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Art Chapter 7 Form in Architecture

The document discusses the evolution of building forms from early shelters to structures that served various community needs such as housing, government, commerce, and worship. It describes some of the earliest residential structures like caves, impermanent shelters made of natural materials, and more permanent structures made of techniques like wattle-and-daub, rammed earth, and fired clay bricks. It also discusses the development of structures that served community needs like palaces, theaters, amphitheaters, marketplaces, and structures for commerce like covered walkways. Important examples of religious structures are also summarized like pyramids, the Parthenon, Pantheon, and Brihadeshwara Temple.

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Amelito Jungoy
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72 views

Art Chapter 7 Form in Architecture

The document discusses the evolution of building forms from early shelters to structures that served various community needs such as housing, government, commerce, and worship. It describes some of the earliest residential structures like caves, impermanent shelters made of natural materials, and more permanent structures made of techniques like wattle-and-daub, rammed earth, and fired clay bricks. It also discusses the development of structures that served community needs like palaces, theaters, amphitheaters, marketplaces, and structures for commerce like covered walkways. Important examples of religious structures are also summarized like pyramids, the Parthenon, Pantheon, and Brihadeshwara Temple.

Uploaded by

Amelito Jungoy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Form in Architecture

CHAPTER 7
Introduction
• The earliest buildings were likely designed to shelter a family or
small group that lived together. Soon group needs came into play,
and the community may have wanted to provide for joint activities
of several types such as ritual/worship, group protection,
government, markets, and other commercial needs.
• The types expanded as the societies grew, diversified, specialized,
and sought ways to meet needs for both individuals and
communities.
• The specific purposes led to diverse designs, and cultural values
influenced both practical and stylistic choices.
Post-and-Lintel
• The most basic method
is the post-and-lintel
design in which two
upright beams support
a horizontal one to
create a rectangular
opening.
We will classify these buildings into several groups,
although noting that a great number of them were
multipurpose:
• residential/housing
• community needs
• commercial buildings and centers
• governmental structures
• worship
RESIDENTIAL NEEDS
• The earliest types of shelters were
likely caves found by humans as they
wandered to hunt and gather food and
to find refuge from bad weather or
pursuing creatures.
• The first independently standing
structures were made of materials that
were impermanent, that is, those found
in nature— sticks, bones, animal
pelts—and fashioned to create a
covered space apparently as protection
from the elements.
Reconstructed Jōmon period (3000
BC) houses.
RESIDENTIAL NEEDS
• As people became more settled,
domesticated animals, and cultivated
crops, they developed such
construction techniques as
• wattle-and-daub (sticks covered with
mud)
• rammed earth (moist dirt and sand or
gravel compressed into a temporary
frame)
• and clay bricks (unfired and fired that
developed alongside their evolving
techniques for creating pottery Recreation of a Celtic Roundhouse
vessels).
RESIDENTIAL NEEDS
• They used these methods for
communal living centers such as the
village of Catalhöyük in modern
Turkey (7,500-5,700 BCE), including
common walls so that the clustered
houses supported one another.
• Such building methods addressed
security issues by confining entry
into living spaces to openings in the
roofs, with ladders that could be
retracted to foil trespassers.
Çatalhöyük at the Time of the First Excavations
RESIDENTIAL NEEDS
• The use of stone for building structures
began in prehistoric times, and an example
of such a structure can be seen the Scottish
village of Skara Brae (3,180-2,500 BCE).
• The walls were made of stacked stone while
entryways and some of the furniture were
created using the post-and-lintel method.
• Because of the harsh northern climate, the
structures were partially underground for
protection from the elements.
• Stone furnishing such as seating, beds,
storage spaces, and other items within the
single-room units were around a central fire
pit. Inside a house at Skara Brae
COMMUNITY AND GOVERNMENT
• Clearly, many of the palaces and complexes
we have explored included accommodation
of community government needs.
• There were others throughout history that
had somewhat more pointed community
needs in mind for their creation but were
often combined with other purposes as
well.
• Ziggurat: a man-made mountain, designed
to be the platform for a temple, raising it
closer to the heavens where the gods were
believed to reside.

Ziggurat of Ur, Iraq


COMMUNITY AND GOVERNMENT
• Both the Greek and the Romans designed
and built theaters, outdoor structures for
dramatic performances, and amphitheaters,
round or oval buildings with a central space
for events, that provided models for such
structures to this day.
• While the basic concepts were devised by
the Greeks to present religious festivals and
ritual dramas, the Romans with their great
ingenuity in engineering and material
development added considerably to the
potential for these designs to cater to
changing needs and broader applications.
Coliseum in Rome
COMMERCE
• Buildings for commerce have appeared over
time. Early systems of trade and barter in
some places eventually became formalized in
ways that required marketplaces and
commercial establishments with temporary
or permanent housing.
• An early example appeared in ancient
Athens, Greece, in the area where the open
market or agora, was also located.
• The Stoa of Attalos, built by King Attalos II of
Pergamon (r. 159-133 BCE), was comprised of
a two-story covered walkway made of
marble and limestone with columns on one
side and a closed wall on the other. Church of the Holy Apostles and Museum of
Ancient Agora
COMMERCE
• Wealthy entrepreneurs and ambitious
developers from around the world have
joined in the competition for buildings of
modern distinction.
• One example I the Chrysler Building in New
York City, designed by William van Alen
(1883-1954, USA).
• Its décor in the Art Deco style (c. 1920-
1940), including the ribbed, sunburst pattern
made of stainless steel in the building’s
terraced crown, celebrates American
industrialism and the automobile.
The Top of the Chrysler
Building, New York City, NY
COMMERCE
• A more recent example is the Petronas Twin
Towers in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, designed
by César Pelli (b. 1926, Argentina, lives USA).
• Inaugurated in 1999, they were the tallest
buildings for several years and remain the
tallest twin towers to this day.
• The buildings’ design motifs are inspired by
Islamic art and culture; for example, the
shape of each tower is the Muslim symbol of
Rub el Hizb, or two overlapping squares that
form an eight-pointed star.
Petronas Twin Towers Malaysia
WORSHIP
• Among the earliest examples are the
pyramid complexes from ancient Egypt.
• The pyramids were tombs composed of
millions of large stones in
mathematically regular geometric
structures carefully oriented to the stars.
• Pyramids evolved over thousands of
years out of pre-Egyptian burial practices
that began with placing heavy stones
over gravesites to protect the occupants
and their grave goods buried within.
Giza Pyramids
WORSHIP
• the Parthenon, dedicated
to the goddess Athena,
the patron of the city of
Athens.

The Parthenon, Athens, Greece


WORSHIP
• An important and very
innovative temple design was
created during the early
Imperial era to honor the
pantheon of nine planetary
deities.
• To address the honor of the
group, rather than individual The Pantheon, Rome, Italy
gods, this temple, the
Pantheon, took a different
form.
WORSHIP
• Later Indian worship
structures such as the
Brihadeshwara Temple
dedicated to the Hindu god
Shiva, from the eleventh-
century Chola Dynasty era,
show the great complexity
of conception of this type
of worship space.

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