The architecture and urbanism of the Greeks and Romans were very different
from those of the Egyptians or Persians in that civic life gained
importance. During the time of the ancients, religious matters were the
preserve of the ruling order alone; by the time of the Greeks, religious
mystery had skipped the confines of the temple-palace compounds and was the
subject of the people or polis. Greek civic life was sustained by new, open
spaces called the agora which were surrounded by public buildings, stores
and temples. The agora embodied the new found respect for social justice
received through open debate rather than imperial mandate. Though divine
wisdom still presided over human affairs, the living rituals of ancient
civilizations had become inscribed in space, in the paths that wound towards
the acropolis for example. Each place had its own nature, set within a world
refracted through myth, thus temples were sited atop mountains all the
better to touch the heavens
Architecture of Ancient Greece
Ancient Agora of Athens
The Romans conquered the Greek cities in Italy around three hundred years
before Christ and much of the Western world after that. The Roman problem of
rulership involved the unity of disparity — from Spanish to Greek,
Macedonian to Carthaginian — Roman rule had extended itself across the
breadth of the known world and the myriad pacified cultures forming this
ecumene presented a new challenge for justice. One way to look at the unity
of Roman architecture is through a new-found realisation of theory derived
from practice, and embodied spatially. Civically we find this happening in
the Roman forum (sibling of the Greek agora), where public participation is
increasingly removed from the concrete performance of rituals and
represented in the decor of the architecture. Thus we finally see the
beginnings of the contemporary public square in the Forum Iulium, begun by
Julius Caesar, where the buildings present themselves through their facades
as representations within the space. As the Romans chose representations of
sanctity over actual sacred spaces to participate in society, so the
communicative nature of space was opened to human manipulation. None of
which would have been possible without the advances of Roman engineering and
construction or the newly found marble quarries which were the spoils of
war; inventions like the arch and concrete gave a whole new form to Roman
architecture, fluidly enclosing space in taut domes and colonnades, clothing
the grounds for imperial rulership and civic order.
Interior of the Pantheon, Rome
This was also a response to the changing social climate which demanded new
buildings of increasing complexity — the coliseum, the residential block,
bigger hospitals and academies. General civil construction such as roads and
bridges began to be built.
Valère Castle in Sion, Switzerland, built from the 12th to 13th century.
Western European architecture in the Early Middle Ages may be divided into
Early Christian and Pre-Romanesque, including Merovingian, Carolingian,
Ottonian, and Asturian. While these terms are problematic, they nonetheless
serve adequately as entries into the era. Considerations that enter into
histories of each period include Trachtenberg's "historicising" and "modernising"
elements, Italian versus northern, Spanish, and Byzantine elements, and
especially the religious and political maneuverings between kings, popes,
and various ecclesiastic officials.
Surviving examples of medieval secular architecture mainly served for
defense. Castles and fortified walls provide the most notable remaining
non-religious examples of medieval architecture. Windows gained a
cross-shape for more than decorative purposes: they provided a perfect fit
for a crossbowman to safely shoot at invaders from inside. Crenelated walls
(battlements) provided shelters for archers on the roofs to hide behind when
The Ghent Altarpiece: The Adoration of the Lamb (interior view) painted
The Cortile del Belvedere in Rome by Donato Bramante.
The Renaissance often refers to the Italian Renaissance that began in the
15th century, but recent research has revealed the existence of similar
movements around Europe before the 15th century; consequently, the term
"Early Modern" has gained popularity in describing this cultural movement.
This period of cultural rebirth is often credited with the restoration of
scholarship in the Classical Antiquities and the absorption of new
scientific and philosophical knowledge that fed the arts.
