Culture and Architecture 15 CHAPTER THREE Colloquial Architecture 25
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
v By Leo Hansen Culture and Second Edition Architecture: AN INTEGRATED HISTORY vvvvvvvv Bassim Hamadeh, CEO and Publisher Kassie Graves, Director of Acquisitions Jamie Giganti, Senior Managing Editor John Remington, Senior Field Acquisitions Editor Monika Dziamka, Project Editor Brian Fahey, Licensing Specialist Miguel Macias, Graphic Designer Kaela Martin and Berenice Quirino, Associate Editors Kat Ragudos, Interior Designer Copyright © 2017 by Cognella, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, transmit- ted, or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information retrieval system without the written permission of Cognella, Inc. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi- cation and explanation without intent to infringe. Cover image copyright © Depositphotos/delray77. Printed in the United States of America ISBN: 978-1-5165-1082-5 (pbk) / 978-1-5165-1083-2 (br) vvvvvvvv Contents PREFACE V PART ONE: INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE The Beauty of Architecture 5 CHAPTER TWO Culture and Architecture 15 CHAPTER THREE Colloquial Architecture 25 PART TWO: PREHISTORY CHAPTER FOUR Origins of Culture and Architecture 37 CHAPTER FIVE The Megalith Builders 47 PART THREE: THE ANCIENT WORLD CHAPTER SIX The First Civilizations 57 CHAPTER SEVEN Egypt in the New Kingdom 69 CHAPTER EIGHT Aegean Civilizations of the Bronze Age 77 CHAPTER NINE The Classical World 83 CHAPTER TEN Ancient Greece 95 CHAPTER ELEVEN Iron Age Civilizations of the Mediterranean 105 and the Near East CHAPTER TWELVE Ancient Rome 115 CHAPTER THIRTEEN Hellenism 129 CHAPTER FOURTEEN Ancient Asia 137 CHAPTER FIFTEEN Ancient American Civilizations 147 iii PART FOUR: LATE ANTIQUITY CHAPTER SIXTEEN Early Christianity 161 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Byzantine Empire 169 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Islam 179 PART FIVE: THE MIDDLE AGES CHAPTER NINETEEN Castles and Fortified Towns 191 CHAPTER TWENTY Romanesque 199 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Gothic 209 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Secular Culture and Architecture in the Late Middle Ages 227 PART SIX: PRE-MODERN CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The Far East 237 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The European Renaissance 247 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Baroque 259 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Historicism 271 PART SEVEN: THE MODERN ERA CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Proto-Modernism 285 CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Modernism 295 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Expressionism 309 APPENDIX General Architectural Terms 323 iv This book is divided into seven parts. After Part One, which is introduc- Preface tory, the remainder of the text is separated into six general eras or ages of cultural and architectural history: Prehistoric, Ancient, Late Antiquity, Medieval, Pre-Modern, and Modern. Chapters within each era describe the most significant styles and periods of each. Some Notes by the Author on the Conventions of Dates and Measures The terms BC, Before Christ, and AD for, Anno Domini (in the year of the Lord), have been replaced in some recent academic works by BCE, Before Common Era, and CE, Common Era. This has raised the ire of some, who consider the removal of the reference to Christ after more than a thousand years to be just as insensitive as its inclusion. Removing the term Anno Domini will not change the basic fact that the birth date of Jesus Christ is the indelible demarcation line separating “positive” years from “negative” years. The non- existent year 0 has to be established at some point, and the present 0 used by the Gregorian, or Western calendar (whose adoption is universal with only a few exceptions) is unlikely to be changed any time soon. The days of the week and months of the years also have religious connotations, but there is little controversy over these, because they are named after gods whose adherents have long been silent. That noted, in this textbook year dates after the year 0 do not have any designation, neither the traditional, A.D. or AD, nor the C.E. or CE. Years before 0 are noted with the designation BCE, which is an abbreviation of both Before Christian Era and Before Common Era. The author is hopeful that, because BCE is similar to the traditional B.C., or BC, Before Christ, there will be little confusion. It is commonly believed that the birth of Christ actually took place in 4 BCE or 5 BCE, and thus, by being less specific, Before Christian Era is a more accurate term than Before Christ. The notation of c. before a date (an abbreviation of the Latin circa) denotes that there is an uncertainty about the exact year. The notation of c. after the date is an abbreviation for century. The notation b. before a date indicates the year given is that in which an individual was born. The notationr. before a date indicates the years