Although it traces its ancestry back to the leader of the Dutch sixteenth – century struggle for independence from Spain, William the Silent, the House of Orange dates its monarchy only from 1813. Willem I (reigned 1813-40) was authoritarian, but his son and grandson, Willem II (reigned 1840-49) and Willem III (reigned 1849-90) were unimpressive, […]
Category: Architecture as Experience Radical change in spatial practice
Reading one: wilderness as a natural resource
The lagoon and islands offered a wooded retreat set aside from the rest of the fair. Frederick Law Olmsted, who created this seemingly natural landscape out of tidal mud flats, intended it to be the only area of the fair without significant buildings. Surrounded by a lagoon and covered with bushes, flowers, and trees, the […]
Selecting the body, selecting the site
The official plan for the rites established the time frame of an extended funeral, one that began with an exhumation on 22 October and ended with entombment on 11 November, and for a lengthy journey between them, from France to Arlington. The funeral was divided into three phases – ‘selection’, the responsibility of the Quartermaster […]
A modern fountain?
2.8 The Colosseum valley as it appeared from the mid-1930s to the mid-1980s, with white outlines marking the locations of the demolished Meta Sudans and Colossal statue base as if Mussolini were seeking to convey not his revival of the grandeur of ancient Rome but his power to destroy that which is old, unsightly or […]
The Catholic Silent Procession
A few years before Emma and Wilhelmina began their campaign for the hearts and minds of Amsterdam, a new annual Catholic ritual had been initiated in commemoration of the city’s Miracle of the Sacrament. Amsterdam’s miracle took place in 1345. It was a standard miracle of the era: the host administered to a dying man […]