Midterm Outline - Appreciation of Architecture | ARCH 2401, Exams of Architecture

Download Midterm Outline - Appreciation of Architecture | ARCH 2401 and more Exams Architecture in PDF only on Docsity! 2401 Midterm Outline I. Architecture relic and precursor: representation and identity? Or, How to read architecture? A. Introduction slides: a. Arch. identity and representation i. Identity 1. the state or fact of remaining the same one or ones, as under varying aspects or conditions: The identity of the fingerprints on the gun with those on file provided evidence that he was the killer. 2. the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another: He doubted his own identity. 3. condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is: a case of mistaken identity. 4. the state or fact of being the same one as described. 5. the sense of self, providing sameness and continuity in personality over time and sometimes disturbed in mental illnesses, as schizophrenia. ii. Representation 1. A society or a human society is (1) a group of people related to each other through persistent relations such as social status, roles and social networks. (2) A large social grouping that shares the same geographical territory and is subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals sharing a distinctive culture and institutions. Without an article, the term refers either to the entirety of humanity or a contextually specific subset of people. In social sciences, a society invariably entails social stratification and/or dominance hierarchy. b. Vitruvian Triad (The Three Components of Architecture) i. Commodity (Function/Use) ii. Firmness (System/Structure) iii. Delight (Beauty) iv. But can’t this not be summed up as form with the additions of space and place c. Object, space, and place i. Form (object) and Space come together to produce Place ii. Architectural Form simply refers to the shape, geometry, proportion, scale, visual appearance, or configuration of an architectural object, to the Classical Elements of architecture. iii. How to analyze form? 1. History- Notre Dame 2. Style-U.S. Capitol 3. Technological-Eiffel Tower 4. Geographical-U.S. Monument 5. Structure material-Sear’s Tower 6. Metaphor-U.S. Monument iv. How to analyze space? 1. Static/dynamic 2. In/out- viewing a street in and from the air 3. Designed/defined- cookie cutter houses v. Place- ‘Place and Identity’ refers to a cluster of ideas about place and identity in the fields of Architecture, urban planning, urban design, landscape architecture, environmental psychology, and urban sociology/ecological sociology. It concerns the meaning and significance of places for their inhabitants and users. Methodologies for understanding place identity primarily involve qualitative techniques, such as interviewing, participant observation, discourse analysis and mapping a range of physical elements. Some urban planners, urban designers and landscape architects use forms of deliberative planning, design charettes and participatory design with local communities as a way of working with place identity to transform existing places as well as create new ones. This kind of planning and design process is sometimes referred to as placemaking. 1. Urban 2. Suburban 3. Sacred-church 4. Monumental 5. Incredible 6. Theoretical II. The Architectural Object: symbol, representation, and identity (sacred and profane) A. Sacred architecture and the Ancients- By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself, for it continues to participate in its surrounding cosmic milieu. - Eliade, The Sacred & The Profane i. Tower of Babel 1. According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where they resolved to build a city with a tower "with its top in the heavens...lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the Earth." God came down to see what they did and said: "They are one people and have one language, and nothing will be withholden from them which they purpose to do." So God said, "Come, let us go down and confound their speech." And so God scattered them upon the face of the Earth, and confused their languages, and they left off building the city, which was called Babel "because God there confounded the language of all the Earth."(Genesis 11:5-8).The Tower of Babel has often been associated with known structures, notably the Etemenanki, a ziggurat dedicated to Marduk by Nabopolassar (c. 610 BC). The Great Ziggurat of Babylon base was square (not round), 91 metres (300 ft) in height, but demolished by Alexander the Great before his death in an attempt to rebuild it. - Wikipedia ii. Laugier’s Primitive Hut 1. The primitive hut had been standard in architectural theory since Vitruvius. Marc- Antoine (Abbe) Laugier brought the idea to life with an image of the hut as the frontispiece for the second edition of Laugier's Essay on Architecture (1755) iii. The Ancients 1. Megaliths a. Stonehenge i. Stonehenge is composed of earthworks surrounding a circular setting of large standing stones. It is at the centre of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments in England, including