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Home > Library > Literature & Language > Dictionaryn.
The art and science of designing and erecting buildings.
Buildings and other large structures: the low, brick-and-adobe architecture of the Southwest.
A style and method of design and construction: Byzantine architecture.
Orderly arrangement of parts; structure: the architecture of the federal bureaucracy; the architecture of a novel.
Computer Science. The overall design or structure of a computer system, including the hardware and the software required to run it, especially the internal structure of the microprocessor.
[Latin architectūra, from architectus, architect. See architect.]

architectural ar'chi·tec'tur·al adj.
architecturally ar'chi·tec'tur·al·ly adv.


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Real Estate Dictionary: Architecture
Top Home > Library > Business & Finance > Real Estate DictionaryThe manner in which a building is constructed, including the layout, Floor Plan style and appearance, materials used, and the building technology used.
Example: The architecture of the houses in the neighborhood is characteristic of the design common to the 1930s: small rooms, much attention to detail, an elaborate Facade high ceilings, and thick walls.

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Dental Dictionary: architecture
Top Home > Library > Health > Dental Dictionary
n
In medicine and dentistry, usually refers to the framework of a structure or system.

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: architecture
Top Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

Art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. The practice of architecture emphasizes spatial relationships, orientation, the support of activities to be carried out within a designed environment, and the arrangement and visual rhythm of structural elements, as opposed to the design of structural systems themselves (see civil engineering). Appropriateness, uniqueness, a sensitive and innovative response to functional requirements, and a sense of place within its surrounding physical and social context distinguish a built environment as representative of a culture's architecture. See also building construction.
For more information on architecture, visit Britannica.com.

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Architecture: architecture
Top Home > Library > Home & Garden > Architecture and Construction
1. The art and science of designing and building structures, communities, or open areas, in keeping with aesthetic and functional criteria. 2. Structures built in accordance with such principles.


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Classical Literature Companion: architecture
Top Home > Library > Literature & Language > Classical Literature CompanionClassical architecture is based on the ‘order’, a unit of design categorized mainly by the type of column used. Each order in its entirety consists of the column, plus its base, plinth, or pedestal (if any), its capital (the crowning feature of the shaft), and its entablature (the decorative horizontal member that surmounts the column, divided into three bands—architrave, frieze, and cornice). The Greeks had three orders, getting progressively slimmer and more richly decorated: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian, named after regions of Greece in which they are said to have been first used. Doric, the style of the Parthenon, was the norm in mainland Greece, Sicily, and Magna Graecia. The Romans added two more orders—Tuscan, a starker form of Doric, and Composite, the richest of all, combining features of Ionic and Corinthian—but Corinthian was the great order of imperial Rome. The orders were discussed by Vitruvius, and from the Renaissance their proportions and detailing were codified and illustrated in countless architectural treatises.

The most important literary source for Greek architecture is the detailed guide-book written by the traveller Pausanius (2) in the second century AD.


US History Encyclopedia: Architecture
Top Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > US History EncyclopediaSeventeenth-and eighteenth-century settlers able to erect or purchase buildings in what later became the United States arrived with knowledge of structure and design that in their places of origin was at once fixed and changing. Time-honored ideas about what and how to build were far more commonly agreed upon than commitment to particular architectural styles, an imbalance largely explained by social location. Town and country artisans and laborers building for themselves were bound by ancient construction and compositional conventions, whereas privileged groups and institutions—landed aristocracy, urban gentry, state, church, and university—hired master craftsmen or gentlemen amateurs to supply the latest fashions.

Colonial and Postcolonial (to 1810s)

Regardless of social location, however, European settlers in North America confronted unfamiliar conditions—climate, topographies, materials—that in some cases modified how they built. Rural New Englanders, for example, whose lands were as littered with rocks as dense with trees, seized upon wood as their primary building material, even though at home they had had more experience with stone: soft species of pine were easier to cut, peg, and haul than stones to haul, dress, and lay. Stone was more efficiently deployed to mark property lines, contain animals, and construct the large hearths necessary in a cold climate.

Settlers in New Netherlands, on the other hand, quickly built kilns for firing brick—the preferred material in the Low Countries, where trees could be scarce—and in short order began erecting gabled row houses, with narrow ends to the street or to the slips they dug in the manner of Continental canal cities. Kilns had been erected even earlier in Virginia during 1611, where clay for brick and oyster shells for lime were plentiful. Adam Thoroughgood arrived as an indentured servant in 1621, but by the time he built his residence (c. 1636–1640), he owned a 5,350-acre plantation. Befitting his new standing, his brick house—which survives and may be the oldest on the Atlantic Seaboard—made reference to late Tudor Gothic style, as did Bacon's Castle (c. 1655) in Surrey County, also in brick but on a much more generous scale for the even wealthier Surrey County planter, Arthur Allen. Like houses farther north, both displayed characteristically medieval oversized chimneys, asymmetric plans, and facades. Unlike the more northerly well-to-do, however, their owners consciously emulated what they mistakenly though had remained fashionable in England. But by the time of William Byrd II built Westover (1730–1734) in Charles City County, an elegant mansion that would have appealed to London admirers of Christopher Wren, English Georgian was showing signs of becoming the architectural preference of wealthy planters and merchants from New Hampshire to the Carolinas.

Very different was Spanish California, where the principal architectural embellishments were twenty-one mission complexes strung along El Camino Real from San Diego to Alcalá (1769) to San Francisco de Solano (1823). As in the East (before the 1780s), there were no architects in the West and few craftsmen except those summoned from Mexico. Priests were the designers and superintendents of construction and of impressed indigenous labor, creating in effect tiny urban cores awaiting urban surroundings. The San Juan Capistrano mission (1776) is representative. A plastered, brick and stone, single-aisled Romanesque church with red-tiled roof, a baptistry, sacristy, and apse is attached to the corner of a large, nearly rectangular court (into which residents could retreat if attacked) surrounded by an arched colonnade. The latter fronted guest and bedrooms; kitchen, pantry, parlor, and refectory; and facilities for making hats, candles, soap, wine, woolens, shoes, and olive oil, along with forge, metal and carpentry shops, and guardhouse. A covered walkway and thick walls provided cooling while broad, undecorated stretches of facade offered an aesthetic simplicity that would not be seen again on so large a scale in North America for over a century; except, that is, in the Spanish Southwest (and Florida).

In these other Spanish holdings, California's contradictory impulses were exaggerated. The Governor's Palace (1610–1614) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a long, low adobe rectangle, unornamented except by structural elements: rubble plinth, round projecting rafters, and regularly spaced posts supporting the colonnade roof. Similar simplicity characterizes Mission St. Francis of Assisi (1805–1815) at Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, the apse end of which, though crude adobe, has all the solemnity and some of the power (if nowhere the grandeur and beauty) of the Cathedral (begun 1282) at Albi, France. By contrast, Pedro Huizar's portal to the Church of San Jose y Miguel de Aguayo (1720–1731) in San Antonio, Texas, is as lavish as Spanish Baroque could possible be. Nothing in English North America rivaled this display, although private and public architecture there was, ironically, moving closer to English splendor as American independence approached.

What is called Georgian, speaking dynastically, or Palladian (after Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio), speaking architecturally, made great inroads after 1750. Whether ecclesiastical, residential, or commercial, it raised colonial standards of quality and elegance. Peter Harrison, a Newport, Rhode Island, ship captain and merchant, was not a professional architect if that means supervising construction and taking a stipulated fee, but as a gentleman amateur he kept current with the literature of his avocation. Buildings like the Redwood Library (1748–1750), Touro Synagogue (1759–1763), and the Brick Market (1761–1762) in Newport are squarely based on Renaissance and neo-Renaissance models depicted in the library he had assembled during his travels. Perfectly symmetrical, Doric or Ionic ordered, porticoed and pedimented, and built of brick and stone, his work—like that of William Buckland in the Chesapeake, Samuel McIntire in Salem, Massachusetts, and anonymous gentlemen builders elsewhere—interpreted English Georgian for traders and planters eager to announce their social prominence by architectural decree. Thomas Jefferson's Monticello (1768–1809), in Charlottesville, Virginia, one of the most famous creations by a self-taught amateur who mixed French, Roman, and Palladian sources, epitomized this impulse. Born in Boston, Charles Bulfinch may qualify as America's first professional architect in that for a time he attempted to live off his earnings. His work (c. 1787–1830) has been included in the so-called Federalist Style, a modified English Georgian well represented by three Boston townhouses (1795–1796, 1800–1802, 1805–1808) for Federalist Party leader and merchant Harrison Gray Otis. Their three or four horizontally articulated stories, forming an unpretentious cube, flat or minimally sloping roof, piano nobiles, porticos opening directly to the sidewalk, and subdued decoration, yielded a quiet elegance strongly appealing to merchants in northeastern ports, where Bulfinch was much emulated. His broad range of buildings included university and market halls, banks, hospitals, prisons, numerous churches (like his exquisite 1816 Church of Christ in Lancaster, Massachusetts), state houses for Maine and Massachusetts, and alterations at Washington, D.C. (as Architect of the Capitol) from 1817 to 1829. Even before taking that post, Bulfinch more than any other architect had raised American design to a level of functional and artistic excellence few during the colonial period might have anticipated.

Eclecticism of Taste and Style

Eclecticism in architecture—selecting aspects of diverse historical styles to form new and acceptable compositions—characterized Europe and America throughout the nineteenth century. In 1929, historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock distinguished between eclecticism of taste—different styles employed contemporaneously but only one on a given building (as with Richard Norris Hunt's two versions of the Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island, for William Vanderbilt: Loire Valley Renaissance in 1892, Genovan Renaissance the next year)—and eclecticism of style, mixing different mannerisms in the same building (for example, Frank Furness's Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia [1871–1876] with English, French, Greek, and Egyptian references). The two eclecticisms coexisted in space, time, and a given architect's work, but if eclecticism of taste dominated during the first half of the century, eclecticism of style—with some exceptions—surpassed it in the second.

Formal American independence in 1783 spurred the demand for public architecture on state and national levels, and since the new republic also considered itself in some ways democratic, its leaders looked for architectural guidance to what they understood as the wellsprings of both, namely, democratic Greece and republican Rome. But Greek and Roman architecture was available to most Americans in treatises written during and after the Renaissance, the result being that publicly funded structures—and by mimesis privately funded buildings of a public nature, such as banks, churches, and some universities—were only generically neoclassical, some more Greek (Benjamin Latrobe's Bank of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia [1799–1801]), some more Roman (Jefferson's Rotunda [1817–1826] at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville). In the end, Greek prevailed because Greek temples, pedimented and colonnaded boxes of straightforward post-and-beam construction, offered simple interior spaces adaptable to virtually any program and geometrically precise exteriors that appealed to Americans, who in 1785 had overlaid the Northwest Territory in a geometrically precise survey grid. The combination of adaptability and order resonated among those whose self-proclaimed mission was to tame the wilderness.

