7. Montferrand, Auguste de (January 23, 1786 – July 10, 1858)
was a French Neoclassical architect who worked primarily in Russia. His
two best known works are the St. Isaac’s Cathedral and the Alexander
Column in St. Petersburg.
In 1806, Montferrand joined the former Académie d’architecture.
Soon, he was summoned to Napoleon’s Army, and served a brief tour of
duty in Italy. Montferrand married in 1812.
After the war new construction in defeated France was out of the
question. In 1815, he was awarded an audience to Alexander I of Russia
and presented the Czar with an album of his works. Post-war Russia
seemed a wealth of opportunities.
In summer 1816, Montferrand landed in St. Petersburg. On December
21, 1816 he officially joined the Russian service.
Montferrand’s name is associated with St. Petersburg. However, he
also designed buildings for Moscow, Odessa and Nizhny Novgorod.
8. Sistine Chapel, the (Italian: Cappella Sistina) is a chapel in the
Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope, in the Vatican City.
Its fame rests on its architecture, which evokes Solomon’s Temple of
the Old Testament, its decoration, frescoed throughout by the greatest
Renaissance artists, including Michelangelo whose ceiling is legendary,
and its purpose, as a site of papal religious and functionary activity,
notably the conclave, at which a new Pope is selected.
The Sistine Chapel is a high rectangular brick building. It has no
exterior facade or exterior processional doorways as the ingress has
always been from internal rooms within the Papal Palace. The internal
spaces are divided into three storeys of which the lowest is huge with a
robustly vaulted basement with several utilitarian windows and a door
giving way into the exterior court.
9. Wright, Frank Lloyd (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an
American architect, interior designer, writer, educator, and philosopher
from Oak Park, Illinois, who designed more than 1,000 projects, of
which more than 500 resulted in completed works. He promoted organic
architecture (exemplified by Fallingwater), originated the Prairie School
of architecture. His work includes original and innovative examples
of many different building types, including offices, churches, schools,
hotels, and museums. Wright also often designed many of the interior
elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass. Many
of his buildings are notable for the geometrical clarity they exhibit.
Wright authored twenty books and numerous articles and was a
popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. His colourful
personal life frequently made headlines.
Already well-known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in
1991 by the American Institute of Architects as “the greatest American
architect of all time”. He believed that humanity should be central to
all design.
One of Wright’s most famous private residences was constructed
from 1935 to 1939 – Fallingwater – for Mr. and Mrs. Edgar
J. Kaufmann Sr., at Bear Run, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. It was
designed according to Wright’s desire to place the occupants close to the
natural surroundings, with a stream and waterfall running under part of
the building. The construction is a series of cantilevered balconies and
terraces, using limestone for all verticals and concrete for the horizontals.
The house cost $155,000, including the architect’s fee of $8,000.
It was also in the 1930s that Wright first designed Usonian houses.
Intended to be highly practical houses for middle-class clients, the designs
were based on a simple, yet elegant geometry. He would later use similar
elementary forms between 1946 and 1951.
His Usonian houses set a new style for suburban design that was
a feature of countless developers. Many features of modern American
homes date back to Wright; open plans, slab-on-grade foundations, and
simplified construction techniques that allowed more mechanization or at
least efficiency in building.
Later in his life and well-after his death in 1959, Wright received
much honorary recognition for his lifetime achievements.
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