Alpine Meadows: Images as suggestions, or for a database

[Sleazy_Writer]

At last Sunday's New Guild meeting, the idea was coined that the NG would build up a collection of photographs that show the intended or useful building styles for the 3rd sim.

Moon showed the people at the meeting a picture of a 'French Rural Chateau' from Wikipedia, which most thought to be very useful for the AM sim.
She also mentioned that a Versailles-style chateau would not help the enjoyment of the sim by the other residents.

Since the new forum apparently allows uploading pictures (great!), I'm uploading something here, and try to illustrate the point.Please post your own pictures, I think it would help the covenant discussion a lot.

A rural chateau, which I believe will help the overall quality of the sim.
(by Steve Jurvetson, with a Creative Commons attribution license)

RuralChateau.jpg (60.99 KiB) Viewed 1410 times

The office sized 2nd Louvre, which like a Versailles, I think would not help the sim.

2ndLouvre.jpg (40.78 KiB) Viewed 1409 times

[Moon Adamant]

This is the Château de Chillon, Switzerland, which i think is a very nice, organic castle. Notice:
- the irregularity of the towers distribution and appearances, which gives a flowing feel to the silhouette of the build. Castles towers have different functions, from strictly defensive to habitational (at least in castles so old as Chillon), and form follows function.
- the way it draws up from the lake - the same can happen from a sloped bed of rock.
- the entrance way is a raised gallery over the moat - but the same scheme can be used to good advantage if the entrance to a château is done from an upper road. This allows for a layered building that doesn't need to be on flattened terrain.

This image has a CC Attribution license.
Here goes the technical table from Wikipedia:

Description: Château of Chillon, during winter
Source: http://www.jenson.org/Images/switzerland/chillon.jpg
Photographer: Scott Jenson ([email protected])

More info on Chillon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chillon

[Moon Adamant]

The Castle of Vianden in Luxembourg. Notice the way it has several courts at different heights. Also, it is a very nice build on its own.

This image has a copyright and was retrieved from (you can see a high-res version there):

http://www.eu2005.lu/en/savoir_lux/phot ... index.html

More pictures also in wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vianden

[Moon Adamant]

A splendid pic that shows how a château can be a set of buildings (instead of one massive build) - also notice how it is set on the terrain - springing from a vertical slab of rock, and the rest of the terrain is defined in a series of terraces, supported by stone walls. These terraces could be gardens.

I couldn't quite found out where this château is, save that it is in the Jura department in France.

This picture was retrieved from http://www.next1000.com/setours/SEtours ... ce.08.html

[Sleazy_Writer]

I really like that one above Neutral in appearance, blending in with the surroundings, but a terraced build looks great and should be challenging.

Moon, you write

pictures .. examples .. It is really starting to define what we want as chateaux appearance, in a very efficient way - more efficient than just words can.

Efficient as examples: yes. But I don't think images can be more than that. How could one 'enforce' pictures like you try to enforce a covenant? We should probably try to find common traits in the example pictures and put a few of the most important ones in the covenant. What do you all think?

Here are two more examples from me:

A positive example, in my opinion. Stokesay Castle in the UK has odd but characteristic Fachwerk-y elements. At the rear end you see a defense-like tower, and the part in the middle could be used as a large livingroom or hall. That part has gothic style windows in reality. It also has a garden of mixed flowers and some wood carved gargoyles.

StokesayCastleByAndrewFoggWithCreativeCommonsAttributionLicense.jpg (117.03 KiB) Viewed 1328 times

A negative example, in my opinion. Boring boring. Boring because it resembles the "kids' castle" too much. The cliché stereotypical towers, exactly where you expect them. No imagination. My question is: How to discourage people from building this and encourage them to build more imaginative instead? I'm not anti-tower or anything, but everyone can do better than this :-)

ChateauDeMarcayByNelsonMinarCreativeCommonsAttributionSharealikeLicense.jpg (106.82 KiB) Viewed 1320 times

[Sonja Strom]

This thread is fun to follow, and in general I like the other ideas posted.

One I have is, such a château would find itself located between a Roman style of architecture and a German style of architecture. It might be good to consider this for a smooth transition. For example, here is one from South Tyrol, which in RL is in such a border area:

If you would like to see more pictures of it, there are some in Wikipedia at: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_Tirolo

And here are three in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland: