Art, Computer Animation and Architecture

Photographers of Genius at the Getty  this exhibition presents works by 38 photographers, 20 of whom are featured on the website: Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Eughne Atget, Hippolyte Bayard, Walker Evans, Roger Fenton, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, David Octavius Hill & Robert Adamson, Lewis Hine, Andri Kertisz, Gustave Le Gray, Dorothea Lange, Lazls Moholy-Nagy, Eadweard J. Muybridge, Timothy H. O'Sullivan, Man Ray, August Sander, Alfred Stieglitz, Weegee, Carleton Watkins, Edward Weston. Each photographer's entry includes one signature picture; links to digital images in the Getty's online collection; biographical and technical information
The Digital Michelangelo Project Three dimensional computer representations of some of history's most important cultural artifacts, mainly focused on some of Michelangelo's sculptures, including the famous David statue, but has also "scanned 1,163 fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae, a giant marble map of ancient Rome.
Smithsonian American Art Museum: Director's Choice The Museum has over 15,000 pieces of art in its entire collection but 13 of these works have been selected as personal favorites, and placed online
Musee Rodin The physical Musee Rodin consists of two buildings -- Httel Biron in Paris and Villa des Brillants in Meudon (a suburb) -- but the museum's Web site makes it easy to visit both. Works are presented as illustrations in essays from the Collections section of the Web site; larger views open in a new window. The site is available in both French and English.
The Drawn Evidence: Scotland's Development Through its Architectural Archives  over 20,000 items related to Scottish architecture and town planning over the past four centuries
Official Salvador Dali Museum Web Site Dedicated to the man who once remarked that "The difference between me and the surrealists is that I am Surrealism," Paintings featured online include "Eggs on a Plate without a Plate" and "The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory."
ARTISTE: Image Retrieval System seeks to cross link, integrate, and render more searchable the vast holdings of London's National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Paris's Louvre, and Florence's Uffizi Gallery
Los Angeles County Museum of Art Collections Online images representing items from its South and Southeast Asian, Japanese, Islamic collections
Two from the Museum of Modern Art: Alberto Giacometti [Flash, .pdf] and Artists of Brucke: Themes in German Expressionist Prints [Flash]  
The Impressionists  including essays, photos of the artists, images of several artworks, and
links to related resources, provide a good, basic, reference book-style introduction to each 
Computer Animation: Algorithms and Techniques a thorough overview with topics ranging from the history of computer animation to hardware and software
http://www.artmuseum.net/  {Internet art museum}
William Blake Online  is a companion resource to the Tate Britain's comprehensive exhibition of the work by the poet, printmaker, and visionary
Piet Mondrian: The Transatlantic Paintings [Shockwave] seventeen rarely seen paintings 
Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia - Virtual Tour [QuickTime VR, RealPlayer] a virtual tour of a 1997 exhibition on sculpture of Angkor
The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery -- A Brush With History. 76 portraits of prominent Americans and accompanying biographies
Picturing the Century: One Hundred Years of Photography from the National Archives images are available for immediate printout
Web Gallery of Art contains over 8,000 digital reproductions of European paintings and sculptures created between the years 1150 and 1750
J. Paul Getty Trust nearly 54,000 pages related to works of art and professional reports in conservation and art history
New Collections and Enhancements at the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS), a UK project devoted to making digital resources for the visual arts community available online, particularly resources for study and teaching in higher education
Art and Culture [Flash, Shockwave, Java] links to a variety of resources related to the visual arts, performing arts, design, literature, music, and film.
Picture Library Search -- National Portrait Gallery
Victoria and Albert Museum Images Online
Arts Journal: The Daily Digest of Arts & Cultural Journalism
The Artchive contain over 2000 scans of artwork by more than 200 artists
The Tate Gallery now offers onlinebrowsing of its permanent collections
This exciting online exhibition from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) traces the history of modern art from 1880 to the present
"The Artists Bluebook" providing biographical and pricing information on American art and artists
The Metropolitan Museum of Art online collection of over 3,500 objects
Aperture Gallery Website to present fine arts photography to a wider audience
Artcyclopedia: the Guide to Museum-Quality Art on the Internet (Fine Art)
Art Images for College Teaching
Art Crimes: The Writing On the Wall and with over 2,000 images of graffiti from over 80 international cities
Van Gogh Museum
Van Gogh's Van Goghs: Masterpieces from the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam at the National Gallery of Art [LivePicture Viewer]
Celtic Art and Cultures
Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO)
The Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library
Art studio chalkboard
Web Page for Humanities Research
The William Blake Archive--UVA
Comprehensive guide to the art collections of GB
Museo Picasso Virtual
WebMuseum
Paintings and supportive text depict many different eras and styles of work. Subject-oriented Famous Paintings and an author index are located in General Exhibitions, the primary point-of-access along with Special Exhibitions. A glossary organized by painting styles and a small index to classical music are available
Books on art architecuture and photography
US National Gallery
Getty searchable databases
San Franciso Fine Arts Museum
60,000 digitised images

Architecture

Cities and Buildings Database Contains over 10,000 digitized images of buildings and cities culled from all historical periods and from all over the world. Visitors may perform detailed searches for buildings by city, style, title, architect, and date of construction.

