Barok01

The Baroque Facade

Introduction:

I have finished the first series of fantasy themed houses. Now I want to extend the series, but in a slightly different way. When I walk along the canals of Amsterdam, I have fine examples of ancient houses lined up. The difference is that in cities, houses are packed together side by side rather than stand alone structures. So I have decided to extend my harbor project. I am adding a series of facades relfecting the architecture I see around me. This project will result in several more houses with unique fronts and neutral sides so you can place them side by side in any arrangement.
Great idea (I guess)! So I had better start doing some serious cutting!

Recently I came across a huge database of original drawings for local houses in Amsterdam's digital archives. Over ten thousand (10,000) drawings are available and freely accessable. I went through the database and downloaded the ones I found most inspiring. I ended up with about 200 drawings that I am calling “my favorites”. I plan to work from these drawings (and other sources) for this project.

The First facade of a planned series is a Louis XIV façade from the late 17th century. It is not the easiest one to start with because of all the decorative trim.

While doing further research of the whereabouts of this facade I came across an article about this house. It also became clear that this house is called the “Korenbloem” and still can bee seen in the city of Mechelen in belgium. The facade dates back to 1684. A big surprice and I hope to visit Mechelen soon to take a look at the house myself. There even is a drawing of the house that was used in a picture collectable series of some kind. The drawing was made in 1912. The small bridge beside the house (as seen in the drawing) doesn't exist anymore.

The cutting process:

I started by making a temporary form out of styrodur. To help me on my way, I had already cut out the outline of the façade. This will speed up the cutting process. The plaster form is about 2 cm thick due to the large undercuts I have to make. The measurement of this façade is 8 cm wide and 23 cm high.

Drawing the basic lines on to the plaster divides the building into lower, middle, and upper sections. The parts that show brickwork will be called "basic level". This means that I have to bring down the thickness of the cast to this level at every point where there is brickwork in sight. In this case I removed about 8mm of plaster to get to this point.
When cutting plaster it is best to avoid bringing down whole areas to a lower level. I must remind myself to try and solve this before making future temporary forms.

Quite a step forward in the project. The top of the façade has been cut back to about 4 mm and from this point I can start to actually bring the details in. The stone structure has been cut back again.

I did not document the cutting process in full, so I will skip through the project in rather big steps. I do have one picture of the start of the next step where I made deep cuts in preparation for bringing the areas down to their new levels. The result is shown in the next picture. The drawing itself does not show the windows in detail so I cut them in a way I like best.
The second picture, below, gives a good view of all the different layers that are a part of this project. If the basic level is the brick wall, then you get a "build" that is something like this:

- Basic layer +4 top stone of arch highest level of fillets
- Basic layer +3 arch stones and horizontal parts above side windows
- Basic layer +2 woodwork surrounding the side windows + Inner part of arch
- Basic layer +1 woodwork inside side windows
- Basic layer brick wall
- Basic layer -1 woodwork inside middle window
- Basic layer -2 glass in the windows

The final part is the lower section of the facade. As for all the decorative trim in this project I try to capture the essence of the decoration but also keep things workable. This means that I will simplify smaller details in a way that it still can be carved out of plaster. For this section, the windows are not drawn in detail. So I choose to go for a window with larger glass segments. The door has a wooden structure and an small oval name plate.

This wraps up the first of a possible series of facades. As a project, this façade is not finished yet. After the cutting is done I will have to make a form and ultimately have to build this piece in to a house. This project will be updated when the resin cast is complete.

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