Timeline

Mammoth House - neolithic (pre-Stone Age) - 16,000-10,000 BCE

Skara Brae Dwelling  3180-2500 BCE

Crete Plaster figures + bronze "votives" of sheep & cattle - 1600 BCE

Bronze Age Tholos Tomb (Treasury of Atreus) at Mycenae, Greece - 1300-1200 BCE

Kouros (male) and Kore (female) statues representing the Individual - 700-600s BCE

Winged Victory of Samothrace - 600 BCE

The Sacred Temple of Delphi - 530 BCE

Treasury of the Siphnians, Delphi, 530-525 BCE

The Parthenon at Athens, Greece - 447-432 BCE

The Sanctuary of the Great Gods, Ancient Greece - 200-100s BCE

Teotihuacan, Mayan City, 1st Century-->750 CE

Rock cut chaitya hall, monastery at Karli, India - 100-125 CE

Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli, Italy - 118-125 CE

Pantheon, built for Emperor Hadrian, Rome, Italy - 120-127 CE

Santa Costanza - 300s CE

The Ise Shrine, Ise, Japan, late 5th-6th Century (late 400s-500s CE)

Asuka period (beginnings of Buddhism in Japan) - 552-645 CE

Visigoths? (Plundering Rome?) - 400-800 CE

Cordoba, Constantinople & Mexico City=really important places - 8th, 9th + 10th centuries (700s-1000s CE)

Carolingian architecture - 800s CE

Pueblo Bonito - 900-1300 CE

Mosque at Djenne, Mali - early 14th century (early 1300s CE)

The Alhambra ("Red Citadel") Granada, Spain - 1340s CE

The Court of Lions, the Alhambra, Spain - 1354-1391 CE

The Friday Mosque, Mali, Africa - 1400s CE

Cluney Abbey - 800-1100 C.E.

St. Gall Abbey - 817 C.E.

The Baptistery, Florence, (1000-1200 C.E.)

St Trophime, Arles, S. France, 1170 C.E.

The Church of our lady of Chartres - 1190-1220 C.E.

The Tempietto for St. Peter, monastery - 1502 C.E.

Guilio Romano's Palazzo del Te, Mantua, Italy (1526-34 C.E.)

Della Porta's Gesu Church, Rome, 1575 C.E.

Chiswick House - 1735 C.E. - Palladion architect Lord Burlington

Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, 1768-82 C.E., 1796-1809 C.E.

Inigo Jones, The Banquetting Hall, 1619-1637 C.E.

Imperial Villa, Katsura, near Kyoto, Japan (1620-37 C.E.)

Royal Palace and Gardens at Versailles, France 1624-1778 C.E.

Church of San Estevan, Acoma, New Mexico, 1629-33 C.E.

Taj Mahal - Agra, India - 1631-1641 C.E.

Hall of Mirrors - Mansart - 1678 C.E. (ceilings le Brun, Engineer le Notre)

Parson Capen House, 1683 C.E.

MacPhaedris-Warner House "Georgian" Portsmouth, NH - (1714-16 C.E.)

Chiswick House - 1725 C.E.

Gardener Wentworth House - 1760 C.E.

Keddleston Hall, by Robert Adam (1770s-80s C.E.)

Apollo and Thetis, Versailles Gardens, Richard Mique - 1778 C.E.

Slater Mill, Pawtucket, RI - 1793 C.E.

Yin Yu Tang - 1800 C.E. --> Salem, MA - (1800s-1840s)

The Crystal Palace, London, England - Joseph Paxton - 1851 C.E.

Red House - Philip Webb for William and Jane Morris - 1860

Trinity Church, Boston, MA - 1870s C.E.

Home+Studio, Oak Park, IL, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1880s-90s

"The Rookery" - 1888 C.E.

Gamble House - 1907 C.E. - Henry + Charles Green

The Bauhaus - Walter Gropius - 1919 C.E.

Usonian House Designs - The Zimmerman House (1950 C.E.)

The Ise Shrine, Japan, Most recent rebuilding: 1993 CE

Lofty Design

The house on stilts is iconic of traditional Japanese architecture, the style coming into prevalence with the advent of Buddhism in Japan. The essential impetus for lifting the building was to remove it from the natural ground moisture. This was especially important as Japanese architecture relied so heavily upon the use of wood as the primary building material, which of course resulted in buildings prone to or at least faced with the constant threat of rotting. By raising the building off of the ground, the wind was allowed to whisk under the structure; air flow along the ground more quickly relieved ground saturation, reducing the risk of rot to the wooden stilts supporting the house.

