PALEAOLITHIC
TERRA AMATA: central post surrounded by stones and fireplace that meant a congregation of people
CAVERNS: graves sorrounded by flowers representing the life after death and setting social structures
EASTERN EUROPE: huts covered by with animals skins, bones or skulls
NEOLITHIC
Started the permament construction of buildings because of sedentarism. Agriculture was established. Also social organitation got more complex
ÇATAL HÜYÜK: rectangular buildings separated with courtyards, no streets. The houses had gorund and first floor with the roof of wood. They didn’t have door because they entered trough the ceiling holes.
MESOPOTAMIA
Several important and large cities between rivers. The architecture started being built with adobe or brick.
ZZIGURATS: temples built on platforms with ascending stairs that represent the dwellings of the gods. Similar to Egypt pyramids. Made with sun-dried adobe brick and covered by fired bricks.
EGYPT
TEMPLES: most important public buildings, considered the house of the gods. Represents the permanence and immutability. They had an entrance courtyard with a reception room and private chambers and then the sanctuary.
PYRAMIDS: funerary architecture that represented continuity of life and the conexion with gods. They used limestone masonry to construct.
ANCIENT GREECE
Polis: cities surrounded by farms. Organitzated by functions. The main streets had an agora in the center to get reunited. At first they were private but years after started being public buildings.
Temple: dedicated to divinity. In the nucleus we find the cella, a space where the image of the divine was kept. The interior was so simple and with no oublic enter. The facade had all the artistic attention. They also used optical resources to hide deformations. We can observe the Parthenon as a great example.
ANCIENT GREECE
Stadiums: largest buildings an they were the most important building for culture, education and community. As theatres, they were open air constructions for important events or entertainment.
Houses: they architecture stablish a balance between landscape and sculptures. Simple buildings with open air spaces like courtyards in the center of the rooms.
ROMANS
Temples: related to naturalism, vitality and energy. They started Tuscan and Composite orders. Placed on a very high podium whose staircase was located in the axes of the door of the cella.
Civil works: specialists designing structures like sewage networks, roads, aqueducts, bridges and walls to protect the cities.
Commemorative buildings: we can see Triumphal arches that are rectangular structures with three openings and columns with the only function of commemorate an historic event or someone important.
ROMANS
Public buildings: an important social role as baths, libraries, schools, space for commercial relations… They contained: tepidarium, caldarium, frigidarium, natatio…etc
Theatre: perfect semicircular, employed to perform without any religious or education purpose. Composed by a scene with decorations and rows of seat, it also had space for the orchestra.
Amphitheatres: double theatres with elliptical scene. Dedicated to fights of gladiators and its spectacle.
Basilica: conceived as courts of justice for legal proceedings. Rectangular space built next to the forum.
ROMANS
Circus: destined for races, gladiatorial combats, shows and performance.
Domus: private buildings of richest families with public relation rooms and private rooms, dining room, kitchen and garden. They were decorated by mosaics, paintings and sculptures.
Insula: private buildings of plebeians. Buildings of three or four floors divided in flats. A flat was divided in cooking rooms and sleeping rooms, they used to live several families at the same time.
Cities: the roman structure of cities was orthogonal. The streets were irregular rectangles with a civic space in the enter called forum.
BYZANTINE
The byzantine architecture is mainly religious. Buildings were for purposes such as hospitals or orphanages. Roads are modified in order to conect the religious buildings.
Hagia Sophia: the union between the Empire and the Church. The mosaics used tried to recreate the heaven on earth. Arcitecture full of symbolism.
Militar architecture: new cities developed very small in order to deffend better in case of attack. The implementation and maintenance of defensive systems as the collection and distribution of the water were very important.
PREROMANESQUE
Pyramid system of vassalage and control of territory. In addition to churches and monasteries, castles were developed.
Lombards: romanized populations converted to Christianity. With almost no architectural tradition.
Visigoths: ecclesiastical architecture. Not large buildings with basilical floor plan, corinthian capitals, stone walls and wooden roofs.
Carolingian: reaffirm classical. Again religion is the base of constructions.
Otonians: cultural reminiscences to confirm the exitence of a link with Christian emperors. Use of galleries and tribunes as alternations of supports.
ISLAMIC
Use of towers and water. Towers are defensive elements but also viewpointss over the landscape.
Produced new architectural types such as baths and mosques. The ornamentation serves to create an atmosphere through plays of ligth and color. The decorative motifs are the repetition of geometrical shapes. They used techniques as ceramic or plaster.
ROMANESQUE
Associated with the art of Normans. Architecture maintained basic characteristics similar to Roman architecture. The feudal lords usually fortify the cities and the palaces became castles.
The religion give rise to many variants. The crhistian religion increased its political and international role.
Religious buildings were made of stone, characterized by large masses and heavy proportions.
GOTHIC
The art of the barbarians.
Cathedrals: the house of God. Great testing ground for architectural experimentation. Total elimination of the walls of the church for stained glass windows, representing scenes of the sacred scriptures and the increase of the height of the naves.
Civil buildings: expression f the new bourgeois social class and its new demands. Abundance of commercial markets and buildings for professional guilds. The stately palaces were the symbolic and administrative place of power.
RENAISSANCE
Exalts the human being and its capacities to dominate the nature. Optimism and confidence in human potential arise.
With the idea of matching the intellectual and artistic achievements. The new architecture had to be rationally understandable.
We can highlight some important artists like Brunelleschi who discover laws of perspective, Alberti who based his aesthetic on beauty and ornament, Palladio who based their constructions on his music studies and Michelangelo who alterned lots of shapes, curves and angles.
BAROQUE
Effort to obtain the maximum possible effects from the moulded space, the manipulation of light and color and details. It supposes the spatial liberation of the rules.
The most important architects of this time were Bernini and Borromini.
One trend of this period was the Rococo, an artistic fashion distinguished by the frivolity and superficiality of decorations with the aim of surprising and ostentation.
NEOCLASSICISM
Radical change towards a rational architecture was experienced. It’s defined like the formal expression that reflects the aof intelectual principles of the enlightenment.
Linked to the idea of public services and the education function of the buildings. It was in this context when museums were born with a didactic function.
Some architects reinvented an architecture of pure geometric forms to express the interior function and proposed an architectural revolution being in a way pioneers of modern architecture.
19TH CENTURY
The industralization of the Western world produced and increase of population and a migratory phenomenon towards the cities wich were not sufficient. New construction techniques and materials were provided.
At this century we can observe the desire of evade reality and the desire of past times spread, giving rise to historicism.
There are mixed styles but is stablished a new vision of art. a more realistic one that evidences the conditions of the society with the crude reality.
20TH CENTURY
Modernism: the art of the new. It lasted a short time beacuse of the elevated costs of the hand-crafted materials needed for it.
Expressionism: built with expression, distorting the rational form to express the spirit.
Cubism: eliminates the separations between interior and exterior for simultaneous contemplation. The time factor influences a lot.
Futurism: in archirecture translates into the movement and mutation of architectural space in time, where the technology of machines, the horizontal and oblique lines that express speed and movement play a great role.