually.

One of the major problems for an architect designing a glass house is literally where to "stow the throne." Here I'm referring to the one usually encountered in the bathroom. By inviting the outdoors in, privacy literally goes "out the window." However, privacy would seem to be considered a must in disposing of bodily wastes, even for those living in glass houses. Johnson solved the problem with a single circular enclosure, rising through the roofline, contrasting strongly with the otherwise rectilinear lines of his glass and steel house (above). Mies van der Rohe, in designing his glass and steel Farnsworth House, had chosen a more traditional elongated, rectangular core containing all utilities (two baths, kitchen, and laundry). Philip Johnson chose to live in his glass house for some 58 years. In fact, a critic once cracked that only Philip Johnson could live in such a place.

 

The Farnsworth House, 1945-51, Plano, Illinois, Mies van der Rohe

The van der Rohe glass house was designed for Dr. Edith Farnsworth, a Chicago nephrologist looking for a quiet getaway where she could engage in her hobbies of playing the violin, translating poetry, and communing with nature. The sixty-acre rural site she chose was on the Fox River near Plano, Illinois, some fifty-five miles southwest of Chicago. (Today it's far from rural.) Designed and built for a cost of around $100,000 over a period of six years from 1945 to 1951, the 1,500 square-foot house served as a private retreat for Ms. Farnsworth for some 21 years. In 2006, the picturesque Fox River which had been the main attraction of the site, flooded, bringing water some 18 inches deep to the main floor of a house already resting on five-foot "stilts." There was some damage to woodwork and furnishings but the glass and steel structure otherwise "weathered the storm" quite nicely.

 

The Johnson house living room demonstrates that living in a glass house is as much about looking out as looking in. Ironically, the minimalist furnishing are by van der Rohe.

Built in 1949, the Philip Johnson house in New Canaan, Connecticut, rests on a concrete slab and is, in some ways, purer than the earlier Farnsworth House which, influenced it. The Farnsworth House (that which is not glass) is painted white and thus imposes itself upon the landscape, in making a stunning architectural statement. The Johnson abode is charcoal gray except for its central bathroom turret, thus becoming a part of the landscape. In effect, we have two groundbreaking architects with surprisingly different approaches to the same concept. Of course, what we're really talking about is as much glass walls as glass houses. And since Johnson and van der Rohe, glass walls have become stock-in-trade for modernist architects all over the world.

The glass bookcase and stairs. Would you feel comfortable climbing glass stairs?

However Italian architect, Carlo Santambrogio, was not satisfied to just erect four glass walls and call it a house. His glass "cube" (top) takes Johnson's purity a step further. Virtually everything in the house is glass (except for the beds). The walls are glass, the furniture is (mostly) glass the floors are glass, the roof, the stairs, presumably even the privy. Santambrogio's house near Milan, Italy, is a concept house (being duplicated in Paris), so presumably it probably won't actually be lived in. Not that one couldn't live in it. The glass walls can be heated, it's structurally sound, spacious, three "floors" (well, levels anyway), and contains all the usual amenities. However, it's hard to imagine where they "stow the throne."

I suppose one could get used to it (buying Windex by the barrel I mean).

 

Contemporary Castles

Grizer's first castle (top) and his second (lower, right)
now under construction, soon to be a bed and breakfast.

The other day as I was perusing the local newspaper, I stumbled upon an article about a man and his wife from Whipple, Ohio, who were in the process of building their very own medieval castle. The first question crossing my mind was, do people still build medieval castles? Whipple is in northern Washington County some fifty or sixty miles from where we live, but in fact, part of the school district where I once taught art. My first inclination was to check to see if I recognized the names of any of the friends and family of Bill Grizer working on the project. I didn't. Grizer is the teenager who grew up wanting to live in a castle. Actually, he does already, having converted his ranch style home (top)into a fairly reasonable facsimile of a medieval castle. His second endeavor along this line is grander (to the tune of 35,000 square feet) and far more medieval. With the help of his wife, six kids, and extended family, Grizer expects to finish in 1217.

 

Architect Charles Sieger's dream castle in Miami, complete
with its own moat and probably alligators too.

As impressive as Bill Grizer's medieval dream may sound, it's relatively modest compared to what other architectural dreamers have put the minds and money to work in building medieval castles. Take, for instance, architect, Charles Sieger's "modern medieval" castle built in the center of a man-made lake near Miami (above). If you, too, yearn to live in a castle, this one can be yours for a modest $10.9-million. It comes complete with such medieval amenities as a pool with fountain and a pond, 10,124-square-feet, eight-bedrooms, and a six-car garage. When does a castle become a palace?

 

An eclectic medieval exterior, a refined late-medieval interior.

Actually, where such architectural extravaganzas are concerned, that's a very valid question. The key word in the residences we're looking at here today is "medieval." All too often such castles get lumped in with, and confused with, chateaus. Chateaus are, indeed, palaces, or close relatives at least. Castles, on the other hand, have always been basically fortresses in which the medieval wealthy took refuge to keep from being murdered in their sleep. They have tall, thick, stone walls, topped by crenellations, watchtowers (round or rectilinear), heavy arched doors, narrow slits for windows, small courtyards, and limited, quite "masculine" decorations. The chateau may retain some of those items, but never the defensive walls, moats, or alligators. The Oak Brook, Illinois, castle (above), is an eclectic mix, heavy and simple like a castle, but lacking the all-important defensive walls. Hagar the Horrible would have little difficulty sacking this one.

A fairly good example of the medieval adapted to a thoroughly modern, luxurious lifestyle.
Translated that means a mansion with medieval decorations.

Contemporary castles can pop up virtually anywhere the rich and famous find convenient to congregate, such as the small town of Versailles, in horse-country Kentucky (some five miles west of Lexington). Castle Post may once have been one man's home and castle, but today it's a ten-unit, high-end hotel with a single room starting at $195 per night. A Majestic Suite will set you back $420 per night. Or if you'd like to turn the place into your own private castle, that'll cost you $265-million. The castle features low walls, cut stone, round towers, conical roofs, and pseudo-medieval furnishings. This one is medieval, but only up to a point.



Though modest in size and lacking an all-encompassing wall, this example has many of the medieval attributes the larger attempts at castle building often lack.
Only the open porch seems out of character.

As in the case of Bill Grizer, medieval castle architecture seems to be just as popular with the modestly well-off, as with the billion-bucks set. Moreover, when the wealthy engage high-profile, high-priced medieval architects what they usually end up with is lots of compromises. In the more than five-hundred years since castles were all the rage, how we live our lives has changed drastically. Walt Disney, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Bavaria's mad King Ludwig not withstanding, castles were seldom things of great beauty (nor were they intended to be). Yet today, an ugly, highly defendable castle with thick walls rising fifty to sixty feet from the water level in the fetid moat (with or without alligators) would hardly be conducive to comfortable habitation no matter how devoted the owner might be to medieval lore. So instead, as in the case of the high-tech architectural genius (below) with his 3-D printer and way too much time on his hands, those who long for the long-past days of lords and ladies, can only pretend. Pretending is good, it keeps us from going insane.

All you have to do is figure out a way to hook up your printer to a cement mixer.