WORLD ARCHITECTURE|1500-1600 BCE

Constantinople Becomes Istanbul

The goal of Ottoman of an Islamic Roman Empire required the capture of Constantinople, named Istanbul after, so in 1453, Istanbul was conquered by Mehmed II. After this, Fatih permit the non-Muslim ethnic groups to govern by their own rules. Also, in order to encourage merchants, he built the markets of Kapalı Çarşı like Koza Han in Bursa. It also had square bay and rounded domes too. This foundation resulted in population increase in the city. The sultan followed Italian improvements and influenced their engineering about fortifications.

The Ulu Cami differed in type from the reverse-T royal mosques. Then, it followed the hypostyle model.  Each of it bays carried a rounded dome.  That square bay with a rounded dome became the standard unit of Ottoman architecture, repeated in palaces, hospitals, schools, baths, and mosques.  It even appeared in the impressive structures of Bursa.

Ulu Cami

The young sultan internalized the cultural and technical innovations of Italy and commissioned the Venetian painter Gentile Bellini for a portrait. In addition, Italian engineering has demonstrated its characteristics in certain parts of the city. The round castle of Rumeli Fortress, Yedikule, built in the forest and the Golden Gate built by the Byzantine to prevent the Christian sea support, is a star-shaped castle. Fatih’s secret weapon was the cannon known as Urban.

Hagia Sophia was significant for the sultan and it was converted church into royal mosque with adding a minaret. An eastern apse also was turned into mihrab and askew from the main axis to point through the Mecca. Conqueror inspired from the Hagia Sophia and built a new mosque which is Fatih Cami and extensive imaret. It had great hemispherical dome that have nearly as much as diameter with Hagia Sophia. It had a rectangular forecourt which has arcades and each bays of it topped by small cupolas and also ancient columns supported point arches. At the back of the mosque, there was a cemetery garden and it includes an octagonal turbe.

Fatih Mosque

The barrel vaults of the Old Byzantine cisterns were the basis for the terraced complex. It occupied the center of a vast, a square plaza. There were eight madrassas sets on the north and south sides for the study of law and sharia. There are also two small walled areas for hospitals. thermal baths, stables, soup kitchens, and nursing homes. Conqueror designed the zoning as a social aid institution. His aim was to show the benefit of Ottoman peace.

In 1459, the palace moved from in the center of the city to extreme tip of peninsula where acropolis of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium. The new palaces made a strong connection with the natural features and the Bosphorus view, making Topkapı closer to the garden of Chinese scholars than the Italian palazzo. Topkapı Palace complex has a residential property which is more intact with the forested and rugged fortified walls. That way there was privacy and unlike the European palaces, it was asymmetrical and more like a garden than the building. Topkapı organized with three successive courts: The Imperial Gate stood a few steps from the apse of Hagia Sophia. The Middle Gate, had freestanding pavilions. It also looked like Byzantine triumphal entry and this gate for business gained entry. For formal ceremonies there was a Court of Processions which had an arcade of pointed arches on the edges. Ancient columns with sculpted muqarna-style capitals were utilized.

 

 

 

 

 

The most important political space in Topkapı was Diwan or the Council Hall. It was a succession of the three-domed hall and was skirted by an L-shaped portico. The Diwan served for official and daily administrative meetings. The harem was behind the Diwan as a collection of three floors small courts.

In Topkapı Palace, Fatih’s architect, Murad Halife wrapped the edges of the court with an arcade of pointed arches. He used ancient columns and capped them with freshly sculpted muqamma-style capitals.

Sinan and the Challange of Hagia Sophia

Mimar Sinan was the most prolific and successful architect over the period. He has over 300 projects including mosques and infrastructure works. He built lots of major mosques and imarets in Istanbul and his obsession with Hagia Sophia can be perceived throughout all of his mosques. This also resulted with city’s fabric transformation into patchwork which juxtaposed effective monumental enclosures studded with billowing cupolas and marble-clad minarets to neighbourhoods of narrow streets that include densely packed wooden houses. Sinan had relation with military so he gained structural and engineering solutions for the production of bridges and ships while observing various designs.