several hundred burial mounds. Archaeologists have believed that the iconic stone monument was erected around 2500 BC, as described in the chronology below. One recent theory however, has suggested that the first stones were not erected until 2400-2200 BC,[2] whilst another suggests that bluestones may have been erected at the site as early as 3000 BC (see phase 1 below). The surrounding circular earth bank and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated to about 3100 BC. b. Menhirs i. A menhir is a large upright standing stone. Menhirs may be found singly as monoliths, or as part of a group of similar stones. Their size can vary considerably; but their shape is generally uneven and squared, often tapering towards the top. Menhirs are widely distributed across Europe, Africa, and Asia, but are most numerous in Western Europe; in particular in Ireland, Great Britain and Brittany. i. site of the Delphic oracle, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, and a major site for the worship of the god Apollo after he slew the Python, e. The Greek Temples (The Orders and The Parthenon) i. Structures built to house deity statues within Greek sanctuaries in Greek paganism. The temples themselves did usually not directly serve a cult purpose, since the sacrifices and rituals dedicated to the respective deity took place outside them. ii. Originally, the distinction was between the Doric and Ionic orders; since the late 3rd century BC, the Corinthian order provided a third alternative. A multitude of different ground plans were developed, each of which could be combined with a superstructure in the different orders. iii. Parthenon is a temple in the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their protector. Its construction began in 447 BC and was completed in 438 BC, although decorations of the Parthenon continued until 432 BC. It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally considered to be the culmination of the development of the Doric order. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art. The Parthenon is regarded as an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece and of Athenian democracy and one of the world's greatest cultural monuments. 6. The Romans a. Innovations i. Arches were used not just for their immense support capabilities but as well for their power to amaze and glorify. The extension of the arch idea lead to the development of domes. The largest dome built for 18 centuries was the Pantheon. The idea of the arch was further extended in the middle ages with the barrel vault and other types of vaults which became the central theme of the Romanesque and Gothic Cathedrals. ii. Throughout the Roman empire, their engineers erected arch structures such as bridges, aqueducts, and gates. They also introduced the triumphal arch as a military monument. Vaults began to be used for roofing large interior spaces such as halls and temples, a function which was also assumed by domed structures from the 1st century BC onwards. iii. Art historians such as Gottfried Richter in the 20's identified the Roman architectural innovation as being the Triumphal Arch and it is poignant to see how this symbol of power on earth was transformed and utilised within the Christian basilicas when the Roman Empire of the West was on its last legs: The arch was set before the altar to symbolize the triumph of Christ and the after life iv. The dome permitted construction of vaulted ceilings and provided large covered public space such as the public baths and basilicas. The Romans based much of their architecture on the dome, such as Hadrian's Pantheon in the city of Rome, the Baths of Diocletian and the Baths of Caracalla v. Roman concret used in buildings where it could stand on its own and support a great deal of weight. b. Vitruvius i. was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ii. De architectura, known today as The Ten Books on Architecture, Vitruvius dedicates his writings so to give personal knowledge of the quality of buildings to the emperor. iii. Vitruvius is famous for asserting in his book De architectura that a structure must exhibit the three qualities of firmitas, utilitas, venustas — that is, it must be solid, useful, beautiful. According to Vitruvius, architecture is an imitation of nature. As birds and bees built their nests, so humans constructed housing from natural materials, that gave them shelter against the elements. When perfecting this art of building, the Greek (Έλληνες) invented the architectural orders: ) invented the architectural orders: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. It gave them a sense of proportion, culminating in understanding the proportions of the greatest work of art: the human body. This led Vitruvius in defining his Vitruvian Man, as drawn later by Leonardo da Vinci: the human body inscribed in the circle and the square (the fundamental geometric patterns of the cosmic order). iv. Vitruvius is sometimes loosely referred to as the first architect, but it is more accurate to describe him as the first Roman architect to have written surviving records of his field. He himself cites older but less complete works. He was less an original thinker or creative intellect than a codifier of existing architectural practice. It should also be noted that Vitruvius had a much wider scope than modern architects. c. The roman Orders i. The Romans adopted the column and beam system of the Greeks, and joined to it the arch and vault. The union of the two elements of arch and beam is the keynote of the Roman style. In this style the orders were used more for decoration than for construction, and were superposed, or set one upon the other, dividing the buildings into stories. ii. Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite d. Aqueduct i. The Romans constructed numerous aqueducts to serve any large city in their empire, as well as many small towns and industrial sites. The city of Rome had the largest concentration of aqueducts, with water being supplied by eleven aqueducts constructed over a period of about 500 years. They served drinking water and supplied the numerous baths and fountains in the city, as well as finally being emptied into the sewers, where the once-used gray water performed their last function in removing waste matter. ii. The Roman use of the arch and their improvements in the use of concrete and bricks facilitated the building of the many aqueducts throughout the empire, such as the magnificent Aqueduct of Segovia and the eleven aqueducts in Rome itself, such as Aqua Claudia and Anio Novus. The same idea produced numerous bridges, such as the still used bridge at Mérida! e. Flavian Amphitheatre/Colosseum i. The Colosseum, or the Coliseum, originally the Flavian Amphitheatre is an elliptical amphitheatre in the centre of the city of Rome, Italy, the largest ever built in the Roman Empire. It is considered one of the greatest works of Roman architecture and Roman engineering. ii. Unlike earlier Greek theatres that were built into hillsides, the Colosseum is an entirely free-standing structure. It derives its basic exterior and interior architecture from that of two Roman theatres back to back. It is elliptical in plan and is 189 meters (615 ft / 640 Roman feet) long, and 156 meters (510 ft / 528 Roman feet) wide, with a base area of 6 acres (24,000 m2). The height of the outer wall is 48 meters (157 ft / 165 Roman feet). The perimeter originally measured 545 meters (1,788 ft / 1,835 Roman feet). The central arena is an oval 87 m (287 ft) long and 55 m (180 ft) wide, surrounded by a wall 5 m (15 ft) high, above which rose tiers of seating. f. Roman Temples (The Pantheon) i. Temple (pantheon) The dome permitted construction of vaulted ceilings and provided large covered public space such as the public baths and basilicas. The Romans based much of their architecture on the dome, such as Hadrian's Pantheon in the city of Rome, the Baths of Diocletian and the Baths of Caracalla. ii. In ancient Roman religion, practitioners often performed their worship at a temple, that is, a structure that housed the image of the deity and an altar. The English word "temple" derives from Latin templum, which was originally not a building, but a sacred area marked out ritually. The word templum later came to mean the building itself. Other words the Romans used for a temple or shrine are aedes, delubrum, and fanum. iii. Sacrifices would take place at an altar within the templum precinct. Since the public ceremonies took place outdoors, the building itself served mainly to house the cult statue which was kept in the main room (cella). The cella might also have a small altar for incense or libations. Behind the cella was a room or rooms used by the attendants for storage of equipment and offerings. iv. The Pantheon 1. is a building in Rome, commissioned by Marcus Agrippa as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome, and rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian in about 126 AD. The building is circular with a portico of three ranks of huge granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment opening into the rotunda, under a coffered, concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) to the sky. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon's dome is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.[4] The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43.3 metres (142 ft).