Architectural history
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Architectural history studies the evolution and history of architecture across the world through a consideration of various influences- artistic, cultural, political, economic and technological. In general, the question is one of relating meaning (intangible functions, purposes, symbols) with the built environment (material tables, windows, roofs, paths) through the necessities of life (food, work, communion etc.) within the historical context. Architectural history, like any other form of historical knowledge, is subject to the limitations and potentialities of history as a discipline. Consequently there have been a wide range of perspectives in the study of architecture, most of them Western.
In the 19th century, architecture was understood as formal perspective, emphasizing the morphological characteristics of form, technique and materials. This period also saw the emergence of the individual architect, the amalgamation of whose conscious intentions would become the subject of artistic movements. In these respects, architectural history is a subdiscipline of art history that focuses on the historical evolution of principles and styles in the design of buildings and cities.
Under the pressures of post-modern pluralism, recent theorists have tried to open architecture to a wide variety of new interpretations. New linguistic theories were popular in the mid-1990s and attempted to "read" architectural elements as an autonomous language, contributing to the ongoing Critical Theory project. The work of Hermeneutics constitutes another perspective on architectural history, and centres on the situational nature of architecture as understood phenomenologically. Although both approaches identify architecture as a sort of language, they differ on the terms of reference; Critical Theory is largely self-referential, whilst Hermeneutics is contextual.
The current climate of opportunism can be seen as a reaction to both the metaphysics of the previous theories, as well as the advance into supermodernity manifest in globalisation, late capitalism and neo-liberal democracy. An increasing awareness of colonialism's influence has also encouraged a re-examination of architecture in previously colonised countries and seeks to liberate its history and practice from inappropriate Western doctrines.
The establishment of architectural history as a discipline in the West is reflected in the greater historical clarity of western architectural development, whilst the understanding of non-western architecture often proceeds with less historical context. Matters are further complicated by incidences of Western colonialism. Postmodern historical narratives attempt to address such issues but the scope of the subject matter denies consensus among historians, even individual historians have changed approaches across time — the changing frameworks traced across the many editions of Sir Banister Fletcher's popular book is a case in point. But in general, it can be said that Architectural history reflects the historical development of its time.
[edit] Architecture timeline (dated events)
To find important architectural event(s) for any year in history, use the "search" box to enter: "#### in architecture", where #### is a year or decade, for example:
- 1700 in architecture (18th century to present, by year)
- 1690s in architecture (17th century and earlier, by decade)
- 23 BC in architecture ("BC" in capital letters)
[edit] Prehistoric architecture
[edit] Ancient architecture
At the beginning, humanity was confronted with a world thoroughly alive with gods, demons and spirits, a world that knew nothing of scientific objectivism. The ways in which the people came to terms with their immediate environment were thus grounded in the omnipotence of Gods. Many aspects of daily life were carried out with respect to the idea of the divine or supernatural and the way it was manifest in the mortal cycles of generations, years, seasons, days and nights. Harvests for example were seen as the benevolence of fertility deities. Thus, the founding and ordering of the city and her most important buildings (the palace or temple) were often executed by priests or even the ruler himself and the construction was accompanied by rituals intended to enter human activity into continued divine benediction. Ancient architecture is characterised by this tension between the divine and mortal world. Cities would mark a contained sacred space over the wilderness of nature outside, and the temple or palace continued this order by acting as a house for the Gods. The architect, be he priest or king, was not the sole important figure; he was merely part of a continuing tradition.
- Ancient Egyptian architecture
- Assyrian architecture
- Babylonian architecture
- Etruscan architecture
- Inca architecture
- Minoan architecture
- Maya architecture
- Mycenaean architecture
- Persian architecture
- Sumerian architecture
[edit] African Architecture
Early African architecture consisted of the achievements of the Ancient Egyptians. Great Zimbabwe is the largest mediaeval city in sub-Saharan Africa. By the late nineteenth century, most buildings reflected the fashionable European eclecticism and pastisched Mediterreanean, or even Northern European, styles.
[edit] Chinese Architecture
The most important is the Chinese architectural emphasis on the horizontal axis, in particular the construction of a heavy platform and a large roof that floats over this base, with the vertical walls not as well emphasized. This contrasts Western architecture, which tends to grow in height and depth. Chinese architecture stresses the visual impact of the width of the buildings.
