BOCH Chapel and Mausoleum Norwood, Massachusetts

Transcription

1 BOCH Chapel and Mausoleum Norwood, Massachusetts

2 17 October 2018 The Boch Chapel and Mausoleum A Description The Boch Chapel and Mausoleum is a contemporary classical design influenced by the Neoclassical movements of the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries. Just as the Founding Fathers looked back to the Classical writings of Greece and Rome as the foundation of the American Republic, architects looked to Greco-Roman Antiquity for inspiration for the architecture of their new country. The pavilion combines Greek and Roman motifs in the austere Neo-Classical style of the Greek Revival period. This robust and geometrically precise style was seen to embody uniquely American virtues of honesty, integrity and directness, and was considered to be the first national style. The main volume of the pavilion is a cube, surmounted by a hemispherical dome. Four wings project from the four faces of the cube to the cardinal points of the compass: entry to the North, transepts to the east and west, apse to the south. The North Porch has four massive Greek Doric columns. These columns are unfluted, except for a small portion below the capitals. The walls are ashlar Charcoal Granite, quarried in St. Cloud, Minnesota by Coldspring. This stone was selected for its similarity to Quincy granite, a common building material in 19 th Century New England which leant a somber air to its buildings. The garden piers and walks, and the paving on the porch are this same gray granite. The four visible corners of the cube are rusticated and the deep horizontal joints create strong horizontal shadows emphasizing the mass and weight of the stone walls and the dome above. The dome and roofs of the four wings are covered in standing-seam copper sheeting. The flatter portions of the roof at the corners of the central block are flat-seam copper. The roof will eventually patina to a green color from its current deep brown. The stepped shape of the dome is a common Neo-Classical device, brought to America by Thomas Jefferson in his design for the Library for the University of Virginia, an homage to the Pantheon in Rome. The bronze doors and windows were fabricated by Tischler Und Sohn. The Roman grilles on the windows are a motif from antiquity, though the half-round Diocletian or Thermal window to the south is protected by diamond pattern grille of Renaissance origin. Moving inside, the austere exterior gives way to a richer more colorful interior; the colors more varied and jewel-like. The walls are the same Charcoal Granite as the exterior. The interior order is still the Greek Doric, but the six columns are now fluted for their entire length and carved from dark green Verde Alpi marble with dramatic veining. The coffered dome has 24 bays, in circumference, symbolizing the hours of the day, and is five bays high. Each coffer is framed by egg and dart moldings, as are the coffered ceilings of the three wings. The egg and dart moldings are a symbol of fertility and refer to the continued cycle of life. At the apex of the dome is a stained glass laylight. The compass pattern of the laylight symbolizes the setting sun in a blue sky fading to rose. The ring of golden, crimson and emerald pieces of

3 stained glass around the perimeter of the laylight allude to the kingdom of Heaven, and visually connect to the rich coloration of the floor beneath. The polychromed floor includes seven distinct species of Italian Marble. A floor of such vibrancy is rare in Greek Revival buildings. However, a look to the contemporaneous Neo-classical movement in Europe inspired a design based upon a floor in the Glienicke Casino by German architect Karl Fredrich Schinkel in Potsdam for the Prussian Royal Family. On the south elevation symbolizing the arc of the sun in the sky, the half-round Diocletian window rests upon a columbarium for the internment of six urns. The columbarium and its Portoro Marble memorial plaques are flanked by Ionic pilasters with Verde Antique shafts and Carrara capitals and bases. The shallow granite pediment with the plain acroteria at the corners takes its form from ancient Greek Funeral monuments. Beneath the Sanctuary, is the Crypt, reached by granite stairs to the south of the building. Where the upper level is meant to celebrate the cycle of life, the crypt reminds us of its impermanence. We descend into the earth to this somber granite room. It is a place for reflection, dark, quiet and primal. The four central columns of this hypostyle hall are in the early Doric style found in the former Greek colonies in Sicily at Paestum. These columns have a squatter proportion than those on the upper story, suggesting not just the great weight of the hall above, but also the weight of mourning. Their pimitive shapes connecting back to our common and distant history.

