Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Architecture/Archive 4

I think there a quite a few issues that have come up when I've tried to write about buildings:

• Photographs - is it appropriate to use photographs of features of a building? The photographs you use to show shapes (for example with a brutalist building) are different from those you take to illustrate a touristy builidng for example. I used grey scale photos to illustrate Brunswick Centre as I felt that it brought out the shape better and was accused of violating NPOV!

• We have a lot of articles on skyscrapers - at the moment they tend to consist of X is so high and has so many floors. We need more than this obviously.

• Should we make a box with name of building, date of completion, architect etc?

We can't write about every listed building, do we want to concentrate on ones that are particularly notable in terms of style, famous architects etc?

Apologies for the random jottings. Secretlondon 09:27, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Heck, don't apologize for random jotting. What else is a WikiProject talk page going to be used for? Anyway here are my thoughts on the above:

• Picture are obviously important. Perhaps a mix of greyscale and color photographs? Alternatively, you could put the color photographs in and link to the grayscale, or vice versa. Color is prettier but greyscale shows buildings better.
• It would make sense to me to have an architecture infobox. Standard stuff would obviously include completion date, architect, and name. Other info that could possibly be put in a standard box: start date of construction, developer, maybe the construction firm, interior designer (if it's someone other than the architect), and building type (see list of building types.) I'm sure there are more things we could include, too.
• In terms of which buildings to write on, I don't have any particular goals in mind. If you want to prioritize, I'd say major works of big-name architects come first. Next are major landmarks (including buildings in major cities that anyone living in the area could identify.) Then we have other buildings by any architect we have an article on. Any other notable buildings can follow as people choose to write on them.

I'm not sure if the US has an equivalent to the UK's "listed building" status. We have something called the "National Register of Historic Places" it's not quite the same. Isomorphic 17:06, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

---

I agree there are too many listed buildings to describe them all, but we could at least have a list of Grade I listed buildings.

Ideas for infobox:

Name of building
General view of building
Location
Architect(s)
Engineer(s)
Date commissioned/Date of competition
Date begun
Date completed

Please edit this! Warofdreams 20:07, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Looks good. Only one concern - the commissioning/competition date would be nice information, but might be hard to find and end up blank on most buildings. Also, could you clarify what "General view of the building" means? Isomorphic 20:18, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Greatbuildings.com [1] may be a good source of inspiration (and information) for this. I think it's very good to distinguish between dates of commission/begin/completion, since these are often mixed up (i.e. in different pieces of literature you often find several dates for a building), a confusion that can be clarified by Wikipedia. I don't know about "engineer" though -- on the other hand, it might be useful to include information on "client". Will check if I find more information elsewhere on "building metadata standards". Spinster 21:05, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

---

Hi! I recently started an architectural history series -- would that be appropriate for inclusion in this WikiProject? In that case, you can count me in ;-) Spinster 20:57, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

---

I only came across this Project not long ago, but I've had in mind for a while now to create articles for the skyscrapers in Melbourne, Australia. That said, I created my own infobox a while ago, you can see it at Rialto Towers and Eureka Tower. Thing is, it's rather large and might do with some reformatting/pruning. If anyone likes it, feel free to use whatever from it, or suggest how it could be made better. Other than that, there is (at the Rialto page) a navbox which leads to the next shortest/next tallest buildings in the city. Since making that, I've seen a few problems with it, like the fact that it will need reworking whenever a new building is completed, as well as being affected by the whole controvesy over including/excluding spires and antennas from heights, etc. TPK 03:19, 8 Jul 2004 (UTC)

architecture stubs

Wikiproject Stub sorting would like to bring the existence of the following stubs to the knowledge of this project:

{{arch-stub}}

{{struct-stub}}

{{euro-struct-stub}}

{{UK-struct-stub}}

{{US-struct-stub}}

Circeus 21:12, Apr 15, 2005 (UTC)

---

Hi! This idea of standardising entries on the same topic (e.g. Architecture) is a good one. I'd like to suggest three sources of information and inspiration that might help in the development of this WikiProject.

1. For 15 years or more the Canadian Centre for Architecture has been creating documentation (or "articles", if you like) of architects and architecture as represented in photographs, prints, drawings, archives, etc. Their online catalogue (http://www.cca.qc.ca/pages/Niveau3.asp?page=catalogue_collection&lang=eng) includes all of this documentation. The idea behind this documentation is to approach each subject in as much the same way as possible.

For example, titles of records usually follow the same form: "View of the White Plains Mall showing the entrance to the Scotch 'n Sirloin restaurant, White Plains, New York, United States" [photograph PH2000:0757, by Molitor, Joseph W.]; i.e. first a description of what is shown in the photograph using the subject's name (supported, if possible, by an authority), then the city-level location, then the regional (state/provincial) location, then the national location.

2. The Art & Architecture Thesaurus (http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat/) is a source of controlled vocabulary (used in CCA documentation) for art and architectural terms. Besides defining useful terms, a controlled vocabulary removes ambiguities that arise when describing different structures. For example, one could use any of a number of terms to describe "establishments that primarily sell gasoline, lubricating oils, and other merchandise, such as tires and batteries, for motor vehicles and that often also perform minor repair work": gas station, service station, filling station, gas bar... The AAT provides a researched and source-supported standard term (in this case, "service station").

3. The Library of Congress Authorities (http://authorities.loc.gov/) for source-supported names of people, places, and subjects. The "Authorized Heading" is the established form of the name in question, e.g. "100 1_ |a Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, |d 1886-1969" i.e. Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig.

I've gone into way too much detail, but I thought it might be helpful to give supply some useful links and some possible parameters...

As for the question: "Photographs - is it appropriate to use photographs of features of a building?" I think any image is helpful, regardless of the type. It's not only architects and engineers who consult these articles and there's no telling how the information might be used - so there's no definitive method of representation. The CCA has over 60,000 photographs of architecture (and other subjects) in all kinds of formats: from daguerreotype (AAT term: http://www.getty.edu/vow/AATFullDisplay?find=daguerreotype&logic=AND&note=&page=1&subjectid=300127181) to digital prints. That NPOV accusation was ludicrous. Pinkville 20:00, 1 August 2005 (UTC)