ARCHITECTURE

What is Architecture?

• Architecture in Roman Architect, Vitruvius ( 1st Century AD) and translated from
Latin to English in the 17th Century by Sir Henry Wotton, that architecture was a
building that incorporated utilitas, firmitas and venustas. Meaning, architecture
embraces functional. Technological and aesthetic requirement because it must
have commodotie (utilitarian qualities), firmness (structural ability and sound
construction), and delignte (attractive appearance)
• the art or science of building
• Most useful art prerequisite for other arts
• “A way to build”
 4.1 Historical Background of Architecture

• High speaks of a country and its people. ( lifestyle,

character, and traditions , their motives and beliefs like in any forms of art. )

• Different Era or Historical Periods. Noting the evolution

of each successful architectural style.
4.2 Egyptian Architecture (3000-1000 BC)
 4.2 Egyptian Architecture (3000-1000 BC)

• Dependent to their religion.

• Believed “Ka” or vital forces lives in every human being, but ones destroyed the “vital
forces” are also destroyed.
• Built pyramids together with the temple= preservation of vital forces
• Their architectural style:
- Mammoth rectangular plan of limestone with stopping pylons with gorge molding.
- It has bud and flower capitals for post-and-lintel construction and monument obelisks and
sphinxes fronting pylons. A relief sculpture on wall and columns.
Example: Pyramid of Giza
 4.3 Mesopotamian Architecture
• is ancient architecture of the region of the Tigris–Euphrates river system
• Among the Mesopotamian architectural accomplishments are the development of urban planning,
the courtyard house, and ziggurats. No architectural profession existed in Mesopotamia; however,
scribes drafted and managed construction for the government, nobility, or royalty.
• Ziggurats were huge pyramidal temple towers which were first built in Sumerian City-States by
Sumerians, Babylonians, Elamites, and Assyrians as monuments to local religions. Built in receding
tiers upon a rectangular, oval, or square platform, the ziggurat was a pyramidal structure. Sun-baked
bricks made up the core of the ziggurat with facings of fired bricks on the outside. The facings were
often glazed in different colors and may have had astrological significance.
• Babylonians- temples are massive structures of crude brick, supported by buttresses, the rain being
carried off by drains. use of brick led to the early development of the pilaster and column, and of
frescoes and enamelled tiles. The walls were brilliantly colored, and sometimes plated with zinc or
gold, as well as with tiles. Painted terra-cotta cones for torches were also embedded in the plaster.
• Assyrians- also built its palaces and temples of brick, even when stone was the natural building
material of the country – faithfully preserving the brick platform, necessary in the marshy soil of
Babylonia, but little needed in the north. When they are free from Babylonains, d to use stone as well
as brick. The walls of Assyrian palaces were lined with sculptured and coloured slabs of stone.
Buildings are rectangular.
Ziggurats
 4.3 Mesopotamian Architecture

• Chaldeans- architects have played a major role in influencing the world with
their enduring display of artistic architectural resourcefulness.

“Hanging Garden of Babylon ”

Nebuchadnezzar made these gardens as a gift to his wife. The
walls were decorated by colored friezes, a broad horizontal
band of sculpted or painted decoration, especially on a wall
near the ceiling.
Today, in modern time, they still have hanging
gardens on its level of rooftop.
 Greek Architecture ( 600- 100 BC)

• is the architecture produced by the Greek-speaking people (Hellenic people) whose culture
flourished on the Greek mainland, the Peloponnese, the Aegean Islands, and in colonies in
Anatolia and Italy for a period from about 900 BC until the 1st century AD, with the earliest
remaining architectural works dating from around 600 BC.
• is best known from its temples
• architecture is distinguished by its highly formalised characteristics, both of structure and
decoration
• Other architectural forms that are still in evidence are the processional gateway (propylon), the
public square (agora) surrounded by storied colonnade (stoa), the town council building
(bouleuterion), the public monument, the monumental tomb (mausoleum) and the stadium.
 Doric order- most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of columns.
Originating in the western Dorian region of Greece, it is the earliest and in its essence the simplest of the orders,
though Greek Doric column was fluted or smooth-surfaced and had no base, dropping straight into the stylobate or
platform on which the temple or other building stood. The capital was a simple circular form, with some mouldings,
under a square cushion that is very wide in early versions, but later more restrained. Above a plain architrave, the
complexity comes in the frieze, where the two features originally unique to the Doric, the triglyph and guttae, are
skeuomorphic memories of the beams and retaining pegs of the wooden constructions that preceded stone Doric
temples. In stone they are purely ornamental and still with complex details in the entablature above.
Ionic order- Similar to Doric Order; Ionic Order retains signs of having its
origins in wooden architecture; is characterized by the use of volutes.
The Ionic columns normally stand on a base which separates the shaft of the column
from the stylo bate or platform; the cap is usually enriched with egg-and-dart; more
slender than the Doric. volutes lay in a single plane then it was seen that they could be
angled out on the corners. This feature of the Ionic order made it more pliant and
satisfactory.
Corinthian Order- does not have its origin in wooden architecture; capital was very
much deeper than either the Doric or the Ionic capital, being shaped like a large krater, a bell-shaped
mixing bowl, and being ornamented with a double row of acanthus leaves above which rose voluted
tendrils, supporting the corners of the abacus, which, no longer perfectly square, splayed above them.
According to Vitruvius, the capital was invented by a bronze founder, Callimachus of Corinth, who took
his inspiration from a basket of offerings that had been placed on a grave, with a flat tile on top to
protect the goods. The basket had been placed on the root of an acanthus plant which had grown up
around it.

• The Corinthian Order was initially used

internally, as at the Temple of Apollo
Epicurius at Bassae