Beginning with public buildings like William Strickland's Second Bank of America of the United States in Philadelphia (1818, the first in the country based squarely on the Parthenon) and Ithiel Town's Connecticut State Capitol (1827) in Hartford (a generic Doric temple), what became known as Greek Revival was used for every conceivable purpose in every nook and cranny of the land until its popularity waned in the East shortly before the Civil War (1861–1865), a bit later in the West. In Hopkinton, New Hampshire, for example, one of the churches, the library, town offices, what are now the firehouse and the general store, and several main street residences are in the style, all painted white because when erected, conventional wisdom held that Greek architecture had been uniformly white. Despite corrective scholarship, no one has yet repainted, happily so, since towns like Hopkinton display a harmony of form and color seldom seen in North America.

Despite its ubiquity, Greek Revival was not unchallenged. Beginning in the 1790s and gathering momentum over the next decades until it reached a zenith of popularity in the 1840s and 1850s, the Gothic Revival (sometimes called Romantic or picturesque architecture) took hold at first with ecclesiastical structures. Prominent church architects included New Yorkers Richard Upjohn, whose work reached Texas and California, and James Renwick, whose St. Patrick's Cathedral (1858–1879) is the best-known example of the genre. Alexander Jackson Davis was as adept with neo-Greek as with neo-Gothic, but made his most singular mark with picturesque villas, the most impressive being Knoll (1838–1842), renamed Lyndhurst after its remodeling and expansion (1864–1867). But the most influential advocate for picturesque design was Andrew Jackson Downing, America's premier landscape architect, whose naturalistic gardens, widely read publications, and house designs with partner Calvert Vaux earned nationwide respect. Gothic Revival church architecture is characterized by pointed arches, steep roofs, pinnacles, and window tracery often supplemented by battlements and buttresses. Residential neo-Gothic might include these features plus steep gables, elaborately sawn trim, projecting windows, verandas, vertically siding frequently, and asymmetrical plans as often as not. (Greek Revival did not have verandas and was never asymmetrical.) Gothic Revival houses were intended to interpret site and to open to the outdoors, thus appealing to part-time gentry who purchased country estates with fortunes made in town and to those of lesser standing whose income limited them to modest lots on the city's edge. If their motives included escaping what they believed to be the gathering hordes of unruly immigrants, Downing's commitment to picturesque architecture and landscaping stemmed from the idealistic notion that individual integrity and independence was best cultivated in a natural setting. But his best intentions—publishing self-build plans for $400 working peoples' houses, for example—were heeded by those who needed them least.

The lesser appeal of Egyptian, Tuscan, and Romanesque styles had also waned by the 1860s, after which the eclecticism of taste became somewhat type-oriented: most universities in neo-Gothic, but some in neoclassical; government buildings, banks, urban railroad terminals, and exposition buildings in neoclassical, neo-Renaissance, and Beaux-Arts (after the classical-and Renaissance-oriented École des Beaux-Arts in Paris). Eclecticism of style was more common on commercial buildings and residences of the rising middle class and the very rich, although Florentine Renaissance and Loire Valley châteaux styles found acceptance with the latter.

American architects began to train in Europe, particularly at the École des Beaux-Arts, or in new architecture programs at home (the Masachusetts Institute of Technology's opened in 1868, Columbia University's in 1881). After their studies, they often toured Europe as they began to read national professional magazines (the first was launched in 1876) inevitably featuring woodcuts and, later, photographs of Continental masterpieces. They read the immensely influential John Ruskin, whose preferred style was Venetian Gothic, and translations of the authoritative Eugêne-Emmanuel Violet-le-Duc, whose ideal was French Gothic. Most importantly, as American architects began to design for an immensely wealthy social class—newly created by post-Civil War industrialization—composed of arrivistes unfamiliar with aesthetic niceties but unerringly aware, as European parvenus since at least the Renaissance had been, that architectural patronage, if interpreted as connoisseurship by established elites, might eventually lead to social acceptance and, if interpreted by the general public as social service, might temper their reputation as rapacious exploiters of the commonweal. As all this happened, expert knowledge of time-honored styles and archeological accuracy in their deployment became indispensable for American architects, whose own social standing rose in direct proportion to their ability to provide nouveaux riches with simulacra of the very architectural styles that bygone aristocrats had made their own. Hence the hegemonic eclecticism after the Civil War.

The Architecture of National Power (1880s to 1930s)

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, generic neoclassicism of lavishness not seen before began to dominate public and quasi-public architecture. State houses, city halls, courthouses, police headquarters, and other government structures no less than art museums, concert halls, libraries, and railroad terminals—sometimes grouped in City Beautiful civic centers—sprang up everywhere, not entirely as a result of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It is true that 21 million visitors, equivalent to one-third the national population, thrilled to its Courts of Honor, a water basin surrounded by nine neoclassical behemoths. But neoclassicism was already on the rise, most notably in works by McKim, Mead, and White, like the Boston Public Library (1887–1895) or the Rhode Island State Capitol (1891–1903) in Providence.

As it evolved, neoclassicism became ever more imperial. McKim, Mead, and White's Pennsylvania Station waiting room (1902–1910) in New York City was 25 percent larger in volume than the gigantic tepidarium in the Roman Baths of Caracella (A.D. 206–217) on which it was modeled, while George W. Post's Wisconsin State Capitol (1906–1917) in Madison, loosely based (its dome not so loosely) on Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral (1666–1710) in London, dominated the countryside for miles around its hilltop site. Neoclassicism had its appeal in Europe, but "nowhere outside the United States were the classical orders to be drawn up in so many parade formations," wrote Marcus Whiffen in his American Architecture since 1890: A Guide to the Styles (1969). "More marble was used in building in the United States in the years 1900–1917," he added, "than was used in the Roman Empire during its entire history."

The explanation for this explosion exemplifies how architecture is put to use outside the world of art. By 1900, the United States had successfully fulfilled its "manifest destiny" on the North American mainland and was constructing a territorial and economic empire overseas. Indigenous people there and in the American West, not to mention native-and foreign-born factory and farm laborers across the country, were increasingly attracted to Greenbackism, populism, socialism, unionization—to radical movements in their many forms—in unprecedented numbers. Memories of shattering disruptions like the 1886 Haymarket Massacre and the 1894 Pullman Strike—only the tip of the class-conflict iceberg, in any case—were made even more vivid by events like the 1911 death by fire of 146 women locked inside their Triangle Shirt-waist Company factory in lower Manhattan so that union organizers could not get to them. Political protest had never been more heated, class conflict more violent, and outright anticapitalist sentiment more widespread than during the "years of marble" from 1900 to 1917.

In this context, state authorities correctly understood that the social order was under serious attack, and for the same reasons that the National Guard armories with medieval crenellation were erected in wealthy urban neighborhoods, so was government at all levels drawn to the architecture of Rome, not of its republic but of its empire, the most enduring Western empire in fact and in collective memory. The seldom-stated but visually obvious implication was that physical assault against the state and the quasi-public institutional structure supporting it, that it in turn supported, as well as political assault on capitalist arrangements and republican forms of government, would not prevail—that the objects of assault would endure forever. To face down social upheaval and to announce imperial objectives, government and quasi-government architecture referred to the "eternal city" as often as not.

Neoclassicism waned with state suppression and the decline of outspoken dissent during and after World War I (1914–1918) but revived in the Great Depression, and throughout Europe as well, particularly under authoritarian regimes in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union. In the United States, it was much simplified from its earlier incarnation by square columns and capitals, spare ornament, crisp rectilinearity, and reduced use of pediments, porticos, and domes (which, when present, resembled spires). Examples are the Gallatin County Courthouse (1936) in Bozeman, Montana, the Library of Congress Annex (1938) in Washington, D.C., and the Soldiers Memorial (1939) in St. Louis, all erected with Works Progress Administration assistance. Fascist and National Socialist architecture differed only in scale: grander in Italy, positively grandiose in Germany. In the Soviet Union it was fussily ornate, recalling the turn of the century.

With the absence or reduction of private investment during the 1930s, governments financed an even greater amount of architecture than before, which is to say that during two historical moments of unusually high demand for social justice or social spending, authorities were unusually concerned with maintaining social order. It mattered not whether order was sustained by increased policing or liberal reform, whether the state was dictatorial or democratic, or—in the United States—whether it was the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, or the New Deal. Regardless of political ideology, governments buttressed legitimacy by appropriating classical architecture, which in times of crisis was the artistic court of last resort.

The Rise and Decline of Modernism (1880s to 1970s)

Three 1932 productions by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and the Museum of Modern Art curator Philip Johnson—the exhibit Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, its catalog of that title, and their book, The International Style: Architecture since 1922—had the effect of equating all that was new with a single mode of expression, the name of which they invented and the existence of which they had no doubt. The characteristics of the International Style, they contended, were the sublimation of mass to volume; continuous, horizontally organized, regular but not symmetrical monochrome surfaces of one material; and the subordination of discrete rooms to free-flowing continuous spaces in open floor plans. Form and composition were determined by structure and interior program, they implied, preferably clad in steel, concrete, glass, and if need be, brick. Sixty-five of the seventy-three projects depicted in their book were European.

Book, exhibition, and catalogue were as narrowly selective as they were hugely influential, omitting, for example, all "new architecture," as it was often called in Europe, that did not conform to their aesthetic preferences. But for at least three decades, the International Style was widely accepted as real, as a distinctive school of design constituting the entirety of the so-called modern movement. Architectural modernism, however, was never a unified entity. Although it is true that repudiation of historically based styles—albeit in myriad ways—was largely worked out in Europe during the 1920s and early 1930s, rumblings of discontent had been heard on both sides of the Atlantic since at least the 1880s.

In the United States, the work of Henry Hobson Richardson in the 1880s, although distantly rooted in Romanesque, featured simplified single masses beneath unified roofs, near monochrome and mono-material, reduced applied ornament, and sensitivity to site. The Ames Gate Lodge (1880–1881) in North Easton, Massachusetts, is a striking example. The so-called Chicago School—notably Holabird and Roche, Adler and Sullivan, Burnham and Root, William Le Baron Jenney, and Solon S. Bemen—specializing in commercial architecture, took Richardson's simplifications further. Bemen's Studebaker Building in Chicago (1895) and Holabird and Roche's Mandel Brothers Store Annex (1900–1905) were grids of masonry-or metal-clad steel columns and beams infilled with glass. The full implication of dispensing with load-bearing walls was grasped in 1921–1922 when Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Germany proposed free-form skyscrapers entirely encased in glass panels clipped to the edges of floor slabs.

In his Prairie Houses (1900–1910s)—so-called because erected in undeveloped Chicago suburbs—Frank Lloyd Wright accented broad stretches of unadorned facade with long runs of crisp contrasting trim and windows in strips; inside, public spaces were merged to form partially open plans. His clean-lined rectilinear exteriors, more textured than the black white surfaces of a minimalist like Vienna's Adolf Loos but less ebullient than contemporary Art Nouveau and the several European Secessions (from historically based academic architecture) made considerable impact abroad. The four giants of the new European architecture—Le Corbusier in France, J. J. P. Oud in The Netherlands, Mies and Walter Gropius in Germany—each acknowledged (Corbusier later recanted) his influence. Perhaps the most innovative American other than Wright was the Californian Irving Gill, whose sharp-edged, rectilinear, virtually unornamented white stucco buildings were stripped almost as clean as Adolf Loos's.