The development from Medieval architecture concerned the way geometry
mediated between the intangibility of light and the tangibility of the
material as a way of relating divine creation to mortal existence. This
relationship was changed in some measure by the invention of Perspective
which brought a sense of infinity into the realm of human comprehension
through the new representations of the horizon, evidenced in the expanses of
space opened up in Renaissance painting, and helped shape new humanist
Perspective represented a new understanding of space as a universal, a
priori fact, understood and controllable through human reason. Renaissance
buildings therefore show a different sense of conceptual clarity, where
spaces were designed to be understood in their entirety from a specific
fixed viewpoint. The power of Perspective to universally represent reality
was not limited to describing experiences, but also allowed it to anticipate
experience itself by projecting the image back into reality.
Donato Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere project is one such instance where
spaces were pictured/designed together before being built. Such a space was
only possible due to the powers of abstraction, offered by perspective, that
allowed the composition of heterogeneous activities into a metaphor for the
legitimacy of current rule. The commission was set by Pope Julius II to
connect an ancient pontifical palace on the right of St Peter's with the
palace, built by Pollaiolo for Innocent VIII. In doing so Bramante organised
the ascent through three courts that sees the lower, theatrical level move
into the upper level through increasingly planned gardens thereby creating a
tension between the human realm and an idealised vision of the "ideal city",
Jerusalum, this is explicitly shown in Bramante's depiction of the ascent
from the perspective of Pope Julius's bedroom window.
The Renaissance spread to France in the late 15th century, when Charles VIII
returned in 1496 with several Italian artists from his conquest of Naples.
Renaissance chateaux were built in the Loire Valley, the earliest example
being the Château d'Amboise, and the style became dominant under Francis
I(1515-47). (See Châteaux of the Loire Valley). The Château de Chambord) is
a combination of Gothic structure and Italianate ornament, a style which
progressed under architects such as Sebastiano Serlio, who was engaged after
1540 in work at the Château de Fontainebleau. At Fontainebleau Italian
artists such as Rosso Fiorentino, Francesco Primaticcio, and Niccolo dell'
Abbate formed the First School of Fontainebleau.
Architects such as Philibert Delorme, Androuet du Cerceau, Giacomo Vignola,
and Pierre Lescot, were inspired by the new ideas. The southwest interior
facade of the Cour Carree of the Louvre in Paris was designed by Lescot and
covered with exterior carvings by Jean Goujon. Architecture continued to
thrive in the reigns of Henri II and Henri III.
In England the first great exponent of Renaissance architecture was Inigo
Jones (1573 – 1652), who had studied architecture in Italy where the
influence of Palladio was very strong. Jones returned to England full of
enthusiasm for the new movement and immediately began to design such
buildings as the Queen's House at Greenwich in 1616 and the Banqueting House
at Whitehall three years later. These works, with their clean lines, and
symmetry were revolutionary in a country still enamoured with mullion
windows, crenelations and turrets.
Sicilian Baroque: San Benedetto in Catania.
If Renaissance architecture announced a rebirth of human culture, the
periods of Mannerism and the Baroque that followed signalled an increasing
anxiety over meaning and representation. Important developments in science
and philosophy had separated mathematical representations of reality from
the rest of culture, fundamentally changing the way humans related to their
world through architecture.
The Age of Enlightenment
Rationality and the universals lead to the emancipation of history,
Gottfried Semper leads the fray, filleting of "beauty" leads to contemporary
notions of form, the seed of Modernity.
Palais Garnier is a cornerpiece of Beaux-Arts architecture characterized by
Émile Zola as "the opulent bastard of all styles"."What Style Shall We Build
In?" [Heinrich Huebsch])
Beaux-Arts architecture denotes the academic classical architectural
style that was taught at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. The style
"Beaux-Arts" is above all the cumulative product of two and a half centuries
of instruction under the authority, first of the Académie royale
d'architecture, then, following the Revolution, of the Architecture section
of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The organization under the Ancien Régime of
the competition for the Grand Prix de Rome in architecture, offering a
chance to study in Rome, imprinted its codes and esthetic on the course of
instruction, which culminated during the Second Empire (1850-1870) and the
Third Republic that followed. The style of instruction that produced
Beaux-Arts architecture continued without a major renovation until 1968.
