Column/ Piller Study

'a vast, rectangular hall – a giant chamber where stone columns rose up like a forest to support a roof sixty feet above her head, and the floor before her wasn’t stone, but water as cold and still as stone. Around the walls, pallid shafts of sunlight thrust down in counterpoint to the supporting columns, leaving discs of light on the water. These made the rim of the reservoir a complex study of light and shade, but the centre remained unknown, cloaked in heavy darkness.'

With this description in mind I searched for images on the internet for real life structures that to me matched the description above. For my Diaroma I couldent decide weather the Pillers be in a state of slow deteration or still seeminly brand new, due to magical properties.  For examples I have been looking more at underground reservoirs, however shall look into other column designs for inspiration.

 Above is an underground water reservoir in China, or imagine is some kind of storm-drain system. I love how giant the columns are compared to the worker. Very simple in structure, yet their size is still an amazing sight.

 Here are some pillers within a Russian building, I really like how sleek looking they are, with smooth black marble and gold plate furnishings. I dont imagine the ones in the book to have gold furnishings as imagine them as actually being carved out of the cave they are within.

With the one above I was thinking more about how the lighting within this underground reservoir would work. I felt it would be something quite like this but more of a mystical cool green and purple lights rather than orange, the light within the diaroma being emitted from the magical rocks which would hopefully create interesting sillouttes in Unreal.

The Ancient Egyptians have such a powerful sense of awe in their architecture, perhaps to represent the power of the Gods/ the Pharoh. Bigger is Better. Having been there myself I remeber being mesremised by this large grid of columns covered in hyroglypthics (falling apart and faded now). The size of these things makes the idea of it as place for gods to walk very believable. I cant remember ever seeing architecture like it, theres normally some part that gives away that it was built by humans, but a giant could of walked through there with ease.
The piller to the left I really liked it mosiac style, thought it would be an interesting but hard texture to make in substance.

THIS is the one! This one is so close to how I imagine the reservoir from the book. If the water was deeper, up to the waist and the pillers much more taller. When reading the book i didnte much consider the structure of the roof as it would have been mostly hidden in darkness, however this one seems very apropriate. I like the simple design but complicity of the roofs architecture.



To the left is the bottom of a column, I imagine was in greece as it shows the head of Medusa, but there was one of these on each column! I thought it would be really cool, time consuming and hard but cool to have something similar on mine. Perhaps heads of past kings and queens of the realm, covered and hidden by the depths of the reservoir but would be visable through my Diaroma.