Saturday, 5 April 2014

ALI QAPU

 

 

ĀLĪ QĀPŪ, from the Ottoman Turkish Âli Qapi or Sublime Porte, a metonym for the central Ottoman government in Istanbul

Isfahan, Esfahan province, Iran

Circa 1610

Photographer: Robert Byron

Courtauld Gallery

 

Originally a Sublime Porte it was transfigured into a six storey palace, each level having its own spiral staircase. On the sixth storey is the Music Chamber, a vast massively intricate alveolate ceiling, a surface of Muqarnas - an acoustic chamber. A complex and unique Helmholtz Resonator. A peculiarity of the Music Chamber is that the musicians play six storeys below on the ground floor, the sound being projected through hollow columns in the walls to the sixth floor and circulated around the Music Chamber via the carved surfaces.

Aali Qapu Palace

360° zoom view

3D acoustic modelling of the chamber

Mocárabe

 

 

FRIDAY MOSQUE

Vault

Isfahan, Esfahan province, Iran

Photographer: Robert Byron

Courtauld Gallery

 

 

BAZAAR

Shiraz, Fars (Persepolis), Iran

Photographer: Robert Byron

Courtauld Gallery

Cornelis de Bruijn - drawings of Persepolis

 

4 photographs from the 708 by Robert Byron amongst 26,311 photographs in the architecture section of the 196,981 photographs in the extraordinary Courtauld Institute online A&A art & architecture archive