During the 1920s, Chicago-area architecture was more widely admired in Europe, where modernism was taking firm root, than at home, where it languished among continuing historical revivals. When modernism did appear it likely came from abroad. Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra emigrated from Vienna in 1914 and 1923, respectively, to work briefly with Wright before settling in Los Angeles, where their houses for Philip Lovell (Schindler's, 1922–1926; Neutra's 1927–1929) in particular were closer in spirit to Corbusier's than to American contemporaries. Only two skyscrapers of the decade were truly modern: the McGraw-Hill Building (1929–1931) in New York City, by Raymond Hood and Andrè Fouilloux (from Paris), and the Philadelphia Savings and Fund Society (1929–1932), by George Howe and William Lescaze (from Zurich). Although a handful of Americans embraced the new architecture, its most conspicuous manifestations before the Wall Street Crash were by European émigrés.

The little that was erected during the depression occasionally flirted with modernism, as in the cases of New York City's Rockefeller Center (1931–1940), by a team of design firms in vertical Art Deco, or Wright's Johnson Wax Administration Building (1936–1939) at Racine, Wisconsin, in streamlined, horizontal "American moderne." But as the decade waned, the arrival of two German émigrés, Gropius in 1937 to direct Harvard's School of Design program and Mies in 1938 to assume the same position at the Illinois Institute of Technology, transformed architectural education and practice in the United States.

That was especially true with Mies, who later produced a master plan for his Chicago campus that in style and scale was revolutionary for this country. Nineteen low-rise structures (not all built) of welded steel frames painted black with glass walls or concrete infilled with brick and glass were followed by three apartment towers on Lake Shore Drive. Even before his enormously influential Seagram Building (1954–1958) in New York City was announced, others were adopting his manner, particularly Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill at their 1952 glass and metal Lever House, among others in New York City. From high-rise buildings the Miesian model spread to virtually every design type during the next two decades. What had taken hold throughout Europe immediately after World War I (1914–1918), in quantity mostly social housing sponsored by socialist and social democratic governments, found favor in the United States after World War II (1939–1945), initially among corporate clients. With the transition, modern architecture changed fundamentally, from low-rise, amply fenestrated brick and concrete structures to high-rise, almost completely fenestrated flat-roof slabs.

As modernism spread to every design genre, stylistic variations appeared, of course. But within the variety there remained commonality: either bland sterility or aggressive anonymity, especially apparent when modern buildings clustered—along Park and Sixth Avenues in New York City, for example, or at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus (1965–1987), mostly by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. As large chunks of city and suburb became virtually interchangeable and as it dawned on clients that architectural conformity compromised corporate and personal identity, the appeal of glass-box architecture began to wane, noticeably in the 1970s.

The New Eclecticism (1970s–)

In his book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966), Robert Venturi condemned "the puritanically moral language of orthodox Modern[ism]." He favored "messy vitality over obvious unity," "the ugly and ordinary architecture" he soon embraced in Learning from Las Vegas (1972). Most architects were reluctant to fetishize "the vulgar" but were receptive to his notion that modernism's "forced simplicity" did not adequately reflect the "ambiguities of contemporary experience." Indeed, retreat from the Miesian model was already under way before Venturi wrote.

The New Formalism of the early 1960s—strictly symmetrical, smooth-skinned, flat-roofed buildings with screens and grilles—was associated with institutional work of Philip Johnson, Minuro Yamasaki, and Edward Durell Stone. The acknowledged master of neo-expressionism (said to have evolved from 1910s and 1920s German expressionism)—characterized by the sublimation of right angles to sensuously sweeping curves made possible by suspended steel cable roofs and concrete (gunite) sprayed over metal frames—was Eero Saarinen, whose TWA terminal (1956–1962) at Idlewild Airport (later Kennedy) in New York City is the most famous of its type. Brutalism referred to massive asymmetrical structures, usually in poured concrete left rough, with small openings, deep recesses, and aggressive projections emphasizing the play of light and shadow; Paul Rudolph's Art and Architecture Building (1958–1965) at Yale University was firmly brutalistic, more so than the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies (1959–1965) in La Jolla, California, or other structures by Louis Kahn, whose masterly work could not easily be categorized but who was influenced nonetheless by the genre.

As if to vindicate him, postmodernism arose shortly after Venturi's second book appeared. A kind of umbrella term in architecture in general from the late 1970s the 1990s, Pomo involved the return of ornament, poly-chrome, mixed materials, and historical design elements like Palladian windows, gables, pediments, elaborate moldings, and the classical orders, as well as unprecedented experimentation with shapes, composition, and the juxtaposition of formerly incompatible features as seen in the works of Charles Moore, Michael Graves, Robert A. M. Stern, and many others, including Venturi.

As the 1990s opened, Pomo was surpassed in media attention by Decon—deconstructivist architecture—represented by prominent figures like Peter Eisenman and Frank Gehry. As with Pomo, Decon borrowed freely from literary studies: a building was a "text" with no intrinsic meaning other than what was brought to it by "readers"—observers, critics, architects themselves. History had little to offer because knowledge is subjective, noncumulative. The architect was therefore free to design any thing in any way. The resulted surpassed even Pomo in its radical disassembling and reconstructing of parts to form heretofore unimagined wholes, perhaps most famously represented by Gehry's Guggenheim Museum (1991–1997) in Bilbao, Spain.

With architects practicing globally, with new materials and technologies at hand, and with every incentive to experiment, expressive possibility is greater than ever before, resulting in a new eclecticism. To mannerisms already mentioned, pluralism adds several identifiable categories: "green" or sustainable energy conserving design; conscious reworking of vernacular and "populist"—that is, commercial—traditions; revived classicism; neomodernism with its "minimalist" or extremely simplified versions; and high-tech, making art of structural and mechanical systems.

These categories are porous. Some architects work exclusively in one while others combine two or more in a single building or in their work as a whole, borrowing freely from each other all the while, benefiting as well from an "anything goes" professional climate. Nor are the categories as mutually exclusive or as historically correct as in the eclecticisms of taste and style. Nevertheless, "selecting aspects of diverse [but no longer exclusively] historical styles in order to form new and acceptable compositions" is the norm. In the absence of stylistic consensus, compositional possibility in the twenty-first century is virtually unlimited.

Bibliography

Curtis, William J. R. Modern Architecture since 1900. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1996.

Goldberger, Paul. The Skyscraper. New York: Knopf, 1981.

Kirker, Harold. The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969.

Lambert, Phyllis, ed. Mies in America. New York: Abrams, 2001.

Ochsner, Jeffrey Karl. H. H. Richardson: Complete Architectural Works. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983.

Pierson, William H., Jr., ed. American Buildings and Their Architects. Vols. 1, 2, 4, and 5. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970, 1972, 1976, 1978.

Riley, Terence. The International Style: Exhibition 15 and the Museum of Modern Art. Edited by Stephen Perrella. New York: Rizzoli, 1992.

Roth, Leland M. A Concise History of American Architecture. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

———. McKim, Mead and White, Architects. New York: Harper and Row, 1983.

Saliga, Pauline, ed. Fragments of Chicago's Past: The Collection of Architectural Fragments at The Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago: The Art Institute, 1990.

Schuyler, David. Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815–1852. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Short, C. W., and R. Stanley-Brown. Public Buildings: Architecture under the Public Works Administration, 1933–39. New York: Da Capo, 1986.

Twombly, Robert. Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and His Architecture. New York: Wiley, 1979.

———. Power and Style: A Critique of Twentieth-Century Architecture in the United States. New York: Hill and Wang, 1996.

—Robert Twombly


Russian History Encyclopedia: Architecture
Top Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > Russian History EncyclopediaThe architecture of medieval Rus, initially influenced by Byzantine architecture, developed a distinct set of styles between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries. As Moscow established its dominance and as contacts with western European culture increased in the late fifteenth century, Russian motifs began to blend with Western ones. By the eighteenth century the design of Russia's public buildings followed Western styles. Rapid social change at the turn of the twentieth century and the establishment of Soviet power after 1917 generated new bursts of architectural experimentation.

Medieval and Muscovite
architecture (C. 1000 - 1700)

Little is known of pre-Christian architecture among the eastern Slavs, but with the acceptance of Christianity by Grand Prince Vladimir of Kiev in 988, the construction of masonry churches spread throughout Rus. The largest and most complex of these early churches was Kiev's Cathedral of Divine Wisdom (1037 - 1050s), commissioned by Prince Yaroslav the Wise and built with the direction of Greek masters. The interior contained extensive mosaics as well as frescoes. Other major churches of this period include the Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod (1045 - 1052), the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Savior in Chernigov (1031 - 1050s), and the Cathedral of the Dormition at the Kiev Cave Monastery (1073 - 1078; destroyed in 1941).

Regardless of size, the churches adhered to a plan known as the "inscribed cross": a cuboid structure with a dome marking the intersection of the main aisles. The dome was elevated on a cylinder supported by the four main piers. The facades usually culminated in curved gables known as zakomary.

In addition to Kiev, Novgorod, and neighboring cities, the third center of architecture in pre-Mongol Rus was the Vladimir-Suzdal principality, whose limestone churches were distinguished by carved decoration and precision of design. Grand Prince Yury Dolgoruky commissioned the first of these churches, such as the Transfiguration in Pereslavl-Zalessky (1152 - 1157). His son Andrei Bogolyubsky began the great era of limestone building in this area with the Cathedral of the Dormition in Vladimir (1158 - 1160); his palace church at Bogolyubovo (1158 - 1165) of which only fragments remain; and the Church of the Intercession on the Nerl (1165). His successor, Vsevolod III, enlarged the Dormition Cathedral (1185 - 1189) and built the Cathedral of St. Dmitry in Vladimir (1194 - 1197), whose upper tier is covered with elaborate carving representing Biblical and secular motifs.

After the Mongol invasion of 1237 - 1241, church construction sharply declined; but by the middle of the fourteenth century, masonry construction revived, particularly in Novgorod, with the support of wealthy merchants and neighborhood craft guilds. The Church of St. Theodore Stratilates on the Brook (1360 - 1361) and the Church of Transfiguration on Elijah Street (1374; frescoes by Theophanes the Greek) exemplified a distinct local style with steeply pitched roofs. Moscow also enjoyed an architectural revival in the construction of limestone churches, but not until the last quarter of the fifteenth century did the major churches of the Kremlin take shape under the direction of Italian masters imported by Ivan III.

During the sixteenth century, Moscow's brick churches displayed boldly inventive designs, also with Italian influence. The culmination of this period occurs in the most famous of Russian churches, the Intercession on the Moat, popularly known as Basil the Blessed (1555 - 1561). Built on what later became known as Red Square, in celebration of Ivan IV's conquest of Kazan and Astrakhan, the structure consists of a central tent tower surrounded by eight tower churches. The latter part of the sixteenth century also witnessed the building of major brick fortresses, most notably the citadel at Smolensk (1595 - 1602) by Fyodor Kon. With the restoration of order after the Time of Troubles (1605 - 1612), the building of brick churches occurred on an unprecedented scale, especially during the reign of Alexei (1645 - 1676).