[5] A rectangular structure links the portico with the rotunda. It is one of the best preserved of all Roman buildings. It has been in continuous use throughout its history, and since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a Roman Catholic church dedicated to "St. Mary and the Martyrs" but informally known as "Santa Maria Rotonda.” g. Basilica (central, orthogonal, and cruciform) i. The Latin word basilica (derived from Greek, Basilikè Stoá, Royal Stoa, the tribunal chamber of a king), was originally used to describe a Roman public building, usually located in the forum of a Roman town. Public basilicas began to appear in Hellenistic cities in the 2nd century BC. vii. Bema 1. As numbers of clergy increased, the small apse which contained the altar, or table upon which the sacramental bread and wine were offered in the rite of Holy Communion, was not sufficient to accommodate them. A raised dais called a bema formed part of many large basilican churches. viii. Latin Cross and Greek Cross 1. Plan of the Renaissance St Peter's Basilica, showing elements of both central and longitudinal plan. Most cathedrals and great churches have a cruciform groundplan. In churches of Western European tradition, the plan is usually longitudinal, in the form of the so-called Latin Cross with a long nave crossed by a transept. ix. Axis 1. As described above, the majority of cathedrals and great churches are cruciform in shape with the church having a defined axis. The axis is generally east/west with external 2. emphasis upon the west front, normally the main entrance, and internal emphasis upon the eastern end so that the congregation faces the direction of the coming of Christ. Because it is also the direction of the rising sun, the architectural features of the east end often focus on enhancing interior illumination by the sun. Not every church or cathedral maintains a strict east/west axis, but even in those that do not, the terms East End and West Front are used. x. Nave 1. The majority of cathedrals and large churches of the Western European tradition have a high wide nave with a lower aisle separated by an arcade on either side. Occasionally the aisles are as high as the nave, forming a hall church. xi. Transept 1. The transept forms the arms of the church building. In English cathedrals of monastic foundation there are often two transepts. The intersection where the nave and transept meet is called the crossing and is often surmounted by a small spire called a lèche, a dome or, particularly in England, a large tower with or without a spire. xii. Vertical emphasis 1. There is generally a prominent external feature that rises upwards. It may be a dome, a central tower, two western towers or towers at both ends as at Speyer Cathedral. The towers may be finished with pinnacles or spires or a small dome. xiii. Facade 1. The facade or "west front" is the most ornate part of the exterior with the processional doors, often three in number, and often richly decorated with sculpture, marble or stone tracery. The facade often has a large window, sometimes a rose window or an impressive sculptural group as its central feature. xiv. External Decoration 1. The external decoration of a cathedral or large church building is often both architectural and pictorial. Decorative architectural devices include columns, pilasters, arcading, cornices, moldings, finials and tracery. The forms taken by these features is one of the clearest indications of the style and date of any particular building. Pictorial elements may include sculpture, painting and mosaic. c. Romanesque characteristics (including portals and vaults) i. The walls of Romanesque buildings are often of massive thickness with few and comparatively small openings. They are often double shells, filled with rubble. ii. Because of the massive nature of Romanesque walls, buttresses are not a highly significant feature, as they are in Gothic architecture. Romanesque buttresses are generally of flat square profile and do not project a great deal beyond the wall. In the case of aisled churches, barrel vaults, or half-barrel vaults over the aisles helped to buttress the nave, if it was vaulted. iii. Piers were often employed to support arches. They were built of masonry and square or rectangular in section, generally having a horizontal moulding representing a capital at the springing of the arch. Sometimes piers have vertical shafts attached to them, and may also have horizontal mouldings at the level of base. iv. Columns are an important structural feature of Romanesque architecture. Colonnettes and attached shafts are also used structurally and for decoration. Monolithic columns cut from a single piece of stone were frequently used in Italy, as they had been in Roman and Early Christian architecture. v. The foliate Corinthian style order provided the inspiration for many Romanesque capitals, and the accuracy with which they were carved depended very much on the availability of original models. vi. A common characteristic of Romanesque buildings is the alternation of piers and columns. The most simple form that this takes is to have a column between each adjoining pier. Sometimes the columns are in multiples of two or three. vii. Arches in Romanesque architecture are semicircular. While small windows might be surmounted by a solid stone lintel, larger windows are nearly always arched. Doorways are also surmounted by a semi- circular arch, except where the door is set into a large arched recess and surmounted by a semi-circular "lunette" with decorative carving. viii. Vaults came in three forms in Ronanesque Architecture: a) The simplest type of vaulted roof is the barrel vault in which a single arched surface extends from wall to wall, the length of the space to be vaulted, for example, the nave of a church. b) In later buildings employing ribbed vaultings, groin