LESSON 3 DOSSIER: Urbanism and architecture

The Greek City

The urbanism of the Greek cities was essentially conditioned by, the polis independent character, the mountainous topography of the land, and the introduction of democracy in Athens. The Hellenic polis, were organized inside a walled enclosure, prepared to deal with the usual and subsequent war conflicts.

It highlights the highest area, equally fortified that the rest of the city, the Acropolis, place in which all buildings of sacred character were built. In addition, in accordance with the implantation of democracy in some cities, the need to create urban elements of a common social, political and economic type was raised.

These new elements were organized around the agora or public square, a place that exemplifies the Greek democratic nature, because different activities were carried out, such as public celebrations, political assemblies, mercantile transactions, justice...

The topographer and geometer Hippodamus of Miletus projected the reconstruction of the city of Miletus in 475 BC. after the destruction that he suffered at the hands of the Persians. With an orthogonal layout with rectangular streets that crossed at right angles and betting to integrate politics, urban planning and geometry, this model served to project subsequent cities. It was a space at the service of the citizen, taking into account the scale, functionality, dimensions, perspective and its relation to the space that surrounds them, making urbanism born in classical Greece.

Map of the city of Milet Ancient Greek Architecture

Of all the ancient architectural styles, Greek architecture has proven to be the most enduring. Sure, the Egyptians built some impressive structures, and the Romans pulled off some amazing feats of engineering. But you don't see us building pyramids anymore - at least, nowhere but Vegas - and even Roman engineering marvels incorporated Greek form and style.

Greek architecture is more than just impressive, it is timeless. You don't have to dig in ruins to find Greek architecture; it's all around you. Don't believe me? Go visit a civic structure, city hall, a theatre, a bank, a library, a museum. What do you see? Columns, columns, columns, columns, columns. In short, if you want a Westerner to think something is important, put columns on it - and not just any columns, Greek columns.

Orders of Greek Columns

Greek columns come in three varieties, or orders: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. All three share the same fluted column, or drum. Where they differ is at the top, what is called the capital of the column.

The Doric Order of Greek architecture was the first style of stone temple architecture in ancient Greece. It became popular in the Archaic Period, roughly 750-480 BCE, and replaced the previous style of basic, wood structures. The Doric Order was the first style of Classical Architecture, which is the sophisticated architectural styles of ancient Greece and Rome that set the standards for beauty, harmony, and strength for European architecture. The other two orders are Ionic and Corinthian. Doric Order is recognizable by two basic features: the columns and the entablature.

The purpose of the columns was to support the weight of the ceiling. Each order of classical architecture used columns for this purpose, but the columns were differently designed. In the Doric Order, the column shaft is simple and tapered, meaning it is wider at the base than the top. Each column has 20 parallel, vertical grooves called flutes. Columns in the Doric Order did not have a base (a wide flat stone) but rested directly on the pavement of the temple, called the stylobate. The top of a column has a wide, flat section called the capital. The capital of a column directly supports the weight of the ceiling. Capitals in the Doric Order are smooth, without decoration, and are flared, meaning the top is wider than the base.

The Ionic Order is one of the three orders of classical architecture, alongside the Doric and Corinthian orders. Classical architecture refers to the architecture styles of ancient Greece and Rome, which set the standards for architecture in the Western world. These ancient civilizations defined what we consider to be architectural beauty.

The Ionic order is defined by the Ionic column. In ancient Greece, buildings were made with a number of columns that held up their roofs. The column was the architectural staple of Greece, both from a practical and artistic standpoint. Columns supported the weight of the roof and let the Greeks build larger temples.

A column was made up of several parts. The base is the stone platform at the bottom of the column. There are usually multiple layers to the base. On top of the base is the shaft, the long part of the column with groves running down the sides. At the very top is the capital, the decorative stone that bears the weight of the roof. Ionic columns tend to be more slender, but the defining feature of the Ionic order is the volute. The volute is the spiral, scroll-like capital of the Ionic column.

Besides a column, the Ionic order also has specific entablature. The entablature is the part of the roof that rests on top of the column and consists of the architrave, the frieze, and the cornice:

 The architrave is the long beam that supports the weight directly above the column.  The frieze is a strip above the architrave.  And the cornice is the top weight-bearing part which juts outwards. The cornice in the ionic order has saw-like squared edges. In architecture, the post and lintel system refers to any building in which the weight of the roof is supported by load-bearing upright sections and a horizontal section on top of those. The entablature is a lintel, and the columns are the posts. The entablature was meant to be functional, so it could help support the weight of the roof but was also often carved or decorated.

