So what's with the architecture?

Just wondering. Is it going to be modern architecture NEXT to old homes, or is it going to be a mishmash of the two?

How are we going to design the homes? What will be their purpose?

Etc.

LF

i would like to tear into ulrika's bavarian house with a postmodern addition.

I asked Ulrika specifically about this on Friday... she said she'd rather not have the 2 styles mixed in one building. Unless its a modern addition tacked onto an old building.

OK. It's actually more complicated than I've alluded to. What I would like to do is follow the 90%-10% rule on many different scales.

This means that all architecture should be 90% Medieval Bavarian and 10% modern (postmodern, minimalistic, deconstructionist, Bauhaus) but applied in a creative way to the city, the buildings, and the furniture. For example:

1. City: 90% of the buildings will look mostly Bavarian. 10% of the buildings will look mostly modern. This decision will be made in city planning.
   
2. Exterior: 90% of an exterior will be Bavarian. 10% will be modern. Here the artist can decide where and how to place modern additions. One could move them all indoors or keep them on the exterior. Examples are the Louvre in Paris or the Reichstag in Berlin.
   
3. Furniture: 90% Bavarian. 10% modern. One can choose to make the exterior completely Bavarian and combine the building and furniture's 10% modern on the inside, creating buildings that are completely modern inside.

We'll adjust the modern element as we progress to make sure it doesn't detract from the city.

I'd also like to keep any modern elements organic and nonrectangular.

~Ulrika~

Why 90-10?

It's an arbitrary ratio that I arrived upon after seeing older structures such as the Louvre and Reichstag that had been modernized and wanting to make sure we preserved the look of a Medieval Bavarian city, while still being able to be creative.

I love the look of Rothenburg but I don't want to make a theme park. I want to explore creative experimental architecture by uniting two disparate styles by means of their organic similarities.

~Ulrika~

I'm going to add the following information to the builder's guide after I get moved but I thought I'd post a rough draft here to get people thinking.

Some questions we should ask ourselves when building our city:

1. Castles and churches have been done to death in SL. How will ours be different?
   
2. Tudors (Darkwood) and Fachwerks (Wolfhill) have been done before. How will ours be different?
   
3. Group builds have been done before. How will ours be different?
   

I've tried to create the philosophy of the city to address some of these questions from the beginning but I'd like more input if you have ideas. My thoughts are:

1. Focus on density and avoid sprawl. I would like a very tight, very tall medieval build. The buildings in Rothenburg are taller than you think. There won't be room for much more than buildings, streets, and a central square.
   
2. Create a city layout which is not on a rectangular grid and use modern architecture which is not rectangular. Streets will curve in all directions, left, right, up, and down. Buildings will be oriented at nonstandard angles (not 0, 90, 180, or 270 degrees). The modern building elements should be curvy to contrast with the rectangular Fachwerks.
   
3. We are mixing traditional and modern architecture.
   
4. We are forming a true collaborative group with an experimental government supported by taxes on sales.
   

If I were to list words which described the project, they would be artistic, experimental, detailed, dense, and unique.

By the way, I have a concept for the castle, which will illustrate what I have in mind, that I'll show you all soon.

What are your thoughts?

~Ulrika~

Now that building is beginning, I thought I would address our very special mountainous terrain. My goal is to keep the terrain as hilly and curvy as possible without covering too much of it up with flat planes.

Search the web for images of Rothenburg and you'll see images of rounded streets that curve up, down, left, and right and structures built with the lay of the land. Note how the roofs don't quite line up and buildings are slightly askew with respect to one another. This is exactly what I'd like to see in our city as well.

One of the goals of the architecture is to embrace the curvilinear. Building with our land is one of the ways we can do that.

~Ulrika~