History of Architecture

Introduction

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History of architecture is a vast subject, but is an indispensable and invaluable key to understand architecture. Architecture has always been very close to civilization's 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.

Ancient architecture

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This section covers the time period ranging from earliest forms of civilization to the beginning of the classical period. Forms of architecture presented here sometimes spanned over very large periods of time, and took place in very different points of the globe. We can see these early periods as bases on which the subsequent periods will be built.


Precolombian architecture

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Western architecture

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Traditionally, history of architecture is mainly based on western (European) architecture, because western civilizations have throughout the history conquered or 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:

Architecture in Africa and the Middle-East

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Architecture in the middle-east shares common bases with western architecture.

Architecture in Asia

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People

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  • Christian Norberg-Schulz, a famous specialist on history of western architecture, wrote a series of highly important books on the subject, mainly focusing on understanding the links between aspirations of human societies and their translations in architecture.
  • Philip Johnson: is a postmodernist architect who has designed a nuclear cooling tower in Rehovat, Israel, the Glass House, the Crystal Cathedral, and the Pittsburgh Plate Glass building, and the Four Seasons Restaurant inside the Seagram Building in New York. He has also done work for Sony and Transco.

The subpage links to maps of ancient ruins.

Google Map of the Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright

See Also

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