In the Greek Corinthian order, the columns were thin and fluted, meaning they had a series of vertical lines cut into the surface. The style tended to be slender and elegant. The most striking element of the Corinthian order was its very decorative capital with a design of scrolls and unfurled acanthus leaves. The acanthus leaf motif was based on a durable plant with spiked leaves found throughout the Mediterranean. On the Corinthian entablature, the frieze was usually decorated with continual sculptural reliefs, where the figures were raised from the surface but not completely freestanding. Temples

Your basic Greek temple is a roofed rectangle surrounded by columns. That's me in front of a particularly old Greek temple in Corinth. What sort of columns are those? That's right, Doric. Well done.

Anyway, these temples had a long, angled roof, peaking on the short ends to form a triangle called a pediment. These shallow shelters were filled with life-size sculptures. The roof rested upon an even plane called an entablature, which spanned the gaps between columns to provide a solid surface. As temple-building developed, architects added decorations to the entablature called metopes, separated from each other by three lines called a triglyph. Further developments and bigger temples led to the addition of a second row of columns with a continuous decoration called a frieze running along the top.

Inside the temple was a smaller enclosure called a naos lined with its own columns. This was the holiest place of the temple and usually housed an idol of the deity for whom the temple was built. Sometimes the Greeks would switch up column styles within the naos, putting the hefty Doric on the outside and the delicate Ionic or Corinthian within.

Perhaps the most famous Greek temple is the Parthenon. The Athenians began building this temple to Athena in 447 BCE and did not complete it until 15 years later. Like all Greek city-states, the Athenians built their most impressive temples atop the highest point in town, called the acropolis (literally 'high city'). The Parthenon had all the elements of a Greek temple: the columns and entablature, the pediment full of sculptures. It even had the extra features: metopes depicting a battle between Centaurs and Lapiths, the second row of columns with their accompanying frieze depicting a civic procession of Athenians in exquisite detail, and, within, the naos, recreated here by the fine folks at Nashville's Centennial Park: big idol of Athena on the inside.

Yet these images cannot convey the overall effect of this building. You simply have to be there. Standing among the columns, you see the clever tricks of the eye Greek architects used to make the Parthenon tower imposingly. You can see how they tapered the columns at the top to make the building seem taller, a trick they called entasis. As you examine more closely, you notice that there is not a single right angle or straight line in the entire Parthenon. Yet the mind expects right angles, it expects straight lines. By taking advantage of the mind's expectations, the Greek architects could make the Parthenon appear even larger than it actually was. The overall effect is one of airy grandeur.

If we study the Doric temple structure on detail, the entablature is the structure that rests on top of the columns and has three parts. The architrave is the horizontal beam that is directly on the capital of the column and is undecorated in the Doric Order. The second section is the frieze. This is the most distinguishing feature of the Doric entablature because Doric friezes have alternating patterns of triglyphs and metopes as decoration. A triglyph is a panel with three vertical lines; the metope is the blank space between triglyphs. Triglyphs are meant to resemble the end of wooden beams, which would have supported the weight of the ceiling in wooden temples. Above the frieze is the cornice, the protruding section that supports the topmost structure, the triangular pediment. Often, statues of deities were found in the pediment.

Doric temples were supposed to be aesthetically balanced, and ideally, there should have been one triglyph above the center of each column and one directly between each column. However, because the Doric Order was the first time stone temples were used, the Greeks were still learning how to adjust for the extra weight of stone. Therefore the last two columns on each row had to be closer together to balance the weight, meaning the triglyphs were off-center. This issue was called the Doric Corner Conflict and took years for architects to correct. Eventually they resolved it by reducing the size of the end metopes, so that the triglyphs were centered over the end columns again.

The Greeks built Doric temples across their territories in Greece and Southern Italy. However, one stands out above the rest. As we said, the Parthenon is one of the most famous temples from ancient Greece and is the greatest example of the Doric Order. It was built around 438 BCE in Athens and is dedicated to the goddess Athena. For a time, it served as the treasury for the Delian League, a coalition of Greek cities, and later the first Athenian Empire. Due to the size and engineering of the temple and the incredible statues and reliefs originally part of the temple, it is called one of the best examples of Greek architecture.

The Parthenon was 45 feet tall, 228 feet long and 101 feet wide. The outside has 46 columns, each 34 feet tall. There are an additional 23 columns inside the temple. The corner columns are slightly wider to try and compensate for the Doric Corner Conflict. The metopes, all 92 of them, had detailed reliefs on them. Metopes were generally blank; only highly important buildings like treasuries, had this feature. Originally, the pediment and interior were filled with painted marble statues that depicted religious scenes and are considered some of the finest marble work in history.

