Villa Rotunda

Several weeks ago I attended a lecture and film about the villas created by Andrea Palladio in the 16^th Century.

Andrea Palladio was born in Padua, Italy in 1508 He created a host of religious building but is best known for his villa built in ad around Florence and Vicenza Italy. His most enduring architectural achievement is the perpetuation of his style and rules of building still used to produce classic buildings. The White House and Monticello are based on his work. I was particularly taken by the Villa Capra, or Villa Rotunda and decided that rather than building something strange and wonderful I’d attempt to build a villa based on Villa Rotunda.

Sizing up the project

I conducted a considerable amount of research, examined floor plans and pictures while mining the web for textures to be used in the project. I then looked at the objects on the EBST4 object path (AWTeen) and discovered that many of the required objects were available. Innovation would be required. I was initially not concerned with the building inspector as the contest world was set to ultra.  I underestimated and ended up having to find new ways to trick the inspector into letting me have an object.

Initial construction began with the basement and built up. My choice for walls required thickness  so I chose the snow1.rwx (scaled) because I did not want to double up on thin objects to make walls which would require two objects to get the same effect (eg,two wall flat wall objects). I was mindful that regardless how I built the villa the part requirement was sure to hit the building inspector eventually.  After much study I elected to not build the third floor and the staircases hidden in the corners of the rotunda as the stairs alone would blow the cell limit. Additionally the total number of cells allotted for the contest entry severely restricted some building freedoms and required paring the project scale. Economies were in order and observed.