are those the individual reigned. The metric system is used for nearly all measurements of distances. The table below will help readers convert between the metric system and the English system. Historically, various systems of measurement have been used. The earliest measurement of length is the cubit, which was based upon the length of the human forearm. The Egyptian royal cubit, or mahe, was further divided into palms and digits and was approximately 52.3 centimeters in length. A Roman cubitus was 44.4 centimeters, or about 1.5 feet (a foot and one-half ). A Roman foot, called a pes, was about 29.3 centimeters. v A Roman digit was one-sixteenth (0.016) of a pes. A Roman palm was one-fourth (0.25) of a pes. A stadium was 625 pedes. The metric system was first adopted by the French in 1799, and is now universal, with the exception, currently, of the United States and Myanmar (Burma). METRIC UNIT SYMBOL APPROXIMATION FACTOR UNIT 1 millimeter m × 0.04 0.039370 inches 1 centimeter cm × 0.4 0.393700787 inches 1 meter M × 3.3 3.280839895 feet 1 kilometer km × 0.6 0.62137119 miles 1 kilometer kKm × 3280 3280.8399 feet vi Culture and Architecture: An Integrated History PART NORTHERN ASIA ZONE EUROPEAN ZONE “Western” NORTH AMERICA ZONE “Western” 16th c.-21st c. NORTH AFRICA ZONE NEAR EASTERN ZONE “The Middle East” Supra-Saharan Africa EAST ASIA ZONE SOUTHERN ASIA ZONE “The Far East or The Orient” LATIN AMERICA ZONE Central American Region PACIFIC ZONE AFRICA ZONE LATIN AMERICA ZONE Sub-Saharan Africa “Primtive” South American Region AUSTRALIAN ZONE “Western” 17th c. -21st c. AUTHOCHTHONOUS ARCHI-CULTURAL ZONES viii Culture and Architecture: An Integrated History ONE Introduction Architecture is the most easily observable of all art forms and the most visible remnant of past civilizations. Artifacts such as pottery, tools, or literature can be more valuable in helping to recreate the religious beliefs, socioeconomic structures, or ways of life of populations, but it is the monuments these groups leave behind that provide the most distinctive images—the pyramids of ancient Egypt, the temples of ancient Greece, the cathedrals of Medieval Europe. Although some works of architecture have been removed from their original sites and placed in museums (for example, the Pergamonmuseum in Berlin contains several whole ancient structures), works of architecture are freely found in civic and pastoral environments on every continent. To properly study a work of architecture, it is important to view it within its cultural context; otherwise it loses much of its meaning, and thus, its value as an art form. If you take away a building’s situation, its history, its mythology, the social mores of its builders, and the stories of its construction and occupation, then it becomes merely brick, stone, concrete, metal, or glass. With all of these factors included, a building becomes alive. 1 Even in ruins, the magnificence of the great style, historical or artistic period, movement, monuments of history is scarcely diminished. group, or school.” For some, ruins elicit a nostalgic mourning for In art, style is simply a one-word civilizations that have perished or otherwise description of a work’s cultural and historical been lost. The stone walls of the citadel at situation. Some works of art fit neatly into Mycenae in Greece call to mind Homer and categories, and others do not. The works of the Iliad. The Roman Forum calls to mind Frank Lloyd Wright, perhaps in testament Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. For others, it is the to his comportment or disposition, defy ruins themselves that are admired and become compartmentalization. Familiar terms, objects of the paeans of writers and poets: such as Medieval and Renaissance, were not products of their own ages, but rather labels For Time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear’d applied long after their time period. The Barbaric dwellings on their shatter’d site, Middle Ages referred to the period between Which only make more mourn’d and more endear’d The last few rays of their far-scatter’d light the ancient world and the modern world, And their crush’d relics of their vanish’d might. but the passage of time has shifted what is considered to be modern. Gothic architecture was once considered “modern.” The term — from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Lord Byron (George Gordon) (1788–1824), about “Renaissance” was scarcely used until 1860, the ruins of Corinth, Greece when Jakob Burckhardt published the work The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Some buildings—especially monumental All cultural aspects, such as artifacts, works like churches—took centuries to art, literature, etc., are categorized to help complete from start to finish. Some, such as historians examine these elements in their the Köln (Cologne) Cathedral in Germany, proper contexts, which in turn, allows for the maintained its original style, even though identification of patterns of ideas and thought, the prevailing styles had changed several cross-cultural comparisons of these patterns times during its construction process.