Another benefit of raising the building up off of the ground is that it reduces the impact that the construction has upon the environment, since so little ground need be broken on the site. Far fewer problems are encountered with issues such as ground permeability and rainwater runoff, as are frequently created or impounded by the pouring of concrete for massive foundations and rolling out pavement for driveways.

Images Cited:

(1) www.japanlinks.ch/traditional_japanese_house/english/building_environment

(2) mikecash.aminus3.com/image/2008-01-21.html

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, feats of early human civilization so incredible that they cannot be forgotten. Some of these have passed out of existence, have fallen or been destroyed, and in some cases the skills and techniques to create them have been forgotten, so that it is no longer within the bounds of mankind to build these miraculous works. 
Nevertheless, their passing only strengthens their hold on our imaginations, and for some the pursuit of these Wonders never ceases.

The Great Pyramid in Egypt - c. pre-450 B.C.E

The Great Pyramid was built in modern-day Egypt by the Pharoah Khufu, and is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World that survives to this day. Perhaps this is partly because its builders were able to draw on all the experience of a long building tradition in this exact vein to perfect the process in this greatest work. 

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon - c. 600 B.C.E

The Hanging Gardens were built by King Nebuchadnezzar II for his ailing wife, in what is now present-day Iraq. His wife, who hailed from Persia, longed for the fragrant trees and lush plants of her home, and so in this style the luxurious garden was established and thrived until its destruction by earthquakes soon after 200 B.C.E.

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia - c. 456 B.C.E

The Statue of Zeus at Olympia was sculpted of ivory and gold by Phideas more than 300 years after the start of the Olympic Games. As the Olympics grew in importance, the need for a larger and more splendid temple became evident. Work began in 470 B.C.E and was completed fourteen years later, crowning what would become the standard for many of our own contemporary monuments, including the Lincoln Memorial.

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus - c. 550 B.C.E

The first Temple of Artemis was probably built in 800 B.C.E, but two more temples would come and go before the great Temple of Artemis would finally be built at Ephesus by the architect Scopas of Paros. The building may have taken anywhere from 60 to 120 years to complete, but was still in construction when Alexander the Great passed through the city.

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus - c. 350 B.C.E

Built by his grief-stricken queen to honor him in death, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was meant to be a tomb of unequalled magnificence for the ruler Mausolus. The tomb gained such great notoriety that the ruler's name has been lent to all grand tombs in the form of the word "mausoleum" for a building, especially a large and stately one, housing a tomb or tombs.

The Colossus of Rhodes - c. 282 B.C.E

Rhodes was an important trade port in the ancient world, and the statue of the Colossus was once said to have stood, straddling the entrance to the harbour, there. It is now believed that the statue actually stood closer to the mainland, and upright, on a pedestal probably. Unfortunately, the statue only remained standing for about 56 years.

The Great Lighthouse at Alexandria - c. 270 B.C.E

The Pharos was the great lighthouse at Alexandria, built in the time of Ptolemy II, in a design that would thereafter be the template for the majority of lighthouses built throughout the ages. Alexandria is the last surviving city thus named by Alexander the Great in the course of his conquests. The city harbour was carefully selected as one that would remain both deep and clear despite the massive amounts of silt yielded by the rise and fall of the Nile River. The lighthouse was topped by the sculpted figure of Poseidon, god of the Sea. It was the last of the six wonders to vanish, with only Khufu's Great Pyramid surviving it to the modern day.

It is true that some ancient spectacles have been overlooked, however it remains a wondrous list compiled by the Greeks within their knowledge of what they had encountered.

Images Cited:

(1) www.hisdudeness.com/Egypt/images/The%20Great%20Pyramid%20of%20Giza%202

(2) www.skepticworld.com/ancient-monuments/images/hangingardens

(3) www.ba.metu.edu.tr/~adil/BA-web/seven%20wonders/zeus_color

(4) i168.photobucket.com/albums/u188/Chesterthegreat12/Artemis

(5) www.faculty.fairfield.edu/ jmac/rs/7mausoleum

(6) www.7wonders.info/colossus

(7) www.love-egypt.com/ images/pharos

(8) www.ba.metu.edu.tr//7wonders

Columns: the Natural Order

There were three orders of columns and capitals established in Ancient Greece. The story of their creation is far more interesting, mathematic, and artistic than one might expect.

