Archikey.com contains a large database of buildings and pictures. From time to time I get the question what the exact difference is between searching for buildings and searching for pictures. I must admit that at first glance these concepts might seem rather similar. Therefore, in this blog post I will briefly explain the differences.
Multiple pictures
For starters, a single building can have multiple pictures, so if you would search Archikey.com for “Guggenheim” for buildings, you would get the two Guggenheim museums that are present in the database: the one in New York and the one in Bilbao, Spain. However, if you would search for pictures of “Guggenheim” you would get all 16 pictures of the two museums.
Multiple buildings
But on the other hand, a single picture can have multiple buildings too. For example this picture of Lower Manhattan from the Hudson river contains a total of 13 buildings. When browsing for pictures of New York this picture is only listed once, whereas if you would search for buildings in New York the picture is listed 13 times, successively zoomed in on the different buildings.
Picture Keys
But lastly, perhaps the most interesting distinction, between searching for buildings and searching for pictures, is the fact that pictures can have Keys assigned too. If you do not know what Keys are, I advise you to read this blog post first. On Archikey.com the information about buildings and pictures is specified using Keys, which are short textual or numerical snippets. To illustrate: Keys can be used for pictures to list the weather conditions or the time of day the pictures was taken, or describe whether the picture is of the interior of the exterior of a building. For example: when looking for pictures of churches around the world, one can list only the interior of churches [Including this magnificent interior of the Église Saint-Joseph du Havre in Le Havre, France designed by Auguste Perret]. Or one could only list church exteriors [Including this Light art installation on a church facade in that I highlighted in my previous blog post].
Of course a merry Christmas to all of you and an inspirational 2012! To conclude: remember that all the pictures on Archikey.com and the information about them are provided by the community, we hope that you will provide a helping hand too!
@aothms