Victoria's Lost Pavilion: Recreating the Arts in Digital Space
Built for Queen Victoria in Buckingham Palace gardens in 1842, the pavilion housed a set of fascinating experiments in British art and architecture until its demolition in 1928.
by Paul Fyfe, Antony Harrison, David Hill, Christopher Isley, Sharon Joffe, Andrew McCall, Keon Pettiway, Sharon Setzer, Vamsi Vikash, Lauren Woodard, and Markus Wust
Published onMar 02, 2022
Victoria's Lost Pavilion: Recreating the Arts in Digital Space
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Distant photograph of the pavilion from the pond.
Description
This project introduces a digital model In the 1840s, a tiny building in Buckingham Palace Gardens was appointed the test site for far-reaching experiments in British art. Decorated with frescos and encaustics by some of the era's most prominent painters, including scenes from Milton's Comus, the pavilion became the center of a national conversation about British art, the capacity of its artists, and Royal and public taste. This project offers a 3D digital model of the pavilion, which restores the pavilion to virtual life and explores the pavilion’s significance for Victorian aesthetics and culture.
Additionally, the introduction of this model allows for the exploration of the significance of this now-lost structure for understanding experiments in 19th-century British art and architecture. The accompanying book explains the pavilion’s history, contents, and controversies, and how it has been digitally remediated.
Pavilion fly around
Section overlay drawings produced in AutoCad. These scaled digital drawings are derived from Ludwig Gruner’s The Decorations of the Garden-Pavilion in the Grounds of the Buckingham Palace Plate 2: Sections of the Lines a-b and c-d of the Plan.
Scaled digital plan drawing based on Ludwig Gruner’s The Decorations of the Garden-Pavilion in the Grounds of the Buckingham Palace Plate 1: Plan of the Pavilion.
Preliminary view of the three-dimensional digital model in SketchUp. The construction is based on orthographic projections of the plan and section drawings.
"Clay model" showing additional architectural details, light, shadow, and preliminary test of integrating the pavilion in the garden context. Rendered with the Kerkythea engine.
Sketches produced by the modeling team that are derived from Edward Blore’s schematic drawings for the pavilion.
Perspective view of digital model showing the terrace, primary entrance, and architectural details.
Aerial view of digital pavilion model with terrace in foreground.
Cutaway view of the model in SketchUp. Shown here is the Octagon room and the back kitchen.
The cutaway illustration of the Octagon room from Gruner’s Decorations. Textures were extracted from the visual content of images like this one.
Cutaway perspective view of the Octagon Room with color lunettes applied (mapped) to the model surface.
Digital model rendered to show architectural detail, material qualities, and textures.
Project Creator or Project Team Name
Paul Fyfe, Antony Harrison, David Hill, Christopher Isley, Sharon Joffe, Andrew McCall, Keon Pettiway, Sharon Setzer, Vamsi Vikash, Lauren Woodard, and Markus Wust.
The pavilion project was an interdisciplinary collaboration among faculty, students, and staff from English, Architecture, Design, and the libraries at NC State University.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)
