Changgyeong Palace (Ch’anggyŏnggung)1 first opened its doors to general public in November 1909. What was once the royal grounds of the emperor Sunjong had undergone a renovation by Hirobumi Ito the first Japanese Resident-General in Korea – replacing and altering existing traditional architectures and landscape to build a new botanical garden, a zoo and a […]
The remnants left behind in Anomabo, a town on the coast of Ghana (figure 1), tell a story in the late 19th century of the elite members of the Gold Coast colony, known today as Ghana. They were constructing their own elegant mansions utilizing an popular British architecture styles1 that not only embraced the modernity […]
The Potala Palace is a magnificent structure built in Lhasa, China, and was finished and opened in 1649, where it served as the home to the Dalai Lamas. Unexpectedly, the palace holds a dark history of power struggles with China as conflicts arose that deemed the Tibet government a culprit to abolish the government. Though […]
Constructed in a traditional neoclassical architectural style, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the largest art museum in the United States. The permanent collection consists of works of art and artifacts from ancient Egypt, European masters collections, and an extensive collection of American and modern art. It also maintains holdings of African, Asian, oceanian, byzantine, […]
In 1773, the Raj began once the Crown appointed the first official governor-general of India to oversee the operations of the private British East India Company (BEIC); this was the British effort to bring the Enlightenment to India with their primary focus being on Calcutta, a city now known as Kolkata.1 Initially, Calcutta was a […]
British Concession The Former British Consulate-General Building in Shanghai, China is an example of colonial architecture that represented the Empire’s control over the city during Concession. As one of the first developed foreign buildings, it laid the foundation for other international investments and values, bringing their own architectural expressions along the Bund.1 The Opium […]
The Fall of the Tokugawa Era and the Rise of Imperial Japan The tail-end of 19th century Japan saw a major transition of authoritative power that sparked a new era of rule throughout the nation. In 1868, Emperor Mutsuhito, later known by his reign name Meiji, and his Imperial forces recognized the fragile rule of […]
The Garden of Perfect Brightness Much like the collections of colonial trophies in the Crystal Palace in London or the grounds of Versailles, the Yuanmingyuan in Beijing was a complex which housed an array of foreign objects, artwork, pleasure gardens and architecture expressing the Qianlong emperor’s political power.¹ The resulting collection of foreign treasures were […]