Sinan’s first work for the Süleyman I, the Şehzade Cami appeared exceptionally harmonious. The sultan founded the mosque in honor to his first son, Mehmed. Sinan also had monumental works for important two female figure in the history: Hürrem and her daughter Mihrimah. An imaret in honor of Hürrem, the Haseki Hürrem complex. He covered the mosque with a single hemispherical dome and designed the hospital, especially, for women. He also built two imarets for Mihrimah and they occupied remote sites in the city, one of them next to Edirne Gate, the other across the Bosporus in Uskadar. The mosque in the Edirne Gate has splendid dome raised on massive octagonal piers. Like Gothic builders, Sinan tried to eliminate the weight of bearing walls and allowing wide fenestration under the four parabaloid supporting arches.The Mosque had inspirations from Hagia Sophia with the central dome and four semi domes. Four small domes located at the corners and define perfectly square forecourt which is identical.

Mimar Sinan’s obsession with Ayasofya was seen also in the Suleymaniye Mosque. He designed a central dome surrounded by two semi doms and four octagonal buttress towers raised at the corners of the dome. The mosque also had gothic stanchions. Two sets of minarets harmonize with the pyramidal massing of the dome. The corners without semi domes the walls of the arched elevations were punctured by three rows of windows for sense of light and openness.

Suleymaniye Mosque

Like the Fatih Cami, Suleymaniye mosque dominated a vast terraced space. On the edges, there were seven madrasas and each have a square courtyard. The madrasas were the educational center of the Ottoman Empire. They contained their own square courtyards. There were various entrances from different levels surrounding the mosque. Behind the dome, the founder’s turbe constructed and Suleyman’s tomb has an octagonal domed structure with a colonnaded veranda. Furthermore, Sinan built his largest mosque in Edirne, Selimiye mosque. Dome of the mosque higher than the Hagia Sophia and the minarets are tallest of the Islam. The eight piers at the corners of the octagonal drum supported the dome rose as single colossal columns.

Selimiye Camii

 

Selimiye Cami in Edirne is the largest mosque designed by Sinan. The domes of Hagia Sophia were slightly larger than the domes. Also, the minarets of the mosque were the longest minarets ever. Selimiye, the largest mosque in the courtyard of the facade, it was implying a kind of Ottoman attitude, broad and narrow coves with a changing rhythm.

PAPAL ROME:

The Fountainhead of Renaissance Classicism

The ancient Roman architecture suggested the architects the symmetry system, harmonious proportions, and the system of decorative columns that could be developed. While designing the expression of the power of the Catholic church in the 16th century, the popes supported artists and architects such as Donato Bramante, Antonio da Sangallo, Raphael and Michelangelo who played with the language of classicism. As a result of being defeated the Sack of Rome, the new theories of fortification and urban design were supported and also many of the designers of Papal Rome went to different cities in 1527. Therefore, this event had two main consequences for architecture:

It encouraged the new theories of fortification and urban design in reaction to the mobile cannon. And many of the designers of papal Rome emigrated to other cities and taking with them the Roman language of classical architecture.

The Papal Restoration: The Deconstruction and Redesign of St. Peter’s

Years later, Rome returned to its old self. In the 14th century, the popes abandoned Rome and the Papal Restoration came out in the 15th century. Along with this restoration, luxury costumes, theatrical papal ceremonies, and triumphal architecture emerged. Due to the Renaissance, the city was born again.

St. Peter was rebuilt as the biggest project of the age. In 1501, A. Castellesi began to work on the Palazzo Castellesi, a new palace. This palace offered a new elegance on an urban scale. And In 1502, a small domed, tolos-type temple was built in the monastery of San Pietro’s church. The purpose was to be surrounded by a concentric columnar formed by larger columns rather than a rectangular structure.

Afterward, Bramante was asked to build a bridge between the Vatican Palace and the Belvedere Villa. He worked with inclined topography. Also, the old-type forked stairs are revitalized. However, the project was not very successful in terms of engineering and part of it collapsed. Then, the papal architects fixed this structure.

 

Humanist Italy and Muslim Roman Empire

Public Spaces and Private Palaces of Renaissance

The Renaissance means the movement of the old Greco-Roman culture. It was born in Italy which is the continuity of ancient Greek and Roman culture between the 14th and early 15th century. In architecture combination of  the details of Greek-Roman culture with herantica occured. Architects tried to use more than antique components and tried to discover the basic principles of design. The most important part of the design at that time was to perfect the vision of perspective. Humanism influenced new palaces and churches in Italian cities. And structures were made to be more uniform and geometric.

