Rotunda

Rotunda or The Rotunda may refer to:

Places

Czech Republic

Greece

Ireland

Moldova

Romania

Rotunda (Woolwich)

The Rotunda on Woolwich Common, in south-east London, is an artillery museum which was established in 1820. The building was originally a very large bell tent erected in St. James's Park in 1814 for a special exhibition and premature victory reception of the allied sovereigns in the Napoleonic Wars but its architect John Nash turned it into a permanent structure with a lead roof and central supporting pillar.

Since most of its exhibits were transferred to the Firepower museum at the Royal Arsenal in 2001, the Rotunda has ceased to be open to the public, except by special arrangement. The building is now used as a boxing ring by the King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery in nearby Napier Lines Barracks.

Obsolete sign near the entrance

Obsolete sign near the entrance

Rotunda and Napier Lines corral

Rotunda and Napier Lines corral

Tent-roof detail

Tent-roof detail

View from the east

View from the east

References

Coordinates: 51°29′03″N 0°03′11″E / 51.4842°N 0.0530°E / 51.4842; 0.0530

Rotunda (Birmingham)

The Rotunda is a cylindrical highrise building in Birmingham, England. The Grade II listed building is 81 metres (266 ft) tall and was completed in 1965. It was refurbished between 2004 and 2008 by Urban Splash with Glenn Howells who turned it into a residential building with serviced apartments on 19th and 20th floors. The building was officially reopened on 13 May 2008.

History

A part of the James A. Roberts design for the original Bull Ring Shopping Centre included a 12 storey circular office block. This was revised to 25 storeys, abandoning plans for a rooftop restaurant and a cinema. The design was approved and construction began on the 81 metre (265 ft) building in 1961. It was constructed with aid of a tower crane located to the side of the reinforced concrete central core. Due to its proximity to a railway tunnel, the main load was built on to a twin ring of piled foundations directly beneath the circular structural core. The floors are supported by the core and perimeter columns. When opened, the podium had shops and its own work of art, "The Rotunda Relief" at Lloyds banking hall, a circular mural designed by John Poole. The building construction was unique at the time, possibly due to the lack of construction space, and was mostly built at ground floor level then 'jacked up' one floor at a time. This allowed the plant room and boiler house, located on the top floor, to have their equipment installed at ground level, making access easier than having to crane the equipment once the building was complete. The supports for the hydraulic pumps used to jack up the building started to shift towards the New Street Station railway lines so the building's planned height was never completed.

Reality

Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. A still broader definition includes everything that has existed, exists, or will exist.

Philosophers, mathematicians, and other ancient and modern thinkers, such as Aristotle, Plato, Frege, Wittgenstein, and Russell, have made a distinction between thought corresponding to reality, coherent abstractions (thoughts of things that are imaginable but not real), and that which cannot even be rationally thought. By contrast existence is often restricted solely to that which has physical existence or has a direct basis in it in the way that thoughts do in the brain.

Reality is often contrasted with what is imaginary, delusional, (only) in the mind, dreams, what is false, what is fictional, or what is abstract. At the same time, what is abstract plays a role both in everyday life and in academic research. For instance, causality, virtue, life and distributive justice are abstract concepts that can be difficult to define, but they are only rarely equated with pure delusions. Both the existence and reality of abstractions are in dispute: one extreme position regards them as mere words; another position regards them as higher truths than less abstract concepts. This disagreement is the basis of the philosophical problem of universals.

Reality (Monk Montgomery album)

Reality is a 1974 album by jazz bassist Monk Montgomery, one of his four solo albums. It was released on Philadelphia International Records.

Track listing

Personnel

References

Reality (2014 film)

Reality (French: Réalité) is a 2014 French-Belgian comedy-drama film written and directed by Quentin Dupieux. The film premiered in the Horizons section at the 71st Venice International Film Festival on 28 August 2014.

Cast

References

External links