4 The Boch Chapel and Mausoleum An Analysis Architecture is defined as the Art of Building. Within the Western architectural tradition, Classicism is both the foundation and recurring leitmotif of the building art. Architects using this design language rooted in a 2,500-year-old tradition rely upon precedent and variation to develop their designs. These precedents are not just the formal language inherited from Greco-Roman Antiquity, but also the precedents of evolving building types which adapted this ancient language to new uses and technologies. The design of the Boch Chapel and Mausoleum, through the use of precedent and variation, links this contemporary temple to the long tradition of classical architecture. The governing order is a version of the Greek Doric derived from the Parthenon in Athens. The domed central block, however, would never have been seen in Greek architecture, the dome having been introduced to the Classical tradition by the Romans. There are a number of formal precedents for the overall design concept of the pavilion. One of the most prominent inspirations is the Württemberg Mausoleum or sepulchral chapel, outside Stuttgart, Germany, designed in 1819 by Italian Architect Giovanni Salucci. Though the main volume of the Württemberg Chapel is circular in plan, it has four projecting porches whose cornices encircle the building and a create an attic story against which provides a vertical surface for the pediments to terminate. Another inspiration is the mausoleum designed by Scottish Architect Robert Adam for the First Earl of Shelburne at his estate, Bowood in Wiltshire, England. Like the Boch pavilion, it has a cruciform plan with a dome over the central space. To the rear, is a grassy slope leading to the burial vault below. The pediments of the four projecting wings rest against the walls of the attic story in a manner similar to those at the Württemberg Mausoleum. The only illumination of the interior comes through the skylight as the walls of the wings have blind arches. Not until the late 18 th Century, with the exploration of Greek ruins in Southern Italy and Sicily and later within

5 Greece itself, did the complex sculptural forms of Greek Classicism begin to appear in Western Europe. This coincided with the Enlightenment, the philosophical and intellectual movement which used Reason to promote the ideals of liberty, tolerance, democracy and the scientific method. The recently rediscovered forms of Greek Architecture displayed a rational and elemental logic that corresponded with the intellectual ideas of the Enlightenment. This scientific and analytical reëxamination gave birth to the Neo-classical Movement. Neo-classicism sought to establish a formal purity in response to the decadent excesses of the Baroque. In creating a language that expressed a Platonic Ideal of building, Neo-classicists hoped to make a rational connection back to pre-history to express the fundamentals of building. This approach with rational geometries and pure forms combined Greek and Roman motifs within new hybrid building forms. This Revolutionary period also gave rise to the American Republic. In a search for the appropriate architectural styles to represent the nascent democracy, early American architects, among them, Benjamin Latrobe, Robert Mills, William Strickland and Alexander Jackson Davis saw the austere architectural forms of ancient Greece as the perfect representation of emerging democratic ideals. Their buildings, 19 th Century adaptations of Athenian temples, were the sites of civic life as the republic spread westward to new towns it named Sparta, Athens, Corinth, Ithaca and Troy. Within New England, these new Grecian temples were often rendered in sturdy gray granite quarried most notably in Quincy, Massachusetts and Stonington, Maine. The Boch Garden Pavilion is a contemporary classical design reflecting many aspects of the Neoclassical movement of the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries. This domed granite temple sits at the end of a sunken lawn in the southwest corner of the estate. The building form can be thought of as a central square block with four arms projecting to the cardinal points of the compass. The dome sits over the central block. The cruciform plan of the building places the entry to the north side of the building; identical transept arms face East and West and the apse faces South. The standard building component of classical architecture is the Order. In the Greek tradition, the Order consists of a column and an entablature - the beams embellished with moldings that a column supports. In the Roman tradition the order also includes a pedestal beneath the column. The column and the entablature are each composed of three basic components. The column, typically includes a base, a shaft and capital. The Entablature from bottom to top is composed of an architrave, frieze, and cornice. The Greek Doric order is an exception though, by omitting the base its shaft sits directly upon the floor. The Order is a proportional system, subject to much variation throughout history and even during Antiquity, but general rules-of-thumb apply to the relative sizes of the components. Column shafts taper as they rise, the widest point being at about 1/3 its overall height. The diameter of the shaft at the top is 5/6 of its widest diameter. The overall height of the column is 5 ½ times as tall as it is wide, lending a squat muscular appearance to the order. Within the frieze, an alternating pattern of narrow fluted rectangular triglyphs and square metopes is an essential part of the Doric Order. Some theorize that the triglyphs symbolize the ends of beams supported by the architrave which spans between columns. This structural logic is supported by the fact that the columns are centered beneath a triglyph.