The Imperial Period (C. 1700 - 1917)

The assimilation of Western architectural styles, which had begun in the late seventeenth century, increased radically during the reign of Peter I (1682 - 1725). In 1703 Peter founded St. Petersburg, which became the Russian capital in 1711. Western European architects Jean Baptiste Le Blond (1679 - 1719) and Domenico Trezzini (1670 - 1734) submitted plans for its development. At this stage Petersburg's architecture owed much to the northern European baroque, particularly in Sweden and Holland. The stuccoed brick walls of the city's baroque buildings were painted, with white trim for window surrounds and other details. Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli (1700 - 1771) defined the high baroque style during the reigns of Anna (1730 - 1740) and Elizabeth (1741 - 1762). Among his major projects are the Stroganov Palace (1752 - 1754), the final version of the Winter Palace (1754 - 1764), and the Smolny Convent with its Resurrection Cathedral (1748 - 1764). In addition Rastrelli greatly enlarged the existing imperial palaces at Peterhof (1746 - 1752) and Tsarskoye Selo (1748 - 1756).

During the reign of Catherine the Great (1762 - 1796), imperial architecture moved from the baroque to neoclassicism. With the support of Catherine, a constellation of architects endowed the city during the second half of the eighteenth century with a grandeur inspired by classical Rome. Charles Cameron (ca.1740 - 1812), the leading proponent of neoclassicism, designed the palace at the imperial estate of Pavlovsk (1780 - 1796), a gift from Catherine to her son Grand Duke Paul. Andrei Voronikhin (1759 - 1814) created a still more obvious example of the Roman influence in his Cathedral of the Kazan Mother of God (1801 - 1811), with its sweeping colonnade reminiscent of the Basilica of Saint Peter in Rome.

The reign of Alexander I (1801 - 1825) witnessed a new campaign to create an interconnecting system of architectural ensembles and public space throughout the center of Petersburg. The rebuilding of the Admiralty (1806 - 1823) by Andreyan Zakharov (1761 - 1811) reaffirmed that structure and its spire as dominant elements in the city plan. The culmination of the imperial design fell to Carlo Rossi (1776 - 1849), who created four major ensembles, including the General Staff Building and Arch (1819 - 1829), facing Palace Square. Neoclassicism in Moscow appeared primarily in houses and other institutions built by the nobility and wealthy merchants. Of particular note are mansions and churches designed by Matvei Kazakov (1738 - 1812).

During the reign of Nicholas I (1825 - 1855), classical unity in Petersburg yielded to eclectic styles and innovations in construction engineering, both of which are evident in the final version of St. Isaac's Cathedral (1818 - 1858) by Auguste Montferrand (1786 - 1858). Of special significance was the Russo-Byzantine style, supported by Nicholas I and implemented by Constantine Thon (1794 - 1881), builder of the Great Kremlin Palace (1838 - 1849). The major work in this style was Ton's Church of Christ the Redeemer (1837 - 1883; destroyed in 1931 and rebuilt in the 1990s), created as a memorial to Russian valor in the 1812 war.

By the 1870s there arose a new national style based on decorative elements from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Muscovy as well as on motifs from folk art and traditional wooden architecture. Major examples of the Russian style in Moscow include the Historical Museum (1874 - 1883), built on the north side of Red Square to a design by Vladimir Shervud (1833 - 1897); the Moscow City Duma (1890 - 1892) by Dmitry Chichagov (1835 - 1894); and the Upper Trading Rows (1889 - 1893) by Alexander Pomerantsev (1848 - 1918), assisted by the construction engineer Vladimir Shukhov (1853 - 1939). In Petersburg the Russian style was used by Alfred Parland (1845 - 1892) for the Church of the Resurrection of the Savior "on the Blood" (1883 - 1907).

The "new style," or style moderne, that arose in Russian architecture at the turn of the century emphasized the innovative use of materials such as glass, iron, and glazed brick in functional yet highly aesthetic designs. The style flourished in Moscow primarily, where its leading practitioner was Fyodor Shekhtel (1859 - 1926), architect for patrons among Moscow's entrepreneurial elite, such as the Ryabushinskys. In Petersburg the style moderne appeared primarily in the design of apartment buildings. In contrast to their American contemporaries, Russian architects did not design large buildings with steel frames, but became experts at the use of reinforced concrete construction.

Soviet Architecture (1917 - 1991)

The economic chaos engendered in Russia by World War I proved catastrophic for building activity, and the ensuing revolution and civil war brought architecture to a standstill. With the recovery of the economy in the 1920s, bold new designs - often utopian in concept - brought Russia to the attention of modern architects throughout the world. Constructivism, the most productive modernist movement, included architects such as Moysei Ginzburg (1892 - 1946), Ilya Golosov (1883 - 1945), Grigory Barkhin (1880 - 1969), and the Vesnin brothers: Leonid (1880 - 1933), Viktor (1882 - 1950), and Alexander (1883 - 1959). Their designs, primarily in Moscow, set a standard for functional design in administrative and apartment buildings, as well as social institutions such as workers' clubs. Another modernist active during the same period, but not a part of Constructivism, was Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov (1890 - 1974), known for his bold designs for exposition pavilions and workers' clubs.

During the 1930s more conservative trends asserted themselves, as designs inspired by classical, Renaissance, and historical models received the party's approval. After World War II architectural design became still more firmly locked in traditional, often highly ornate eclectic styles, epitomized by the postwar skyscrapers in Moscow and other Soviet cities. After 1953 pressing social needs, particularly in housing, led to a return to functionalism, heavily dependent on standardized designs and prefabricated components. With the demise of the communist system in Russia, the revival of private practice in architecture seems likely to change the face of the profession, even as new problems arise in zoning and resource allocation.

Wooden Architecture

Throughout Russian history wood has been used for almost every type of construction, from churches and fortress walls to peasant dwellings and grand country villas. Fire and rot have destroyed most wooden structures from the distant past, and there is no extensive evidence that wooden structures appeared before the late sixteenth century. Yet the basic forms of wooden architecture are presumably rooted in age-old traditions. Remarkable for their construction logic, wooden churches also display elaborate configurations. One example is the Church of the Transfiguration at Kizhi (1714), whose pyramid of recessed levels supports twenty-two cupolas. Although such structures achieved great height, the church interior was usually limited by a much lower ceiling. Log houses also ranged from simple dwellings to large three-story structures peculiar to the far north, with space for the family as well as shelter for livestock during the winter. Wooden housing is still used extensively, not only in the Russian countryside, but also in provincial cities (particularly in Siberia and the Far East), where the houses often have plank siding and carved decorative elements.

Bibliography

Brumfield, William Craft. (1991). The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Brumfield, William Craft. (1993). A History of Russian Architecture. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Cracraft, James. (1988). The Petrine Revolution in Russian Architecture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hamilton, George Heard. (1983). The Art and Architecture of Russia. New York: Penguin Books.

Khan-Magomedov, Selim O. (1987). Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. New York: Rizzoli.

—WILLIAM CRAFT BRUMFIELD

Columbia Encyclopedia: architecture
Top Home > Library > Miscellaneous > Columbia Encyclopediaarchitecture, the art of building in which human requirements and construction materials are related so as to furnish practical use as well as an aesthetic solution, thus differing from the pure utility of engineering construction. As an art, architecture is essentially abstract and nonrepresentational and involves the manipulation of the relationships of spaces, volumes, planes, masses, and voids. Time is also an important factor in architecture, since a building is usually comprehended in a succession of experiences rather than all at once. In most architecture there is no one vantage point from which the whole structure can be understood. The use of light and shadow, as well as surface decoration, can greatly enhance a structure.
The analysis of building types provides an insight into past cultures and eras. Behind each of the greater styles lies not a casual trend nor a vogue, but a period of serious and urgent experimentation directed toward answering the needs of a specific way of life. Climate, methods of labor, available materials, and economy of means all impose their dictates. Each of the greater styles has been aided by the discovery of new construction methods. Once developed, a method survives tenaciously, giving way only when social changes or new building techniques have reduced it. That evolutionary process is exemplified by the history of modern architecture, which developed from the first uses of structural iron and steel in the mid-19th cent.

Until the 20th cent. there were three great developments in architectural construction-the post-and-lintel, or trabeated, system; the arch system, either the cohesive type, employing plastic materials hardening into a homogeneous mass, or the thrust type, in which the loads are received and counterbalanced at definite points; and the modern steel-skeleton system. In the 20th cent. new forms of building have been devised, with the use of reinforced concrete and the development of geodesic and stressed-skin (light material, reinforced) structures.

See also articles under countries, e.g., American architecture; styles, e.g., baroque; periods, e.g., Gothic architecture and art; individual architects, e.g., Andrea Palladio; individual stylistic and structural elements, e.g., tracery, orientation; specific building types, e.g., pagoda, apartment house.

Architecture of the Ancient World

In Egyptian architecture, to which belong some of the earliest extant structures to be called architecture (erected by the Egyptians before 3000 B.C.), the post-and-lintel system was employed exclusively and produced the earliest stone columnar buildings in history. The architecture of W Asia from the same era employed the same system; however, arched construction was also known and used. The Chaldaeans and Assyrians, dependent upon clay as their chief material, built vaulted roofs of damp mud bricks that adhered to form a solid shell.

After generations of experimentation with buildings of limited variety the Greeks gave to the simple post-and-lintel system the purest, most perfect expression it was to attain (see Parthenon; orders of architecture). Roman architecture, borrowing and combining the columns of Greece and the arches of Asia, produced a wide variety of monumental buildings throughout the Western world. Their momentous invention of concrete enabled the imperial builders to exploit successfully the vault construction of W Asia and to cover vast unbroken floor spaces with great vaults and domes, as in the rebuilt Pantheon (2d cent. A.D.; see under pantheon).

The Evolution of Styles in the Christian Era

The Romans and the early Christians also used the wooden truss for roofing the wide spans of their basilica halls. Neither Greek, Chinese, nor Japanese architecture used the vault system of construction. However, in the Asian division of the Roman Empire, vault development continued; Byzantine architects experimented with new principles and developed the pendentive, used brilliantly in the 6th cent. for the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

The Romanesque architecture of the early Middle Ages was notable for strong, simple, massive forms and vaults executed in cut stone. In Lombard Romanesque (11th cent.) the Byzantine concentration of vault thrusts was improved by the device of ribs and of piers to support them. The idea of an organic supporting and buttressing skeleton of masonry (see buttress), here appearing in embryo, became the vitalizing aim of the medieval builders. In 13th-century Gothic architecture it emerged in perfected form, as in the Amiens and Chartres cathedrals.

