First I listed the main Gods and Goddesses in the Greek Religion, along with their attributes and what they were 'God of'. From this I then thought of adaptations to the temples which I could make according to their attributes, for example for Demeter, who is the Goddess fertility, agriculture, nature and the seasons, I thought about incorporating more nature and plants in the temple, like grass on the roof or ivy growing up the columns. Using this list I chose six ideas which I thought were the best and kept to the guidelines I created on what a Greek temple was.
I think that this was a good way to structure my ideas because I was not just thinking of things to do to the temple but actually focused more on the function and what people would be praying for, or using the temple for. Although I did find it hard to think of ideas that were related to the architecture and not just interiour design. In addition any changes I make to the architecture has to be without changing too much. I was unsure where the line was between too much change and not enough. One of the big challenges was if I were to add windows, would that then compromise the temple in the respect that you are not allowed to see the Cella/naos (inner chamber) from the outside.
I then drew some sketches of the six ideas and showed them to some people I knew who had taken classics at GCSE or A-level. With their help I chose one of the designs which we thought was the most promising, the Apollo design shown on the left and some of the other designs above. From this I created a more detailed design of this idea with some changes my friends and I agreed upon. I found that going to other people was helpful as they could be objective about the designs and that if one was not so in keeping with what a classical Greek temple was they would say so. In addition they offered criticism which I otherwise would not have gotten. The final design is shown below. |