Archive:History of Architecture

Introduction

History of architecture is a very vast subject, but is an indispensable and invaluable key to understand architecture. Architecture has always been very close to civilizations and their development, in fact we can see architecture as a mirror, reflecting civilizations changes, advancements and hopes throughout history. The same applies to other forms of art and culture, but architecture, since it is not only a form of art but also catering to fundamental human needs, can sometimes be a deeper portrait of what happened in a certain place at a certain time.

By studying history of architecture, we not only study history of civilizations, but, since architecture is a coherent chain of events, styles, tendencies, beliefs and techniques, we also gain a direct understanding of how and why architecture is made today, and clues to how architecture can be tomorrow.

A good general introduction to history of architecture can be found on wikipedia history of architecture page.

Western architecture history

Traditionally, history of architecture is mainly based on western (European) architecture, because western civilizations have throughout the history conquered of influenced almost all other territories, and today, history of western architecture is part of almost all courses of history of architecture around the globe, and can be considered as the classical "trunk" of World architecture. Commonly, history of architecture is divided in the following principal parts:

• Egyptian architecture, which can be described as the mother of architecture, began around year 3000 BC, with the first pharaonic dynasties, and dies when Egypt gets conquered by Rome around year 300 BC
• Greek architecture, which began round year 1500 BC with the first pre-hellenic civilizations of Minos and Mycaenae, passes through classical hellenic apogee and dies with the rise of the roman empire
• Roman architecture, which began roughly around year 500 BC and ends up in decadence until the 6th century
• Byzantine architecture, which is a sequel to the roman architecture, in an environment where it could survive longer
• Romanesque architecture, which raises around 10th century after a long period of middle-age darkness
• Gothic architecture, which evolves from the Romanesque period, around 12th century
• Renaissance architecture, which follows the important paradigm changes of the Renaissance, in the 15th century
• Baroque architecture, which follows the catholic counter-reformation begins in the 17th century
• The multiplicity of neo- styles appearing during the age of Enlightenment
• Modern architecture, began round year 1920, which somehow ends what is commonly considered history of architecture, since what comes after modernism is probably what we are doing today. After modernism, we enter in another discipline called Theory of Architecture.

Historians

Christian Norberg-Schulz, a famous specialist on history of western architecture, wrote a serie of highly important books on the subject, mainly focusing on understanding the links between aspirations of human societies and their translations in architecture.