Tag: Architecture
-
Our house
Our house So there it is, our house in Kumaon, that I mentioned in last week’s post. You’ll need good eyes to find it though. It’s on the slope of the second hill, surrounded by trees. The photo below gives you a closer view. Photos of the week: Our house at Kasardevi, Almora, Kumaon, Uttarakhand,…
-
Sublime simplicity
Sublime simplicity The house:a tatami-mat floor, sliding walls, a roof.The pinnacle of Japanese architecture. The walls slide open.The spectacle begins. Photo of the week: Katsura Villa, Kyoto, Japan 2008
-
Marken
Marken A little further than the quiet villages of Waterland but still close to Amsterdam we find Marken. In the past a fishing village on a tiny island in the Zuyder Zee, now connected by road to the mainland. With its typical wooden houses around the harbour it has kept some of its looks of…
-
Ransdorp
Ransdorp A thousand years ago there were already people living in this low lying Waterland near the Zuyder Zee. Because of regular flooding a long dike was made in the 13th century around the whole Waterland area to protect the fields and villages. Early 16th century the village of Ransdorp started the construction of its…
-
Gyantse Kumbum
Gyantse Kumbum The biggest and best preserved pyramidal multi-chapel monument of the kind in Tibet. It has more than 70 – dark – chapels inside, almost all decorated with murals and statues. We can look at the kumbum as a three-dimensional mandala: when you project the whole building on its ground-plan, it represents a visual…
-
Foot Bath Temple
Foot Bath Temple Robert James Waller and his ode to the beauty of Indian women: Orange saris and green saris, red and blue, and gold adorning their bodies, bracelets on their arms and combs in their hair. The women were graceful and seemed almost to float above the ground. Even as they wade through the…
-
Worn down worshippers
Worn down worshippers Thousands, if not millions of feet must have stepped on the threshold of this place of worship, wearing down bit by bit the reliefs of worshippers sculpted on its surface. Touching signs of the passage of time. Photo of the week: Entrance of Vitthala temple complex, Hampi, Karnataka, India 2014
-
Massive arcades
Massive arcades Such is the abundance of granite rock at Hampi that massive projects could easily be envisaged. Like constructing two lengthy arcades for the entranceway to a temple complex. Hundreds of massive pillars, heavy but simple, for a massive project indeed. In contrast, inside the complex, reliefs of love and tenderness that clearly betray…
-
Stonecutters’ paradise
Stonecutters’ paradise Elegant camels, mounted horsemen. and of course, as always, the graceful women … it’s as if we can appreciate these scenes from daily life even more when depicted in stone. Maybe it is because we can feel the pleasure the sculptors of Hampi must have had in cutting these reliefs. The non-sculptured walls…
-
Gorazdova Heaven
Gorazdova Heaven This heaven seems badly in need of a lick of paint. But even if it was less run down, it would still be a rather strange impression of a heavenly abode, at least from the outside. Good that it is clearly indicated so we know where to report after our death. Photo of…
καιρός remembered 