Blades didn't serve the Empire... they serve the emperor right? Thath's a huge difference...... anyway
There isn't much "lore fact" given for the Blades by Bethesda, but from what I have pieced together the Blades have greater purpose than simply being the Emperor's lap dogs. Their order has existed for hundreds of years through some of the Empire's greatest turmoils. They served when there was no emperor to serve and so that is why I say Empire. When there is no Emperor, such is the case in RST where there is no Emperor after the Oblivion crisis, the Blades continue to do their work for the good of the Empire and beyond the control of the Senate. There is no guarantee that the Blades would serve the next Emperor blindly either, if that Emperor were corrupt say, I believe the Blades would possibly even work against that person to maintain the Empire.
There is some kind of Imperial architecture.. Medieval... It comes back almost everywhere (except the IC but that city is more or less Ayleid) All the fort ruins, Major City Castles and all the city walls are all medieval-like... Although it's in Oblivion hard to seperate Imperial from foreign (like Bruma and Cheydinhall) you can see the Imperial architecture very clear in Morrowind from villages like Pelagiad and Seyda Neen.... I doubt that these architectures are Ayleid or Akavir like...
I think you misunderstood me a bit. I'm saying that, in my opinion, there isn't such a thing as purely "Blades" architecture or even purely "Imperial" because in the game world there are a lot of different influences from many different cultures being represented; not limited to Ayleid or Akaviri or even just fantasy cultures, those were just the examples I gave. In general, architecture in any world is seldom purely influenced by a single culture unless that culture is isolated to some degree from other influences. That's just my opinion though, everyone is entitled to theirs. :read:
Reality is, this is just a game folks. It's taken me a year, working often 60+ hours a week (for free) in the CS to complete construction on RST's 150+ interiors using what is available to me among the vanilla materials in a new and interesting way. Would I have liked to see more of an Akaviri style to some of the interiors? Sure, of course, but I don't wager anyone wants to wait another year for me to learn how to model and redesign the whole mod eh? Unfortunately, I'm not working with a wand here, there are limitations on what I can do, so if it looks too Imperial to some, I'm sorry, I did the best I could with what I had available to me. :shrug: