- Rusticated stones, between architecture and nature
Architecture contained a range of styles suggesting the gradation between art and nature, for the parts of the buildings that served as intermediaries between the house and the garden. Rough (or 'rusticated') stones were frequently used for the garden gates (as well as for ground floors): the interest in rough material as a transition between formal architecture and nature means an emphasis on the texture of the material.
see artlex under 'rusticate'
see an example: the gates of the Botanic Garden at Oxford (early 17th century) pictures of england/counties/ Oxfordshire / Oxford
also see the later chapter on 'Transition motifs': statues on fountains with a texture suggesting both stone and water drops
- Townscapes with heterogeneous surroundings
- These ideas are now reproduced in flythroughs.
- Irregular townscapes
- Eighteenth-century 'Gothick' as an intermediary between classical and mediaeval styles : see the bbc website (In Pictures / Oxford from the air, photos 6 and 21). In picture 6 especially you may see the 18th-century pseudo-gothic towers of All Souls close to the 15 th-century gothic Bodleian Library and the classical 18th century Radcliffe Camera.
- Curves of Regent Street: the curves of this Regency street, though they have a regular shape, cause hidden vistas (section 'London Landscape Architecture') ; on CATI website, master 1, Virtual spaces, Subjective spaces, Fragmented spaces; on this website you are taught how 'image maps' on websites can reproduce this effect.
- The mid 20th century theorist of townscape Gordon Cullen studied the experience walking in a city: focus on empty spaces (streets, squares) rather than buildings frequently means viewing simultenaeously buildings of different styles, and emphasing 'surprise' caused by new vistas as a positive element. Cullen introduced the notion of 'serial vision'
- Flythroughs: see the animation based on Cullen's principles and its use in the design of information spaces