The birth of Renaissance architecture (15th cent.) inaugurated a period of several hundred years in Western architecture during which the multiple and complex buildings of the modern world began to emerge, while at the same time no new and compelling structural conceptions appeared. The forms and ornaments of Roman antiquity were resuscitated again and again and were ordered into numberless new combinations, and structure served chiefly as a convenient tool for attaining these effects. The complex, highly decorated baroque style was the chief manifestation of the 17th-century architectural aesthetic. The Georgian style was among architecture's notable 18th-century expressions (see Georgian architecture). The first half of the 19th cent. was given over to the classic revival and the Gothic revival.

New World, New Architectures

The architects of the later 19th cent. found themselves in a world being reshaped by science, industry, and speed. A new eclecticism arose, such as the architecture based on the École des Beaux-Arts, and what is commonly called Victorian architecture in Britain and the United States. The needs of a new society pressed them, while steel, reinforced concrete, and electricity were among the many new technical means at their disposal.

After more than a half-century of assimilation and experimentation, modern architecture, often called the International style, produced an astonishing variety of daring and original buildings, often steel substructures sheathed in glass. The Bauhaus was a strong influence on modern architecture. As the line between architecture and engineering became a shadow, 20th-century architecture often approached engineering, and modern works of engineering-airplane hangars, for example-often aimed at and achieved an undeniable beauty. More recently, postmodern architecture (see postmodernism), which exploits and expands the technical innovations of modernism while often incorporating stylistic elements from other architectural styles or periods, has become an international movement.

Bibliography

See T. Hamlin, Architecture through the Ages (rev. ed. 1953); N. Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture (16th ed. 1960); S. Kostof, A History of Architecture: Settings & Rituals (1985); M. Trachtenberg and I. Hyman, Architecture: From Pre-History to Post-Modernism (1986); H. A. Millon, Key Monuments of the History of Architecture (1964); A. E. Richardson and H. O. Corfiato, The Art of Architecture (3d ed. 1972); S. F. Kimball and G. H. Edgell, A History of Architecture (1946, repr. 1972); J. Fleming et al., The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture (rev. ed. 1973); C. Harris, Dictionary of Architecture and Construction (rev. ed. 1988); K. Frampton, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture (1996).


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Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia: Architecture
Top Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > Mideast & N. Africa EncyclopediaAn area of great cultural creativity.

The architecture and city planning of the countries of North Africa and the Middle East are steeped in a history that has been marked by the development of Arab and Islamic culture since the seventh century. The architectural and urban traditions generated by this culture produced a remarkable built environment - composed of beautiful monuments of the Islamic art - and spatial typologies. Since the nineteenth century, this architectural inheritance has cohabited with and contrasted with a contemporary architecture that was produced on the one hand by an endogenous dynamics of "Westernization" developed during the Ottoman imperial period, and on the other hand by different forms of colonial domination (mainly French and British).

Since the independence of the region's countries, architecture has been the product of essentially two tendencies. In the vernacular, "minor" architecture, age-old traditions rooted in the materials, climate, and social structure of the local environment mark buildings in both rural areas and in new urban districts, where the self-construction is encouraged. There, the population produces an architecture without architects, and old forms cohabit, harmoniously or in a disjointed way, with modern structures. By contrast, in official, "major" architecture, buildings whose construction relied on governmental or institutional patronage have undergone a metamorphosis that has altered dramatically historical traditions and reflects the increasing impact of international styles and construction methods.

In addition to this influence, during the last thirty years the rate of construction in this part of the world has been intense, so architectural development has been rapid and buildings production radically transformed. However, as Udo Kulter-mann explained in Contemporary Architecture in the Arab States, this "rapidity and gigantic dimension of the transformation caused problems, among them waste, inefficiency, and misstated priorities, [and] the focus of international architectural activity shifted from Europe and North America to the Arab states as the world elite of the architectural profession competed with each other and with the emerging generation of Arab architects" (p. 1).

The Islamic Legacy

In the contemporary architecture, the influence of the Islamic legacy and local traditions is apparent not only superficially, in building forms and ornaments; instead, it affects the very design process. It "became, as the Aga Khan said, an instinctive manner of expression for any architect designing anywhere in the Islamic world" (The Aga Khan, 1979, cited by Kultermann, p.4). Old principles that governed the organization of space and the Isalmic aesthetic are actualized according to modern building requirements and are reintroduced to satisfy the religious rules and the climate. In addition, new buildings are least likely to complement the existing buildings so changes to the city environment are generally made house by house, block by block, and not by urban overhaul. If planned buildings are close to cities' historic districts, architects and governments build with care and sensitivity, but in cities' peripheries, they often propose buildings that do not correspond to the population's needs or lifestyles.

The Colonial Legacy

Even before the establishment of colonial empires in the Middle East, economic decline had reduced the quantity and quality of official patronage of architecture. Simultaneously, European styles influenced the building of European embassies and commercial concerns and the way that official patronage relied upon architects and builders who had traveled or studied in Europe, European publications on architecture, and changing tastes in Islamic courts. In the Ottoman Empire, for example, the Balyan family provided three generations of official architects for the sultans beginning in 1822, producing mosques, palaces, and other official buildings that reflected a mixture of European styles.

European governments, banks, commercial trading enterprises, and missionary institutions began to erect buildings in the European style. French styles prevailed in Algeria and later in the Maghrib; the style of the Balyans and later the Italian architect Montani gained currency in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul); in Egypt, Muhammad Ali (r. 1805 - 1848) favored buildings in a Europeanized Ottoman style, and the Khedive Ismaʿil ibn Ibrahim (r. 1863 - 1879), who had studied in Europe, imported European architects to build his palaces and to make over modern Cairo in the image of Paris under the Second Empire. Elsewhere on the Mediterranean littoral, and to an extent in Iran, French, Italian, and British architectural ideas left their stamp on museums and government buildings.

Nationalism and Architecture

By the end of the nineteenth century, European architectural ideas had provoked reactions from Middle Eastern architects and from Europeans who were sensitive to local traditions. Moreover, as the neo-Islamic building style gained popularity in Europe in the nineteenth century, it began to appear in the Middle East as well. In Egypt a substantial number of Islamic Revival buildings were erected by local and foreign architects in Cairo and in Alexandria; these used European construction methods and floor plans but were decorated with Islamic motifs. Examples include Alfonso Manescalo's Islamic Museum (1903 - 1904) and Mahmud Fahmi's Awqaf Ministry building (after 1898). In the Ottoman Empire a revival of governmental patronage in the late nineteenth century led to an early-twentieth-century Ottoman Revival style, whose chief practitioners were the architects Kemalettin Bey and Mehmet Vedat, and to a new-Islamic style that drew its inspiration from Spain and the Maghrib, exemplified by the Valide Mosque (1873) by Montani, and by the mid-nineteenth-century neo-Marinid gateway to what is now Istanbul University. In Casablanca, the Law Courts and other official buildings that were built under the French protectorate reflected an attempt to understand and to promote "appropriate" local styles.

Nationalist architecture in the Middle East emerged during the twentieth century. The Ottoman Revival under the Young Turks in the early twentieth century manifested a new Turkish nationalism and sparked a tradition reflected today in the neo-Ottoman contemporary buildings of Sedad Hakki Eldem, such as his many Bosporus villas (yah) and the massive central complex of Istanbul University. After the Atatürk revolution, German architects were invited to devise a city plan for modern Ankara; public monuments in European styles often drew upon what their designers believed were the pre-Islamic Hittite and Assyrian traditions of Anatolia.

Similar attention to the pre-Islamic past was seen in the architecture of Iran under the Pahlavis, where the monarchy stressed cultural continuity not only with the Safavid Islamic past but also with a Persian heritage stretching back to Cyrus the Great. The government of Reza Pahlavi spent vast sums on restoring monuments, especially those that had been built with earlier royal patronage, while largely adopting the modern international style in its new institutional buildings. The regime's Islamic successor has produced no significant architecture that indicates its own political and religious agenda, mostly because of the country's economic decline and the demands of its war with Iraq.

Morocco's independence from the French, gained in 1956, led to a pronounced nationalism in architecture, first expressed in the tomb complex of Muhammad V in Rabat, and in the 1990s in a series of laws that required that the construction budgets for all institutional and governmental buildings allot a substantial percentage of funds to strictly defined traditional Moroccan crafts.

In Egypt, by contrast, the revolution of the 1950s led to a socialist government whose official architecture often imitated the monumental style popular in the Soviet Union, best exemplified in the massive and forbidding Central Government Building in Cairo. National revolutions thus developed architectural patronage that reflected their own ideologies. For example, the secularist Baʿthist regime in Iraq, when it drew on the past for inspiration, typically looked to the neo-Babylonian period rather than to traditional Islam, a tendency that increased under the government of Saddam Hussein. In a parallel though far less pronounced tendency, Egypt has sought pharaonic inspiration for building styles and public monuments. In Central Asia, Russia first pushed its Stalinist architectural agenda, then later espoused the Soviet version of modernism. At the same time, the Soviet governments in Central Asia put significant effort into restoring Islamic monuments such as the giant mosque of Bibi Khanym in Samarkand, and religious monuments in Tashkent and Bukhara.

Contemporary Dilemmas

Middle Eastern attempts to adapt modern Western architecture often conflicts with the desire to bring about a renaissance of traditional architecture, or to produce a modern Islamic architecture that can keep its distinctive local or regional style while drawing upon the best of the new technology. There have been several institutional attempts to deal with this dilemma, but none has been more influential than the Aga Khan Awards, established in the late 1970s by the leader of the world's Ismaʿili Muslims. Beginning in 1980 an international jury composed of architects and others from the Islamic world, Europe, and the United States has periodically awarded prizes for contemporary Middle Eastern architecture that best reflects Islamic traditions and values combined with artistic distinction. The honored styles have varied widely, from the neotraditionalist architecture of Hassan Fathy in Egypt, typified in his buildings for the Wissa Wassef Foundation in Harraniya, near Giza, to the technically and formally avant-garde water towers designed for Kuwait City by the Swedish firm VBB. In general, the juries have shown remarkable breadth of vision and have taken an inclusive and eclectic (rather than ideological and purist) approach to the enormous range of distinctive modern Middle Eastern architectural styles. Awards have been given for domestic architecture, historical restoration, institutional buildings, adaptive reuse, and commercial buildings. The first awards were memorialized in 1983 in a publication edited by Renata Holod; subsequent years' awards, and other subjects of Middle Eastern architecture, have been featured in the periodical Mimar: Architecture in Development (up to 1994).

Three main issues confront governments, patrons, architects, and urban planners in the Middle East today. The first is how and whether there should be an ideology of architecture; the answer in Morocco has been an unequivocal yes, reflected in neotraditionalist building codes that emphasize traditional ornament and decorative crafts while utilizing modern technology to the fullest. For example, the mosque of Hassan II in Casablanca (thought of as a pendant to the impressive twelfth-century ruins of the Almohad mosque in Rabat), although constructed in classical Moroccan forms and proportions with classical decoration, is an outsized reinforced-concrete giant whose skyscraper minaret is surmounted by a huge laser that sends beams far into the sky. Its construction has been hailed for its Islamic symbolism and condemned for its extravagance during a time of financial difficulties. Similar ideology prevailed in the reconstruction of the two major pilgrimage shrines in Mecca and Medina by the Saudi government. Although they greatly facilitate the comfort and ease (if not the safety) of vastly increased numbers of pilgrims, these structures, lavish in size and decoration and traditional in style, raise more questions than they answer about the future of Middle Eastern religious architecture.