Le Corbusier  includes online 3D models of his very distinctive buildings, his writings, biographical sketches, and visual images

Land Surveyor Reference Page  Reference materials useful in the practice of Land Surveying.  Periodically updated to include the latest information on US state rules, regulations and statutes, federal government data sources, maps etc.

Planetizen:  information exchange for the urban planning and development community

Scotland's Development Through its Architectural Archives  is a virtual archive of over 20,000 items related to Scottish architecture and town planning over the past four centuries

 Mies in Berlin/Mies in Ameria  highlights some of Meis's most famous works, including the German Pavilion in Barcelona, the Seagrams Building in New York City, and the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago

Irish Architecture  Serving as a massive clearinghouse for information about contemporary and historic architecture and urban design practices in Ireland, this site contains the archives of several major organizations.  Along with this general material, visitors can find profiles of several major and influential Irish architects, including essays on the work of Eileen Gray, Michael Scott, and Kevin Roche 

The Buckminster Fuller Institute  Presaging the movements of political ecology, "smart growth", sustainable
development and other trends of the past three decades, R. Buckminster Fuller remains one of the most misunderstood Renaissance individuals of the 20the century. Today, Mr. Fuller is most well known for inventing the geodesic dome, which he hoped would become a model for low-cost housing across the world.

Base Isolation [Real Player] Base Isolation is a construction technique that maintains a building's stability in the event of an earthquake. This  Web site provides 34 pages that describe base isolation and give detailed derivations and equations of the processes involved. 

Structurae the International Database and Gallery of Structures. The information contained on the site is primarily aimed at civil engineers and architects; however, anyone with an interest in modern or historical structures should definitely review it. More than 3,000 structures are listed in the database. You can sort the structures by type, function, construction method, geographical location, or alphabetically; or you can browse a 2,500 year timeline. There are also separate databases of large-scale projects and notable engineers and architects.

The Great Buildings Collection  is a wide gateway to architecture around the world. This collection documents
approximately a thousand buildings, offering 3D models. The site contains sections on buildings and architects, as well as architectural places of the world.

AECportico: Your Guide to Architecture, Engineering, and Construction from NBS Services of the Royal Institute of British Architects

Crystal Palace  The graphics include both  models, with interior and exterior animations that give clear and illuminating depictions of the palace. In addition, the site contains  images and animations of the building's lighting, as it existed in 1851. This is definitely a site to explore for architects and those users awe-struck by 3-D graphic images.

The Canberra House: contains profiles and images of significant, Modern houses in Canberra, Australia from the 1930s to the 1980s

Skyscrapers.com  information on over 43,000 skyscrapers around the world

The Skyscraper Page with information provided for each building: Address, Architect, Height, number of floors, etc. Skyline Photos, links to sources of views 

Advanced Buildings: Technologies and Practices from Natural Resources Canada

Architecture.com The official homepage of (RIBA), offers a number of architecture-related resources.  The heart of the site is an indexed collection of over 1000 annotated links to architecture resources from around the world, though it currently focuses mainly on Britain. The links may be searched by keyword or browsed by category and subject. A "raw" list of another 1000 sites compiled by the RIBA staff and organized by topic.

Building Technology 

From residential houses to hundred-story skyscrapers, many different technologies come together to make a building safe and comfortable. Building design is a continually changing industry, and new advances are being made possible as research progresses.Sustainable development is gaining popularity worldwide in an effort to minimize environmental impact. The Center for Resourceful Building Technology  maintains an online guide that describes building practices that are resource-efficient; some information on the center's research projects is also available. Similar in topic is this report from the National Association of Home Builders Research Center . The 70-page document is the final report of an April 2003 conference on green building; it gives day-by-day summaries of presentations and activities in which the conference participants were involved. Office buildings have a number of design issues that need to be considered to make a productive work environment. One such issue is the acoustics in a cubicle workspace. The Canadian Institute for Research in Construction  discusses some design factors that can improve privacy even in the very open atmosphere of closely spaced cubicles. In the wake of the 2001 anthrax scare, a research project at Pennsylvania State University has garnered significant attention. This paper introduces immune buildings, which have advanced ventilation and air filtration systems that can mitigate the danger caused by airborne  pathogens. Experimental results from the project are also presented. The US Department of Energy High Performance Building Initiative  is investigating new technologies to make commercial buildings more comfortable and cost effective. Several interesting technical papers and introductory reports are given on the initiative's homepage, including a technology road map for high performance buildings. This essay from the June 2003 issue of Constructech Magazine  highlights a movement toward integrated control systems for all types of buildings. The author notes that having a unified system that automatically manages security, lighting, energy, and several other building operations can save time and money in the long run. Another article, written by a member of the Partnership for Advanced Technology in housing , discusses building materials and practices that can improve residential installation's resistance to major storms and natural disasters. An example of an area that is using these weather resistant designs is in Florida; the article cites the vulnerability of coastal homes to hurricanes and outlines some efforts to build them in a more structurally sound manner.  Lastly, the Commercial Modular Construction Magazine  is a quarterly publication that centers on permanent and temporary modular building design. The second issue of 2003 has, among other things, a good article that describes the basics and benefits of modular construction.

Further Architecture links

Copyright Bob Anderson
05 April 2005