There were certain architectural features that were reserved solely for buildings built for the Emperor of China. One example is the use of yellow roof tiles; yellow having been the Imperial color, yellow roof tiles still adorn most of the buildings within the Forbidden City. The Temple of Heaven, however, uses blue roof tiles to symbolize the sky. The roofs are almost invariably supported by brackets, a feature shared only with the largest of religious buildings. The wooden columns of the buildings, as well as the surface of the walls, tend to be red in colour.
Current chineese architecture follows post-modern and western styles.
[edit] Indian Architecture
Indian architecture encompasses a wide variety of geographically and historically spread structures, and was transformed by the history of the Indian subcontinent. The result is an evolving range of architectural production that, although it is difficult to identify a single representative style, none the less retains a certain amount of continuity across history. The diversity of Indian culture is represented in its architecture. It is a blend of ancient and varied native traditions, with building types, forms and technologies from West and Central Asia, as well as Europe.
Architectural styles range from Hindu temple architecture to Islamic architecture to western classical architecture to modern and post-modern architecture.
The temples of Aihole and Pattadakal are the earliest known examples of Hindu temples, also known as mandirs in today's Hindi. The Church of St. Anne which is cast in the Indian Baroque Architectural style under the expert orientation of the most eminent architects of the time. It is a prime example of the blending of traditional Indian styles with western Europian architectural styles.
[edit] Islamic Architecture
Islamic architecture has encompassed a wide range of both secular and religious architecture styles from the foundation of Islam to the present day, influencing the design and construction of buildings and structures within the sphere of Islamic culture.
The principle architectural types of Islamic architecture are; the Mosque, the Tomb, the Palace and the Fort.
Some of the major types of Islamic Archiceture are Persian architecture, Moorish architecture Timurid architecture, Ottoman architecture, Fatimid architecture, Mamluks architecture, Mughal architecture, Sino-Islamic architecture, and Afro-Islamic architecture.
Many forms of Islamic architecture have evolved in different regions of the Islamic world. Notable Islamic architectural types include the early Abbasid buildings, T-type mosques, and the central-dome mosques of Anatolia. The oil-wealth of the 20th century drove a great deal of mosque construction using designs from leading non-Muslim modern architects and promoting the careers of important contemporary Muslim architects.
[edit] Japanese Architecture
Japanese architecture has as long a history as any other aspect of Japanese culture. Influenced heavily by Chinese architecture, it also shows a number of important differences and aspects which are uniquely Japanese.
Two new forms of architecture were developed in response to the militaristic climate of the times: the castle, a defensive structure built to house a feudal lord and his soldiers in times of trouble; and the shoin, a reception hall and private study area designed to reflect the relationships of lord and vassal within a feudal society.
Because of the need to rebuild Japan after World War II, Major japaneese cities contain numerous examples of modern architecture. Japan played some role in modern skyscraper design, because of its long familiarity with the cantilever principle to support the weight of heavy tiled temple roofs. New city planning ideas based on the principle of layering or cocooning around an inner space (oku), a Japanese spatial concept that was adapted to urban needs, were adapted during reconstruction. Modernism became increasingly popular in architecture in Japan starting in the 1970's.
[edit] South American Architecture
[edit] Pre-Columbian
[edit] Post-Columbian
[edit] Western Architecture — Classical to Eclecticism
[edit] Classical architecture
The architecture and urbanism of the Greeks and Romans were very different from those of the Egyptians or Persians in that civic life gained importance. During the time of the ancients, religious matters were the preserve of the ruling order alone; by the time of the Greeks, religious mystery had skipped the confines of the temple-palace compounds and was the subject of the people or polis. Greek civic life was sustained by new, open spaces called the agora which were surrounded by public buildings, stores and temples. The agora embodied the new found respect for social justice received through open debate rather than imperial mandate. Though divine wisdom still presided over human affairs, the living rituals of ancient civilizations had become inscribed in space, in the paths that wound towards the acropolis for example. Each place had its own nature, set within a world refracted through myth, thus temples were sited atop mountains all the better to touch the heavens
The Romans conquered the Greek cities in Italy around three hundred years before Christ and much of the Western world after that. The Roman problem of rulership involved the unity of disparity — from Spanish to Greek, Macedonian to Carthaginian — Roman rule had extended itself across the breadth of the known world and the myriad pacified cultures forming this ecumene presented a new challenge for justice. One way to look at the unity of Roman architecture is through a new-found realisation of theory derived from practice, and embodied spatially. Civically we find this happening in the Roman forum (sibling of the Greek agora), where public participation is increasingly removed from the concrete performance of rituals and represented in the decor of the architecture. Thus we finally see the beginnings of the contemporary public square in the Forum Iulium, begun by Julius Caesar, where the buildings present themselves through their facades as representations within the space. As the Romans chose representations of sanctity over actual sacred spaces to participate in society, so the communicative nature of space was opened to human manipulation. None of which would have been possible without the advances of Roman engineering and construction or the newly found marble quarries which were the spoils of war; inventions like the arch and concrete gave a whole new form to Roman architecture, fluidly enclosing space in taut domes and colonnades, clothing the grounds for imperial rulership and civic order.
