Anthony Lopez: Week 2 Castle

Concept

My work is a castle courtyard inspired by two works of Italian architecture. The outer walls, towers, and entrance arch are based on those found in the Sirmione Castle in Sirmione, Italy. The structure inside the walls is a baptistery that is a modern take of the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence. This work is designed for a space in rural land. The outer walls act as a form of architecture that is traditional while the baptistery invokes curiosity and showcases what is now possible in architecture.

Techniques

Fillet edges were crucial for forming the entrance arch. Alongside that, boolean difference was used to create the opening both in the arch and in the two slits in the middle of the structure. Next to the entrance is a straight wall in which I used split to form. Originally, it was so tall that it was going through the ground but I created another rectangular prism so I could use it as a divider. Afterwards I deleted the prism and the wall below it and the wall was complete.

When it came to forming the body of the baptistery I created a 2D polygon using curves, and I then extruded them to build the final shape. The roof was constructed with a pyramid but it still required a surface for the top of the roof. I achieved this by using the surface tool but since it only covers 4 points I made two surfaces then joined them as one. Lastly, I also filleted the edges of the towers to replicate the curvature of the towers found in the Sirmione Castle.

Materials

The outer walls of the castle are cement with a tile texture and the towers are travertine. The baptistery is what highlights the stark contrast between today’s works of architecture and those of the medieval/renaissance period. This is because the materials used on the baptistery could only be shaped in the way they are today. The body of the baptistery is built of blue and white marble and it holds two doors that are an extravagant blue built of anodized titanium. The roof is made entirely of glass and serves as a blue window. Unfortunately, I could not figure out how to simulate the transparency of a glass window but I did work with the lighting so that it had a realistic effect for reflections. In order to achieve this I chose to use 30 ray bounces for my environment.