The first order of column was the Doric order.

In deriving the design for this column, experts of masonry, architecture, and even engineering in its earliest forms, looked to nature and to the gods. With the belief that man was made in the image of the gods, and that the ideal human body is divine and perfect, a male specimen was procured and measurements were taken. The column needed to be not only strong, but also beautiful, like an athlete. Upon finding the human foot to be at a fixed proportion to the height of male body to which it is attached (the length of a man's foot is approximately 1/6 of his full height) they applied this proportion to their column, making the height of the column (from the ground to the top of the capital) just six times the width at the base. In this way they created a column with both the strength and beauty of man.

The second order of column that they devised was the Ionic Order.

The Ionic Order was to embody the grace and beauty of the female form, as opposed to the strength and beauty of man expressed in the Doric Order.

The thickness of the Ionic column was designed to be 1/8 of its full height. Thus making it a more slender and feminine design element. 

Decorative volutes (the curled part on either side of the capital) were added in place of the comparatively Spartan design given to the Doric capital. 

Instead of the simple fluting separated by sharp arrises along the length of the Doric shaft, the fluting on the Ionic shaft is separated by fillets, in which aspect it resembles the triglyph pattern that so often accompanied the Doric column.

The third order established was the Corinthian Order. This was the most decorative order and is said to have been an attempt to capture the youthful and springy nature of a maiden. Another legend that follows the Corinthian capital is that a 

nursemaid bringing a basket of treasured belongings to the tomb of a princess set the basket down upon a dormant Acanthus root, and then placed a heavy tile upon the top to stay the basket. In the spring the Acanthus root pushed up from under the basket and its leaves grew to spring up all around and alongside it. 

Passing by the tomb, Callimachus chanced to see the plant and basket arrangement, and from this he drew the inspiration for the Corinthian capital and column.

All three of these columns can be found in contemporary examples of classical architecture:

Corinthian or perhaps composite (most likely an amalgamation of Corinthian and Ionic style) columns on an old bank building in Sydney, Australia.

Doric Columns on the National Register Nomination:  Old Dominion Bank Building, Alexandria

Beautiful Corinthian capitals on columns in the auditorium of a library:

Ionic capitals employed on a federal building in Seminole Heights

Images Cited:

(1) http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Temples/DoricOrder.html

(2) http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Temples/IonicOrder.html

(3)+(4) http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Temples/CorinthianOrder.html

(5) http://www.sydneyarchitecture.com/images/uni-bank2.jpg

(6) http://www.dhr.virginia.gov/ registers/Cities/Alexandria.jpg

(7) http://www.booktruck.files.wordpress.com/.../ library1

(8) http://www.seminoleheights.blogspot.com/ 2006_03_01_archive

Banking on an Architectural Tradition

The treasuries of Ancient Greece provided the architectural inspiration for centuries of design in financial buildings, or more specifically bank buildings. The example image above, of the famous Bank of Ireland building, shows us an extremely traditional use of treasury design elements. The buildings significant massing, large and squat in nature, provide those depositing their finances here with an innate sense of security in their keeping. A sense of credibility is also established by the "official" appearance of the building, which is derived partly from the fact that the ancient greek architectural tradition is so frequently drawn upon for another important type of architecture: the government building.

We can see the use of a handful of classical elements in this building's fine exterior. The trio of sculpted figures that preside upon the rooftop over the grand entrance is more than just reminiscent of what, for example, the Parthenon must once have looked like. Other similarities between the two buildings include the pediment, or the triangular piece carried by the columns and, in the case of the Parthenon, decorated heavily with what would have once been brightly colored high and low (or "bas") relief sculpture, now bleached white by the harsh Grecian sun.

One element that differs, though it remains definitively Classical Greek in design, is the use of Ionic columns and capitals, versus the Doric order we see employed throughout the temple to Athena. We also see a use of arches and curvature far more closely related to the Ancient Roman tradition, as illustrated by the Emperor Hadrian's temple to the gods on Mount Olympus, the Pantheon.

Image Credits:

(1) www.census.nationalarchives.ie

(2) www.mlahanas.de/ Greeks/Arts/Parthenon.htm

(3) curious.astro.cornell.edu/ question.php?number=692