As people developed, their architectural horizons and technical abilities broadened, until today we are able to enclose entire cities in a single structure. With each historical period in this development, we can associate at least one particular form or style of architecture. These styles are always the result of three basic kinds of characteristics:
Natural Characteristics
Climate, attitude, geography, geology, and plant life determine what building materials are locally available and the requirements for weather protection in building construction.
Cultural Characteristics
Religious beliefs; patterns of trade, economy, and government; social ideals; and daily living habits determine the functions and activities to be accommodated in building design.
Technical Characteristics
There are three basic structural forms: post and beam, truss, and arch. These determine the means by which spaces are spanned, which in turn determine the open or column-free areas that can be contained within a building unit.
Knowing these characteristics, the architectural historian or archaeologist can identify a building with its place in the history of civilization. Thus, the significance of architectural styles is that they are a reflection of the period in which they evolved-of the people who lived then: their beliefs and aspirations, their environment, and their degree of cultural and technical achievement.
THE PHYSICAL EMBODIMENT OF HUMAN HISTORY
Architecture, as we think of it in terms of our western culture, first appeared some six thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, a wedge of land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in the country now called Iraq. The Babylonians and Assyrians who lived there believed in living for the moment and gave little thought to life after death. Consequently, their architecture was one of lush palaces and other structures reflecting the everyday pleasures they valued. Mesopotamia was rich in clay, river water, and sunshine, but provided little stone or timber, so sun-dried clay brick was a principal building material. Brick surfaces are easily molded into decorative forms, or glazed with colored ceramic materials, or veneered with stone for decoration and weather protection. So, major Babylonian buildings were covered with bas-relief carvings, glazed friezes, or tooled stone veneers depicting incidents in the history of their civilization. Lacking quantities of stone or timber, these people could not span wide distances, and their buildings contained many columned spaces and small rooms. Had they known of the arch, they could have vaulted large spaces even with brick. But the arch was not generally known or widely used until the early Romans first successfully employed it around 700 B.C.
Around 3000 B.C., the Egyptian civilization began in the Nile Valley. The people of the valley, in contrast to those in Mesopotamia, believed that their everyday activities should be spent largely in preparation for life after death. Their tombs, in the form of pyramids and large rooms carved out of solid rock hillsides, were created to protect the deceased in their journey through eternal life.
Stone, a material of great crushing strength, is abundant in the Nile Valley. The Egyptians used it in quantity to construct post-and-beam buildings of great mass and height. These architectural forms were appropriate to their belief in the majesty and permanence of the afterlife. These bold forms combined with the brilliant sunshine to cause violent light and shadow patterns, which accentuated the massive design of the structures. The dry desert climate has preserved many Egyptian architectural masterpieces to this day.
The Greek Empire during its Hellenic period (700-146 B.C.) brought the architectural foundation of our western culture to full flower. The Greek form of government, academic and philosophical concepts, and cultivation of the arts combined to produce one of the world's great civilizations. Their architecture reflected this achievement; their buildings were proportioned and detailed to a perfection of simplicity and harmony. Part of their success can be attributed to the availability of marble, a strong and beautiful building material that lends itself to exact detailing and fine surface treatment. These materials in the hands of artisans who valued the arts, freedom of mind and spirit, and personal achievement provided the ingredients for architectural excellence. The Greeks principally used a post-and-beam structural system, although they did introduce the truss for spanning large central building spaces. The gable roofs of many of their buildings reflected this structural element.
While the Greeks refined their aesthetics and used a "pure" geometry of circles, squares, and proportional systems, the Romans developed shapes based upon the demands of large-scale structures. They invented the advanced geometry of the ellipse, concrete, and the arch to produce monumental plazas bordered by heavily decorated buildings with huge vaulted interiors (500 B.C.-A.D. 500).
During the middle Ages, superstitions and distrust caused people of that time to withdraw behind the walls of heavily fortified cities or to crowd around the massive masonry walls of monasteries or the castle of a feudal lord (A.D. 400-1100). People depended on the monasteries or castles for protection; these structures were frequently sited on hilltops that provided sweeping views of the surrounding countryside and early warning of any approaching hostile force. Thick, high masonry walls topped with battlements reinforced the feeling of protection. Masons be-came extremely skillful, extending the use of stone even to roof construction, in which vaults employing the principle of the arch were used to span increasingly larger spaces. This time was known as the Romanesque Period. The spread of Christianity and the rebirth of scholarship is reflected in the period's development of the church plan based upon the Latin cross, the ornamentation of doors and windows with carvings depicting religious figures, and the production of incredibly beautiful manuscripts describing the history and growth of the Christian movement.
During the early 1200s, the fear and distrust of the middle Ages began to give way to the need for greater communication and travel necessitated by increased commerce between cities. Feudal lords combined their resources, and the city-state emerged. People became interested in the world around them and set out to explore what made humanity and nature work. This was the Renaissance Age. Its renewed interest in Greek and Roman cultural concepts including classic architecture reflected the classicism and humanism now associated with the period (A.D. 1200-1500).
During this time, builders became less interested in protection as an element of building design and construction and became intrigued with pushing the performance of masonry to its limits. They emphasized height by using pointed arches and tall slender columns that soared from the floor to the peak of the building. They found they could punch great holes in the sidewalls by placing flying buttresses on the outside of the building to support the inner walls. They filled the openings with magnificent stained glass creations depicting events in human development. Thus, this period of Gothic architecture was the ideal reflection of the western world's concurrent interest in expanding knowledge of and influence on nature and culture.
The age of exploration and colonization spread Western European cultural characteristics throughout the world, and in our own hemisphere, we can note countless examples where these European influences combined with those of the American frontier to produce architectural styles unique to the New World (1300-1900).
