It’s spring in London and the flowers are bursting forth on Cheyne Walk, which skirts the edge of the River Thames until it gives way to the Chelsea Embankment. I have ambled along the street for nearly an hour identifying plaques representing the famous people who’ve lived on nearly every block. Finally, I’ve reached Roper’s […]
Tag: architectural storytelling
Beyond architectural language is architectural storytelling, which I do here on The Diary of an Improvateur.
When I received the Rizzoli book Grand Bordeaux Châteaux, I was bowled over by how gracefully modern architects had added contemporary additions to the grand neoclassical châteaux in Bordeaux. The architectural storytelling took off when I found out the intrepid Stendhal had visited one of the wineries and I tapped his travel writing about touring the area to offer an entertaining look at Bordeaux in a time when it took seventy-two hours to travel there from Paris by stagecoach!
For the Stendhal had visited, the storytelling hinged on chivalry, which was such an important subject during the Tudor Era. I continued the exploration in Stendhal had visited, which looked at jousting through the Tudor King’s eyes. Henry VIII inherited his predilection for sport honestly, as his father, Henry VII, saw no need to devote any funds to supporting a court poet; instead, he invested in a state-of-the-art games-and-gambling complex at Richmond Palace that held facilities for jousting, bowling, tennis and archery.
The New Face of Religious Zeal
As I circle the domed space, I approach the front of the pulpit for the third time. I can’t believe how perfect it is that I am seeing the chapel at night; that I am alone. There is an eerie feel to the room that’s intensified by the few thin slices of light glancing off […]
Far from Oblivious in Bologna
If you find yourself strolling along the streets of Bologna near the city’s center, don’t be surprised if you turn a corner and come upon an anomaly. It will stand unapologetically as traffic whizzes by, a thumb of unruly masonry with its flanks sawed off. The amputations were necessary to make way for thoroughfares teeming […]
My Porcelain Bucket List
When I am planning literary design adventures, I look for experiences that give me the feeling of transcendence—encounters during which I am conscious of having one foot in the past and one in the future. One of the strongest examples of this I have had to date took place during a trip to the Bernardaud […]
Architecture with Heart in Bordeaux
In the preface to the book Grand Bordeaux Châteaux: Inside the Fine Wine Estates of France, Philippe Chaix describes discovering Bordeaux as a bewitching act: on foot, he reports, it means ambling through the city of stone and gazing into its mirror-like river. Setting off to explore the Mèdoc and Saint-Èmilion, he notes, the experience makes […]
Heaven Shall Be Here
In the film A Little Chaos, Alan Rickman, who plays an unlikely Louis XIV, declares, “Heaven shall be here.” He’s speaking of a ballroom he has commissioned for the gardens at Versailles, which will be realized by one of the most visionary landscape architects during the 17th-century, André le Nôtre (played by Matthias Schoenaerts), and […]
Reading Dante in Milan
“I’d like that sunny table near the windows under the beautiful mirror,” he says to the hostess at Le Vrai, pointing to the niche set with two café tables, perfect for reading Dante all afternoon. Only a few decades earlier, the waistcoat and watch fob dangling from its pocket would have been out of place, […]
The Built Legacy of Henry VIII
The 2016 Academy Awards are handed out this coming Sunday so I’m celebrating a film that showcases the built legacy of Henry VIII to delve back into the subject I began here on February 2nd. The movie that showcases Henry VIII’s architectural heritage so beautifully is A Man for All Seasons, which swept the Oscars in 1967 […]
Renovating During the Tudor Era
Hindsight is 20/20, as they say. Looking back to the Tudor Era from this great distance, it’s easy to see how barbaric a sport jousting was. But before you feel all modern and lofty, consider America’s devotion to football, even after the discovery of its deadly occurrence of brain trauma. If you can’t imagine our country […]
The Peacock Room à la Whistler
The most recognizable painting by artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler might lead you to believe he was as Puritan as his upbringing. The fact he could render such a realistic homage to piety in Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother)—better known as Whistler’s Mother—does seem to further the illusion […]