Gothic architecture

Gothic architecture is a style that began in France during the 12th century. It was particularly associated with cathedrals and other churches. In Florence, Italy, the Gothic style became widespread in the 15th century AD. England could see a series of Gothic revivals in the mid 19th century and it spread across other parts of Europe. Across America, in the 20th century, this style was largely used for ecclesiastical and university structures.

Gothic style emphasizes the vertical plane and features largely skeletal stone structures. Gothic architecture structures have large stained-glass windows that allow more light to pass through. These windows are usually the point of focus to design other structures of the building. Usually, buildings have extensive glass windows, sharply pointed spires, cluster columns, flying buttresses, ribbed vaults, pointed arches using the ogive shapes, and inventive sculptural detail. Flying buttresses were used as a means to support higher ceilings and slender columns.

Building materials used in Gothic architecture are usually native stones. But in Northern Germany, Scandinavia, and Northern Poland, where native stones were unavailable, simplified provincial Gothic churches were built out of bricks. Gothic brick buildings were associated with Hanseatic league, an alliance of trading cities of Northern Europe. There are over a hundred brick Gothic castles across Northern Poland built by the Teutonic Knights.

The French Gothic style has different sub-styles, including Rayonnant and Flamboyant styles. The Gothic cathedrals of France are highly decorated with statues on the outside and paintings on the inside. They are built over several successive periods and the dominant architectural style changes throughout a particular building. In England, Gothic style was more widely revived as a decorative, whimsical alternative.

The Gothic style that prevailed in the 20th century, known as Neo-Gothic, is found mainly in modern churches and college buildings. Although it was considered inappropriate, Gothic style was used for early steel skyscrapers, jailhouses, and towers.

Greek architecture

Architecture in ancient Greece was usually done with wood or mud-bricks, so their ground plans are the only evidence of their existence. Greeks established most of the most enduring themes, attitudes, and forms of western culture. Architecture is one of the Greek legacies that the western civilization has inherited, as Greece established many of the structural elements, decorative motifs, and building types still used in architecture today.

The two main styles of Greek architecture are doric and ionic. The doric style is much more disciplined and austere, whereas the ionic style is more relaxed and decorative. There was a strong emphasis in building temples for the Greek mythological gods and goddesses. But, there were also well known public buildings like the Parthenon.

Building materials used were limestone and some native stones. Highly expensive marble was used mainly for sculptural decoration found in grand buildings of the classical period. The roofs of their buildings were made up of timber beams covered with overlapping terracotta or occasionally marble tiles.

The structure of ancient Greek architecture consists of a basic cube or rectangle, flanked by colonnades, and a long sequence of columns. Building will have a pronao or a portico that open up to a large open court peristyle. Greeks used very little of the principles of the masonary arch, individual blocks bound together by mortar. The front end of the roof has flat triangular shaped structure, the pediment which is usually filled with scultural decoration.

Temples are the best known form of Greek architecture. The altar of the temple was usually found in the sacred fane, an enclosure, in front of the temple. The inner building of the temple, cella, served mainly as the storage room. The other common public builds of the Greek architecture are gymnasiums, the palaestra, and theatres.

In ancient Greece, architects were hardly treated as valuable master craftsmen, unlike today where the architects are closely associated with the work they produce. And moreover, architecture was not seen as an art form, as it is in modern times.

Roman Architecture

Great thing about roman architecture

Roman architecture

Roman architecture is a fusion of traditional Greek and the Etruscan elements, where arches were developed and horizontal beams were supported by columns. Later, three dimensional counterpart of the arch, namely the dome was introduced. Apart from this, Roman architects found their inspiration from the Greek architecture at large.

The basic building materials of the Roman architecture are stones, developed concrete, and highly expensive marble. The idea behind mosaic, a decoration of colorful chips of stone inset into cement, was brought from Greece. Roman homes joined the well known mural decorating floors, walls, and grottoes in geometric and pictorial designs.

Architecture of the Romans was always eclectic and was characterized by varying styles attributed to different regional tastes and diverse preferences of a wide range of patrons. In general, Roman monuments were designed to serve the needs of their patrons rather than to express the artistic ability of their makers.

Roman architecture was also considered to be an exact copy of the Greek building style. But, the Romans have also contributed to the classical architectural styles. The two developments of Roman buildings styles are the tuscan and composite orders. Tuscan is a shortened, simplified variant on the doric order of the Greek style. Composite is a tall order with the floral decoration of the Corinthian and the scrolls of the ionic building style of the Greeks.

The Roman Colosseum is the best-known amphitheatre in the world, which is more correctly termed the Amphitheatrum Flavium, after the Flavian dynasty that built it. The Pantheon is a building in Rome, which was originally built as a temple to the seven deities of the seven planets of the Roman state religion. Since 7th century, it has been a Christian church. The Colosseum and the Pantheon are some of the buildings built during this period.

Roman contribution to the architecture of the modern world is the development of concrete for building purposes. And the other contribution is the Empire's style of architecture that can be still seen throughout Europe and North America in the arches and domes of many governmental and religious buildings.

American architecture

To limit modern architecture to that which seems to embody what are called modernistic tendencies would be not only foolish, but arrogant. The architecture which to-day is regarded as unprogressive, a generation from now may be in the van, and no man, be he layman, critic, or designer, can pass an infallible judgment, or even make a good guess, as to what is to be the architecture of the future. Modern American architecture is the American architecture of today.

The mechanical fallacy, or, if we approve it, the mechanical theory, has loomed large in the criticism of modern American architecture. The analogies, most of them superficial, between Gothic architecture and steel construction made it inevitable. Almost as soon as the first timid attempts in the "Chicago construction" appeared, critics at home and abroad began insisting upon the desirability of the design revealing in the skyscraper the system of construction which made it possible.

The history of American architecture is dotted with disasters in polychromatic design. Happily, this difficulty is being recognized and met. The great monuments of color in the past, like Raphael's loggia or Pintoricchio's decorations for the Borgia Apartments, are being studied as such monuments should be studied--not for imitation, but as successful solutions of a problem--and a few monuments of American architecture have just appeared which can compare, in the matter of successful color, with anything that has been done in the past.

A brief sketch, therefore, of the development of American architecture, with especial reference to that side of it which affects modern design, is the necessary prelude to any discussion of the types of buildings, or the tendencies of architecture to-day. The traditions of American architecture date back to the earliest Colonial period. Colonial architecture varied widely, however, period by period, and was influential more in its later phases than its earlier.