vaults are most frequently used for the less visible and smaller vaults, particularly in crypts and aisles. A groin vault is almost always square in plan and is constructed of two barrel vaults intersecting at right angles. Unlike a ribbed vault, the entire arch is a structural member. Groin vaults are frequently separated by transverse arched ribs of low profile. c) In ribbed vaults, not only are there ribs spanning the vaulted area transversely, but each vaulted bay has diagonal ribs. In a ribbed vault, the ribs are the structural members, and the spaces between them can be filled with lighter, non-structural material. d. Saint-Sernin Basilica i. Cruciform Church in Toulouse e. Durham Cathedral i. Northern England f. Angoulême Cathedral i. Charente, France g. Cathedral Vezelay i. Vezelay, France 9. The Gothic- Style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture. Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great cathedrals, abbeys and churches of Europe. It is also the architecture of many castles, palaces, town halls, guild halls, universities and to a less prominent extent, private dwellings. A characteristic of Gothic church architecture is its height, both absolute and in proportion to its width. Cologne Cathedral with a ratio of 3.6:1. a. Features and Characteristics i. Pointed arches: Origins-One of the defining characteristics of Gothic architecture is the pointed or ogival arch. Arches of this type were used in the Near East in pre-Islamic as well as Islamic architecture before they were structurally employed in medieval architecture, and are thus thought to have been the inspiration for their use in France, as at Autun Cathedral, which is otherwise stylistically Romanesque. 1. Functions 2. The Gothic vault, unlike the semi-circular vault of Roman and Romanesque buildings, can be used to roof rectangular and irregularly shaped plans such as trapezoids. The other structural advantage is that the pointed arch channels the weight onto the bearing piers or columns at a steep angle. This enabled architects to raise vaults much higher than was possible in Romanesque architecture. 3. While, structurally, use of the pointed arch gave a greater flexibility to architectural form, it also gave Gothic architecture a very different visual character to Romanesque, the verticality suggesting an aspiration to Heaven. 4. In Gothic Architecture the pointed arch is used in every location where a vaulted shape is called for, both structural and decorative. Gothic openings such as doorways, windows, arcades and galleries have pointed arches. Gothic vaulting above spaces both large and small is usually supported by richly moulded ribs. ii. Clustered columns : tall columns that looked like a group of thin columns bundled together iii. Ribbed vaults : arched ceilings made of stone. In the Gothic style they were held up by stone ribs. iv. Vertical orientation with very high towers and spires and roofs v. Rose window : a skeleton of stonework with great big glass windows in between. vi. Tracery : carved stone lace in the windows and on the walls vii. Stained glass : richly colored glass in the windows, often with pictures telling stories viii. Buttresses : narrow stone walls jutting out from the building to help hold it up ix. Flying buttresses : buttresses that help to hold the vault up. They are made with an arch that jumps over a lower part of the building to reach the outside wall. x. Statues : of Saints, Prophets and Kings around the doors. Many sculptures, sometimes of animals and legendary creatures. Gargoyles spout water from the roof. the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe.” c. Fibonacci's (Leonardo of Pisa) 1202 book Liber Abaci introduced the sequence to Western European mathematics, although the sequence may have been previously described in Indian mathematics. 5. Harmony and Order a. Harmony: The Renaissance tried to extract and codify the system of proportions in the orders as used by the ancients, believing that with analysis a mathematically absolute ideal of beauty would emerge. Brunelleschi in particular studied interactions of perspective with the perception of proportion (as understood by the ancients). This focus on the perception of harmony was somewhat of a break from the Pythagorean ideal of numbers controlling all things.Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man is an example of a Renaissance codification of the Vitruvian view of the proportions of man. 6. Geometrical Formalism a. From the Renaissance, emphasis was placed on humanism, the accuracy of knowledge and the development of scientific branches - Luca Pacioli and Leonardo da Vinci. iii. Renaissance architecture 1. Vitruvius 2. Filippo Brunelleschi and his buildings a. The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore is the cathedral church (Duomo) of Florence, Italy, begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to the design of Arnolfo di Cambio and completed structurally in 1436 with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi. The exterior of the basilica is faced with polychrome marble panels in various shades of green and pink bordered by white and has an elaborate 19th century Gothic Revival facade by Emilio De Fabris. …All brick dome… b. The Basilica di San Lorenzo is one of the largest churches of Florence, Italy, situated at the centre of the city’s main market district, and the burial place of all the principal members of the Medici family from Cosimo il Vecchio to Cosimo III. c. The Pazzi Chapel (Italian: Cappella dei Pazzi) is a religious building in Florence, central Italy, considered to be one of the masterpieces of Renaissance architecture. It is located in the "first cloister" of the Basilica di Santa Croce. 