Monday, June 3, 2013

Architecture inspiration

I have been through several ideas for inspirational pictures for the Architecture Challenge. The first that popped in my head was a picture I took at the Canary Islands a couple of years ago. I loved the rounded shape of the white stairs against the red.

However, looking at it now, the picture itself was not as great as I remembered (are they ever?), so I moved on to my favourite architect and favourite building – Casa Batllô by Antoni Gaudi (none of the following pictures of the building are mine). On my first visit to Barcelona we only got to see the exterior, which by all means is simply amazing
 
 
but when I happened to stroll by on my second visit there years later, the building, at the time owned by an insurance company I think, was open to the public as part of the celebrations of the 150 year anniversary of Gaudi’s birth. It was the most amazing feeling walking around in the house I had read so much about about in my Gaudi books, looking at all the details everywhere. I was surprised to see all the clever and highly decorative solutions to simple things like ventilation and light shafts. I bet yours look nothing like this.

Wouldn’t it be the perfect inspiration for a quilt! I thought so, but then I remembered we are to use made fabrics in the quilt and somehow that did not work with what I had in my head. You can read more about the building here.

Having spent too much time browsing through Google Images, in the end I landed close to home, at a trade school near where we live. The building is a couple of years old and I still haven’t been inside even though I was following the building process eagerly. The façade is very modern and striking, and would fit perfectly for this challenge.

I want to use this opportunity to experiment with free-form-but-not-improvisational piecing, so as a first exercise I made a rough sketch, just catching how the light and shadows and angles create dept.

Next I did another sketch focusing more on proportions and angles.

I think I’ll use this as a blueprint and I already have the made fabric ready to go. I just need to finish another quilt first, oh where, oh where did that inspiration go...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that is a cool project! ♥♥♥

Paulette said...

I am in awe of your sketch (says she who makes stick figures)! It looks like an ideal venue to showcase some made fabric.