This was also a response to the changing social climate which demanded new buildings of increasing complexity — the coliseum, the residential block, bigger hospitals and academies. General civil construction such as roads and bridges began to be built.
[edit] Medieval architecture
The liberation of representation from reality advanced the cause of Roman cohesion. We left the Romans in the Forum Illium, where we saw the beginnings of general space, free, to an extent, of the spiritual and religious values that made up the space of all previous civilisations. The ramifications of this can be seen in the speculative architectures of Nero and Hadrian where architecture represents increasingly abstract concepts of time, history and rulership. But it was Christianity that first established a universal concept over the Roman world — a single God as exclusive source — thus supplanting concrete imperial duty with intangible faith. The conscious power over representation was allied with a new faith in a universal God borne out in architectures structured towards light, as a representation of divinity, through geometry.
- Byzantine architecture
- Sassanid architecture
- Romanesque architecture
- Gothic architecture
- Tudor and Jacobean architecture
[edit] Renaissance architecture
The Renaissance often refers to the Italian Renaissance that began in the 15th century, but recent research has revealed the existence of similar movements around Europe before the 15th century; consequently, the term "Early Modern" has gained popularity in describing this cultural movement. This period of cultural rebirth is often credited with the restoration of scholarship in the Classical Antiquities and the absorption of new scientific and philosophical knowledge that fed the arts.
The development from Medieval architecture concerned the way geometry mediated between the intangibility of light and the tangibility of the material as a way of relating divine creation to mortal existence. This relationship was changed in some measure by the invention of Perspective which brought a sense of infinity into the realm of human comprehension through the new representations of the horizon, evidenced in the expanses of space opened up in Renaissance painting, and helped shape new humanist thought.
Perspective represented a new understanding of space as a universal, a priori fact, understood and controllable through human reason. Renaissance buildings therefore show a different sense of conceptual clarity, where spaces were designed to be understood in their entirety from a specific fixed viewpoint. The power of Perspective to universally represent reality was not limited to describing experiences, but also allowed it to anticipate experience itself by projecting the image back into reality.
Donato Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere project is one such instance where spaces were pictured/designed together before being built. Such a space was only possible due to the powers of abstraction, offered by perspective, that allowed the composition of heterogeneous activities into a metaphor for the legitimacy of current rule. The commission was set by Pope Julius II to connect an ancient pontifical palace on the right of St Peter's with the palace, built by Pollaiolo for Innocent VIII. In doing so Bramante organised the ascent through three courts that sees the lower, theatrical level move into the upper level through increasingly planned gardens thereby creating a tension between the human realm and an idealised vision of the "ideal city", Jerusalum, this is explicitly shown in Bramante's depiction of the ascent from the perspective of Pope Julius's bedroom window.
The Renaissance spread to France in the late 15th century, when Charles VIII returned in 1496 with several Italian artists from his conquest of Naples. Renaissance chateaux were built in the Loire Valley, the earliest example being the Château d'Amboise, and the style became dominant under Francis I(1515-47). (See Châteaux of the Loire Valley). The Château de Chambord) is a combination of Gothic structure and Italianate ornament, a style which progressed under architects such as Sebastiano Serlio, who was engaged after 1540 in work at the Château de Fontainebleau. At Fontainebleau Italian artists such as Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Primaticcio, and Niccolo dell' Abbate formed the First School of Fontainebleau.
Architects such as Philibert Delorme, Androuet du Cerceau, Giacomo Vignola, and Pierre Lescot, were inspired by the new ideas. The southwest interior facade of the Cour Carree of the Louvre in Paris was designed by Lescot and covered with exterior carvings by Jean Goujon. Architecture continued to thrive in the reigns of Henri II and Henri III.