Modern architecture is a term given to a number of building styles with
similar characteristics, primarily the simplification of form and the
elimination of ornament, that first arose around 1900. By the 1940s these
styles had been consolidated and identified as the International Style and
became the dominant architectural style, particularly for institutional and
corporate building, for several decades in the twentieth century.
The exact characteristics and origins of modern architecture are still open
to interpretation and debate.
The instrumentalisation of Architecture as argued under the maxim "form
Frank Lloyd Wright
George Grant Elmslie
The tower of the Helsinki Olympic Stadium (Y. Lindegren & T. Jäntti, built
Functionalism, in architecture, is the principle that architects should
design a building based on the purpose of that building. This statement is
less self-evident than it first appears, and is a matter of confusion and
controversy within the profession, particularly in regard to modern
The place of functionalism in building can be traced back to the Vitruvian
triad, where 'utilitas' (variously translated as 'commodity', 'convenience',
or 'utility') stands alongside 'venustas' (beauty) and 'firmitas' (firmness)
as one of three classic goals of architecture.
Ferrohouse in Zurich (Justus Dahinden, 1970)- an example of futurist
Futurist architecture began as an early-20th century form of architecture
characterized by anti-historicism and long horizontal lines suggesting
speed, motion and urgency. Technology and even violence were among the
themes of the Futurists. The movement was founded by the poet Filippo
Tommaso Marinetti, who produced its first manifesto, the Manifesto of
Futurism in 1909). The movement attracted not only poets, musicians, artist
(such as Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Fortunato Depero, and Enrico
Prampolini) but also a number of architects. Among the latter there was
Antonio Sant'Elia, who, though he built little, translated the Futurist
vision into bold urban form.
Modern architecture and beyond
Arts and Crafts Movement
Goetheanum by Rudolph Steiner in 1923
Expressionist architecture was an architectural movement that developed in
Northern Europe during the first decades of the 20th century in parallel
with the expressionist visual and performing arts.
The style was characterised by an early-modernist adoption of novel
materials, formal innovation, and very unusual massing, sometimes inspired
by natural biomorphic forms, sometimes by the new technical possibilities
offered by the mass production of brick, steel and especially glass. Many
expressionist architects fought in World War I and their experiences,
combined with the political turmoil and social upheaval that followed the
German Revolution of 1919, resulted in a utopian outlook and a romantic
socialist agenda. Economic conditions severely limited the number of
built commissions between 1914 and the mid 1920s, resulting in many of
the most important expressionist works remaining as projects on paper, such
as Bruno Taut's Alpine Architecture and Hermann Finsterlin's Formspiels.
Ephemeral exhibition buildings were numerous and highly significant during
this period. Scenography for theatre and films provided another outlet for
the expressionist imagination, and provided supplemental incomes for
designers attempting to challenge conventions in a harsh economic climate.
The Glass Palace, a celebration of transparency, in Heerlen, The Netherlands
The International style was a major architectural trend of the 1920s and
1930s. The term usually refers to the buildings and architects of the
formative decades of modernism, before World War II. The term had its origin
from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson which
identified, categorised and expanded upon characteristics common to
modernism across the world. As a result, the focus was more on the stylistic
aspects of modernism. The basic design principles of the international style
thus constitute part of modernism.
Around 1900 a number of architects around the world began developing new
architectural solutions to integrate traditional precedents with new social
demands and technological possibilities. The work of Victor Horta and Henry
van de Velde in Brussels, Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona, Otto Wagner in Vienna
and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow, among many others, can be seen as
a common struggle between old and new.
Mies van der Rohe
Late Modern Architecture
Moscow State University, a prime example of the Stalinist style.
