RR 9 Week of March 14-18 Expansion of language

St. Pauls Cathedral Expansion of Language
Language, and its colonial expansion

·         The building is in the shape of a cross with a dome

·         The dome is one of the largest in the world

·         The blind side story was constructed so that the dome wouldn’t look out of scale

·         Used buttresses with the columns for support

·         The cathedral is made up of a lot of extras to make other areas match or appear larger

·         Paris and Italy were influences for how the columns were set up

The cathedral I thought was a good example of the concepts we talked about in class this week.  Starting with colonial expansion it shows expansion from past and future. It has a neo classical design to it with both sides matching which was a past design that expanded throughout the years. It resembles the Capital Building in the U.S. today as well. This structure alone just shows how ideas can be passed on and expanded throughout the world. Stacking of columns has always been an overflow of design ideas throughout the years but it expands to different ways of using them. Although the cathedral stacks them it has a different style in a sense of the bottom stacked on top of it but a smaller scale. Semiotics and language are expressed through this structure as well. To me this cathedral means this is a place where everyone should come and worship.  The size of this cathedral shows that it’s dominant and has the room to welcome many people.  It has purity with the white material and the dome which is one of the biggest in the world this alone shows its dominance as a place.  I think this cathedral is trying to say other cathedrals I am the best and the most elegant for its time. It has the purity of white, it has one of the biggest domes, and it’s stacked with multiple columns and that stretch across the landscape.  The cathedral also has good balance with making up scale with the big dome so the rest of the cathedral doesn’t look under scale. Within this structure a good word to describe this would be columns. A sentence would be the columns create patterns and symmetry. A phrase would be made from the columns creating patterns and symmetry that make it the cathedral distinctive to surrounding buildings that give off the high priority persona.