Architecture around town

Jane,
Monticello... saw it when I was about five, when I was thirteen, and when I was forty-five. Still love it.

Now to find a rich man to take me to see Palladio's buildings...

made up my mind on Swimpy's recently posted brick buildings.

Jane or John (or Letty, if she tunes in here), what's the second building in the Charlottesville post?

Here's a bit of an odd duck of a house just down the street from where I live:

Johnboy's essay:
The signature building at the University of Virginia is the Rotunda. The design and original construction was done around 1819 by this guy named Thomas Jefferson. The building had a fire but was reconstructed under the leadership of architect Stanford White.
To the south of the Rotunda is the Lawn. Perhaps 120 feet wide and a quarter mile long. On the sides are one story rooms, measuring perhaps 15' by 15' which were the living quarters for the students. And still used by students today. Despite the small size, and despite the age and the lack of indoor plumbing (the bathrooms are around back), it is considered an honor to be selected to live on "The Lawn."
At the south end of "the Lawn" is Old Cabell Hall. It has been around long enough that the "Old" thing is part of its name. A performing arts space. In fact, johnboy performed there on several occasions when he was an actor.
To the left and right and behind Cabell are non-descript buildings that are doomed to come down as part of the South Lawn project.
The plan is to extend The Lawn around and behind Cabell Hall and then over a four lane road and into a new complex of buildings.
I like the idea. The existing buildings are ugly and I am really tired of running over flip-flop wearing, cell-phone carrying students who walk into the street without a glance at traffic. It really screws up the allignment of my tires.

The issue is the design of the new buildings that will link the "Old" Lawn to the "New" Lawn. Ms. Kessler, the reporter for The Cavalier Daily (the student newspaper), did a fine job of summarizing where we are.

David Neuman, who holds the title of Architect of the University, claims that the final design of the South Lawn will "advance people's thinking of architecture..." at UVA. I doubt it. I agree with John Goodheart of the New York Times and his comment about a sense of fatigue settling in on the deciision makers.

And that, to end this little essay, is what happens to a lot of public projects involving architecture. Torn between the traditional and, for the want of a better word, the modern, the decison is made to go into the middle. And that is where we end up with really bad design.

(OK, my ranting is over)

Mostly I agree with you, Johnboy, but for the complications. Still, I generally agree, it's how movement happens. Tricky when there is an icon like the Louvre or the Rotunda to deal with. But mediocre doesn't honor such a place.

Sometimes the contemporary impinges too much - check a2k search for ROM, royal ontario museum, and impinging too much is just my opinion.

Sometimes something in the middle might work. Or, the new should move a few feet further away, which I wish for the ROM. (I try to think of examples, there are some. Hey, Chicago, both things happened in the building of it.

On matching old, my example is piazza S.S. Annunziata in Florence. That was built over centuries, starting, I think, with the church, then Brunelleschi's orphanage (1st renaissance building), then the church got an arcade to match the orphanage, then on the other side of the square, there was a Servite monastary built to match. About two hundred years to do all that if I remember right, 500 or more years after the orphanage, and the piazza still works. Monastary now a hotel which I lucked into staying at.

I got all hot under the collar about a R. Meier building in Rome a few years ago, but didn't mind one on the outskirts of the old city... so, context. I'll have to reconsider that, may have changed my mind.

Haven't read the south lawn thing yet myself, presently blank on opinion.
Apt to agree with you though.

This has been a tangent, but sort of pertainent to a lot of what we look at...

The thing about the South is all the houses seem to look the same. The Jeffersonian look to much of Virginia, and similar columned front buildings all the way down into Georgia. Plenty of Charleston styles grace the coastline and some bungalows further inland, but for the most part they all start looking the same.

(I know nothing about architecture, as you may have guessed.)

One of the pictures Swimpy posted reminded me of this, as it closely resembles the NC Governors Mansion.

Reyn, I'm thinking if that were pink it could be on some island. You'd have to change the trees to palms, I guess..

Dunno. What do you think? I sort of like it.

Squinney, I know nothing (well, little) about architecture either, just am enthusiastic and loud.

But what you're saying is sort of what RJB and I are talking about - the natural referencing to the icon, and can you break away from it. So, you're right in the conversation.

I like that building in your photo, like the symmetry (might not be perfectly symmetrical but is close and sometimes too perfect is boring)
- like the clarity - you know where the front door is and there is no garage to see first
- think the lollypop trees are dumb, but no matter
- would hate to be the one to do the dusting
- like the chimneys
- would like to see inside the room on the second floor that's in the center..

Given that a lot of what you see there is similar, Swimpy, I can start to see the appeal of things like wavy sidewalks and bean shaped swimming pools, two items I've not been very keen on. Sometimes people get just plain tired of stuff that has been around forever..

Well, other than that turret over the front window, it's quite an ordinary house. It seems rather out of place. I wonder what the builder was thinking? Was there a purpose, or just a bit of a design quirk?

I would like to see inside. It was fixed up some a few years back. Some vinyl siding put on, too.

It seems small. I don't think I would be inclined to buy it or live in it.

Oh, to me it has a rather amazingly big slanted roof, but sort of weird slants, cut off at the back end and the front slant seems odd too (not to mention the turret, which was probably what I liked). Is that all wasted space? a bowling alley in the ceiling?
You say the house is small and I look at the picture and think it's fairly big.

The second one is viewed from the side, aon odd angle. the front is much more curvy, but that's the only picture I could find at the time. I favor the third house. It was a funeral home for many years but has since been converted to a Bed & Breakfast.