History of Architecture

Architecture first evolved out of the dynamics between needs (security, shelter, worship, etc.) and means (available skills and building materials). As human cultures developed and knowledge began to be formalized through oral traditions and practices, architecture became a craft.

Prehistoric Architecture

The Neolithic peoples in the Levant, Syria, Anatolia, northern Mesopotamia and Central Asia were great builders, using mud-brick to construct houses and villages. At Çatalhöyük (southern Anatolia), houses were plastered and painted with elaborate scenes of animals and humans.

In Europe, long houses were constructed using wattle and daub. Neolithic people in the British Isles built long barrows and chamber tombs for their dead and causewayed camps, henges flint mines and cursus monuments.

Ancient Architecture

In many ancient civilisations, such as the Egyptians' and Mesopotamians', architecture and urbanism reflected the constant engagement with the divine and the supernatural, whilst in other ancient cultures (such as Persia), architecture and urban planning was used to exemplify the power of the state.

Thus, the founding and ordering of the city and its most important buildings (the temple or palace) were often executed by priests or even the ruler himself and the construction was accompanied by rituals intended to enter human activity into continued divine benediction. Cities would mark a contained sacred space over the wilderness of nature outside, and the temple or palace continued this order by acting as a house for the Gods.

Greek Architecture (750 BC - 250 AD)

During the time of the ancients, religious matters were the preserve of the ruling order alone; however, by the time of the Greeks, religious mystery had escaped the confines of the temple-palace compounds and was the subject of the people or polis. Greek civic life was thus sustained by new, open spaces (known as agora), which were surrounded by public buildings, temples and stores. The agora embodied the new found respect for social justice received through open debate rather than imperial mandate. 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.

Roman Architecture (730 BC - 650 AD)

The Romans based much of their architecture on the dome, such as Hadrian's Pantheon in the city of Rome, and the Baths of Diocletian. The dome permitted construction of vaulted ceilings and enabled huge covered public spaces such as the public baths and basilicas. The Roman use of the arch and their improvements in the use of concrete facilitated the building of the many aqueducts throughout the empire, such as the magnificent Aqueduct of Segovia and the eleven aqueducts in Rome itself, such as Aqua Claudia and Anio Novus.

Medieval Architecture (5th-16th Century)

Surviving examples of medieval secular architecture mainly served for defence, such as castles and fortified walls. 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 not shooting.

Islamic architecture began in the 7th century, developing from the architectural forms of the ancient Middle East but developing features to suit the social and religious needs of the society. Examples can be found throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Spain, and were to become a significant stylistic influence on European architecture during the medieval period.

In Europe, in both the Classical and Medieval periods, buildings were not attributed to specific individuals and the names of the architects frequently unknown, despite the vast scale of the many religious buildings extant from this period. The role of architect was usually one with master builder.

Renaissance Architecture (14th-17th Century)

With the Renaissance and its emphasis on the humanity and individual rather than religion, and with all its attendant progress and achievements, a new chapter began. Buildings were ascribed to specific architects - Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Alberti, Palladio. However, there was no dividing line between artist, architect and engineer, or any of the related vocations. At this stage, it was still possible for an artist to design a bridge as the level of structural calculations involved was within the scope of the generalist.

With 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.

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. Architects such as Androuet du Cerceau, Philibert Delorme, Giacomo Vignola, and Pierre Lescot, were inspired by the new ideas. 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 in 1619. These works with their clean lines and symmetry were revolutionary in a country still enamoured with mullion windows, turrets and crenelations.

Baroque Architecture (17th Century)

Baroque architecture took the humanist Roman vocabulary of Renaissance architecture and used it in a new theatrical, rhetorical, sculptural fashion, expressing the triumph of absolutist church and state. New architectural concerns for colour, light and shade, sculptural values and intensity characterise the Baroque. But whilst the Renaissance drew on the power and wealth of the Italian courts, and was a blend of religious and secular forces, the Baroque was, initially at least, directly linked to the Counter-Reformation, a movement within the Catholic Church to reform itself in response to the Protestant Reformation.

