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| The Parthenon in
Athens, Greece. |
Architecture
Architecture is the science of the design of structures
or buildings such as houses, places of worship, and
office buildings. Architecture is also the profession of
an architect. A person must study at an institution of
higher education (university) to become an architect.
Architecture can be about small designs, such as a
garage, or large designs, such as a whole city.
Architecture often overlaps with civil engineering, and
architects and civil engineers often work together.
History
In the past, people built huts and wood houses to
protect themselves from the weather. For safety, they
were often close together. Great civilizations like the
Ancient Egyptians built large temples and structures,
like the Great Pyramids of Giza. The Ancient Greeks and
Romans made what we now call "Classical Architecture".
The Romans, working over 2000 years ago, copied the arch
from the Etruscans, who copied it from the
Mesopotamians. The stone columns, which still hold up so
many important buildings, like the Parthenon in Athens,
were simply copied from the first wooden posts. |
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Classical Architecture was very formal, and it always
obeyed laws. It used symmetry, which really means
balance, and it used proportion which means keeping
shapes in certain ways. The Golden Mean was a rule (or
law) which said, (to put it very simply) if you are
making a room, or any other thing, it will work best if
you always make the long side 1.6 times longer than the
short side. There are many laws in Classical
Architecture, like how high the middle of an arched
bridge needs to be (which depends on how wide the bridge
needs to be). These laws were learned from thousands of
years of experience and they are as true today as they
were 2000 years ago.
In some parts of the world, like India, the architecture
is famous for carving the stone on temples and palaces.
Different architectural styles were made in China,
Japan, Southeast Asia, Africa, Mexico, and Central and
South America.
Later, people in Western Europe in the Middle Ages made
Romanesque architecture, then Gothic architecture.
Gothic buildings have tall, pointed windows and arches.
Many churches have Gothic architecture. Castles were
also built at this time. In Eastern Europe, churches
usually had domes. People added their own ideas and
decoration to the Classical Architecture of the past.
The Renaissance brought a return to classical ideas. |
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In the late 18th century with the Industrial Revolution,
people began to invent machines to make things quickly
and cheaply. Many factories and mills were built during,
or after this revolution. Decades later, in the
Victorian era, architects like George Fowler Jones and
Decimus Burton still followed the Gothic style to build
new churches. Up to this point, buildings were limited
in size and style by the strength of the wood and
masonry used to construct them. Gothic cathedrals were
among the largest buildings because the gothic arch when
combined with buttresses allowed stone buildings to be
built taller. For example, the cathedral in Ulm, Germany
is over 500 feet tall. However, building with stone has
its limits, and building too tall could result in
collapse, an example of which is the Beauvais Cathedral,
which was never completed.
Towards the end of the 19th Century with a second
Industrial Revolution, steel became much cheaper.
Architects began to use inventions like metal girders
and reinforced concrete to build. An example is the
Eiffel Tower in Paris. Buildings can now be built taller
than ever before. We call them skyscrapers. This new
technology has made us free from traditional
limitations, and because of the new possibilities
presented by these materials, many traditional methods
of construction and ideas about style were reevaluated,
replaced, or abandoned. Cheap, strong glass soon brought
transparent exterior walls, especially for office
buildings. |
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Modernism is the name for the architectural style which
developed because of these new building technologies,
and its beginnings can been seen as early as 1890.
Modernism can also refer to a specific group of
architects and buildings from the early to late 20th
century, and so may not be the proper term to use for
many building built since then, which are sometimes
called "post-modern".
Many of the world's greatest structures were built by
modern-day architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, I. M.
Pei, Adrian Smith, Edward Durell Stone, Fazlur Khan, and
Bruce Graham. |
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 Kiddle: Architecture
Wikipedia: Architecture |
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