Examples of the opposite approach, which could be termed "creative pluralism," are found in Turkey and Tunisia, where many different styles, structures, and forms of decoration exist side by side in a creative mixture. The issue remains: Is appropriate architecture to consist of a traditional decorative veneer on what are essentially Western buildings in plan and construction, or is the new architecture of the Middle East going to be based from the ground up on the rich mosaic of social, environmental, and historical traditions? In fact, with few exceptions, local vernacular architecture is disappearing, replaced by undistinguished modern structures or by an equally alien homogenized national traditionalism that often consists of little more than employing the arch solely as a decorative device on building surfaces.

The second issue is curricula in architectural schools and colleges. The twentieth-century conflict about the role of teaching and learning the art and architecture of the past exists in the Middle East as it does elsewhere; the almost universal acceptance of Western-originated construction techniques and equipment (reinforced concrete, steel, glass, the tower crane, and so on) lends an almost surreal quality to some of these debates, and the issues often have been obscured as much as illumined by the polemics against the West exercised by individuals such as the late Ismaʿil Faruqi. The dialectic between historicism and artistic creativity is as old as art itself, however, and these debates are bound to survive as an essential part of the creative process.

The third issue is one that confronts architects and patrons everywhere. Even an examination of the record of the Aga Khan Awards demonstrates an impressive array of beautiful structures that are creative in design and impressive in sensitivity to tradition, but for the most part, whether they are private houses or public monuments, expensive to construct and affordable to few. Whether architecture in the Middle East can fulfill its implicit role - to provide decent housing and urban environments for exploding populations while reflecting its national and local traditions and remaining affordable - is a dilemma that will not easily be resolved.

Bibliography

The Aga Khan. Introduction of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture. Proceedings. Instanbul: Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1979.

Akbar, Jamel. Crisis in the Built Environment: The Case of the Muslim City. Singapore: Concept Media Pte Ltd., 1998.

Evin, Ahmed. Architecture Education in the Islamic World. Singapore: Concept Media Pte. Ltd./Aga Khan Award for Architecture 1986.

Faruqi, Ismail al-. "Islam and Architecture." In Fine Arts in Islamic Civilization, edited by M. A. J. Berg. Kuala Lumpur: Alif International, 1981.

Holod, Renata, and Rastorfer, Darl, eds. Architecture and Community: Building in the Islamic World Today. New York: Aperture, 1983.

Kultermann, Udo. Contemporary Architecture in Arab States. Renaissance of a Region. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999.

Sakr, Tarek Mohamed Refaat. Early Twentieth-Century IslamicArchitecture in Cairo. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1993.

— WALTER DENNY UPDATED BY AZZEDINE G. MANSOUR


History 1450-1789: Architecture
Top Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > History 1450-1789The monumental inventions of early modern European architecture still mark the modern built environment. Vast boulevards and formal gardens focusing on public buildings denote the capital city everywhere. Domes dominate the skyline in Rome, London, and Washington. Uniform palaces and house facades define the squares of Paris and London, the canals of Amsterdam and St. Petersburg. Churches modeled on imperial Roman baths and basilicas seem to reach outwards, with spectacular baroque facades and multiple columns extending into public space, like the twin columns (inspired by Trajan's Column in Rome) of Vienna's Karlskirche (Fischer von Erlach, 1715–1738), or the colonnades that define the piazza of St. Peter's in Rome (Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1656–1667). The countryside, too, is transformed by villas and great houses in their landscaped grounds, and in the most famous case, Versailles (Louis Levau and J. H. Mansart, 1668–1689), the out-of-town retreat became the capital of an absolute monarch.

The language of all these buildings is classical, using the columns, arches, cornices, vaults, and triangular pediments still visible in the ruins of ancient Rome, integrating them according to the ancient treatise of Vitruvius, and in some cases directly imitating the few ancient buildings that survived, such as the Pantheon and the Colosseum. But this language was transformed in several ways, going beyond the accomplishments of the Renaissance. In its baroque form, space becomes more complex, and surfaces more agitated and ornate; straight moldings and flat walls curve and break apart, columns spiral, circles turn into ovals, ceilings dissolve into vast trompe l'oeil paintings that seem open to heaven, and solid ornament imitates the movement of angels or the sudden burst of light. Secular buildings undergo the same transformation, especially in their ceremonial staircases and uniform suites of reception rooms that create the impression of infinite power. The best of these designs is orderly and monumental rather than capricious or excessive, yet periodically architects reacted against the baroque, instigating a calmer and more rational classicism. A well-known example is Palladianism, a revival of the late Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) that came to dominate English country house design in the eighteenth century in reaction to the ornate formality of Versailles and its English baroque rival, John Vanbrugh's Blenheim (1705–1716).

Individual buildings and urban spaces conveyed a powerful message of confidence and control through new forms and crystalline geometry even when they were not very large. Thus Francesco Borromini's (1599–1667) church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome (1634–1667), though only the size of one of the piers of St. Peter's, created a stir among visitors and critics who praised its curved facade and oval dome—or execrated them in equal measure. Sant' Ivo (1642–1660), Borromini's Star of David–shaped chapel for the University of Rome, dazzled with its breathless spiral tower that altered the role of the adjacent Pantheon's dome. Borromini's fastidiousness for building materials and moldings was matched by his French contemporary François Mansart, but the latter's trademark at country houses such as Château Maisons near Paris (1642) and the Orleans wing of the royal palace at Blois (1635) was a limpid and austere classicism. Pietro da Cortona's (1596–1669) facade for Santa Maria della Pace (1656–1659) in Rome applied theatricality to urban design, placing a lavishly columned and curved portico in a small space that caught unprepared visitors by surprise. Paris, Turin, London, and Bath were endowed with geometrical open spaces framed with uniform porticoes and houses, to whose shapes the English word "square" fails to do justice: rather, they were triangular (Place Dauphine), circular (Place des Victoires, Jules Hardouin-Mansart, 1685; the Circus, John Wood, 1754), rectangular (Piazza San Carlo, Carlo di Castellamonte, 1620), hexagonal (Place Vendôme, Mansart, 1698), and elliptical (Royal Crescent, John Wood, Jr., 1767–1777). Countering these residential "squares" were the public spaces of Rome, such as Piazza Navona (Four Rivers fountain by Bernini, 1647–1651), the Spanish Steps (Francesco de Sanctis, 1723–1726), and the Trevi fountain (Nicola Salvi, 1762), each animated by generous displays of statuary, water, terraces, and views. This festive quality of the best early modern urban design was enhanced with additional ornaments, including innumerable triumphal arches, imprinting the city with commemorative meaning.

The Architectural City

The innovations of the Italian Renaissance provided an ample foundation for the developments in architecture of the late sixteenth, the seventeenth, and the first half of the eighteenth centuries. This inheritance was enhanced by the innovations of military defense, altered social and political organizations, and new forms of organized religion. Yet despite significant research in church form and extensive construction of places of worship, the period is marked by a secularization of architecture and urban space.

The seventeenth century was an urban century, whose great cities—defined by the size of the population (according to Giovanni Botero) and the magnificence of their rulers—constituted its new wealth. A large population can be attained through prosperity and security, and the architecture of the early modern era defined the prosperity of the social order and ensured its safety in the face of enemies. Distinguished buildings, significant historical inheritance, artistic collections, and public safety attracted visitors to the great city. Thus consumerism and tourism developed in tandem with the early modern city and its architectural expression.

This was accompanied by the widespread acceptance and application of the revived classical style of architecture in places outside the Italian peninsula—in France, England, the Netherlands, the Germanic states, Sweden, Russia, and the British colonies in the Americas. A specifically Counter-Reformation style of classical architecture, emphasizing massive, ornate spaces and animated forms that propagate the faith by captivating the audience, was disseminated in the colonial towns of Spanish and Portuguese settlers, and in the missionary convents of religious orders in Central and South America, on the western coast of Africa, and on the Indian subcontinent.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, architecture became an instrument of state control and organization, not only signifying the cultural advantages of its sponsors (as in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) but also assuming a defining role in the identity of nascent national states. Thus secularized, classicized, and politicized, architecture transformed the early modern city. The architectural product continued to be defined through three types of design—church, palace, and public square—but each underwent extensive refinement and redefinition. We have cathedrals, parish churches, and monastic churches as before, though now competing for attention through the offer of urban amenities such as colonnades, fountains, and elaborately decorated facades, transformed by the worldly social agenda of the Counter-Reformation. The palace building type came to encompass not only aristocratic town residences (called hôtels in France) and the communal homes of religious orders, but also the state agencies of control, management, and reform (such as prisons, almshouses, hospitals, and city halls). The open spaces of the city surrounded by this evolving set of buildings (housing new functions and organized into streets and squares more or less geometrically defined and ordered) became the principal sites of urban meaning. The definition of urban architecture was ultimately achieved through the enclosure of a city within a fortification belt (walls, bastions, outworks, and gateways) that effectively created the separation between town and country and allowed each to develop firm boundaries.

This defining separation was the major contribution of military urbanism. Other military-influenced architectural features were the triumphal arch, the pentagonal citadel, the wide, uniformly framed straight boulevard, and the equestrian statue of the victorious ruler placed at the center of squares used for parades and festivities. The pacification brought about by military architecture encouraged the development of the rural palace or agrarian villa. Palladio's urbane villas (such as the Rotonda outside Vicenza, 1566–1569, and the Villa Barbaro at Maser, 1554–1558) offered a residential type that resonates throughout early modern architecture. Modeled on the French royal château, the palaces at Blenheim, Tsarskoe Selo (Bartolomeo Rastrelli, 1749–1756), and Schönbrunn (Fischer von Erlach, 1696–1711) are among the most prominent examples of the "Versailles syndrome" that swept through eighteenth-century Europe.

This new understanding of architecture, urbane even in its country houses, was promoted through the burgeoning medium of print: illustrated books, single sheets, and specialized studies turned the newly defined city and its buildings into a subject of study, and were collected by all those with pretensions to learning: for the first time in the history of Western civilization, the achievements of architects could be appreciated, studied, and imitated without leaving home. Nonetheless, this graphic documentation stimulated travel in the pursuit of architectural education, making Rome—then Paris, London, and Amsterdam—the destinations for nonreligious pilgrimage.

