Saturday, November 27, 2010

Architecture Global

Architecture Global

Millenium Park Theater Architecture

Chicago, also known as the Windy City is located in the state of Illinois and is the largest metropolitan area in the Midwest. It is a beautiful old city located right on Lake Michigan offering it fantastic water views from the many high rise buildings there. Chicago had a horrible fire in 1871 where much of the city was devastated and had to be rebuilt by contractors in Chicago. During that time, amazing architecture was produced by a Chicago general contractor and architects and much of it can be enjoyed on the architectural cruise in the city.

There are so many wonderful things to do and see in Chicago and this article will just touch on a few favorites. It is recommended that you stay in one of the fine hotels near the magnificent mile on Michigan Ave. or near the recently constructed Millenium Park. Both of these locations are great and close to the many different sites to see. If you are not afraid of heights then a visit to the tallest building, The Sears Tower is a must see for a complete aerial view of the downtown area as well as the lake. Because it is so high, the building has been known to close the top floors down on windy days.

For sports fans, Chicago is a great city with two major league baseball teams, The Chicago Cubs and The Chicago White Sox, a huge football stadium to see the Chicago Bears NFL team play and the famous NBA team the Chicago Bulls where Michael Jordan played for years. All of these professional sports can be seen in the downtown area and many visitors center their visit surrounding one of these games. The Chicago fans are some of the most loyal and vocal fans in the country so getting a ticket to a game should be done well in advance.

Chicago is also known for the great museums, zoos and aquarium. If you are a fan of the arts, the Field museum and the Contemporary Museum of Art rival other art museums in larger cities and should be seen. The Shedd Aquarium also is a great place to visit and has the largest collection of Beluga Whales in North America. The Lincoln Park Zoo is also one of the oldest free zoos in the country so a visit to that is great and obviously inexpensive too.

Food is a big reason people like to visit Chicago. There is a Little Italy as well as a Greek town in Chicago that have amazing restaurants to be found. Two foods that this city is known for are the Chicago style deep dish pizza and the infamous Superdawg hot dog that is served with a variety of condiments special to Chicago like mustard, no ketchup, onion salt and a kosher pickle. There are also several top restaurants available for the foodies traveling here too.

Chicago is a great city to see and many celebrities are proud to call it their home like Oprah Winfrey, President Barack Obama, and many actors and musicians.


How Is Geometry Used In Architecture

Shapes, lines and geometry are part of the foundations of basic design. While most other people will start creating a design for their home from a color scheme, lines and shapes make for an equally effective and interesting starting point. They call about as much attention as a new color and work better with other elements. So let go of that paint can for now, take out your ruler and start redecorating.

Although it's true that a room is static in that it has fixed and definite dimensions, it's also dynamic in the sense that you could make it look differently proportioned than it really is. By just mixing up the shapes and the lines that you use to decorate a room, you can drastically change how it looks overall.

Whether you like your spaces large and grandiose or small and compact, you likely have at least one in your home that's not exactly right to your preferences. It's too small, too big or somehow too awkwardly proportioned. Whatever its problem, using the right shapes and lines in the décor can easily correct it. It's all about tricking the eye of the viewer into thinking that the room is something it's actually not. Once the visual flaws of the room have been corrected, you can then finish it off with the décor that you had wanted and the color scheme that you planned for the room to have.

Before putting in any new decor pieces, give the room a long hard look first. Consider how you'll be using the room and how many people you intend to have in it at any one time. It helps to be realistic when doing interior design, especially here where you play with the proportions and visual size of a room. No matter what illusions you use, you can only make an eight foot square room look spacious but not actually spacious enough for, say a living room or a recreation area. You can only influence the visual size of the room, so don't mix up visually fixing and physically redecorating it.

After you've gotten the room's purpose straight, it's time to check the geometry that will work best with your space. Lines, for example, tend to draw your eye from one end to the other. It's effective for making one dimension seem longer, such as with continuous lines running the length of a room. Meanwhile, you could also shorten the room by breaking up any continuous lines, such as by clumping furniture into squares.

Curves, on the other hand, relax a room and literally take the edge off. Any curving shape is fine; just be careful not to use too many different ones so that the room won't end up looking like a mod project gone wrong. But whether you're going with curves or straight lines, area rugs are an easy and safe way to reinforce or counteract it. They come in round or contoured shapes for a homey look or in hard-line rectangles and squares for a stronger, manlier appearance. Having patterns on the rug only adds to the effect and gives your decor even more depth.

Similarly, your choice of furniture can also affect the overall look of the room. Plain rectangular coffee tables fit in with rooms full of straight lines, while tables with rounded edges add a bit of contrast to a 'round' room without clashing. Whichever theme you use, a little creativity and a bit of architectural know-how should give you a room that looks exactly the way you want it to.