User:IoneChandler/sandbox

Commission
The Church of Saint-Jean-Montmartre was commissioned by Montmartre priest Father Sobbeaux. The population of the town was growing and the only other abbey church, Saint-Pierre de Montmartre was too small. Saint-Pierre de Montmartre was located at the top hill of Montmartre, and could only serve those living up there. The new church was part of Fr. Sobbeaux's personal mission to evangelize the population of the lower part of the hill, and he was responsible for raising all the funds for construction.

Construction
Architect Anatole De Baudot was chosen to build the new church. Together he and engineer Paul Cottancin worked together to develop a new construction technique that would be strong, lightweight, and inexpensive to produce. Using reinforced concrete in his design allowed to Baudot to underbid his competitors and win the contract to build the church. Part of the decision to use reinforced concrete was the topography of the site where it was to be built, steeply sloping landscape on the side of the hill of Montmartre.

The reinforced concrete system used in Saint-Jean-de- Montmartre was perfected by Paul Cottancin in 1890. This system was known as ciment armé, in the book Studies in Tectonic Culture, Kenneth Frampton explains the system, "Cottancin's ciment armé employed wire-reinforced, perforated brickwork as the permanent framework of a cement armature, together with thin, lightweight cement shells... the wire reinforcement and cement infill were considered as acting independently, the former in tension the latter in compression." Other reinforced concrete patents at this time suffered fundamental weaknesses form the relationship between the concrete and metal reinforcement, the separation in Cottancin's system allowed him to avoid this, and gave him an advantage over all other reinforced concrete systems until the turn of the century.

The strength provided by the reinforced concrete allowed the church to have ribbed vaults. Previously, the heavy stone vaults had to be accompanied by thick walls that could handle the weight and thrust of the vault. New developments in building materials and construction techniques allowed walls to become thinner while still supporting vaulted ceilings.

Delays
Using reinforced concrete on Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre resulted in the church being quite ahead of its time and, and building codes had not caught up yet. Cottancin's system was so new and revolutionary, it was difficult for people to believe the structure would actually stand. Even other architects opposed the plan, and believed it would collapse. The church was built in ten years, the reason for it taking so long was because construction had to be stopped as a result of a lawsuit filed in 1898 due to " non-conformity of town planning". Next came an order for the demolition of the building. This resulted in the performance of innumerable tests to to ensure the structural integrity of the building. To save the church, Baudot and Sobbeaux set up technical demonstrations. They recreated the pillars and flagstone floor in the garden of the church to prove the strength and stability of the building. This demonstration reassured the skeptics and the order for the destruction of the church was lifted.

Style
Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre is the first religious building to be made from concrete, understandably there was some concern over the aesthetic qualities of the material. The red brick facade, is used for decoration as well as additional support an insulation. The exterior is also embellished with geometric designs made from multicolored sandstone pearls. Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre is in the architectural style art nouveau, one of the few Parisian churches in this style. The theme of the exterior and interior design is based off the writings of St. John- The fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse.

Article Selection
So far I have selected two articles that would be good potential candidates for my final article; Medieval Architecture, and Classical architecture.

Medieval Architecture:
This article had been rated a Start-Class, meaning that there is not a lot of information of there, and there is plenty of room for improvement. In addition, this article is part of two WikiProjects: WikiProject Architecture, and WikiProject Middle Ages. For both of these it has been rated Top-importance on the project's quality scale. Also Medieval Architecture has been listed as a level-5 vital article in arts.

This article appears to be quite important, yet there is much room for improvement. These two reasons make this article a good option for my final article.

Classical Architecture:
The second article I have selected is the Wikipedia article on Classical Architecture. This article has also been rated a Start-Class, so there will be plenty of opportunities for improving it. This article is also part of two WikiProjects: WikiProject Architecture, and WikiProject Classical Greece and Rome. In the Architecture WikiProject, this article has been rated Top-importance on the project's quality scale, and under the Classical Greece and Rome WikiProject, it has been rated High-importance. Finally, this article has also been listed as a level-5 vital article in arts. So any improvement is quite welcome.

For the same reasons as for the first article, this one would also be a good choice for editing.

Spanish Renaissance Architecture:
The third article I have selected as a possible final project topic is Spanish Renaissance Architecture. This article has been rated a Start-Class article, and it quite short on information. It is part of two WikiProjects, Spain and Architecture. It has not received a rating from the Spain WikiProject, but under the Architecture WikiProject, it has rating of High-importance. This article has also been listed as a level-5 vital article in arts. This article is very short, there is only one paragraph of information. I also did a google search and I found quite a few promising articles on this topic, so the length of the article is not due to lack of information.

I think this would be quite a good article to evaluate because it is so short. I also have a personal interest in this topic because I have traveled to Spain, and I really enjoyed my time there. I loved learning about the old architecture, and seeing the old churches and cathedrals.

Evaluating an Article
I will be evaluating the article on Mont-Saint-Michel.

Evaluating Content
Yes, everything in the article is relevant to the topic. The article covers a wide range of topics about Mont-Saint-Michel, everything from the geography and history of the island itself, to the economy and population today. I did not notice anything that distracted me while I read it. None of the information appears to be out of date, it all appears to be updated and relevant. In fact, the last update to the page was September 20, 2018. There does not appear to be anything missing from the article, it is quite well rounded and informative. Perhaps there could be a section on the architecture of the island. Some improvements that could be made include more information in the history part of the article. This is such a unique place, I would love to know more about how it came to be the way it is.

Evaluating Tone
The article is written in a neutral and professional tone. There is no evidence of bias in the writing. There are no areas of the writing that are over represented, but maybe a few that underrepresented. The sections on the administration on the island, and the section on the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem are a little small. Maybe there is not much more to write about the administration of the island, but I would imagine a great deal more could be written about the monastic fraternities and the religious history of the island.

Evaluating Sources
All the links I checked did work, and each source linked supported the claims. Each fact is referenced with an appropriate reliable reference. None of these references are biased, they are very factual and informative. The information comes from official French government websites, with statistics and facts on the population and economy. Other information comes from official Mont- Saint-Michel websites, with information on its history. All of these sources are neutral and purely factual. Again, there does not appear to be any bias.

Checking the Talk Page
The conversations that are going on in the talk page include, conversations about adding and removing facts, formatting issues of text and pictures, and conversations about the content itself. Some of those conversations are on adding more about the people who live there, adding more about the monastic order of the abbey, and on adding information about the surrounding bay and geological features of the island. The article has been rated as a B-class article. The article is part of WikiProjects on France, Normandy, Historic Sites, Architecture, World Heritage Sites, Christianity, and Catholicism. For all of these but the WikiProjects for world heritage sites and architecture, it had been rated B-class. For the other two it has been rated C-class. The way Wikipedia talks about the topic is different from the way we talked about it in class is different because in class we just focused on the architecture of Mont-Saint-Michel. This article covers a large variety of topic relating to this subject.