The Dome of Florence and Its Architect, Filippo Brunelleschi

During the fourteenth century, the wealthiest families from the merchant guilds dominate the artistic output of Florence. They channeled their collective resources into civic projects such as  public palace (Palazzo Vecchio), the new cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the public grain market of Or San Michele, the city walls, and the bridges.

Palazzo Vecchio

Many public works in late-fourteenth century Florence used rounded arches, symmetrically placed bays and harmonious proportions. The emergence of perspective vision provided the development of the principal public space of the city, the L-shaped Piazza della Signoria.

Santa Maria del Fiore’s (dome constructed in fifth century) design was entrusted to Anolfo di Cambio, who suggested a simple Gothic style. The largest masonry dome was made of vaults. Like the Pantheon in Rome, the structure had an octagon base and the dimensions of the copula was as wide as Pantheon.

Santa Maria del Fiore

The structural concept for Fioravanti’s dome derived from the baptistery of San Giovanni. Brunelleschi’s double shelled structure lay in a combination of masonry techniques while Brunelleschi preserved the dome’s pointed arches and ribs from the Gothic program, he added motifs to the exterior. Brunelleschi designed the Pazzi Chapel and it was completed by his colleague Michelozzo di Bartolomeo. The chapel served as the chapter house, with a porch resembling a triumphal arch.

The Ottoman Empire|1500-1600 : A Culture of Local Symmetries

The Ottoman Turks gave up the nomadic life and started to live in western Anatolia.  They had imaret foundations which include a mosque, school, tomb, bath and soup kitchen. Strong sense of internal order was created by placing shallow dome over each bay of significant buildings.  This symmetrical order contrasted with the irregular patterns of the cities.

Ottomans enlarged their territories time by time and architecture created a language for regime’s authority. Hagia Sophia affected the design of Ottoman mosques and Sinan established an Ottoman style as assured and recognizable as ancient Roman style.

The Prospect of a Muslim Roman Empire: Royal Mosque and Imarets

Ottoman architects used their architectural models from the Anatolian region, reflecting the vaulted masonry of Armenian churches.

The Orhan Gazi Cami (Mosque) (Bursa ,1339) has basic reverse-T plan of early Ottoman royal mosques. Inside, two central domes covered an axial prayer space as mihrab( the niche oriented to Mecca) Similar with Roman, a technique of opus mixtum were used.

 

The reverse- T mosque type appeared in many other royal foundations in Bursa, including the Yeşil Cami. It belonged to a religious enclave, imaret, a charitable institution introduced by the Ottomans.

 

 

The Yeşil Cami had also the reverse-T mosque type. The interior of Yeşil Cami seems like a palace with a foyer and stairs causing to the second floor where comfortable rooms that separated from the prayer hall.

 

Imarets included a mosque, a turbe (tomb of the donor), one or more madrassas (religious schools), a hammam(bath), sometimes a hospital, a tekke for dervish monks and imaret or soup kitchen.

The Ulu Cami in Bursa, differed from the reverse- T royal mosques, had the hypostyle model found throughout Southwest Asia. All of its twenty bays carried a rounded dome. A rounded dome that produced by the square bay become the standard unit of Ottoman architecture. ( mosques, schools, baths, hospitals.)

The silk market, or Koza Han extended as a rectangular court with two levels of arcades surrounding a domed treasury. The symmetrically organized public buildings in the early Ottoman capital transmitted the idea of a new, efficient political order.

Constantinople Becomes Istanbul

The Ottoman goal of an Islamic Empire required the capture of Constantine. Byzantine art, architecture, and ritual life influenced places as diverse as Damascus, Venice and Cordola. Constantinople was conquered by Fatih Mehmed II in 1453. The new name of ‘city of Constantine’ was ‘Istanbul’. He built the markets of Kapalı Çarşı which like the Koza Han in Bursa, to stimulate merchant activity. It had square bays capped with rounded, lead covered domes.