In England the first great exponent of Renaissance architecture was Inigo Jones (1573–1652), who had studied architecture in Italy where the influence of Palladio was very strong. Jones returned to England full of enthusiasm for the new movement and immediately began to design such buildings as the Queen's House at Greenwich in 1616 and the Banqueting House at Whitehall three years later. These works, with their clean lines, and symmetry were revolutionary in a country still enamoured with mullion windows, crenelations and turrets.
[edit] Baroque architecture
If Renaissance architecture announced a rebirth of human culture, the periods of Mannerism and the Baroque that followed signalled an increasing anxiety over meaning and representation. Important developments in science and philosophy had separated mathematical representations of reality from the rest of culture, fundamentally changing the way humans related to their world through architecture.
[edit] The Age of Enlightenment
- Further information: The Age of Enlightenment
Rationality and the universals lead to the emancipation of history, Gottfried Semper leads the fray, filleting of "beauty" leads to contemporary notions of form, the seed of Modernity.
[edit] Consequences of Enlightenment
Historicism or "What Style Shall We Build In?" Karl Friedrich Schinkel
[edit] Modern architecture
The instrumentalisation of Architecture as argued under the maxim "form follows function".
- Expressionist architecture
- Futurist architecture
- Constructivism (art)
- Functionalism (architecture)
- De Stijl
- Bauhaus
- Art Deco
- International Style
- Late Modern Architecture
[edit] Postmodern architecture
Flattening the ontological plane. The commodification of architecture, humanism endgame, junkspace and an exit.
- Googie architecture
- Postmodern architecture
- Deconstructivist Architecture
- Biomorphism
- Foreign Office Architects
- NOX
- Kas Oosterhuis
- Greg Lynn
[edit] Critical Regionalism
Draws on the local condition to create an architecture with a sense of place. Focuses on the environmental and societal as well as modern technology to create new, regionally distinct designs.
- Critical Regionalists
[edit] Modern architecture and beyond
- Arts and Crafts Movement
- Art Nouveau
- Art Deco
- Constructivist architecture
- Chicago school
- De Stijl
- Nazi architecture
- Socialist realism
- Futurist architecture
[edit] Architecture by Nation
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Part of the series on Regional architecture |
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| Africa | ||
| Europe | ||
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | ||
| United Kingdom | ||
| Ireland | ||
| Russia | ||
| Sweden | ||
| Norway | ||
| East Asia | ||
| China | ||
| Indonesia | ||
| Japan | ||
| Korea | ||
| South Asia | ||
| Bhutan | ||
| Cambodia | ||
| India | ||
| Newari | ||
| Eurasian | ||
| Ottoman | ||
| Middle East | ||
| Islam | ||
| Iran | ||
| Western | ||
| Anasazi | ||
| Bermuda | ||
| Inda | ||
| Hawaii | ||
| Meso-America | ||
| United States | ||
| Australia | ||
| Architectural history | ||
- European architecture
- Islamic architecture
- African architecture
- South Asian architecture
- East Asian architecture
- United States architecture
- Pre-Columbian American architecture
- Mesoamerican architecture
- Aztec architecture
- Incan architecture
- Mayan architecture
- Anasazi architecture
[edit] References
- Francis Ching, Mark Jarzombek, Vikram Prakash, A Global History of Architecture, Wiley, 2006.
- Copplestone, Trewin. (ed). (1963). World architecture - An illustrated history. Hamlyn, London.
- Watkin, David (Sep 2005), A History of Western Architecture, Hali Publications, ISBN
- Nuttgens, Patrick (1983), The Story of Architecture, Prentice Hall, ISBN
- Curl, James Stevens [2006]. A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (Paperback), Second (in English), Oxford University Press, 880. ISBN.
[edit] Modernism
- Banham, Reyner, (1 Dec 1980) Theory and Design in the First Machine Age Architectural Press. ISBN
- Curtis, William J. R. (1987), Modern Architecture Since 1900, Phaidon Press, ISBN-X
- Frampton, Kenneth (1992). Modern Architecture, a critical history. Thames & Hudson- Third Edition. ISBN
- Jencks, Charles, (1993) Modern Movements in Architecture. Penguin Books Ltd - second edition. ISBN-X
- Pevsner, Nikolaus, (28 Mar 1991) Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius, Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN
[edit] External links
- The Roman walls of Lugo. Past, present and future Unusual promotion of a technological strength
- Tolomeus VR Panoramas about Architectural History
- The Society of Architectural Historians web site
- SAHANZ The Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand weblink