Baroque Rome and Beyond

The issues involved in large building operations—budget, conflicting interests of patrons, and variable design talents of architects—can best be illustrated by the seemingly interminable reconstruction of St. Peter's in Rome. Its dome, completed (Michelangelo and Giacomo della Porta, 1590) after nearly a century of indecision and uncertainty, the much desired Renaissance plan of the ideal church as centrally planned—promoted by Bramante (1506) and Michelangelo (c. 1546), the two most acclaimed architects of the sixteenth century—was definitively abandoned. The extension of the church by Carlo Maderno (1607–1612), and the immense facade designed by him, completed the body of the church proper. This signified the coming importance of building elevations in a development that has been labeled facadism—countering the Renaissance's failure to complete the public front of important religious and secular buildings (the facade of San Lorenzo in Florence, for example, whose interior includes Michelangelo's Medicean library and chapel, remains unclad). The elliptical space before St. Peter's, defined by a carefully planted forest of columns, was not completed until the late 1660s by Bernini. The area framed by the facade and colonnade, where pilgrims to Rome were taken to the bosom of the church and whose center was defined by the largest Egyptian obelisk in Rome, represented the epitome of baroque space. The placement of the obelisk under the direction of Domenico Fontana in 1586 marks an important achievement in the history of engineering, considered by architectural historians to be the most influential moment of early modern city planning and a spur to later developments. Facadism then is a crucial element of the concern with the appearance of public space that dominates Western architectural design in the seventeenth century.

Like Florence in the fifteenth century, Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was an artistic hub of the highest order. The papal government (with its huge numbers of retainers and accompanying families), the missionary orders that made their headquarters in the city, and the large numbers of pilgrims constituted the elements of a varied and rich patronage system that attracted the best artists to the city. Milan and Naples, Rome's most important rivals in wealth and size of population, were dominated by the Spanish viceroys, whose cultural contributions were more modest; Spanish monarchs beginning with Philip II concentrated their architectural patronage on the remote palace-monastery El Escorial (Juan de Herrera, 1568–1584). Architects came to work in Rome, but they also came to study, forming "national" groupings lodged among their compatriots in distinct parts of the multicultural city.

By the end of the seventeenth century the Italian tour, though highly recommended, was no longer a requirement for a successful career in architecture. Thus Christopher Wren and Jules Hardouin-Mansart, unlike their predecessors Inigo Jones and Jacques Lemercier, built highly visible religious monuments—St Paul's in London (1675–1711) and the Invalides church in Paris (1679–1691)—modeled on St. Peter's without setting foot in the old city. Inigo Jones put his Italian experience to work designing the queen's house in Greenwich (1616–1635, outside London), a royal villa that later became the centerpiece of Wren's naval hospital (1696–1716), and the Whitehall Banqueting House (1619–1622), which emulated the urban palaces of Palladio in Vicenza. Although his buildings were few, he sowed the seeds of Palladianism, the single most significant classicizing movement in England, whose influence continued through the eighteenth century in the houses designed by John Wood in Bath and Lord Burlington, William Kent, and Robert Adam in the British countryside near London (Chiswick, Syon) and East Anglia (Holkham Hall).

The Dutch version of classicism turned Amsterdam into a Venice of the north and provided the stimulation for the design of St. Petersburg. Russian neoclassicism in the later eighteenth century was leavened by the presence of both Charles Cameron and Giacomo Quarenghi, whose cool white and stripped-down temples and pavilions for the empress Catherine were rooted in the more recent archaeology of the mid-century. Architects at the French Academy in Rome made an inestimable contribution to neoclassicism: they measured and drew antiquities, offering the most accurately reproduced illustrations for those unwilling to travel. By anatomizing antiquities, they acquired a familiarity with the classical forms that led to the transformation of this inheritance, stripping it of baroque accretions.

Architectural Achievements

Architecture in this period solved problems that had been researched for centuries: how to express the status and ambitions of the patron and how to connect the buildings' public and private functions. Thus the formation of palace facades in Rome, Turin, Venice, Paris, and Vienna can be seen as billboards that explicate the position of their owners. This meant articulating the relation between the exterior (the street or garden facade) and the interior, which in turn must be divided into entry, passage, principal reception room, and private apartments.

While palace and church elevations had been recognized as essential areas of relation between public and interior space (and as carriers of meaning), the formal manipulation of these surfaces was determined by concerns for the appearance of dignity and sobriety. The baroque facade became strongly articulated and richly ornamented with the entire arsenal of architectural vocabulary available to designers. While the liveliness of church facades was meant to stimulate a Counter-Reformation participation, the facades of palaces became essential elements in the highly ritualized definition of power exchanges.

The major architectural innovations—St. Peter's in Rome, Palladio's villas, the Louvre in Paris (1666), and the palace at Versailles—soon acquired the authority earlier associated with ancient Roman and Greek buildings such as the Parthenon, the Pantheon, the Colosseum, and the ancient theater. The new standards were serially emulated, though not always with distinguished results. Thus St. Peter's was the source not only for Mansart's Invalides in Paris and Wren's St. Paul's in London, but also for Jacques-Germain Soufflot's Panthéon (1755–1780) in Paris, stretching as far as the nineteenth-century capitol buildings in Washington and in Providence, Rhode Island. Versailles, itself distantly modeled on the Escorial, spawned numerous imitations in the German principalities and in Vienna, as well as in Sweden and Russia. Palladio's villa designs, capable of absorbing variations in scale, were the basis (through Inigo Jones) for innumerable British country houses, and for Thomas Jefferson's influential Monticello. Bernini's designs for the Louvre, and the realized version by Louis Le Vau and Claude Perrault, drew upon the Farnese palace in Rome, the grandest of Renaissance homes, and propagated countless urban houses, from Guarino Guarini's Carignano palace (1679–1683) in Turin to Viennese town palaces of the eighteenth century.

Bibliography

Ackerman, James S. The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses. Princeton, 1990.

Blunt, Anthony. Art and Architecture of France 1500 to 1700. New Haven, 1999. First published in 1953.

Botero, Giovanni. Della grandezza delle città. 1608.

Millon, Henry, ed. The Triumph of the Baroque: Architecture in Europe 1600–1750. Milan, 1999.

Millon, Henry, and Vittorio Lampugnani, eds. The Renaissance from Brunelleschi to Michelangelo: The Representation of Architecture. New York, 1994.

Payne, Alina. The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance: Architectural Invention, Ornament, and Literary Culture. Cambridge, U.K., 1999.

Pollak, Martha. Turin, 1564–1680: Urban Design, Military Culture and the Creation of the Absolutist Capital. Chicago, 1991.

Rykwert, Joseph. The First Moderns: The Architects of the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge, Mass., 1980.

Summerson, John. The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century. London, 1986.

——. The Classical Language of Architecture. London, 1980.

Waddy, Patricia. Seventeenth-Century Roman Palaces: Use and Art of the Plan. New York and Cambridge, Mass., 1990.

Wittkower, Rudolf. Art and Architecture of Italy, 1600–1750. New Haven, 2001. First published in 1958.

—MARTHA POLLAK


Military Dictionary: architecture
Top Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > Military Dictionary(DOD) A framework or structure that portrays relationships among all the elements of the subject force, system, or activity.




Quotes About: Architecture
Top Home > Library > Literature & Language > Quotes AboutQuotes:

"A structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature." - Guillaume Apollinaire

"In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it's modern architecture." - Nancy Banks-Smith

"When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers." - Colleen C. Barrett

"Where do architects and designers get their ideas? The answer, of course, is mainly from other architects and designers, so is it mere casuistry to distinguish between tradition and plagiarism?" - Stephen Bayley

"Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money." - Ambrose Bierce

"Architecture is inhabited sculpture." - Constantin Brancusi



See more famous quotes about Architecture


Wikipedia: Architecture
Top Home > Library > Miscellaneous > WikipediaThis article is about the design and construction of buildings for human use. For other uses, see Architecture (disambiguation).
For a topical guide to this subject, see Outline of architecture.



Section and elevation of the dome of Florence Cathedral, Italy.

Brunelleschi in Italy, in the building of the dome, not only transformed the cathedral and the city of Florence, but also the role and status of the architect.
Architecture (Latin „architectura“, from the Greek „arkitekton“, ὰρχιτεκτονική – arkhitektonike, from ὰρχι chief or leader and Τεκτονική builder or carpenter) is the art and science of designing buildings and other physical structures.

Architecture is both the process and the product of designing and constructing spaces that reflect and functional, aesthetic and environmental considerations. Architecture requires the use of materials, technology, textures, light, and shadow. As a process, architecture also includes the pragmatic elements of design, such as planning, cost and construction. A wider definition may comprise all design activity from the macro-level (urban design, landscape architecture) to the micro-level (construction details and furniture). In fact, architecture today may refer to the activity of designing any kind of system.

Architectural works are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements.

Contents [hide]
1 The Architect
2 Theory of Architecture
2.1 Historic treatises
2.2 Contemporary concepts of architecture
3 History
3.1 Origins and the ancient world
3.2 The Medieval builder
3.3 Renaissance and the architect
3.4 Early Modern and the Industrial Age
3.5 Modernism and reaction of architecture
3.6 Architecture today
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 External links

The Architect
Main article: architect
Architects plan, design and review the construction of buildings and structures for the use of people by the creative organisation of materials and components with consideration to mass, space, form, volume, texture, structure, light, shadow, materials, program, and pragmatic elements such as cost, construction limitations and technology, to achieve an end which is usually functional, economical, practical and often artistic. This distinguishes architecture from engineering design, which has as its primary object the creative manipulation of materials and forms using mathematical and scientific principles.

As documentation produced by architects, typically drawings, plans and technical specifications, architecture defines the structure and/or behavior of a building or any other kind of system that is to be or has been constructed.

Theory of Architecture
Main article: Architectural theory
Historic treatises


Architectural drawings of details of the Palace of Persepolis, Persia (Iran)The earliest written work on the subject of architecture is De architectura, by the Roman architect Vitruvius in the early 1st century CE.[1] According to Vitruvius, a good building should satisfy the three principles of firmitatis utilitatis venustatis,[2][3] which translates roughly as -

Durability - it should stand up robustly and remain in good condition.
Utility - it should be useful and function well for the people using it.
Beauty - it should delight people and raise their spirits.
According to Vitruvius, the architect should strive to fulfill each of these three attributes as well as possible.



The Parthenon, Athens, Greece, "the supreme example among architectural sites." (Fletcher).[4]Leone Battista Alberti, who elaborates on the ideas of Vitruvius in his treatise, De Re Aedificatoria, saw beauty primarily as a matter of proportion, although ornament also played a part. For Alberti, the rules of proportion were those that governed the idealised human figure, the Golden Mean.

The most important aspect of beauty was therefore an inherent part of an object, rather than something applied superficially; and was based on universal, recognisable truths. The notion of style in the arts was not developed until the 16th century, with the writing of Vasari.[5] The treatises, by the 18th century, had been translated into Italian, French, Spanish and English.

In the early nineteenth century, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin wrote Contrasts (1836) that, as the titled suggested, contrasted the modern, industrial world, which he disparaged, with an idealized image of neo-medieval world. Gothic architecture, Pugin believed, was the only “true Christian form of architecture.”

The 19th century English art critic, John Ruskin, in his Seven Lamps of Architecture, published 1849,[6] was much narrower in his view of what constituted architecture. Architecture was the "art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by men ... that the sight of them" contributes "to his mental health, power, and pleasure".

For Ruskin, the aesthetic was of overriding significance. His work goes on to state that a building is not truly a work of architecture unless it is in some way "adorned". For Ruskin, a well-constructed, well-proportioned, functional building needed string courses or rustication, at the very least.

