Architecture Design

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Throughout history, humanity has utilized architecture to express religious belief, nobility, prosperity, and political movements. In addition, architects have created structures to facilitate engineering processes and to convey artistic visions. Famous architecture acts as much as an informer of human history and aspirations as a historical textbook.

Architecture first took large-scale shape with the construction of the Egyptian pyramids. Their enormous size and stately appearance was no accident: their purpose was to serve as the burial ground for the pharaohs who ruled over Egypt. According to historians, Egyptians believed the pharaohs’ burial in the pyramids eased their passage to the afterlife. As churches would do centuries later, pyramids served as integral religious symbols for the Egyptian civilization.

The ancient Greeks and Romans placed equal importance on religious architecture. The Greeks dedicated most of their architecture to their gods, though they also built recreational structures such as amphitheatres. Their religious architecture culminated with the Temple of Hephaestus, named for the god Hephaestus. In building these temples, the Greeks developed innovative modes of construction reflecting their love of proportion and regularity. Their creation of Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns gives clear expression to these loves. These columns are the cornerstones of what would come to be known as classical architecture.



Roman architecture also consists of column-filled religious temples, such as the Parthenon in ancient Rome. However, Romans channeled an equal amount of their architecture into engineering. Along with the Etruscans, they were the ones to first introduce aqueducts, vaults, and arches. Moreover, the Romans constructed domes, which they used most notably at the Pantheon and St. Peter’s Basilica. The Romans also created enormous arenas to house sports competitions and entertainment, of which the Colosseum is the most famous example.

Romanesque architecture, or Norman architecture, took its inspiration from the ancient Romans. It was the first large-scale European architectural movement since classical architecture. Romanesque structures contained vaults, arches, and domes. The style arose between the sixth and tenth centuries, when more people were adopting Christianity as their faith and wanted to construct churches to house religious services. Many castles were also built using Romanesque principles. A hallmark of Romanesque buildings is their thick walls, because their heights demanded solid structural support.

Gothic architecture eschewed these thick walls and rounded arches in favor of flying buttresses and ribbed vaults. The Gothic period arose at the close of the Middle Ages. Gothic structures brilliantly redistributed the weight of churches and provided them with the stability to rise many times higher than their Romanesque predecessors. Many famous churches express the Gothic style, such as Salisbury Cathedral and Notre Dame de Paris. Gothic architecture, with its soaring heights, was so popular for churches because architects wanted churches to symbolize oneness with God.

Architecture again rose to special prominence during the Italian Renaissance. Unlike previous architectural movements, Renaissance architecture was humanistic in nature. People were interested in using architecture to test human capability rather than to celebrate religion. Nonetheless, they considered Greek and Roman architecture their beau ideals, and strove to revive those classical structures. For instance, Brunelleschi designed the Florence Cathedral, or Duomo, which contains a dome. Yet, this dome relied on modern engineering to expand it to much greater dimensions than its Roman counterparts. Moreover, architects frequently used Greek columns in their architecture, and based each aspect of a building’s construction on harmonious mathematical ratios.

Following the Renaissance, there was Mannerist and Baroque architecture. These movements broke away from classical restraint and simplicity by conveying more drama and extravagance. Some of their distinguishing marks include frescoes, illusory trompe l’oeil paintings, and decorative sculptures. The lavish St. Paul’s Cathedral in London is a bastion of Baroque architecture.

The Age of Enlightenment, beginning in the sixteenth century, marked a return to not only classical, but also to trompe l’oeil and to Gothic and Romanesque styles. This movement of intellectual rationality asserted itself in the regular, restrained lines of its structures, returning to old standards, which gave it its name of Neoclassicism. This movement intentionally acted as a foil to the decadent Baroque architecture of previous years. Naturally, it heavily utilized arches, columns, vaults, and domes. The United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. contains the columns and dome of Neoclassicism.

Neoclassical, neo-Romanesque, and neo-Gothic architecture figured large until the late nineteenth century, when the Beaux-Arts architectural movement swept over the Western world. Beaux-Arts buildings have a neoclassical base, but include ornamental sculptures that recall the Baroque period. Paris’s Opéra Garnier combines neoclassical and Baroque styles, as does Grand Central Station in New York City.

Architecture majorly departed from tradition with the twentieth century arrival of Modernism. Modernism is represented by streamlined, economical forms with absolutely no ornamentation. The motto for modernism is “form follows function.” Skyscrapers are prime examples of Modernism: they are rectangular, wholly unadorned forms designed to hold large groups of people for business purposes. The Seagram Building in New York City embodies the bareness of modernist architecture.

A later movement descending from Modernism is the Art Deco style. Art Deco took root in the 1920s, and, like Beaux-Arts, consolidated previous historical styles. It strove to retain modernist functionality while adding innovative ornamentation, though this ornamentation consisted of geometrical shapes rather than sculptures. Its opulence mirrored the gaiety of the Roaring Twenties, in reaction to the austere period of World War I. The Chrysler Building in New York City exemplifies the Art Deco movement because of its spire’s progressive crescent-shaped pattern.

From the Art Deco period sprang Postmodern architecture, which is still in use today. It became popular during the 1950s, and is remarkable for its irregular lines and fluid silhouettes. Though it retains the modernist sense of height and functionality, it also adopts Art Deco-like geometric shapes. A subset of this movement includes futurist architecture, exemplified by Seattle’s Space Needle.

Besides these more recent forms of architecture, today’s architects are beginning to construct buildings in deference to their energy efficiency. This sustainable architecture, or green architecture, uses recyclable materials and strategically positions buildings to reuse their own energy. For instance, green architects add greater insulation to buildings so there is less need for heating. Moreover, they implement large, specially angled windows to harness solar energy, and put in composting toilets that reuse human waste as compost material. On its own, green architecture is not so much a movement as a template for architectural design, permitting architecture to achieve environmental sustainability while maintaining artistic innovation.
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