Week_04- Exercise with Piranesi

I have used this image by Piranesi, "The Drawbridge" as the main focus of the excercise for today

This was a very confusing one to do, with the many paths and the impossible structural/ architectural elements and different paths that I found when I was analysing this picture. It is very architecturally convincing, with very realising structures and representation of architectural elements in the space, but on closer analysis, there are very impossible and confusing additions and elements. 

Some problems in the drawing:

One of the main elements that confused me was the large column in the middle of the sketch. It seems to go through the second floor bridge, but if you look at the draw bridge, it seems to be right above the second floor bridge, so it would be reasoned that the column would also pass through this structure as well. 

This column also reaches the top, at the fourth floor, and the intersecting pathways is also depicted incorrectly and impossibly. The paths reach behind the arch and also in front of it, but it seems to be all on the same level, with makes this also impossible to do.

This is my section/ elevation:

Some corrections I made in the elevation is that:

1) the column is behind the bridge, not going through it

2) one of the 'impossible' pathways that meets at the top of the column, I have placed set back, on a higher floor than the fourth floor, to accommodate for the seemingly "impossible" structure that Piranesi has drawn.

These are the floor plans: I have placed them levels 4 down to 1 to make it easier to visualise the floors being on top of each other:

There is a door way that exists on the column that is lined on the second floor and to accommodate for this existence, I made a smaller path that joins the column to the second floor. You can see it in the second floor plan. I have also kept the spiral staircase that reaches up to the fourth floor, and was one the original sketch Piranesi did.

This excerise was very interesting, and it really had me analysing Prianesi's depiction of architectural space, and consideration of circulation and space represented in his drawings, but it is far from being real. The theory of intersecting, diverging and overlapping circulation within the sketches are very prominent, and a strong concept, but because Piranesi has no background as an architect, the techniques and the architectural realism escapes Piranesi's grasp.