On the difference between the ideals of "architecture" and mere "construction", the renowned 20th C. architect Le Corbusier wrote: "You employ stone, wood, and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces: that is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say: This is beautiful. That is Architecture".[7]



The National Congress of Brazil, designed by Oscar Niemeyer.Contemporary concepts of architecture
The great 19th century architect of skyscrapers, Louis Sullivan, promoted an overriding precept to architectural design: "Form follows function".

While the notion that structural and aesthetic considerations should be entirely subject to functionality was met with both popularity and skepticism, it had the effect of introducing the concept of "function" in place of Vitruvius "utility". "Function" came to be seen as encompassing all criteria of the use, perception and enjoyment of a building, not only practical but also aesthetic, psychological and cultural.



Sydney Opera House, Australia designed by Utzon.Nunzia Rondanini stated, "Through its aesthetic dimension architecture goes beyond the functional aspects that it has in common with other human sciences. Through its own particular way of expressing values, architecture can stimulate and influence social life without presuming that, in and of itself, it will promote social development.'

To restrict the meaning of (architectural) formalism to art for art's sake is not only reactionary; it can also be a purposeless quest for perfection or originality which degrades form into a mere instrumentality".[8]

Among the philosophies that have influenced modern architects and their approach to building design are rationalism, empiricism, structuralism, poststructuralism, and phenomenology.

In the late 20th century a new concept was added to those included in the compass of both structure and function, the consideration of sustainability. To satisfy the contemporary ethos a building should be constructed in a manner which is environmentally friendly in terms of the production of its materials, its impact upon the natural and built environment of its surrounding area and the demands that it makes upon non-sustainable power sources for heating, cooling, water and waste management and lighting.

History
Main article: History of architecture


Vernacular architecture in Denmark.Origins and the ancient world
Architecture first evolved out of the dynamics between needs (shelter, security, worship, etc.) and means (available building materials and attendant skills). As human cultures developed and knowledge began to be formalized through oral traditions and practices, architecture became a craft.

Here there is a process of trial and error, and later improvisation or replication of a successful trial. What is termed Vernacular architecture continues to be produced in many parts of the world. Indeed, vernacular buildings make up most of the built world that people experience every day.



Angkor, Cambodia.Early human settlements were mostly rural. Due to a surplus in production the economy began to expand resulting in urbanization thus creating urban areas which grew and evolved very rapidly in some cases, such as that of Çatal Huyuk in Anatolia and Mohenjo Daro in Pakistan.

In many ancient civilizations, like the Egyptians' and Mesopotamians', architecture and urbanism reflected the constant engagement with the divine and the supernatural, while in other ancient cultures such as Persia architecture and urban planning was used to exemplify the power of the state.

The architecture and urbanism of the Classical civilizations such as the Greek and the Roman evolved from civic ideals rather than religious or empirical ones and new building types emerged. Architectural styles developed.

Texts on architecture began to be written in the Classical period. These became canons to be followed in important works, especially religious architecture. Some examples of canons are found in the writings of Vitruvius, the Kao Gong Ji of ancient China[9] and Vaastu Shastra of ancient India and Manjusri vasthu vidya sastra of Sri Lanka[10] .

The architecture of different parts of Asia developed along different lines to that of Europe, Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh architecture each having different characteristics. Buddhist architecture, in particular, showed great regional diversity. In many Asian countries a pantheistic religion led to architectural forms that were designed specifically to enhance the natural landscape.

The Medieval builder


The Taj Mahal, in IndiaIslamic architecture began in the 7th century CE, developing from a blend of architectural forms from the ancient Middle East and from Byzantium but also developing features to suit the religious and social needs of the society. Examples can be found throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Spain, and were to become a significant stylistic influence on European architecture during the Medieval period.



Wells Cathedral, Somerset, England, United Kingdom.In Europe, in both the Classical and Medieval periods, buildings were not attributed to specific individuals and the names of the architects frequently unknown, despite the vast scale of the many religious buildings extant from this period.

During the Medieval period guilds were formed by craftsmen to organise their trade and written contracts have survived, particularly in relation to ecclesiastical buildings. The role of architect was usually one with that of master mason, or Magister lathomorum as they are sometimes described in contemporary documents.

Over time the complexity of buildings and their types increased. General civil construction such as roads and bridges began to be built. Many new building types such as schools, hospitals, and recreational facilities emerged.

Renaissance and the architect


La Rotonda, Italy by PalladioWith the Renaissance and its emphasis on the individual and humanity rather than religion, and with all its attendant progress and achievements, a new chapter began. Buildings were ascribed to specific architects - Brunelleschi, Alberti, Michelangelo, Palladio - and the cult of the individual had begun.

There was still no dividing line between artist, architect and engineer, or any of the related vocations, and the appellation was often one of regional preference. At this stage, it was still possible for an artist to design a bridge as the level of structural calculations involved was within the scope of the generalist.

Early Modern and the Industrial Age
With the emerging knowledge in scientific fields and the rise of new materials and technology, architecture and engineering began to separate, and the architect began to concentrate on aesthetics and the humanist aspects, often at the expense of technical aspects of building design.



St Pancras Midland Hotel, London, United KingdomThere was also the rise of the "gentleman architect" who usually dealt with wealthy clients and concentrated predominantly on visual qualities derived usually from historical prototypes, typified by the many country houses of Great Britain that were created in the Neo Gothic or Scottish Baronial styles.

Formal architectural training in the 19th century, for example at Ecole des Beaux Arts in France, gave much emphasis to the production of beautiful drawings and little to context and feasibility. Effective architects generally received their training in the offices of other architects, graduating to the role from draughtsmen or clerks.

Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution laid open the door for mass production and consumption. Aesthetics became a criterion for the middle class as ornamented products, once within the province of expensive craftsmanship, became cheaper under machine production.

Vernacular architecture became increasingly ornamental. House builders could use current architectural design in their work by combining features found in pattern books and architectural journals.

Modernism and reaction of architecture
Main article: Modern architecture


The Bauhaus Dessau architecture department from 1925 by Walter GropiusThe dissatisfaction with such a general situation at the turn of the twentieth century gave rise to many new lines of thought that served as precursors to Modern Architecture. Notable among these is the Deutscher Werkbund, formed in 1907 to produce better quality machine made objects. The rise of the profession of industrial design is usually placed here.

Following this lead, the Bauhaus school, founded in Germany in 1919, consciously rejected history and looked at architecture as a synthesis of art, craft, and technology.

When Modern architecture was first practiced, it was an avant-garde movement with moral, philosophical, and aesthetic underpinnings. Immediately after World War I, pioneering modernist architects sought to develop a completely new style appropriate for a new post-war social and economic order, focused on meeting the needs of the middle and working classes. They rejected the architectural practice of the academic refinement of historical styles which served the rapidly declining aristocratic order.



Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright.The approach of the Modernist architects was to reduce buildings to pure forms, removing historical references and ornament in favor of functionalist details. Buildings that displayed their construction and structure, exposing steel beams and concrete surfaces instead of hiding them behind traditional forms, were seen as beautiful in their own right.

Architects such as Mies van der Rohe worked to create beauty based on the inherent qualities of building materials and modern construction techniques, trading traditional historic forms for simplified geometric forms, celebrating the new means and methods made possible by the Industrial Revolution.

Many architects resisted Modernism, finding it devoid of the decorative richness of ornamented styles. As the founders of the International Style lost influence in the late 1970s, Postmodernism developed as a reaction against the austerity of Modernism. Robert Venturi's contention that a "decorated shed" (an ordinary building which is functionally designed inside and embellished on the outside) was better than a "duck" (a building in which the whole form and its function are tied together) gives an idea of this approach.

Architecture today
Main article: Contemporary architecture


Postmodern design at Gare do Oriente, Lisbon, Portugal, by Santiago Calatrava.Part of the architectural profession, and also some non-architects, responded to Modernism and Postmodernism by going to what they considered the root of the problem. They felt that architecture was not a personal philosophical or aesthetic pursuit by individualists; rather it had to consider everyday needs of people and use technology to give a livable environment.

The Design Methodology Movement involving people such as Christopher Alexander started searching for more people-oriented designs. Extensive studies on areas such as behavioral, environmental, and social sciences were done and started informing the design process.

As the complexity of buildings began to increase (in terms of structural systems, services, energy and technologies), architecture started becoming more multi-disciplinary. Architecture today usually requires a team of specialist professionals, with the architect being one of many, although usually the team leader.

During the last two decades of the twentieth century and into the new millennium, the field of architecture saw the rise of specializations by project type, technological expertise or project delivery methods. In addition, there has been an increased separation of the 'design' architect [a] from the 'project' architect.[b]

Moving the issues of environmental sustainability into the mainstream is a significant development in the architecture profession. Sustainability in architecture was pioneered in the 1970s by architects such as Ian McHarg in the US and Brenda and Robert Vale in the UK and New Zealand. There has been an acceleration in the number of buildings which seek to meet green building sustainable design principles. It is now expected that architects will integrate sustainable principles into their projects.[11] An example of an architecturally innovative green building is the Dynamic Tower which will be powered by wind turbines and solar panels.[12]



21st century office building, Moscow, Russia.See also Architecture portal
Main articles: Outline of architecture and Index of architecture articles
Architect
Architectural design competition
Architectural style
Glossary of architecture
History of Architecture
Liturgical architecture
Notes
a. ^ A design architect is one who is responsible for the design
b. ^ A project architect is one who is responsible for ensuring the design is built correctly and who administers building contracts - in non-specialist architectural practices the project architect is also the design architect and the term refers to the differing roles the architect plays at differing stages of the process.

References

The Bank of America Tower, New York City, United States (under construction in this picture) was completed according to principles of environmental sustainability.^ D. Rowland - T.N. Howe: Vitruvius. Ten Books on Architecture. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, ISBN 0-521-00292-3
^ Translated by Henry Wotton, in 1624, as "firmness, commodity and delight" [1]
^ Vitruvius [2]
^ Banister Fletcher, A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method
^ Françoise Choay, Alberti and Vitruvius, editor, Joseph Rykwert, Profile 21, Architectural Design, Vol 49 No 5-6
^ John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, G. Allen (1880), reprinted Dover, (1989) ISBN 0-486-26145-X
^ Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, Dover Publications(1985). ISBN 0-486-25023-7
^ Rondanini, Nunzia Architecture and Social Change Heresies II, Vol. 3, No. 3, New York, Neresies Collective Inc., 1981.
^ 7th-5th centuries BCE.
^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_ancient_Sri_Lanka
^ The U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating system has been instrumental in this. Other energy efficiency and green building rating systems include Energy Star, Green Globes, and CHPS (Collaborative for High Performance Schools),LEED.
^ "AssociatedPress". AssociatedPress. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq-QUkE1DGM&fmt=18. Retrieved 2008-12-21.
Panayiotis Pagalos, "The significance of time in contemporary architecture. Technical and poetic time: the case of Aldo Rossi", Phd dissertation, University of Patras, Greece, 2008

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