By the 5th century BCE, the Ionic Order was popular in mainland Greece, and the first time it was used on a major temple was for the Temple of Hera on Samos, built around 570 BCE by the Greek architect Rhoikos.

Another Ionic building was the Temple of Artemis, which was said to be one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. According to the Roman architect Vitruvius, the Doric order was based on the proportions of the male body, while the Ionic order was modeled after the more graceful elements of the female body. The ancient Greeks and Romans were obsessed with mathematical, perfect proportions of bodies, architecture, and art. These proportions were based on the ancient geometry, algebra, and trigonometry of these civilizations. To them, everything that was perfect could be represented in formulas of perfect proportions. An arm of a statue might be exactly 25% longer than the torso, for example.

Reconstruction of the Temple of Artemis

The Greek mathematician Euclid figured out how to find the mathematical ratio of a line, which led to the discovery of the Golden Proportion, also known as phi. This proportion is when the ratio between the larger and smaller section is equal to the ratio between the larger section and the whole line. This was considered 'perfect,' hence the term, Golden Proportion. Another Greek mathematician, Pythagoras (560-480 BCE), proved that the Golden Proportion was the basis for the proportions of the human figure. This had a huge impact on Greek art and became the basis for what was considered beautiful in art and architecture.

The three orders of Greek architecture, including the Ionic order, reflect these Golden Proportions. Greek temples are shaped like a rectangle because the ratio between height and width can be measured by phi. The division of the columns to the entablature and base are measured by the same ratio.

The Greek Corinthian order was named for the city of Corinth and began to be used in Greek architecture around 425 BC. We see a first example of Corinthian capitals on the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae, built between 429 and 400 BC. The Corinthian order was later used on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens, which was essentially an award monument to a theatrical play built around 334 BC. Although this monument has suffered damage over the centuries, the acanthus leaf motif is still visible on some of the capitals, as are parts of the continual sculptural frieze on the entablature.

But it was the ancient Romans who used the Corinthian order to its fullest effect. It seems the elegant decorative nature of its thinner fluted columns and acanthus-leaf capitals appealed to them. You can find the Corinthian order used on the Pantheon in Rome, on a first century AD Roman structure called the Temple of Dioscuri in Naples, and many other Roman buildings as well. Treasuries and Stadiums

Treasuries and stadiums pop up in important pan-Hellenic sites like Delphi and Olympia, places where all the Greeks came to worship, meet and compete. Stadiums provided a place to watch competitions. These stadiums were not the massive round affairs that we have today but rather tiered benches along the side of a long track called a stade, which is where we get the name 'stadium.' Competitors would race down the stade and back again. Here's me and some friends running the stade at Delphi. Of course, the Greeks would have done this naked, but there were ladies present.

Another way city-states competed at these holy sites was by making lavish donations to the god, which they housed in treasuries. Being full of treasure, treasuries lacked the airy openness of Greek temples. They were squat, strong houses with opulent facades to declare the glory of the polis that built it and hint at the wealth stored within. The form of these treasuries is often mimicked by today's banks.

Theatres

Yet perhaps the most distinctly Greek piece of architecture is the theatre. Indeed, an archaeologist can identify a Greek colony based on little else. Greeks used their theatres for more than just entertainment. Theatre was both religious and competitive, and the Greeks took theatre and music competitions as seriously as their sporting events.

If the Greeks had refined their engineering skills in their temples, they mastered it in their theatres. Greek theatres are an engineering marvel: vast enough to seat thousands yet precisely designed to carry the slightest sound all the way to the back. At the center of every Greek theatre lays a small stone. This is the sweet spot of the theatre. That's Mel, of the Olympia debacle, standing on the sweet spot at Epidaurus, home of the largest and best-preserved of the Greek theatres. From that spot, even the slightest whisper resonates, and spoken words ring like the voice of God. I've been a singer all my life, and I could not resist. I stood upon that sweet spot and sang my face off, and let me tell you, no stage, no hall, no cathedral can match the acoustic mastery of the Greek theatre.

The theaters were built taking advantage of the unevenness of a mountain. This slope was used to lay the grades or cover it in semicircular form. On his feet there was the scene, where the theatrical performance was developed, and the orchestra, a central circular space between the steps and the scene, where the heart was.

Among the theaters, it is worth mentioning the theater of Epidaurus, with an ultra- semicircular; the orchestra has almost 20m. of diameter and the scene is a one-story building with two side doors.

Greek theatre reconstruction