The Mountain City - Colonnades and Bridges

 

Cliff Embedded Colonnades

This week I have been fleshing out the architecture that surrounds the district gates that I covered in my previous post. I started by expanding directly from the gate itself, designing the rest of the architectural relief of the cliff face.

Cliff Colonnades Design 

When working on this design, there was no shortage of reference to draw from. I was able to pull from multiple relevant ancient cultures, as you can see from the reference examples on the design sheet above. Of course, as I've mentioned quite a bit now my primary inspiration for this city concept remains the city of Petra in Jordan, but I also enjoyed looking at some other sources here. Many of the references featured distinct column layouts, leading to my decision to design this architectural feature as a vertical series of colonnades that stretches out on either side of the gate. As I showed in the turnarounds for my gate design in the previous post, it features archways on its sides as well as the major entrance at the front. These arches open out onto the colonnades, as though they are the district's balcony. There are also two large fountain altars in the design, which can be seen on either side of the gate. I didn't have these at first, but added them because they helped to break up the pattern of the colonnades while also complimenting the main gate's monumental form.

District Bridges

I next wanted to look at the bridges that lead from the palace at the centre of the city's massive sinkhole out to these established district gates at its edges. I went into this with a pretty clear idea of what this would look like, so my task here was more about conveying what I had in mind than it was designing.

Hopefully these sketches clarify my intentions, since I realised while designing the gates in the previous post that it might not have been entirely clear what my meaning for their function was. The bridge opens out into a wider, area in front of the gate and colonnades, and on the other side of the gate, inside the cliff, is the main area of the district. My current idea for the inside of the districts is that the ceilings will bear the creator's water, providing illumination to the cavernous chambers, almost like a natural sky. I'd like to explore the inside of the districts at some point, but it's not the focus for now.

A need for light

Logically, the mountain city's general structure/character would lead to much of it spending a lot of time obscured from sunlight, which brings about a necessity for sustainable sources of light. I hence came up with the idea that the creator's water could be the city's primary light source, since it exhibits an intense glow and is unlimited in nature. It might also be interesting if the mountain city's residents refer to this water exclusively as 'light', since this would again reinforce its miraculous nature while adding an interesting cultural distinction between the Mountain and Oasis cities. Off the top of my head, I don't think I've yet seen this idea of a civilisation that uses glowing water as their light source, so I'm quite happy with this as it feels pretty unique.

Light Fountains

As you can see from the sketches above, I decided to line the district bridges with obelisk-like structures that I have called light fountains. These are structures that are built to house a source of creator's water and allow it to flow down, almost like a vertical LED strip that illuminates the surrounding area. Following the bridge sketches above, I decided to delve into designing these light fountains using a similar process to the one I applied when designing the district gates, since I think it worked really well for me.

Initial Exploration

I started with some silhouette exploration. I already knew mostly what I was after, which was a similar shape design to the large monument found on the main gate at the end of the bridge. I didn't want the light fountains to detract too much from that focal point, since there are several of them for one district gate, so they had to have a pretty simple design that would almost guide our attention towards it. There's really nothing too elaborate in my exploration, it was just about solidifying the form of something I already had a pretty good image of in mind.

Light Fountain Design Document

From my silhouette work, I then moved to a few design sketches, and I ended up choosing the one with the simplest decorative work (C). I then decided to experiment with some gold ornamentation at the top of the fountain. This wasn't initially planned but I randomly scribbled the design that then became iteration 1, and really liked it. I experimented with a few other designs but ended up sticking the 1 for the final render. I think what I really liked about the addition of an ornament is that it gives the fountain a personified element (a crown/crest) that reminds me of the rows of large 'guard statues' you often see lining a bridge or processional way in both real-world and fantasy architectural environments. Importantly, this didn't come at the cost of losing that blocky, monumental aesthetic that I first established with the district gates, since it's not like I redesigned the fountains as human/creature figures. I'm not sure that this 'statue' idea will come across to most people though, it was just what I first thought of when I scribbled the ornament on and I liked it so it stayed.

At the bottom of the design document I also included a top down view of the bridge and light fountains. I mainly did this so that I could showcase another idea I had while designing the fountains. As you can see, the water flowing down the fountains is collected in small reservoirs at their feet, which could double as a pleasant resting/refreshment spot for residents and mules alike. The water then flows out along channels in the floor of the bridge, illuminating it from underfoot. This was mainly an aesthetic decision, since the fountains probably provide enough illumination without the supplementation of channels. I designed the channels to follow similar patterns to the ones flowing vertically down the district gate monument at the end of the bridge.

Reflection

Similarly to my last post, I'm quite pleased with the work showcased today because it continues the trend of delving into some meaningful design thinking and execution. I hope that leading on from the last two posts on the mountain city, today's post has helped in clarifying the layout and connections between the ideas on display. It feels like I'm beginning to develop my grasp of effective visual communication and I hope this is starting to come across in my work. 

In my next post, I'll actually be veering away from the city itself and taking a closer look at its surroundings, a vast, maze-like forest of sandstone formations created by the isolationist city founder. There is still obviously plenty to explore within the city itself, but I have made this decision because there is just one week left of the term and the sandstone forest is an area that I really want to look at during this timeframe. My exploration of the mountain city will undoubtedly continue at some point, whether it be as part of my third term practice or as a personal project.