| |
From: Stephen Lauf
To: design-l@lists.psu.edu
Subject: Re: "Revivalist..."
Date: 2004.04.14 22:25
"Ludwig did not set out to copy the entire Palace of Versailles; in fact, he conceived Herrenchiemsee as something of a shell, in which only two rooms were of consequence--the State Bedroom and the Hall of Mirrors. He commissioned architect Georg Dollmann and, later, Julius Hofmann, to faithfully duplicate the center block and side wings, He eventually wished to include to longer auxiliary wings containing the chapel and court theater, but money ran short before these schemes could be executed. The king never intended that all the rooms should be completed: From the beginning, Herrenchiemsee was to be a set piece into which certain rooms were to be introduced. Their bare plaster walls, bricked up windows, and vaulted stone ceilings only served to fill out the space behind the palace's facade, providing an eerie contrast to the extravagant rooms of the piano nobile. By the fall of 1885, the palace was ready for a royal visit."
--Greg King, The Mad King: A Biography of Ludwig II of Bavaria, pp. 241-2
Earlier today, while driving to the local post office (which is within a large local shopping center, which years ago was the site of Heinz Manufacturing), I passed by what until a year or two ago was a K-Mart. For some reason the entrance to this place was wide open, and inside was an enormous, cavernous space. I thought to myself, "Gosh, the interiors of these stores are so ephemeral." Then I thought, might it not be interesting if homes were treated/designed like BIG BOX stores. Now, thinking of Herrenchiemsee, why can't all BIG BOXES look like Versailles on the outside and empty shells on the inside? Or, is that what is kind of already happening, and Ludwig was a "dreamer" just a head of his time?
[I haven't been able to confirm this story yet, but, according to an older cousin of mine, what turned out to be the beginnings of NASA was in a building once within the Heinz Manufacturing complex. Sometime in the 1940s, she got a government secretarial job (because she was fluent in German) working for a Dr. Schuster (or some German name like that), who was a rocket scientist or something. She was sworn to secrecy at the time. Now, my cousin has been known to embellish things, so I really don't know how 'secret' or related to the future NASA this place was, but, it did exist, and she did work there.]
|