Essay On Architecture History

Using your own body is the best way to learn about the world around you. Numerous architects draw inspiration from human anatomy and consider nature's peak of perfection. It is necessary to examine beyond human body parts that mimic architectural works to investigate the relationship between the human body and architecture, emotions, sensory nerves, the mind, and general human psychology. Everything that makes us human, in short. When it comes down to it, architecture is simply the art or practice of designing structures. It's done functionally and expressively, or both communication and expression. Architecture can describe a place, site, energy, systems, a building, and even flora and fauna from the perspective of the human body. In addition to serving a practical purpose, some parts are aesthetically pleasing. From the viewpoints of imitation, idealized allusion, and actual human use, the precise balance and proportions of a typical human body are included in architectural constructions.

 

Throughout this paper, I argue that architects rarely think about their designs regarding the human body. It is common to think of the body as a 'normal body,' or one with precise geometrical proportions based on standard Cartesian measurements. Discuss and examine the substance and consequences of architects' views of the body and embodiment, how they can challenge the dominant corporeal reductive conceptions in architecture, and the opportunities and problems.

 

Contemporary architectural theories and practices sometimes downplay or neglect the human subject or the people who utilize structures and the built environment in Western (or modern) architectural ideas and techniques. Architecture designs specific technical norms and measurements based on a picture of the average human body rather than recognizing anatomical and physiological variance. Archaeologists and architects have long held that the human body is a divinely inspired network of Euclidean geometry and that the fit and able body manifests this divinely inspired harmonic order. The post-Galilean perspective on the body sees it as a mechanism dependent on mechanical rules. From such a perspective, the body is a fixed measuring item; it is sterile and neutral, devoid of race, gender, sex, or any other physical variation. The mind defines that area of existence characterized by what the body isn't, for instance, self, reason, and thought.

 

Furthermore, the body's worth diminishes. Architectural thinking encourages thinking of human bodies as either natural and passive or a brute givenness that must be overcome. It isn't surprising that modernist architects viewed the body of a human as a contaminant undermining the geometrical purity idea by ruining the aesthetic beauty and inner meaning of design.

 

To convey a sense of scale to clients or potential customers, architects frequently employ the human figure in their renderings. Body and architecture are no longer mutually constitutive but rather subsume each other. It is not just architects that think of the human body in a narrow and reductive way. All other theories are compared to this body view, which portrays it as biological and naturalistic. Despite its singularity, it attempts to depict the human in all its complexity and diversity.'

 

On the other hand, architects see this body as pre-social, unchangeable, and unchanging. Instead of acknowledging the diversity of ethnicity, gender, or physical appearance, this is a body defined by a single-sex. There is also a lack of explicit reference to the human body in architecture education and the design process, which is a problem. Unfortunately, this is an issue as to how people perceive those individuals' physical attributes heavily influence space. They say that the world opens up before humans and closes behind them, which is undoubtedly true. It's as if the front and back are separated. It is also possible to make the case that architecture can never be wholly divorced from (many) corporealities because architecture is rooted in the human body's origin and destination. For many, identifying spatial experiences begins with the body, as the most real places and markers of space are defined first and primarily by the body. Unlike other things, our body is not confined to a specific location; instead, we can interact with the world around us through it.

 

Others describe the body as primarily existing in the world'öa complex, fluid, and ever-shifting sort of lived experience that is ever-changing and dynamic. People can't relate to objects because the body isn't one of them (such as structures). Consequently, the human body is etched into the built environment in various ways, and architecture is dynamic in forming bodies while always leaving a trace of the corporeality of the subject. That said, architecture and the human body are interwoven in their (common) production, transformation, and meaning; they are not distinct entities. There would be no space for people if they didn't have a body. Architects are being asked to respond to the assortment of biological requirements in the constructed world through (re)creating a fluid shape affirming ambiguity and sarcasm (instead of reproducing a static, singular body conception). Open-minded construction is necessary without borders or frontiers and sensitive to the body's corporealities. Architects must be aware of the human body's wide range of physical and postural schemata. Bodies are subjects, not objects in physical science; they are sensual-sentient, communicative, and practical. When it comes to designing, it's also essential to bring together the beautiful and functional with the subject-object-subject-object-intellectual axis to create a harmonious whole.

