Saturday 14 February 2009

Butterfly Tent: Arab Culture Paves the Way



3 comments:

shaw said...

“Butterfly tents were important as they are the first recorded instance of automatic air conditioning.”
this sounds very interesting to me, i don't really find any image of the origin butterfly tent, but considering this function, it relate to a passive cooling system, which is very architectural term, and this we have something equivalent in the history, "hua gai" hua kai, canopy, marquee or baldachin, i don't know which is the right one i refer to.
It's what shade the emperor when he walk out in the sun. A mobile pavillion.

HCE said...

Brilliant! I agree, this is marvelous and fascinating. I'm thinking about a portable 'Tent Camera'. The first 'camera obscuras' were said to have been used by nomadic Arabic tribes. Apparently someone (over a thousand years ago) noticed that a small accidental hole in the tent enabled an image to appear on the opposite inner wall... That Arab culture does it again.

'Baldachin'... this new word had me reaching for my dictionary. ... a canopy over a throne, pulpit, alter... Wow! This Italian then French word has its root in the city of Baghdad... which through your referencing of it makes me in turn think of The Silk Road! Wonderful.

Sean

shaw said...

You're right, the silk road was not only a silk road, the interests point is my reference of "baldachin" that reminds you the cultural exchanges on the silk road. I went along the beginning part of it in China, nowadays, Gansu province. If we pull the civilization back before the ocean one, then the only way the bridge the far west and the far east, is the SILK ROAD. It's the most ancient route buried under the deserts or winds up on the Gobi, The history, jokingly, play us both geologically and linguistically.
Hua Gai, canopy over an imperial carriage. To my big surprising, when i deep digging its root, and find a plant, a mushroom behind, which has a huge influences upon China's traditional architecture also, which i never realized before.
I will continue it in a new blog, Lingzhi.