Karl Friedrich Schinkel called his designs for apalace on the Acropolis in Athens and for
OriandaCastle in the Crimea a 'beautiful dream'.They date from 1834 and 1838 and were
Schinkel'slast major projects in which he presentedhis ideal of architecture in brilliant
drawings andwatercolours as if in a last will and testament.Both the formal language of
neo-Classical architectureand the quality of presentation arebrought to a level here that can
scarcely be surpassed.It is clear how highly Schinkel himselfesteemed these two unrealized
designs from thefact that he had them printed as coloured lithographsin his publication Werke
der höheren Baukunstfür die Ausführung erfunden (Potsdam 1840to 1842).These lithographs are
reprinted in a large format complemented by the no less spectacularlithographs of the two Pliny
villas Tusculum andLaurentinum. These works which represent ahighpoint in the long story of
the reconstructionof the two villas that have come down to us onlyin literature also show
Schinkel's impressiveability to demonstrate and convey his architecturalideas. He is profoundly
concerned both in thereconstructions of the Pliny villas and in the designsfor the royal
palace on the Acropolis andOrianda Castle to be archaeologically precise andto fulfil
prescribed building programmes but alsoto plumb the possibilities of architecture beyondmere
utility. For the Acropolis palace project hehad his eye mainly on the way in which the
newbuilding would interact with the surviving remainsof the Propylaea and the Parthenon. In the
Oriandaproject it is a glazed observation pavilionin the form of a temple that expresses
architecture'sperception of itself more clearly than perhapsever before.Klaus Jan Philipp
studied art history archaeology and history in Marburg and Berlin. He gainedhis doctorate with
a thesis on medieval architecturein southwest Germany. From 1988 to 1990he worked as a
free-lance at the Deutsches Architekturmuseumin Frankfurt am Main wherehe organized the
exhibition 'Revolutionsarchitektur.Ein Aspekt der europäischen Architekturum 1800'. Philipp is
professor of architecturalhistory at Stuttgart University. He presented hisresearch on
neo-Classical architecture in 1997in the post-doctoral thesis Um 1800: Architekturtheorieund
Architekturkritik in Deutschland zwischen1790 und 1810.