 

According to some observers, classical then far along Renaissance human body perspectives tended to view it as an extinct factor in shaping the design of architecture. Vitruvius only refers to architecture when discussing a variant or specifying a building type's configuration. The human use of structures was consequently deemed secondary importance; the body of a human was significant only since it offered proportions for deciding architectural form and style. Here, the body of a human being is compared to a destructive constraint that threatens the aesthetic process by contaminating the ordered purity of the building. In architecture, the body and its impurities are doubtful or should be considered an instrument of self-given consciousness and submissive to it.

 

Artists and physicians enjoyed a synergistic relationship during the Renaissance (approximately 1300 to 1600). Artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, concerned with precisely capturing the human form, studied physicians at work to comprehend the layers of muscle and bone components that comprised specific regions of the human body. In response, surgeons employed illustrators to make illustrations for the numerous anatomy textbooks published after Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440. Titian and Andreas Vesalius are probably the most well-known examples of painters who collaborated with doctors, who allowed the artists to assist with dissections (which were tightly restricted at the period) in exchange for anatomical drawings and sketches. Some of the greatest painters conducted their anatomical studies, contributing to the knowledge body. Some artists went so far as to create écorchés, corpses in which they peeled back successive muscle, bones, and tendons layers to understand better the way of depicting the body of a human being in art. In contrast, most artists limited their investigations to the body's surface and observed live, naked subjects. Da Vinci is said to have conducted the first accurate anatomical examination of a human fetus.

 

In a modest room in the West Building of the National Gallery, rare artists' guides and anatomical literature portray the proportions of the human body. Some depict the body's musculature, while others (below) focus on the human face. The strong connection between the anatomical literature and the art guides demonstrates the relationship between anatomy and art throughout this crucial period in European history.

 

During the Renaissance, there was a substantial shift in how the human body was regarded and portrayed in art. The advent of new materials and techniques contributed to the naturalness and realism of photography, but societal changes also influenced how the naked was depicted. The residents of this era resorted to the ancient world to better comprehend the current world. The history of the ancient Greeks and Romans seemed more distant to the residents of this century than the history of the medieval period. As the ancient culture progressed, so did attitudes about the body and nakedness, albeit through the lens of Christianity and classical literature or philosophy.

 

Early in the 15th century, Florence was the Renaissance movement epicenter, aiming to recover or recreate typical antiquity. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the newfangled style nearly superseded the late Middle Ages' Gothic style throughout Europe. It fortified the revitalization of ancient architectural ornaments and forms, such as the round arch and column, dome, and tunnel vault, as well as naturalism, which was visible in 15th-century Italian painting and sculpture. The Renaissance learned about the Classical architectural style from the Roman architect Vitruvius's treatise De architectura (about 27 BCE; "On Architecture") and the ancient Classical buildings ruins, predominantly in Italy but also in Spain and France. The order, a system of traditional architectural components in classical olden days and, consequently, in the Renaissance, served as the primary architectural design element. During the Renaissance, the Tuscan Composite, Doric, Corinthian, and Ionic orders were utilized, with some being more predominant during diverse eras. Throughout the early Renaissance, for instance, the rich decorative nature of the Corinthian order was valued.

 

In contrast, the Doric order's masculine simplicity and strength were favored during the Italian High Renaissance. Frequently, architects of the Renaissance superimposed the order or utilized a diverse order for every building's numerous stories, beginning with the heftier, sturdier Doric, or Tuscan order lower and ascending via the lighter, more ornamental Composite, Ionic, and Corinthian orders. This was a typical practice in ancient Rome (e.g., in the Marcellus Theatre or the Colosseum).

 

The most crucial element for determining beauty in the Renaissance minds was proportion. Famous Italian architect and humanist Leon Battista Alberti described architectural beauty as the rational harmony of every component in a body, ensuring that nothing can be altered, added, or withdrawn without causing harm.

