ICE CAP SPILL

LEFT: Ice Cap Spill: the fountainhead of the Lost Alphabet Wash.
RIGHT TOP CENTER: Camel Pavilion (aka Camel Kiosk).
FAR RIGHT: Part of the House of ACCentaury tries to pop over the trees.

     Over the past week, big remodeling changes have come to Caravan Terminus. The West and Central Asian styles are giving way to a more indigenous ACC Alpha palette. They are heavily swayed by both modern and South East Asian influences. Following are some of the changes:

1. Modern cap covers the main dome of the Camel Kiosk. It’s silhouette is influenced by South East Asian stupas. When my friend Lilia Artis saw my original stupa, she said it looked too heavy for the Kiosk, and suggested a very modern set of transparent rectangular tiers. I compromised, and threw in areas of stone along with a few circular modern tiers, then combined them into the silhouette of my intended stupa. The original dome of the Kiosk is still in place… nothing was removed from the build, only added to.

2. The main Gate to Caravan Terminus, which lead to Maze Gardens, and had the best views of the garden, has now been removed. This made me unhappy indeed. That large Gate with the comfortably furnished lookout, was one of my favorite buildings. But I felt the move was necessary. The Gate was erected with the intention of drawing visitors’ attention to the end of the reflecting pond, and seeing that beyond it were the gardens. But in fact, it had the opposite effect. Caravan Terminus looked like a closed off square, and few people realized that there was more city beyond.

3. The arcade named “Caravan Tent Theater” gets a new roof too… and quite a large one. The theater was built to house my idea of shadow puppet performances, yet I never had time to build a show. The building simply served as a corridor. Taking the Trevi fountain in Rome as a model, I had decided a long time ago to flood the arcade’s façade, turning it into a wall of water which then flowed into the ancient reflecting pond. The sculpture formed the Lost Alphabet Wash (see earlier blog entry). Now, with the new rooftop and ACC Alpha’s increasing environmental themes, I have renamed the theater to ICE CAP SPILL. Though the gushing façade is the same from its earlier history, its providence falls into a more obvious story: the melting of our polar ice caps. I removed a good number of the statues that stood before the wall of water, but kept enough of them to convey the drama of the coming floods. In addition, the force of the flood is increased as it appears to have washed away two little margin gardens that used to frame the Wash. Aerially the spill has increased in size.

LEADING UP TO CARAVAN TERMINUS

CARAVAN GATE. The cliff-like walls constitute a gateway in effect.
They are an extention of the older walls of the Topiary Fortress.
I decided to photoshop the lighting in this image to darken the shadows.
However, the basic play of light is very similar inworld by virtue of
the sim's windlight settings.

NOTE: The luminous building in the distance is the Camel Kiosk. 

Replacing the old Gate that once stood above the ancient stone steps [from Maze Gardens' earliest days in 2010], the simplified but massive Caravan Gate now stands. Low prim, cliff-like walls, with an added balcony offer visitors a relaxing place to sit while viewing the gardens from a bird's eye perspective.

XXX