It was Christopher Wren who presided over the birth of the English Baroque manner, which differed from the continental models by clarity of design and subtle taste for classisism. Following the Great Fire of London, Wren rebuilt 53 churches, where Baroque aesthetics are apparent primarily in dynamic structure and multiple changing views. His most ambitious work was St Paul's Cathedral, which bears comparison with the most shining domed churches of Italy and France.

Georgian Architecture (1720-1840)

Georgian succeeded the English Baroque of Sir Christopher Wren, Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor. Georgian architecture is characterised by its balance and proportion; simple mathematical ratios were used to determine the height of a window in relation to its width or the shape of a room as a double cube. Georgian designs usually lay within the Classical orders of architecture and employed a decorative vocabulary derived from ancient Rome or Greece. The most common building materials used are brick or stone. Commonly used colours were red, tan, or white.

The styles that resulted fall within several categories. In the mainstream of Georgian style were both Palladian architecture (and its alternatives, Gothic and Chinoiserie) which were the English-speaking world's equivalent of European Rococo. From the mid-1760s a range of Neoclassical modes were fashionable, associated with the British architects Robert Adam, James Gibbs, Sir William Chambers, James Wyatt, Henry Holland and Sir John Soane. After about 1800, Greek Revival was added to the design repertory.

Neoclassical Architecture (Mid-18th to 20th Century)

This architectural style was produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, both as a reaction against the Rococo style of anti-tectonic naturalistic ornament, and an outgrowth of some classicizing features of Late Baroque. In its purest form it is a style principally derived from the architecture of Classical Greece. Neoclassical architecture was exemplified in Sir John Soane's Bank of England in London, Karl Friedrich Schinkel's buildings(especially the Old Museum in Berlin), and the newly built capitol in Washington, DC.

Its last manifestation was in Beaux-Arts architecture (1885–1920).

Victorian Architecture (1837-1901)

The architectural styles predominantly employed during the Victorian era included the British Arts and Crafts movement, Gothic Revival, Jacobethan (the precursor to the Queen Anne style), Queen Anne and Renaissance Revival.

During the latter part of this era, 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. Vernacular architecture became increasingly ornamental. House builders could access current architectural design in their work by combining features found in pattern books and architectural journals.

Modern Architecture (1900-Present)

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, which first arose around 1900.

The dissatisfaction with such a general situation at the turn of the twentieth century 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. Following this lead, the Bauhaus school, founded in Germany in 1919, consciously rejected history and looked at architecture as a synthesis of art, craft, and technology.

After World War I, pioneering modernist architects sought to develop a completely new style appropriate for a new post-war economic and social order, focused on meeting the needs of the working and middle classes. They rejected the architectural practice of the academic refinement of historical styles which served the rapidly declining aristocratic order.

The approach of the Modernist architects was to reduce buildings to pure forms, removing historical references and ornament in favour of functionalist details. Buildings that displayed their structure and construction, exposing concrete surfaces and steel beams instead of hiding them behind traditional forms, were seen as beautiful in their own right. Architects such as Mies van der Rohe worked to create beauty based on the inherent qualities of building materials and modern construction techniques, trading traditional historic forms for simplified geometric forms, celebrating the new means and methods made possible by the Industrial Revolution.

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.

Postmodern architecture, which was first seen around the 1950s, continues to influence present-day architecture. The functional and formalised shapes and spaces of the modernist movement were replaced by unapologetically diverse aesthetics: styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound.

Deconstructivism in architecture was a development of postmodern architecture that began in the late 1980s. It is characterised by ideas of fragmentation, non-linear processes of design, an apparent non-Euclidean geometry, (i.e., non-rectilinear shapes) and an interest in manipulating ideas of a structure's surface or skin; all of which serve to dislocate and distort some of the elements of architecture, such as envelope and structure. The finished visual appearance of buildings that exhibit the many deconstructivist styles is characterised by a stimulating unpredictability and a controlled chaos.

Important events in the history of the deconstructivist movement include the Museum of Modern Art's 1988 Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition in New York, which featured works by Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Coop Himmelblau, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid 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.