Builders mixed mud and water together with a binder such as reeds or straw and molded them into rectangles. Then they set the bricks out in the sun to bake until they were dry.
As the use of metal increased starting around 2000 BCE, the prevalence of these massive stone monuments began to decline.
After the last Sumerian king was overthrown by foreign invaders, Mesopotamia was divided into independent city-states. Among them was a group from Arabia who established Babylon as their capital. Babylon is considered by many to be the greatest of all the ancient Mesopotamian cities, in part because it was the first product of thoughtful, deliberate city planning.
Glazing was a technique for waterproofing clay objects. Usually the glaze was made with ground mineral pigments mixed with water, at which point color could also be added. The effect is a glass-like finish that, when fired together, adheres to the clay bricks.
An arch is stronger than a simple post-and-lintel construction and represents a considerable advance in building technique. The reason is that the round arch carries the weight onto 2 vertical support. On the lintel, all the stress rests on the horizontal. The arch effectively functions as a curved lintel, connected to the 2 posts on either side.
Each year, usually sometime in August, the rains in central Africa and melting snows in the Ethiopian highlands cause the river to flow to a level or nearly 25ft. The flooding was enough to put the entire Nile Valley under water. When the waters finally receded, they left a dark, rich silt that was perfect for growing crops. Although the annual flood sounds destructive, it restored fertility to the land and led to a new farming season. Egypt has been called the gif of the Nile. The villages were far back enough from the plain that they were spared and the water always stopped right at the desert.
In the later centuries of their civilization, Egyptians built a number of elaborate temples where people could come and worship the gods.
Columns as they appear in Greek architecture were heavily influenced by Egyptian precedent.
Wherever he went, Alexander spread Greek culture and integrated it with local customs and arts. For this reason, the period between his death in 323BC and the beginning of the Roman Empire (c. 31BC) is known as the Hellenistic Age. It marks the transition of Greek society from autonomous city-states to its folding into this larger region.
However, pushing the city’s waste into the Tiber made the water unfit for drinking. So the Romans piped in water from fresh spring located outside of Rome. This required a complex system of aqueducts and city reservoirs that used gravity to send water to the city and up through the mountains.
Among the most important contributions of Romans to architecture was the invention of concrete. The Romans developed natural cement as an easier alternative to stone. This made architectural work much easier, although it was not nearly as attractive as stone. The Romans used other finishes to cover concrete, materials such as stucco, mosaic, and marble.
Romans took architecture beyond post and lintel to adopt compression building, which allowed them to design the arch, vault, and dome. Using these methods, the Romans figured out how to enclose very large space. All they needed were modestly sized stones.
Christianity was started by the followers of Jesus but did not really start to develop as an organized religion until several hundred years after his death.
Justinian’s Hagia Sophia, or Church of the Divine Wisdom, in Istanbul, is one of the most extravagant buildings of all time. It remained the biggest building for nearly 1000 years and was the place where Byzantine emperors were crowned and the main focus of religious life in Constantinople.
Curved ceilings like arches, vaults, and domes are heavy and their weight creates a force that moves outward. This force is called horizontal thrust. Additional support is required so that the dome does not crumble under the horizontal thrust. At Hagia Sophia, the builders placed buttresses between the dome windows to reinforce the structure. They used a network of ribs inside the dome for additional strength.
The Islamic empire was very wealthy; the practice of charity prevented wealthy citizens from saving their fortunes for their descendants. Instead they left their personal wealth for religious, educational, social, and civic purposes.
The mihrab symbolized the entrance to paradise. Congregants formed rows that were ultimately facing the holy city and its supreme shrine, the Kaaba.
Great building projects in China were driven by the government rather than religious or private patrons.
Teahouses are designed to be harmonious, tranquil spaces where guests can reflect and attain internal simplicity and calm. There is intentionally no main focal point.
While it was inspired by Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the Russian builders did not have the technology or knowledge to make something as enormous. Instead of one gigantic dome, they improvised and made multiple domes over small interior spaces positioned next to one another.
