time:passage male:female real:ideal
archtpe:prototype:hybrid demos:empire the wu-wu+other interpretations
architecture+civic life local:international structure+surface:east meets west
In our first unit we covered the basic elements and foundations of architecture through studying the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman cultures.
http://pro.corbis.com/search/Enlargement.aspx?CID=isg&mediauid=%7B587D8CF1-49F2-4DD9-BEAB-A598EDBE2292%7D
I believe the Colosseum is the perfect picture to summarize the unit because it best exemplifies the way cultures look into the past to design for the future.
ARCHITECTURE = “WHAT NATURE CAN’T MAKE” –louis kahn
Within the foundations unit we spent time discussing the meaning and requirements of architecture. The best way to describe this in my eyes is a concrete inhabitable structure. “Architecture, Vitruvius wrote, must provide utility, firmness, and beauty or, as Sir Henry Wotten later paraphrased it in the seventeenth century, commodity, firmness, and delight.” (ROTH 11) Not all three requirements are always met but I find this to be the best way to explain architecture.
Build like an Egyptian...
nicspic2608.wordpress.com/ 2007/04/
nicspic2608.wordpress.com/ 2007/04/
From then we moved onto examining the Egyptian culture. Within this span we looked at how location of the people, availability of material, purpose, and tools effected the way structures looked. The main purpose in the buildings we looked at in class was religion and hierarchy. To the Egyptians it was all about the after life. The great pharaohs spent their entire reigns having temples built to their greatness and having monumental tombs built to encase them and all their possessions upon death. Things about architecture that I took away from the section on Egypt were: their building were based around social hierarchy, material avalibality, technology, locality, and religion.
Off to Greece…
www.flickr.com/photos/ polselli/1418243984/
From Egypt we traveled northeast to the Greek Empire. The Greek people thought that Greece was the center of the world. The important change from Egypt was the locality. With the introduction of a early form of Democracy and a different religion we see lots of change in the architectural world. The major buildings in the Grecian world were temples dedicated to their many gods. These were used for sacrifice, prayer, celebratory festivals and other forms of worship to please the gods. Things we see emerge during this time were, the further development of columns, more attention to hierarchy, and building forms working with the land.
Greeks focused their lives around their religion. This became extremely evident in their buildings and architectural forms. Massive temples were constructed in honor of their gods, huge festivals were held, all aspects of life were in someway involved with their religion.
The Romans are coming the Romans are coming…
From Greece we went to Rome. Romans taught us all about assimilation and made the idea of borrowing ideas from the past quite evident in their architecture. “Both in form and in ornament, Roman design was based on Greek prototypes” (Blakemore, 67)
The Romans began to shape human space and were the first to be true to the interior environment and pay just as much if not more attention to the inside of a space. The Romans ignore landscape. Important forms within Rome were: baths, markets, arches, the basilica, the dome, the aqueduct, and the villa. They also paid a lot of attention to the exterior façade by decorating the front of a building, leaving the rest very plain.
www.ntnu.no/ab/english
The foundations unit was used to show us the fundamentals of building and architecture that have been built and expanded upon and will help us understand the future.
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