Hyperborean Architecture

[Scott of Hyperborea]

[This is an expansion on stuff from the Radarasilikan]Hyperborean architecture as discussed here is not the very functional building techniques used to make ordinary houses and shops. These are mostly an amalgam of sod houses similar to those of the Inuit in summer and igloo-type dwellings in winter, and they would not be intended to last more than a season. Proper Hyperborean architecture is used only on the permanent buildings in the city center owned by the city as a whole. Although these vary from tiyil to tiyil, they typically include the city's meeting hall, the library, one or two temples, a common area, and perhaps government offices of some sort. It would be rare for a Hyperborean city to have more than ten permanent stone buildings, but these ten would be large and ornate.The stone used to construct the main buildings is dazzling white marble, which comes from a number of quarries around the island. The only exception to this is Thulel, whose buildings are a duller gray quarried from the base of Mount Yaanek. Other colors are supplied by lapis lazuli, which exists in profusion in the south and which is either used as a tile or ground up into a paint; various qualities of stone used in various ways can produce almost any shade of blue desired. Because of the accessibility of marble and lapis, the color scheme of virtually all Hyperborean architecture is blue and white, with the white predominating. In some flashier buildings, a viishol, or "shock" is used - a very contrasting color such as bright red. The shock would typically be on the central dome or the central mandala.Hyperborean architecture is most similar to the architecture of medieval Islam, with perhaps a pinch of Tibetan thrown in. It tends to go for stocky, simple, very well supported cubic structures, with a minimum of the sort of soaring complex geometries seen on European cathedrals. A typical design would be a long corridor with three larger cubical "rooms" - each of which may contain several actual rooms in it - one at each end and a larger one in the middle. Other forms include simple rectangles or octagons. Non-right angles are rare, although some of the right angles may be cosmetically smoothed over into more graceful forms. The cubes may actually be slanted slightly inward for stability related purposes. The Hyperboreans had the arch, and occasionally used it, but didn't find it very pretty and tried to avoid making it obvious in most cases.The vast majority of the building's surface is kept as empty white space, but edges, domes, doors, and windows are surrounded by an ornate "trim", a thin line of color that features linear art of some sort. In many cases, this art is a poem, whose letters twist around and encircle a window or other object. In other cases, it is repeated geometric motifs - popular varieties are spirals, swastikas, triskelions, stars, and flowers. Many buildings also feature a central mandala drawn at a prominent position and usually drawn by a great artist of the city. It is rare but not unheard of for the trim or the central art to be a less abstract rendering of some scene from history or myth.The roof of a building usually features one or more domes or kidunal, with the latter being spiral towers. The domes are as a rule colored; the spiral towers may or may not be. The coloration is usually a solid blue, but occasionally can be spectacular works of art.The Hyperboreans LOVE stained glass windows, and use them wherever possible. Because they have no electric lighting, windows are very important in getting light into rooms, and, not content to trust the stained glass windows on the side, the roof of a building is littered with skylights - each of which can be covered quickly and easily in the case of a blizzard so as to prevent the snow from collapsing it.This is the Council Hall at Taras, a typical example of a Hyperborean building. I have a better picture of it sketched out, which I can show Eoin, and possibly the rest of you when I bother to use the scanner here.And here are pictures of some real buildings which I consider very, very close to the sort of thing the Hyperboreans might make.The Dome of the Rock is VERY close to something the Hyperboreans might make, if you discount the color scheme. The geometric shape is their style, the dome is their style, and the blue art in this picture illustrates exactly what I mean by the trim.This building in Samarra is the ONLY building in the world today I know of that uses a kiduna (spiral tower). The Hyperborean ones would be smaller fixtures protruding from an existing building rather than the building itself as this one seems to be.More brilliant geometric art; Hyperborean buildings wouldn't be quite so covered with it, but they would have a lot to talk about with whatever artist drew these designs.Just change the dome to blue. The coloration of the main building is perfect, as is the main shape (though not the details of the shape).This one has right shape (though the domes are too pointy), and great trim, but I don't like the colors.TheSpectrum Center in my home city of Irvine, from which I got a lot of inspiration. If you're ever there, go see it - for a glorified shopping center, it's amazingly pretty.This one is as perfect as the real world is likely to give me; not sure if the Hyperboreans would have towers like that, but wouldn't count it out. Too bad this is in Fallujah; it's one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen and I hope it's still there.

[Unknown]

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[Scott of Hyperborea]

Since Ari's reminded me of the existence of this topic, I guess I might as well post the Mongolian capital building:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... Square.JPG

[Aurangzeb Khan]

They've not let Norman Foster loose in Ulaan Bator have they?

[Scott of Hyperborea]

Erm, I haven't seen him around.