3. Leon Battista Alberti, his building, and The Ten Books. a. The Tempio Malatestiano b. The Basilica di Sant'Andrea is a Renaissance church in Mantua, Lombardy (Italy). c. Santa Maria Novella is a church in Florence, Italy, situated just across from the main railway station which shares its name. Chronologically, it is the first great basilica in Florence, and is the city's principal Dominican church. 4. Donato Bramante 1444 – 11 March 1514) was an Italian architect, who introduced the Early Renaissance style to Milan and the High Renaissance style to Rome, where his most famous design was St. Peter's Basilica. 5. St. Peter’s a. Pope Julius' scheme for the grandest building. This plan was in the form of an enormous Greek Cross with a dome inspired by that of the huge circular Roman temple, the Pantheon. The main difference between Bramante's design and that of the Pantheon is that where the dome of the Pantheon is supported by a continuous wall, that of the new basilica was to be supported only on four large piers. This feature was maintained in the ultimate design. Bramante's dome was to be surmounted by a lantern with its own small dome but otherwise very similar in form to the Early Renaissance lantern of Florence Cathedral designed for Brunelleschi's dome by Michelozzo. b. The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter, officially known in Italian as the Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano and commonly known as St. Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. St. Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world. [1] It is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic sites. It has been described as "holding a unique position in the Christian world” and as "the greatest of all churches of Christendom.” 6. Andrea Palladio, his buildings, and The Four Books a. (30 November 1508 – 19 August 1580) was an Italian Renaissance architect active in the Republic of Venice. Palladio, influenced by Roman and Greek architecture, primarily by Vitruvius, is widely considered the most influential individual in the history of Western architecture. All of his buildings are located in northern Italy, but his teachings, summarized in the architectural treatise I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture), gained him wide recognition. The city of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. 7. Michelangelo and the significance of the Laurentian Library a. Took over St. Peter’s… Michelangelo took over a building site at which four piers, enormous beyond any constructed since the days of Ancient Rome, were rising behind the remaining nave of the old basilica. b. The Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana) in Florence, Italy, is famous as a repository of more than 11,000 manuscripts and 4,500 early printed books. Built in a cloister of the Medicean Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze under the patronage of the Medici pope, Clement VII, the Library was built to emphasize that the Medici family were no longer mere merchants but members of intelligent and ecclesiastical society. It contains the manuscripts and books belonging to the private library of the Medici family. The library is renowned for the architecture planned and built by Michelangelo Buonarroti and is an example of Mannerism C. The Profane and evolution of architectural object codification i. Order ii. Proportion iii. The Ten Books iv. The Four Books v. The Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Times vi. Académie royale d'architecture 1. Serlio- (6 September 1475 – 1554) was an Italian Mannerist architect, who was part of the Italian team building the Palace of Fontainebleau. Serlio helped canonize the classical orders of architecture in his influential treatise, I sette libri dell'architettura ("Seven Books of Architecture"), sometimes published among his collected works, Tutte l'opere d'architettura et prospettiva. 2. Durand (The Grid) a. Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing features of Late Baroque. In its purest form it is a style principally derived from the architecture of Classical Greece and the architecture of Italian Andrea Palladio. i. “Architects should concern themselves with planning and nothing else.”- Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand 3. Blondel 1705–1774 a. Head of the Academie d’Architecture 4. Rondelet 1743-1829 5. Quatremère de Quincy (architecture as language) 1755 – 1849 a. Head of the French Academie b. First to theorize architecture as language. c. The importance of this Dictionary stems from Quatremère's profound reflections on the nature and ends of architecture; on the principles which are at the source of her rules, and on the roles of imitation and invention within Tradition. vii. École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts 1. Characteristics and conceptual basis a. Flat roof b. Rusticated and raised first story c. Hierarchy of spaces, from "noble spaces"—grand entrances and staircases— to utilitarian ones d. Arched windows e. Arched and pedimented doors f. Classical details: references to a synthesis of historicist styles and a tendency to eclecticism; fluently in a number of "manners" g. Symmetry h. Statuary, sculpture (bas-relief panels, figural sculptures, sculptural groups), murals, mosaics, and other artwork, all coordinated in theme to assert the identity of the building i. Classical architectural details: balustrades, pilasters, garlands, cartouches, with a prominent display of richly detailed clasps (agrafes), brackets and supporting consoles j. Subtle polychromy k. Conceptual Basis: i. Grande Architecture (Monument) ii. Character iii. Rationalization 2. Buildings a. Musee des Beaux-Arts viii. The Classical Ordering Principles 1. Axis, symmetry, hierarchy, rhythm/repetition, datum, and transformation a. Picture ix. Linguistic codification a. codification is the process of standardizing and developing a norm for a language. b. Codifying a language can vary from case to case and depends on the stage of standardization that already exists. It typically means to develop a writing system, set up official rules for grammar, orthography, pronunciation, syntax and vocabulary as well as publishing grammar books, dictionaries and similar guidelines. Several variants exisit for a specific aspect, e.g. different ways of spelling a word, decisions on which variant is going to be the standard one have to be made. 2. De Quincy 3. Typology a. Typology (in urban planning and architecture) is the taxonomic classification of (usually physical) characteristics commonly found in buildings and urban places, according to their association with different categories, such as intensity of development (from natural or rural to highly urban), degrees of formality, and school of thought (for example, modernist or traditional). architecture carry out its symbolic role- how well does it communicate whatever message it may have that goes beyond the purely functional, beyond even the aesthetic appeal of its physical form? When Vitruvius, writing in ancient Rome, dictated that architecture should provide “commodity, firmness and delight,” he also said that architecture was, in effect, the beginning of civilization and that all other arts and fields of study connected to it and were descended from it- an observation that, as architectural historian Fil Hearn wrote in Ideas That Shaped Buildings, “offered the art of building perhaps the highest encomium it has ever received,” rendering the architect, in effect, the keeper of civilization. (Vitruvius’s work consisted of ten sections and included long discussions about the classical orders, about the proper way to build temples, amphitheaters, and houses, and about materials and the sitting of cities.) But if Vitruvius can be considered the beginning, or the foundation, of architectural theory, it was a foundation with not much built upon it for more than fifteen hundred years. In the Middle Ages, great engineer-architects built some of the most extraordinary structures that have ever existed, but they did not codify their ideas into long treatises, as Vitruvius had done. The notion that one could prescribe in words an ideal way of building, and a purpose for architecture, returned in the Renaissance, when Vitruvius was rediscovered and used as a model for an updated treatise by Leon Battista Alberti in the middle of the fifteenth century. Alberti urged a return to classical architecture based on the buildings of ancient Rome, not just because he found classicism aesthetically appealing, but because he believed that in building correctly lay virtue. Nature delights in the measure and the mean, and so should the architect. Alberti’s writing inspired numerous other odes to classicism, most famously the Four Books of Architecture, by Andrea Palladio, the great sixteenth-century builder of Italian country villas. Palladio presented his own work as evidence of his theoretical ideas, thus beginning the practice of architects writing books in which they attempt to articulate ideal ways of building and then show their own buildings, presumably as a demonstration of these ideal notions. Pugin was aided by John Ruskin, whose long treatises The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice, surely the most ambitious architectural writing since Palladio, extended the argument beyond architecture’s influence over what we might call the external morality of society into the idea that there is also a morality within a structure itself. The architect Russell Sturgis wrote