Stalinist architecture was the architectural style developed in the Soviet
Union between 1933 (the date of the final competition to design the Palace
of Soviets) and 1955 (when the Soviet Academy of Architecture was
Just like any other form of art in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union,
architecture was destined to serve the purpose of glorifying communism as
the ideal social order. It was Stalin's goal to "wipe clean the slate of the
past...and rebuild the world from top to bottom." To do this, Stalin
subjected architects (though not as dramatically as artists and writers) to
a considerable amount of state control. On April 23, 1932, the Communist
Party Central Committee passed the resolution On Structural Changes in the
Literary and Artistic organizations. The resolution outlawed all independent
organizations. The formerly independent organizations were forced to form
unions where the communist party could decide what was "fruitful, creative
and correct". By July 1932, all independent organizations were abolished and
replaced with the Union of Soviet Architects, a government-funded membership
organization charged with architectural censorship. The following year,
1933, the Soviet Academy of Architecture was founded; this marked the
"official" beginning of the time of Stalinist Architecture.
1000 de La Gauchetière, with ornamented and strongly defined top, middle and
bottom. Contrast with the modernist Seagram Building and Torre Picasso.
Postmodern architecture is an international style whose first examples are
generally cited as being from the 1950s, and which continues to influence
present-day architecture. Postmodernity in architecture is generally thought
to be heralded by the return of "wit, ornament and reference" to
architecture in response to the formalism of the International Style of
modernism. As with many cultural movements, some of postmodernism's most
pronounced and visible ideas can be seen in architecture. The functional and
formalized shapes and spaces of the modernist movement are replaced by
unapologetically diverse aesthetics: styles collide, form is adopted for its
own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound.
Classic examples of modern architecture are the Lever House and the Seagram
Building in commercial space, and the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright or
the Bauhaus movement in private or communal spaces. Transitional examples of
postmodern architecture are the Portland Building in Portland and the Sony
Building (New York City) (originally AT&T Building) in New York City, which
borrows elements and references from the past and reintroduces color and
symbolism to architecture. A prime example of inspiration for postmodern
architecture lies along the Las Vegas Strip, which was studied by Robert
Venturi in his 1972 book Learning from Las Vegas celebrating the strip's
ordinary and common architecture. Venturi opined that "Less is a bore",
inverting Mies Van Der Rohe's dictum that "Less is more".
Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown
Herzog & de Meuron
Libeskind's Imperial War Museum North in Manchester comprises three
apparently intersecting curved volumes.
Deconstructivism in architecture is a development of postmodern architecture
that began in the late 1980s. It is characterized by ideas of fragmentation,
non-linear processes of design, an interest in manipulating ideas of a
structure's surface or skin, and apparent non-Euclidean geometry, (i.e.,
non-rectilinear shapes) which serve to distort and dislocate some of the
elements of architecture, such as structure and envelope. The finished
visual appearance of buildings that exhibit the many deconstructivist
"styles" is characterised by a stimulating unpredictability and a controlled
Important events in the history of the deconstructivist movement include the
1982 Parc de la Villette architectural design competition (especially the
entry from Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi's
winning entry), the Museum of Modern Art’s 1988 Deconstructivist
Architecture exhibition in New York, organized by Philip Johnson and Mark
Wigley, and the 1989 opening of the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus,
designed by Peter Eisenman. The New York exhibition featured works by Frank
Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Coop
Himmelblau, and Bernard Tschumi. Since the exhibition, many of the
architects who were associated with Deconstructivism have distanced
themselves from the term. Nonetheless, the term has stuck and has now, in
fact, come to embrace a general trend within contemporary architecture.
Foreign Office Architects
The development of European Architecture
Art of designing structures. The term covers the design of the visual
appearance of structures; their internal arrangements of space; selection of
external and internal building materials; design or selection of natural and
artificial lighting systems, as well as mechanical, electrical, and plumbing
systems; and design or selection of decorations and furnishings.
Architectural style may emerge from evolution of techniques and styles
particular to a culture in a given time period with or without identifiable
individuals as architects, or may be attributed to specific individuals or
groups of architects working together on a project.
