Architecture, the practice of designing and constructing buildings, has been around since human beings stopped living in caves and needed to put a roof over their heads. For thousands of years, there was no concept of ‘architecture’: people just built what they needed, as best they could, taking into account the materials available and the environment in which the structure or building needed to operate. Put simply, if you lived in a cold forest you need to make a warm house and you would almost certainly use wood to build it. If you lived in a hot, rocky desert you would want to build a house that kept you cool and you’d use stone as the main building material.
The Principles of Architecture
“We shape our
buildings, then they shape us.” – Winston Churchill
Architecture, the practice of designing
and constructing buildings, has been around since human beings stopped living
in caves and needed to put a roof over their heads. For thousands of
years, there was no concept of ‘architecture’: people just built what
they needed, as best they could, taking into account the materials available
and the environment in which the structure or building needed to
operate. Put simply, if you lived in a cold forest you needed to make a warm
house and you would almost certainly use wood to build it. If you lived in a
hot, rocky desert you would want to build a house that kept you cool and you’d
use stone as the main building material.
As people switched from being nomads living
in tents to settled farmers,
it made sense to make bigger, more permanent, living spaces than the
highly portable but otherwise
limited tent. There was also a need to build ‘houses’ for the animals or
to store crops – in other words, stables and barns. However, in a short space of
time, people learnt to build very well: huge pyramids arose from the Egyptian
desert while beautifully proportioned buildings started to
appear in Greece and Turkey around three thousand years ago. China and other
parts of the Far East also started to create some huge structures.
Many were palaces or assembly
buildings, like temples or meeting halls and a surprising number were built
to honour dead people. This is true of the pyramids and, much later
in history, the Taj Mahal in India. Nonetheless, most buildings are for
living in or working in, or both, and as architecture matured, some people started to
think and write about its principles. One of the very first was the Roman,
Vitruvius, who set down three basic things to remember when designing and
constructing a building:
In short,
‘durability’ means that you should make a building that will last well and not
fall down in a couple of years. ‘Utility’ means that the building should be
really useful and easy to live or work in. And, ‘beauty’ speaks for itself.
If we think of buildings like the Acropolis in Greece or the Coliseum in Rome,
it seems that classical architects often succeeded in meeting all three of Vitruvius’ criteria.
From Roman times, the advances in
architecture came in two important areas. First, new materials were invented
that allowed far bigger and more complex buildings. The most important of these
were cement and concrete which allowed materials as strong as stone to be
poured into place or into moulds. Second, were the advances in mathematics
and especially geometry (a favourite of the Ancient Greeks) which allowed
engineers to work out how much stress or weight a given shape could
stand and what size it could reach before collapsing. Two examples are the dome and
the arch,
the one used for roofs and the other for windows or doorways. They were both
possible two thousand years ago but, after one thousand five hundred years of
maths and engineering, it was possible to build the enormous dome of
St Paul’s Cathedral in London and most of Europe’s other cathedrals had
very big arched windows
and doorways tens of metres high.
Yet, there was another imperative
too for many Europeans: building for the glory of God. Roman Catholics believed
– and many still believe – that wonderful art, music and architecture can bring
us closer to God because they take us out of our humdrum, monotonous lives and show us
something truly miraculous,
a reminder of God’s great gifts to us. The Vatican, where the Pope lives in
Rome, boasts
both fine architecture and art in the form of Michelangelo’s paintings and many
stunning
sculptures. Indeed, many European artists made a living out of commissions
from the Catholic Church!
While that belief may not be a tenet of
Islam, Sultan Ahmet built the Blue Mosque in order to have the most beautiful
mosque in the world in his capital city, Istanbul. He decided to construct it next to Aya
Sofia, built as a church in the sixth century by the Byzantines, to demonstrate
that his was the more spectacular creation. He even went to the extent
of constructing a seventh minaret on the mosque at Mecca so that he could not
be accused of being irreligious!
Of course, one effect of the changing
technology was that more light could be let in through these bigger windows
and domes. An important thing in the days before there was electric
lighting but also the reason that architects consider natural light coming
in, artificial lighting, and reflected interior lighting (reflected off
walls and mirrors, for example) as a very important factor in the design and
positioning of a building.
As the engineering and materials have
improved and widened, so have the options for architects. These days, a
building can be made almost completely of glass, including the floors. You just
need a steel structure to hang it on. Many cities have one or more
buildings like this.
Generally, these all-glass buildings
are at least interesting to look at, so they try hard to satisfy one of
Vitruvius’ criteria: beauty. But what would it be like to live in a glass
building? Well, most reports are pretty negative. These buildings tend to
be cold in winter and cost a lot to heat but that’s nothing compared to
the way they heat up in the summer when the sun hits the glass. Many complain
that the glass walls and floors mean that one is watched by others all the
time, which makes many of us uncomfortable. Often, people put up lots of
posters and calendars on the glass walls to stop the sunlight and unwanted
observers, which just makes the whole place look untidy.
Even the idea of ‘durability’ is no
longer a rule. These days, many building companies design the new houses they
build, and sell people, to last about forty years and then start falling apart rapidly.
Then, the same or another company will build a new lot of houses, also designed
to last just a few decades. Short life houses are good for the construction
industry.
The big breakthrough in
architecture towards the end of the 19th century was the result of an
improvement in materials, namely new and flexible steel that allowed a
tall, thin building to rise to fifty, seventy, a hundred floors. These were the
famous skyscrapers,
first in New York and other American cities and then all across the world. The
classic example is New York’s ‘Empire State Building’ which, for many years,
was the world’s tallest building.
It has been surpassed many times now
and the prestige of
having the world’s tallest building passes from country to country every few
years. It is seen as a symbol of national or corporate pride. The new
Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, will be a kilometer high, for instance,
on its completion. Now, skyscrapers are being used as prisons as
well. Prisoners are kept on the highest floors which makes escape a lot more
difficult.
The future of architecture seems to be
in ‘smart’ environmentally friendly buildings. Many offices and similar
buildings now include lights that come on and off automatically as you enter or
leave rooms or that follow you as you walk along corridors. Of course, these
types of buildings incorporate a lot of computer technology but
also try to use things like solar energy and the latest domestic recycling technology.
Wherever the future takes us, it seems certain that architecture will become ever more central to our lives. After all, more and more of us live in cities and work indoors, in offices and shops. But we are all architects at heart. After all, which one of us has never spent time thinking what their dream house would be like?
If you want to watch some videos on this topic, you can click on the links to YouTube videos below.
If you want to answer questions on this article to test how much you understand, you can click on the green box: Finished Reading?
Videos :
1. Roman Architecture – The Coliseum (5:23)
3. History & Architecture of the Vatican (10:17)
4. Byzantine Architecture (4:15)