Architecture
The most famous spaces in the house are those at the rear of the Museum - the Dome Area, Colonnade and Museum Corridor. These are mostly toplit and provide some idea in miniature form of the ingenious lighting contrived by Soane for the toplit banking halls at the Bank of England. The ingeniously designed Picture Gallery has walls composed of large 'moveable planes' (like large cupboard doors)that allow it to house three times as many items as a space of this size could normally accommodate (the original hang in this room was reinstated in January 2011). When visiting, it is necessary to request the planes to be opened and wait for a group to gather before this is done.
The more domestic rooms of No. 13 are at the front of the house, many of them highly unusual, but often in subtle ways. The domed ceiling of the Breakfast Room, inset with convex mirrors, has influenced architects from around the world. The Library-Dining Room reflects the influence of Etruscan tombs and perhaps even gothic design in its repertoire of small pendants like those in fan vaulting. It is decorated in a rich 'Pompeian' red. The Study contains a collection of Roman architectural fragments and the two external courtyards, the Monument Court and Monk's Yard contain an array of architectural fragments, Classical in the Monument Court with its central column or 'pasticcio' representing Architecture and Gothic in the Monk's Yard, filled with medieval stonework from the Palace of Westminster.
Read more about this topic: Sir John Soane's Museum
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“Polarized light showed the secret architecture of bodies; and when the second-sight of the mind is opened, now one color or form or gesture, and now another, has a pungency, as if a more interior ray had been emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in the frame of things.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)