La Grand Vitesse and Taj Mahal, Essay Example

Mathematical calculations have enabled creative minds to make tremendous monuments come true. Design and meticulous calculations have allowed great monuments and sculpture to be erected into the wonders they are appraised for today. Architects have always been able to ingeniously use the universal language of numbers to their advantage in order to make their views a reality for everyone to see and be amazed. Two architectural marvels that have come to life and can greatly be appraised today are La Grand Vitesse by Alexander Calder and the Taj Mahal designed by the architect Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. These two individuals had a great view in their minds of what they wanted to create and nothing was able to stop them from accomplishing their goals. In analyzing these two grandeurs of art we shall place special attention into the individual materials, tools, and processes that were used in these two in order to make these two marvels a reality.

The artist Alexander Calder built La Grand Vitesse in 1969 in Grand Rapids, Michigan where it is still standing today. The materials that he used to create this sculpture were steel and bright red paint. When the parts of La Grand Vitesse arrived to the place where it would be built they had been pre-fabricated and therefore only needed to be assembled together like a puzzle. The tools that were used to make this sculpture were: heavy-duty machinery, cradles, soldering irons, and most probably wall brushed. The processes that were used to make this sculpture were soldering and applying different coats of bright red paint using the brushes. The medium for this sculpture as aforementioned in the materials is steel with bright red paint with dimensions 43 feet tall, 54 feet long, and 30 feet wide. The visual qualities that are characteristic of the medium are those of using the bright red paint to resemble the city’s colors and create this abstract piece that has a lot of life to it. The use of bright red paint relates to its meaning because it was made using the city’s color and to show art to that place.

As one of the most transcendental building still standing, the Taj Mahal receives millions upon millions of visitors every single year. The materials used to construct this building were: constructive brick lining of white marble slabs, bricks, lapis lazuli, coral, amber and jade, inlaids in black stone, precious stones from all over the world, red sandstone, and forty-three different kinds of gems. The tools that were used include: elephants for material transportation, a workforce of over 20,000 men, wimble and bit, hatchets, handsaws, planes, mallets, hammers, gauges, rulers, chisels, carving tools, tenon saws, and winding sticks. The processes used in the creation of this building include: deep wells, the use of ramps, bullock carts with wagons for movement too, pulley systems, mechanical bucket systems, and lots of carving. The Taj Mahal is considered one of the most beautiful buildings standing today. The visual quality that is most characteristic of the medium is the white color in the outside and the techniques employed that make this building such a tremendous architectonic achievement. The white beauty employed by the materials is especially relevant to the inspiration of this building which was the death of the wife.

Works Cited

“Initial Public Art Project Becomes a Landmark | NEA.” Home | NEA. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.

Welcome To Official WebSite of Taj Mahal-U.P.Tourism. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2015.