Little remains of the earliest forms of architecture, but archaeologists
have examined remains of prehistoric sites and documented villages of
wooden-post buildings with above-ground construction of organic materials
(mud or wattle and daub) from the Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and
Neolithic periods in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. More
extensive remains of stone-built structures have given clues to later
Neolithic farming communities as well as to the habitations, storehouses,
and religious and civic structures of early civilizations. The best
documented are those of ancient Egypt, where exhaustive work in the 19th and
20th centuries revealed much about both ordinary buildings and monumental
structures, such as the pyramid tombs near modern Cairo and the temple and
tomb complexes concentrated at Luxor and Thebes.
The basic forms of classical architecture evolved in Greece between the 16th
and 2nd centuries BC. A hallmark was the post-and-lintel construction of
temples and public structures, classified into the Doric, Ionic, and
Corinthian orders and defined by simple, scrolled, or acanthus-leaf capitals
for support columns. The Romans copied and expanded on Greek classical
forms, notably introducing bricks and concrete and developing the vault,
arch, and dome for public buildings and aqueducts.
This form of architecture developed primarily in the Eastern Roman Empire
from the 4th century, with its centre at Byzantium (later named
Constantinople, now Istanbul). It is dominated by the arch and dome, with
the classical orders reduced in importance. Its most notable features are
churches, some very large, based on the Greek cross plan (Hagia Sophia,
Istanbul; St Mark's, Venice), with formalized painted and mosaic decoration.
This developed from the 8th century, when the Islamic religion spread from
its centre in the Middle East west to Spain and east to China and parts of
the Philippine Islands. Notable features are the development of the tower
with dome and the pointed arch. Islamic architecture, chiefly through
Spanish examples such as the Great Mosque at Córdoba and the Alhambra in
Granada, profoundly influenced Christian church architecture, for example,
the adoption of the pointed arch in Gothic architecture.
This style flourished in Western European Christianity from the 10th to the
12th centuries. It is marked by churches with massive walls for structural
integrity, rounded arches, small windows, and resulting dark volumes of
interior space. In England the style is generally referred to as Norman
architecture (an example is Durham Cathedral). Romanesque enjoyed a renewal
of interest in Europe and the USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
This form emerged out of Romanesque. The development of the pointed arch and
flying buttress made it possible to change from thick supporting walls to
lighter curtain walls with extensive expansion of window areas (and
stained-glass artwork) and resulting increases in interior light. Gothic
architecture was developed mainly in France from the 12th to 16th centuries.
The style is divided into Early Gothic (for example, Sens Cathedral), High
Gothic (Chartres Cathedral), and Late or Flamboyant Gothic. In England the
corresponding divisions are Early English (Salisbury Cathedral), Decorated
(Wells Cathedral), and Perpendicular (Kings College Chapel, Cambridge).
Gothic was also developed extensively in Germany and Italy.
The 15th and 16th centuries in Europe saw the rebirth of classical form and
motifs in the Italian neoclassical movement. A major source of inspiration
for the great Renaissance architects – Andrea Palladio, Leon Battista
Alberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, Donato Bramante, and Michelangelo Buonarotti
– was the work of the 1st-century BC Roman engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio.
The Palladian style was later used extensively in England by Inigo Jones;
Christopher Wren also worked in the classical idiom. Classicism, or
neoclassicism as it is also known, has been popular in the USA from the 18th
century, as evidenced in much of the civic and commercial architecture since
the time of the early republic (the US Capitol and Supreme Court buildings
in Washington; many state capitols).
European architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries elaborated on classical
models with exuberant and extravagant decoration. In large-scale public
buildings, the style is best seen in the innovative works of Giovanni
Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini in Italy and later in those of John
Vanbrugh, Nicholas Hawksmoor, and Christopher Wren in England. There were
numerous practitioners in France and the German-speaking countries, and
notably in Vienna.
This architecture extends the baroque style with an even greater
extravagance of design motifs, using a new lightness of detail and
naturalistic elements, such as shells, flowers, and trees.
European architecture of the 18th and 19th centuries again focused on the
more severe classical idiom (inspired by archaeological finds), producing,
for example, the large-scale rebuilding of London by Robert Adam and John
Nash and later of Paris by Georges Haussman.