Architecture (building)

A4

c

Pre-Columbian Architecture

The nomadic North American tribes left little permanent building, but the Pueblos of Sonora, Mexico, and of Arizona and New Mexico did build in stone and adobe. These cultures were already in decline by ad 1300; a number of impressive cliff dwellings and other villages remain as significant monuments. See Native American Architecture.

The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés encountered the Aztecs in 1519 and within two years had destroyed their capital city, Tenochtitlán, where Mexico City now stands. But he passed over the nearby center of the older Teotihuacán culture (100 bc-ad 700), which has now been extensively restored and excavated. Teotihuacán contains two immense pyramids—of the sun and of the moon—that recall those of Egypt. They are arranged, along with other monuments and plazas, on a north-south axis at least 3 km (2 mi) in length, and the complex is embedded in what was a vast city, laid out accurately in blocks. Monte Albán, near Oaxaca de Juárez, was the center of the Zapotec culture that flourished about the same time. Its imposing stone structures are set around a spacious plaza created by leveling the top of a mountain.

The Maya civilization had existed for 2700 years when first confronted by the Spanish in the 17th century, but its greatest building periods fall within the 4th to the 11th century. The Maya occupied every part of the Yucatán Peninsula, the principal sites, in roughly the order of their development, being Copán (Honduras), Tikal (Guatemala), Palenque, Uxmal, Chichén Itzá, and Tulum (Mexico). The important ceremonial monuments found in these centers are of stone; although the enclosure of space has more emphasis than in other pre-Columbian cultures, the Mayas never mastered the true vault. Nevertheless, they created impressive structures through extensive earth moving and bold architectural sculpture either integral with the stone or as added stucco ornamentation. The so-called Governors’ Palace at Uxmal, sited on a great artificial terrace, is a long, horizontal building, the proportions and ornamentation of which suggest the eye and hand of a master designer.

The Incas’ thriving empire was centered high in the Andes of east-central Peru at Cuzco, which flourished from about 1200 to 1533, with other cities at nearby Sacsahuaman and Machu Picchu. Inca architecture lacks the sculptural genius of the Maya, but the masonry craftsmanship is unexcelled; enormous pieces of stone were transported over mountain terrain and fitted together with precision, in what is called cyclopean masonry. See Pre-Columbian Art and Architecture.

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B

Classical Architecture

The building systems and forms of ancient Greece and Rome are called classical architecture. Greek contributions in architecture, as in so much else, defy summarization. The architecture of the Roman Empire has pervaded Western architecture for more than two millennia.

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1

Aegean Architecture

The architecture that developed on mainland Greece (Helladic) and in the basin of the Aegean Sea (Minoan) belongs to the Greek cultures that preceded the arrival in about 1000 bc of the Ionians and the Dorians. The Minoan culture (3000-1200 bc) flourished on the island of Crete (Kríti); its principal site is the multichambered Palace of Minos at Knossos (Knosós), near present-day Iráklion. On the Pelopónnisos near Árgos are the fortress-palaces of Mycenae and Tiryns, and in Asia Minor the city of Troy—all of them excavated by the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the last quarter of the 19th century. Mycenae and Tiryns are believed to represent the Achaean culture, the subject of Homer’s epic Iliad and Odyssey. See Aegean Civilization.

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2

Greek Architecture

The Greek temple emerged as the archetypal shrine of all time. Unlike the Egyptians, the Greeks put their walls inside to protect the cella and their columns on the outside, where they could articulate exterior space. Perhaps for the first time, the overriding concern is for the building seen as a beautiful object externally, while at the same time containing precious and sacred inner space. Greek architects have been praised for not crushing the viewer with overmonumentality; yet they found it appropriate to build temples on basically the same theme ranging in size from the tiny Temple of Nike Apteros (427-424 bc) of about 6 by 9 m (about 20 by 30 ft) on the Athens Acropolis to the gigantic Temple of Zeus (500? bc) at Agrigento in Sicily, which covered more than 1 hectare (more than 2 acres). The Greeks seldom arranged their monuments hierarchically along an axis, preferring to site their temples to be seen from several viewpoints in order to display the relation of ends to sides.

In successive efforts during many centuries the Greeks modified their earlier models. Concern for the profile of the building in space spurred designers toward perfection in the articulation of parts, and these parts became intellectualized as stylobate, base, shaft, capital, architrave, frieze, cornice, and pediment, each representing metaphorically its structural purpose.

B2

a

The Greek Orders

Two orders developed more or less concurrently. The Doric order predominated on the mainland and in the western colonies. The acknowledged Doric masterpiece is the Parthenon (448-432 bc) crowning the Athens Acropolis (see Parthenon).

The Ionic order originated in the cities on the islands and coasts of Asia Minor, which were more exposed to Asian and Egyptian influences; it featured capitals with spiral volutes, a more slender shaft with quite different fluting, and an elaborate and curvilinear base. Most of the early examples are gone, but Ionic was used inside the Propylaea (begun 437 bc) and in the Erechtheum (begun 421 bc), both on the Athens Acropolis.

The Corinthian order, a later development, introduced Ionic capitals elaborated with acanthus leaves. It has the advantage of facing equally in four directions and is therefore more adaptable than Ionic for corners.

City planning was stimulated by the need to rebuild Dorian cities after the end (466 bc) of the Persian Wars and again by the challenge of new cities established (beginning 333 bc) by Alexander the Great. The plan of Miletus in Asia Minor is an early example of the gridiron block, and it provides a prototype for the disposition of the central public areas, with the significant municipal buildings related to the major civic open spaces. A typical Greek agora included a temple, a council house (bouleuterion), a theater, and gymnasiums, as well as porticoes giving shape to the edges of the open space. Greek domestic architecture transformed the Mycenaean megaron (hearthroom) into the house with rooms disposed about a small open court, or atrium, a theme later elaborated in Italy, Spain, and North Africa. See Greek Art and Architecture; House.