History of Architecture (script)

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What is it?

Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings or other structures.

Mesopotamian

Mesopotamia is most noted for its construction of mud-brick buildings and the construction of ziggurats, occupying a prominent place in each city and consisting of an artificial mound, often rising in huge steps, surmounted by a temple. The mound was no doubt to elevate the temple to a commanding position in what was otherwise a flat river valley. The great city of Uruk had a number of religious precincts, containing many temples larger and more ambitious than any buildings previously known.

Ancient Egyptian

The Ancient Egyptians believed in the afterlife. They also believed that in order for their soul (known as ka) to live eternally in their afterlife, their bodies would have to remain intact for eternity. So, they had to create a way to protect the deceased from damage and grave robbers. This way, the mastaba was born. These were adobe structures with flat roofs, which had underground rooms for the coffin, about 30 m down. Imhotep, an ancient Egyptian priest and architect, had to design a tomb for the Pharaoh Djoser.

Acient Greek

Ancient Greek temples usually consist of a base with continuous stairs of a few steps at each edges, a cella with a cult statue in it, columns, an entablature, and two pediments, one on the front side and another in the back.

Ancient Rome

The architecture of ancient Rome has been one of the most influential in the world. Its legacy is evident throughout the medieval and early modern periods.

Medieval Europe

Medieval architecture was the art of designing and constructing buildings in the Middle Ages. Major styles of the period include pre-Romanesque, Romanesque, and Gothic.

Renaissance

The period began in around 1452, when the architect and humanist Leon Battista Alberti completed his treatise De Re Aedificatoria (On the Art of Building) after studying the ancient ruins of Rome and Vitruvius's De Architectura. His writings covered numerous subjects, including history, town planning, engineering, sacred geometry, humanism and philosophies of beauty, and set out the key elements of architecture and its ideal proportions. In the last decades of the 15th century, artists and architects began to visit Rome to study the ruins, especially the Colosseum and the Pantheon.

Early modern and the industrial age

The emerging knowledge in scientific fields and the rise of new materials and technology, architecture and engineering began to separate, and the architect began to concentrate on aesthetics and the humanist aspects, often at the expense of technical aspects of building design. There was also the rise of the "gentleman architect" who usually dealt with wealthy clients and concentrated predominantly on visual qualities derived usually from historical prototypes, typified by the many country houses of Great Britain that were created in the Neo Gothic or Scottish baronial styles.

Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution laid open the door for mass production and consumption. Aesthetics became a criterion for the middle class as ornamented products, once within the province of expensive craftsmanship, became cheaper under machine production.

Modern

Around the beginning of the 20th century, general dissatisfaction with the emphasis on revivalist architecture and elaborate decoration gave rise to many new lines of thought that served as precursors to Modern architecture. Notable among these is the Deutscher Werkbund, formed in 1907 to produce better quality machine-made objects. The rise of the profession of industrial design is usually placed here.

Postmodern

Many architects resisted modernism, finding it devoid of the decorative richness of historical styles. Postmodernism produced a style that combined contemporary building technology and cheap materials, with the aesthetics of older pre-modern and non-modern styles, from high classical architecture to popular or vernacular regional building styles.