Architecture-Building & Construction

The ancient world

For the convenience of Western readers, the architecture of the ancient world, of the Orient, and of the pre-Columbian Americas may be divided into two groups: indigenous architecture, or ways of building that appear to have developed independently in isolated, local cultural conditions; and classical architecture, the systems and building methods of Greece and Rome, which directly determined the course of Western architecture.

• Indigenous Architecture

The oldest designed environments stable enough to have left traces date from the first development of cities.

Mesopotamia
This region, the greater part of modern Iraq, comprises the lower valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The Assyrian city of Khorsabad, built of clay and brick in the reign of Sargon II (reigned 722-705 bc), was excavated as early as 1842, and much of its general plan is known. It became the basis for the study of Mesopotamian architecture, because the far older cities of Babylon and Ur were not discovered and excavated until the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Early Persian architecture—influenced by the Greeks, with whom the Persians were at war in the 5th century bc—left the great royal compound of Persepolis (518-460 bc), created by Darius the Great, and several nearby rock-cut tombs, all north of Shīrāz in Iran.

Egypt
The urban culture of Egypt also developed very early. Its political history was more stable, however, with strong continuity in the development and conservation of tradition. Also, granite, sandstone, and limestone were available in abundance. These circumstances, in a cultural system conferring enormous power on rulers and priests, made possible the erection, over a long period, of the most awesome of the world’s ancient monuments.

Each Egyptian ruler was obsessed with constructing a tomb for himself more impressive and longer lasting than that of his predecessors. Before the 4th Dynasty (began 2575 bc) Egyptian royal burial took the form of the mastaba, an archetypal rectangular mass of masonry. This form evolved into the step pyramid and finally into the fully refined pyramid, of which the largest and best preserved are those of Khufu and Khafre, both dating from about 2500 BC, at Giza near Cairo. These immense monuments testify to the pharaohs’ vast social control and also to the fascination of their architects with abstract, perfect geometrical forms, a concern that reappears frequently throughout history.

Egyptians built temples to dignify the ritual observances of those in power and to exclude others. Thus, they were built within walled enclosures, their great columned halls (hypostyles) turning inward, visible from a distance only as a sheer mass of masonry. A hierarchical linear sequence of spaces led to successively more privileged precincts. In this way was born the concept of the axis, which in the Egyptian temples was greatly extended by avenues of sphinxes in order to intensify the climactic experience of the approaching participants. The temples also introduce the monumental use of post-and-lintel construction in stone, in which massive columns are closely spaced and bear deep lintels.

The best-known Egyptian temples are in the mid-Nile area in the vicinity of the old capital, Thebes. Here are found the great temples of Luxor, Al Karnak, and Deir al Bahri (15th-12th century bc) and Idfū (3rd century bc).

• India and Southeast Asia

Hindu traditions are rich in visual symbols; the early stone architecture of India was elaborately carved, more like sculpture than building, especially as the designers did not emphasize structural systems and rarely faced the task of enclosing large spaces.

India
The Indian commemorative monument takes the form of large hemispherical mounds called stupas, like the one built from the 3rd century bc to the 1st century ad, during Buddhist ascendancy, at Sanchī, near Bhopāl in central India.

In the early period of monastery and temple building, shrines were sculpted out of the solid rock of cliffs. At sites such as Ellora and Ajanta, northeast of Bombay, are great series of these artificial caves carved over many centuries. As the art of temple building developed, construction by subtraction gave way to the more conventional method of adding stones to form a structure, always, however, with more concern for sculptural mass than for enclosed volume.

Hindu temples are found throughout India, especially in the south and east, which were less dominated by the Mughal rulers. Jainism, still a very successful cult, has its own temple tradition and continues to build on it.

Southeast Asia
In Southeast Asia a Buddhist temple is called a wat. The most famous of these, and perhaps also the largest known, is Angkor Wat in central Cambodia, built in the early 12th century under the long-dominant Khmer dynasty. A richly sculptured stone complex, it rises 61 m (200 ft) and is approached by a ceremonial bridge 183 m (600 ft) long that spans the surrounding moat.

Buddhist architectural traditions, sometimes coming via China, are strongly evident in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), Thailand, Malaysia, Java, and Sri Lanka. The rich temples and shrines of the Royal Palace compound in Bangkok are less than 200 years old, testifying to that culture’s continuing vitality.

• China and Japan

The cultures of China and Japan have shared many features, but each has used them according to its national temperament. The resultant architectures are quite different from each other in both form and purpose.

Chinese Architecture

China has a traditional reverence toward ancestors; the stable and hierarchical life of the Chinese extended family is proverbial. It is reflected in the formality of the Chinese house, built in rectangular form, preferably at the northern end of a walled courtyard entered from the south, with auxiliary elements disposed in a symmetrical fashion on either side of the north-south axis. This pattern was the point of departure for more lavish programs for mansions, monasteries, palaces, and, eventually, whole cities.

The city of Beijing took form over a very long time, under various rulers. Two contiguous rectangles, the Inner City and the newer Outer City, each embrace several square kilometers. The Inner City contains the Imperial City, which in turn contains the Forbidden City, which sheltered the imperial court and the imperial family. The entire development adheres to symmetry along a strong north-south avenue—the apotheosis, on a grand urban scale, of the Chinese house.

Stone, brick, tile, and timber are available in both China and Japan. The most characteristic architectural forms in both countries are based on timber framing. In China, the wooden post carried on its top an openwork timber structure, a kind of inverted pyramid formed of layers of horizontal beams connected and supported by brackets and short posts to support the rafters and beams of a steep and heavy tile roof. The eaves extended well beyond column lines on cantilevers. The resulting archetype is rectangular in plan, usually one story high, with a prominent roof.

Japanese Architecture

The Japanese house developed differently. The Japanese express a deep poetic response to nature, and their houses are more concerned with achieving a satisfying relationship with earth, water, rocks, and trees than with establishing a social order. This approach is epitomized in the Katsura Detached Palace (1st half of the 17th century), designed and built by a master of the tea ceremony. Its constructions ramble in a seemingly casual way, but in reality constitute a carefully considered sequence always integrated with vistas to or from outdoor features.

Japan had already perfected timber prototypes early in its history. The Ise Shrine, on the coast southwest of Tokyo, dates from the 5th or 6th century; it is scrupulously rebuilt every 20 years. Its principal building, within a rectangular compound containing auxiliary structures, is a timber treasure house elevated on wooden posts buried in the ground and crowned by a massive roof of thatch. Lacking both bracketing and trussing, the ridge is supported by a beam or ridgepole held up by fat posts at the middle of each gabled end; the forked rafters, joining atop the ridgepole, exert no outward thrust. This tiny but beautifully proportioned and crafted monument is an excellent example of the understated subtlety of the art of Japan.

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.

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.

posted by Ronald @ 2:05 PM