The Gothic style of architecture was popular from the 12-16th centuries in Western Europe. The name itself was initially an insult. “Gothic” refers to the Germanic tribes who wreaked havoc on Western Europe in the 4th century, invading Italy and toppling the Roman Empire. Goths destroyed much of classical civilization, and when in the 16th century the critic Vasari wrote that the architecture of the High Middle Ages was “Gothic,” he was saying it was the kind of thing that might have ben erected by barbarians.
Building a cathedral created many jobs for artists and craftsmen. Once a cathedral was finished, it attracted thousands of pilgrims, who would spend money in the town on their visit. People were very proud of their cathedrals.
The Italians began reading and studying work by the Greeks and Romans with a new intensity. People were fascinated with Roman texts from the past and searched for as many surviving texts as they could find. Artists and scholars began to move away from the religious focus that had been at the heart of the culture of the Middle Ages. Instead they started thinking more about humans’ feelings and experiences.
People in the early Renaissance tended to be critical of much medieval scholarship, which they felt had grown stale and dogmatic. They saw themselves standing at a bright point of knowledge, as if on a mountain. In the distance they could see another mountain: the age of classical Greece and Rome. In between, they beheld nothing but a long, dark middle age. Hence the name “Middle Ages” to refer to the period from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, or “rebirth.”
Most of the accomplishments we most closely associate with the Renaissance occurred during the late 15th century and early 16th century, a period known as the High Renaissance. Among the artists working during this time were Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. These years were also turbulent politically; there were invasions and takeovers and shifting borders throughout the Italian peninsula. Toward the end of the century, a religious fanatic named Girolamo Savonarola took power in Florence and condemned the arts as “vanities.” Although he was eventually overthrown, Florence faded as the artistic hub of the movement; Rome was now the creative center of Italy.
Some of the elite nature of Mannerism was due to the fact that the artists themselves were enjoying a new place in society. After the Renaissance, they were considered among the scholars and humanists whereas previously painters, sculptors, and architects had mostly been considered nothing more than craftsmen.
Innovators such as Palladio were taken with the way music is organized. Music notes need to blend together in intervals and ratios to sound nice. If you stray from these intervals, the music sounds discordant. So the idea was that music notes sound good together if they respect a certain relationship or ratio. Palladio believed that using harmonic proportions in architecture would make it look as good as music sounds.
Baroque is characterized by a sense of dramatic emotion and energy. The movement began in Rome after the Renaissance, partly as a reaction against the Protestant Reformation.
The Baroque style reinforced the Catholic beliefs but in a violently theatrical way. Baroque architecture emphasized the contrast between dark and light, called chiaroscuro, to add drama to all its forms. Baroque buildings, by using curved lines, concaves, and oval shapes, played optical tricks that brought out textures and complexities. Ceiling were painted, walls were gilded. Often spectators felt as if they were in motion. Sculpture, painting, and architecture were sensual.
The artistic movement called Romanticism was in many respects a reaction against the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the order and predictability of Neoclassicism. Romantics found imperfect, asymmetrical forms to be beautiful. Whereas Enlightenment thinkers sought to emulate nature and live in harmony with it, Romantics believed that on the whole nature was hostile to man (a popular subject of Romantic painters was storms at sea and shipwrecks).
Picturesque was an aesthetic that accompanied Romanticism. Its adherents saw it as a mediating force between the immense power and horror represented by nature and the notion of beauty embodied in the soft curves of the female body.
Massing makes a big difference in how a building is able to control its own temperature and light — essentially free energy. You need to decide, for example, whether a building will be short and fat or tall and thin. Buildings that do not house a lot of people benefit from tighter floor plans so that they do not lose too much heat to the outdoors. Buildings with a lot of people in them generate a lot of heat themselves. So in the case of a big office building, longer and thinner floor plans are a good fit.