 

 

On Vitruvius' authority, Renaissance builders discovered a balance between the human body and architectural proportions. According to Italian painter Piero Della Francesca, the Renaissance artistic method of perspective represented distant objects proportional to their relevant distance. The first person to discover the concept of perspective was Brunelleschi, a Renaissance architect in Italy. The attention to proportion exhibited by these architects resulted in the exact, measured definition and expression of architectural mass and space that separates the style of Renaissance from that of Gothic and enables the viewer to grasp the structure in its whole immediately.

 

Ancient Greek architecture introduced the first well-defined set of architectural rules, which impacted the architecture in Roman and, consequently, architecture. Architecture in Ancient Greek developed into 3 different orders, including the Doric, Corinthian, and Ionic architectural orders, which emerged in Classical Greece at the commencement of the period now known as the Classical period. There are separate columns for each order in formal public constructions like libraries, municipal buildings, gymnasiums, theatres, and stadiums.

 

To many, this is the earliest, simplest, and most expansive of Greek architectural orders. It first emerged in Greek architecture around 700 BCE. Ionic and Corinthian columns were minor, whereas Doric columns were enormous. Their circular, smooth capitals are more straightforward than the other 2 orders of Greek. The shafts of columns in the Doric style were often curved, having bowl-shaped curves formed into them. The column crowns of Doric were primary, with a round bottom section and a four-sided top section (the acanthus). Early variants of the echinus seem white and flat, rising like a circular cushion from the top of the column to the abacus supporting the beams.

 

The Parthenon: Parthenon is among the most famous examples of Doric columns, built in honor of Athena about the fifth century BCE. Peripteral Doric temples like the Parthenon have columns on both the sides and the front of the tower. At a diameter of 6.2 feet and a height of 34.1, the outer Doric columns of the Parthenon's facade are the largest in Greece.

 

 

The Temple of Hephaestus: Hephaestus' Temple, built around 449 and 415 BCE, is a complete example of columns of Doric.

 

 

The Temple of the Delians: This is an incomplete temple on the Delos Temple's island. Because the columns aren't fluted and are on the ground with no base, this edifice is unique.

 

 
A coastal area of what is today Turkey, known as Ionia, is where the order was born. Their column capitals' volutes distinguish ionic columns, and the column base supports are absent from Doric columns. In the sixth century BCE, the Doric Order and the Ionic style were both formed, and many of mainland Greece's landmarks were erected in the Ionic style of the Ionic columns.

 

The Heraion of Samos: Architect Rhoikos built the Heraion of Samos in 570 and 560 BCE to worship the goddess Hera. Only a single Ionic column was left standing after an earthquake leveled the entire tower.

 

 

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus: Ephesus's Temple of Artemis, built in the Ionic style, was once hailed as among the world's 7 wonders. It was built around 550 BCE by Croesus, King of Lydia. As well as being famous for its sheer size (it measured 350 feet by 180 feet), Artemesium was also notable for the exquisite artwork adorning its walls. In 262 CE, the Goths, who had invaded from the north, demolished the temple.

 

Unlike the Ionic and Doric orders, this order was developed directly from the Ionic order rather than from timber construction in the 5th century BCE. Corinthian capitals include stylized acanthus leaves as a distinguishing feature from Ionic capitals, which are plainer. When it came to ornamentation, the Corinthian entablature's frieze was typical in that it had continuous sculptural reliefs with figures raised from the surface; however, not entirely free-standing.

 

The Temple of Olympian Zeus: It took the Roman emperor Hadrian more than a century to complete the Olympieion, a vast temple dedicated to Olympian Zeus that had been under construction since 174 BCE. Because of its incredibly ambitious design and tall columns, the temple was among the largest ever constructed in antiquity. Each of the 17.25-meter-tall, 1.7-meter-diameter Corinthian columns in the temple featured 20 fluted capitals. Corinthian crowns were fashioned from two massive pieces of marble for each of the 104 columns that initially stood.

 

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