that the typical public building was designed to be “a box with a pretty inside, put into another box with a pretty outside,” and never mind any rational connection between the two. Still, Ruskin’s writing had considerable influence. It led directly to what became known as the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain, led by William Morris, which called for a revival of craftsmanship, something it saw as closely connected to the principles of honesty and directness that Ruskin believed gave buildings integrity. Ruskin’s notion that there is such a thing as a building itself being moral or inherently honest was picked up by Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, a French theorist who carried it still further and argued that architecture had an obligation to be rational. The great French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier, in Towards a New Architecture and When the Cathedrals Were White, as well as the Italian futurist Antonio Sant’Elia and the German architect Walter Gropius, saw the machine as the great inspiration of the age and urged architects to follow it, not by making their designs literally machinelike, but by giving them the directness and lack of extraneous elements that characterized machines. Wright was acting on the presumption that architecture was a form of communication, a radical thought indeed for 1901- architecture as media. “The Art and Craft of the Machine,” then, can be viewed as an early example- perhaps the early example- of the notion of architecture as media, which today, when we think of almost everything in terms of its implications for information technology, is astonishing. Wright was viewing architecture as a system by which the culture preserved and extended itself- in fact, as the primary system by which the culture did this, since Wright saw art and sculpture as subsidiary to architecture, as merely tools in its arsenal of communication. But [Wright] did identify an issue that remains as sharp a sign of division today as ever, which is the question of how important it is for architects to invent something new, and that even if you do not consider reusing an architectural style from the past to be immoral, as Wright and other modernists did, is it nevertheless a lesser pursuit than designing something new and different? Aesthetics, and the wish that buildings look a particular way, almost always provided the underlying, if sometimes unspoken, rationale behind architectural theory. Ruskin all but admitted this when he said, “Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.” In Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, Robert Venturi’s seminal work of theory, published in 1966- a book that is preoccupied primarily with aesthetics and is a potent and eloquent attack on the stark simplicity of much modernist architecture- Venturi took note of the rising tide of demands in the 1960s that architects assume a broader role. “The architect’s ever diminishing power and his growing ineffectualness in shaping the whole environment can perhaps be reversed, ironically, by narrowing his concerns and concentrating on his own job,” Venturi wrote. His point was that the best way for an architect to fulfill his or her social responsibility is simply to build better buildings. But finally architecture is not about itself. As I said at the beginning of this chapter, it is about everything else. It is never a neutral envelope, it is always made to contain something, and to understand architecture fully you have to understand more than architecture. You have to understand something about what is going to be contained within a building, whether it is theater or medicine or high finance or baseball. Architecture exists to enable other things, and it is enriched by its intimate connection to those other things. To study school buildings is, in part, to study education; to study hospitals is, in part, to study medicine. The tie between architecture and the things it contains makes architecture different from anything else. Nothing else, you could say, is about everything. I like Harrie’s notion of an ethical architecture, since it seems to say implicitly that even though architecture is an aesthetic experience, it is not in the same category as art and music. Rather, it is a way of providing something we absolutely need, and not a luxury that we can afford to give up in the face of stress and difficulty. We build, in the end, because we believe in a future- nothing shows commitment to the future like architecture. And we build well because we believe in a better future, because we believe that there are few greater gifts we can give the generations that will follow us than great works of architecture, both as a symbol of our aspirations of community and as a symbol of our belief not only in the power of imagination but in the ability of society to continue to create anew. To strive to make more of them is in its way an ethical as well as an aesthetic goal, because it is a sign that we believe our greatest places are still to be made and our greatest times are still to come.