6 The entry porch of the Boch Garden Pavilion is a three-step crepidoma or stylobate upon which sit four 11-0 Greek Doric columns. The shafts were each turned from a single block of granite and are not fluted. The necking, a thin groove around the circumference of the shaft, separates the shaft from the capital above. The remnant above the shaft above the necking is fluted just beneath the echinus of the capital. The historic source of this combination of fluted and unfluted portions of the shaft is the Temple of Nemesis at Rhamnus. The shafts at Rhamnus were uncompleted, but their incomplete form inspired 19 th Century copies. The two outside columns are centered under the corner triglyphs. The inner two columns are set at the distance of two triglyphs from the outside columns. Therefore, the two central columns are spaced three triglyphs apart to mark the entry to the building, though above the entry, the triglyphs and metopes are omitted and replaced by a carved granite plaque bearing the Boch name. The order used in the Boch Garden Pavilion is based upon the Parthenon in Athens. The North façade is a true temple front, with free-standing columns supporting a pediment. The East and West façades do not project so far and have square piers called antae with bronze windows between them. Antae, (singular, anta) are considered not like a pilaster, or a column imbedded within a wall, but rather as an extrusion of the wall itself. Hence, their capitals are a simpler form than their corresponding column capitals. On the South façade, the entablature is broken and terminates around the large half-round Diocletian or Thermal window, so-called because its shape was found in the Baths, or Thermae, of Roman Emperor Diocletian. The walls of the central block are rusticated and support the Doric entablature omitting the triglyphs and heightening the muscular appearance of the building. The entry, through a pair of bronze doors set in a granite surround, leads to a vestibule. To the east and west are a closet and a small lavatory, ahead the granite doorway leading to the central Great Room. The jambs these doors in the vestibule are sloped inward in the common Grecian motif recalling the Bronze Age Treasury of Atreus, or Tomb of Agamemnon. The lintel is heavy to suggest the weight it supports, and its ends project into the wall beyond. The tapered opening commonly seen in Greek Architecture derives from from the early example at Atreus above which diminishes the length of the span of the lintel. The Great Room is square in plan with a pier in each corner. The great dome centered above, is suspended between flat pendentives marking the square room below. This plan concept of a dome suspended above a square plan on flat pendentives was influenced by Robert Adam s Bowood Mausoleum in Wiltshire, England.

7 Bowood Mausoleum Villa Karma The highly figured green marble columns are a subtle nod to early 20 th Century Austrian Architect, Adolf Loos Villa Karma. It was Loos who pronounced the Ornament is a crime as a rallying cry of the Modernist Movement. Yet his use of veined black marble Doric Columns seems to belie his claim. The brightly veined green marble columns of the Garden Pavilion make the statement that the beauty Classical Ornament survives the Modern era. The flamboyant polychromed floor was inspired by a floor installed by German Neo-classical Architect, Karl Friedrich Schinkel in the Casino of the Schloss Glienicke in Potsdam. The floor originally was installed in the villa of Queen Catherine Cornaro at Asolo, Italy. The scale of the original, is quite small, and the Garden Pavilion expands not just its size, but also connects it to the Greek Revival style with a radial mosaic of a Greek Key in Nero Marquina and Gialo Siena marble.

8 BOCH GARDEN PAVILION FACT SHEET Exterior Dimensions: Height of Dome Above Grade Interior Dimensions: Height of Dome Dome Diameter 35'-0" (E-W) x 41'-10" (N-S) 30'-0" 31'-0" (E-W) x 24'-0" (N-S) Great room and wings 26'-2" 18'-8" Overall Wall Thickness: Varies 1'-4" to 2'-1 1/2" Exterior Columns Interior Columns Greek Doric Order, unfluted, 2'-0" diameter X 11'-0" high, Column shaft is single turned piece of Cold Spring Charcoal Granite Greek Doric Order, fluted, 1'-10" diameter X 10'-6" high, Column is composed of 5 stacked segments of Verde Alpi Marble. MATERIALS Structure: Granite: Roof: Interior Columns: Floor: 8" reinforced concrete walls. 5" thick reinforced concrete dome Coldspring, Charcoal Gray Standing Seam and Flat Seam Copper Verde Alpi Marble Seven Species of Italian and Spanish Marbles: 1) Bianco Carrara Statuario 2) Fior De Pesco 3) Salome 4) Giallo Siena 5) Breccia Pernice 6) Rojo Alicante 7) Portoro Black & Gold

9 Dome: Windows: Exterior Doors: Interior Doors: Door Hardware: Laylight: Cast plaster segments by Foster Reeve & Associates Suspended from a structural concrete dome. Custom Bronze, with Roman Style Grilles fabricated by Tischler und Sohn Custom Bronze, fabricated by Tischler und Sohn, Bronze Door Surrounds by Weimann Metalcraft Mahogany and Crotch Mahogany Veneer Greek Revival Style Doors designed by architect, fabricated by South Shore Millwork Antique Bronze by Maison J. Vervloet-Faes Bronze, sunburst design, fabricated by Weimann Metalcraft. Architect: Landscape Architect: Interior Design: Builder: Masonry: 1) Merrimack Design Architects, Eric Inman Daum, Partner in Charge 2) Eric Inman Daum Architect, LLC Brian Frazier Design Anthony Catalfano Interiors Ken Vona Construction/KVC Kenneth Castellucci & Associates, Inc.