Resentment sickened a number of thinkers and artists who associate the surge in technology with moral decay and the dehumanization of society. Outspoken opponents of industry and capitalism were outraged by the deplorable working conditions of the factory workers and distraught over how the shifting population changed the aesthetic of the region.
Art Nouveau (“Youthful Style”), began as an artistic statement against industrialization. It was an aesthetic movement in architecture and the decorative arts that drew inspiration from the curvilinear organic forms that appear in nature. The Art Nouveau movement sought a youthful, energetic style that could find harmony with the environment.
Art Nouveau reflected a growing interest in psychology, symbolism, and the supernatural. Architects who ascribed to it wanted to bring back good workmanship but also to produce something utterly modern. They looked for inspiration from the inner world of the spirit and psyche.
By the time of WW1, Art Nouveau with its highly styled material had become very expensive to produce. The style was replaced by Art Deco in the 1920s, a more streamlined modern look.
Today Beaux Arts is a popular style for prestigious theaters, monuments, and libraries. These are public buildings that hold a certain distinction, like the Paris Opera House or the Library of Congress. The style exudes harmony, dignity, and order. The details are very precise and sophisticated, in line with the school curriculum.
City Beautiful advocates believed they could improve the city through, well, making it beautiful. They thought that beauty would inspire civil loyalty and create an inviting place for the upper classes to return. They wanted to use beauty as a means to social control.
Sullivan believed firmly that the design of a building should reflect its use. He toyed that famous maxim, “Form ever follows function.” He believed that a person walking by the building on the street should be able to determine what went on in the Wainwright Building just by looking at it.
Its economy had grown faster than any deliberate — or even responsible — civil planning could keep pace with. On that hot night, a stretch of 4 miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide burned to the ground. An unfathomable number of homes and businesses burned, somewhere around 18K buildings.
Every home, building, or temple we have discussed from the Stone Age up until this point can be place in 1 of 2 categories: shell structure or skeleton-and-skin structure.
For centuries, skeleton-and-skin seemed like a more primitive approach to construction.
This changed everything because now it was clear that as long as the skeleton was very strong you could sheath it with anything, even something as fragile as glass.
After ground broke on the Reliance Building, city leaders started to get nervous about what all these tall buildings might do to the look and feel of Chicago. They decided to place a 10-story limit on all future buildings as a precaution.
Like Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts movement before it, Art Deco was the product of an attempt to find something utterly modern. This style was a direct departure from the organic motifs featured in Art Nouveau. Art Deco advocated instead developed designs that embraced industry and exuded a faith in the technological and social constructs of the day. Proponents of Art Deco wanted to demonstrate glamour and luxury as a way to announce the dark days were over and there was a new prosperity. They were inspired by mass production, as well as by a cultural shift. Prohibition had ended and girls were making feminist statements by cutting their hair and dressing in shorter skirts. Morale was high and future looked bright.
Art Deco emphasized luxury and newness with reflective materials like chrome, steel, and glass. Geometric patterns with strong lines and clear symmetry accented both interior and exterior surfaces. It was stylish and current, bucking revivalist tendencies in architecture to draw inspiration from the moment.
Beginning in 1929, the Great Depression brought an end to the exotic, luxurious ornamentation of Art Deco, replacing it with a more austere, streamlined style. In light to the financial crisis, the original Art Deco style exuded a decadence that seemed frivolous and inappropriate.
When the Nazis rose to power and the Bauhaus collective disbanded, many of the leading architects were reunited in the US where they resumed their efforts in the Modern movement. For the first time, the US took the lead in architectural theory and design. The American extension of Bauhaus became known as International style. It shed the connection to social politics and instead aligned itself with the parameters of capitalism. Today it is the preferred style for office buildings and upscale luxury homes.
Practitioners of Deconstructivist architecture find Modernism to be too constraining with rules that place too many limitations on the possibilities of form. These architects are not overly concerned with ornament as a fixture because they believe that if something has been thoughtfully designed, the resulting look is ornamentation enough.