Recent Renderings

I wanted to post some of my most recent renderings. I think that the Belvedere is going really well. I'm constantly having to make adjustments-moving things a single brick length here and there, but I feel like I have the overall structure locked down at this point. Sorry that the renderings are small and that they have my copyright all over them, but in this day and age I want credit for my work.

I had sent some renderings to my friend Matt, and he had a few questions that I thought I should answer publicly. His biggest question was how accurate the colors are. Honestly, I'm not sure, but I'm not just randomly picking them either. I know that the bricks were yellow. Kruty describes them as 'cream-yellow' and he should know; he actually has a dozen Midway Gardens bricks that he dug up from the original site (p. 18). Elsewhere he also mentions that the concrete was gray and that the floor tiles were black and white. Midway Gardens was meant to be very colorful, and this was at a time when Wright was expanding his palette. Just two years before Midway Gardens he made the windows for the Coonley Playhouse which use bright, primary colors instead of the subdued autumnal tones of his Prairie years.



I think that the windows for Midway Gardens would have been similarly colored, and we know that the murals would have been brightly colored as well. As for the rest, it's hard to say, and I may just have to use my own judgement. For example, I decided to make the gates to the building Cherokee red because it was Wright's favorite color. Besides, its a lot nicer than just having them be black.

Matt also made the comment that he couldn't belive I was drawing every brick. Well, I am and I am not. For every wall I create two rows of bricks and make it a Sketchup component. I then stack these as necessary. This makes changes easier along the way as well. It saved me a few weeks ago when I decided to change the brick size. Despite what Kruty said in his book, I decided to make the bricks slightly larger than he suggested. Big mistake. It worked out fine at first, but when I got to portions of the building where I had good photographs showing the exact number of bricks, stuff wasn't working out. I spent an entire week changing them to the 8.5x4 that Kruty mentions. Like I said, he actually has some so he should know. Kruty did not, however, mention how tall the bricks are, so I decided to make them 2.5". I did this based on observation.



The photo above has been very helpful to me. It's great because it shows elements in almost true elevation. The columns on either side of the entrance are two bricks wide, with a 1/2" mortar joint. It also appears that this width is equal to six rows of bricks, so about 2 1/2" per row. It may not be exact (and probably isn't) but if the overall model is about a foot or two off of reality, I'm not too worried. I can't be. Besides, the heights I'm coming up with work out nicely with what I'm scaling from the Wendingen drawings, so I can't be off by that much.

Note: With the exception of my own renderings, the photos on this blog have come from the internet. And, with the exception of the book cover, depict objects that are over 80 years old and should be outside of US copyright. This includes the historic images of Midway Gardens. But, if anyone has a problem with anything I post, let me know and we'll work something out.