Capital (July 2012)
The generic term I generally use for this type of cardstruction is a "capital" building. This term comes from the fact that most state capital buildings as well as the US Capitol building follow in the neoclassical style and are characterized by heavy influence from Greek and Roman architecture. Most capital buildings are variations of the same basic architectural elements - columns, domes, and porticos.
I can break this project down into 4 main construction phases. The first, was the layout of the building footprint upon the building surface as I visualized the finished structure in three dimensions my mind. During this phase, I established the front facade.
The next phase was foundation work, and consisted of filling in the rear and interior of the structure's volume with support columns. Real buildings are never built solid, so why should card buildings? I wound up stacking 40 four-card tall support columns, which I packed fairly densely. In retrospect, I definitely could have gotten by with fewer of these support columns. I suppose I can attribute some of this "overbuilding" to the fact that, at the time, I still had not fully decided on what sort of structural elements I was going to use to "cap" the building. I built for the "worst-case" and heaviest possible elements, but what I wound up building definitely did not require as sturdy of a foundation and I probably could have easily been just as successful with 30 or even fewer columns.
Rather than build directly on the support columns that I bridged with a two-card-thick roof, I spanned the entire structure with a basic horizontal grid. Horizontal grids function to bind the structure together and very efficiently distribute the forces of the layers above them down into the scattered support columns. In addition, a horizontal layer slices across the building in a visual sense, and serves to break up the vertically stacked cards used in the facade.
The final phase of construction included all the ornamental elements. This is always where the building turns the final corner and finally starts to come together and actually look really cool. However, building these elements is not always easy or successful on the first try. And, believe it or not, this is not because the cards keep falling down.
Even though this project was not being modeled after an actual building, it still took some trial and error to get the proportions of the domes to look "right". The first dome I built was much too scrawny to feel appropriate for the proportions being dictated by the rest of the structure. So I rebuilt and refined the domes to better suit the dimensions. Also, the other porticos and roofs had to be built such that they didn't overwhelm or underwhelm, but instead complement, the rest of the structure.
I can break this project down into 4 main construction phases. The first, was the layout of the building footprint upon the building surface as I visualized the finished structure in three dimensions my mind. During this phase, I established the front facade.
The next phase was foundation work, and consisted of filling in the rear and interior of the structure's volume with support columns. Real buildings are never built solid, so why should card buildings? I wound up stacking 40 four-card tall support columns, which I packed fairly densely. In retrospect, I definitely could have gotten by with fewer of these support columns. I suppose I can attribute some of this "overbuilding" to the fact that, at the time, I still had not fully decided on what sort of structural elements I was going to use to "cap" the building. I built for the "worst-case" and heaviest possible elements, but what I wound up building definitely did not require as sturdy of a foundation and I probably could have easily been just as successful with 30 or even fewer columns.
Rather than build directly on the support columns that I bridged with a two-card-thick roof, I spanned the entire structure with a basic horizontal grid. Horizontal grids function to bind the structure together and very efficiently distribute the forces of the layers above them down into the scattered support columns. In addition, a horizontal layer slices across the building in a visual sense, and serves to break up the vertically stacked cards used in the facade.
The final phase of construction included all the ornamental elements. This is always where the building turns the final corner and finally starts to come together and actually look really cool. However, building these elements is not always easy or successful on the first try. And, believe it or not, this is not because the cards keep falling down.
Even though this project was not being modeled after an actual building, it still took some trial and error to get the proportions of the domes to look "right". The first dome I built was much too scrawny to feel appropriate for the proportions being dictated by the rest of the structure. So I rebuilt and refined the domes to better suit the dimensions. Also, the other porticos and roofs had to be built such that they didn't overwhelm or underwhelm, but instead complement, the rest of the structure.