The round towers of Rumeli Hissar was built at the Golden Gate after the conquest of Constantinople. It was constructed on the Bosporus to prevent the Christian naval support to the Byzantine. Also, Hagia Sophia converted the venerable Palatine church into a royal mosque with adding a minaret.

Rumeli Hissar

Gothic Europe : The Fabric of the Great Cathedrals

The great success of the Italian merchants stimulated the rest of Europe with new possibilities for cultural exhange so markets began to thrive in the cities, and the demand for public space and new cathedrals followed. Great market cities such as Bruges, Paris, Lübeck, and Cologne more than doubled in size by 1300.

In France the shared interests of the monarchy and the clergy encouraged the new Gothic style as both a cultural and a national enterprise. In cotrast to the heavy barrel vaults of Romanesque churches, the Gothic cathedral designers explored a structural system that combined pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses to achieve dazzing heights and mysterious luminosity. Traveling masons helped spread the style from France throughout Europe, leading the local interpretations wherever it appeared, to the point that the English, Germans, Spanish, Polish and Czechs considered Gothic their own.

 

Flying Buttresses

Ribbed Vaults

Pointed arch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The city Returns: Market Towns and New Towns

The new prosperity of the cities encouraged the expansion of the city walls, gigantic cathedrals, and impressive civic buildings; such as town halls, covered markets and hospitals. The quest for emancipation from feudal bonds inspired the foundation of hundreds of new towns across Europe, most built on orthogonal plans that revived the idea of public space. Seasonal markets rotated among the four Champagne towns in two-months durations throughout the year.

The Champagne fairs took place outside the city gates, where they generated permanent settlement areas known in French as ‘faubourgs’. The walls surrounding the city of Troyes doubled in 1250, they enclosed the western faubourg. In the western side, the streets took the names of the goods sold and the money changed. And the faubourg included a synagogue, a building for crusaders and two hospitals.

The growing economy of Troyes led to build a cathedral, a new church of St. Urbain, and a new hospital. St. Urbaing finished in thirty years.

The merchants of Bruges gained the right to own their houses and lands. This led to the formation of guilds and citizen councils. By the end of the thirteenth century, Bruges had rebuilt its walls as a gigantic oval enclosing the two earlier rings and improved its canal system. Also constructed several significent civic monuments including the Belfry, the Cloth Hall and the Waterhalle.

As the citizens of older towns struggled to gain new liberties, new towns were founded throughout Europe. The Zahringer counts, lords of parts of southern Germany and Switzerland, initated the conseptof the new town as an enterprise. Between 1119 and 1228 they sponsored a dozen market towns, each structured on a broad central street. The most successful of these, Freiburg-im-Breisgau and Berne, developed into important trade centers.

During the 14th and 15th centuries the town counsil permitted property owners to add deep arcades to the front of their buildings, single arches propped up on thick piers. The Zahringer planners didnt leave specific sites for cathedrals  and town halls, but once a city had proven itself as successful market, the citizens found sites in secondary positions on the side streets for the religiouus and institutional buildings.

The French king Louis IX led the Seventh Crusade against Islam. He also conducted a champaign against renegade Christians. His armies destroyed lots of places and the king took one of the prime rebel forts, Carcassonne, and rebuilt it. Near the fortress of Carcassonne, the king established a polygonal new town with a grid settlement. One square in the center left unbuilt for the cities market.

During the late thirteenth century the French and English both claimed Gascony and built hundreds of bastides (new towns) to intensify their respective power over southwest France. They both followed a simple grid plan. Surveyors subdivided the blocks into oblong ‘gothic lots’. And they forced each settler to built a house within a year and participate in the expenses of preparing the streets, walls and market place. The designers calculated their spaces using proportional divisions. They allotted much more attention to public space by creating an oblong central piazza.

The Gothic Cathedral: The Crown of the City

The new gothic style appeared in European cities during the 13th and 14th century. The designers experimented with slender structural members to accentuate verticality, their aim was to create ‘heavenly’ interior light. The master builders have used that three structural expedients; pointed arches, ribbed vaults and flying buttresses. While none of the three was a new invention, together they comprised an architectural theory that served symbolic potantial of light.

Gothic architecture started with Abbot Suger. He wrote down his thoughts about rebuilding the abbey church of St. Denis. The interior of the church, with it’s spindy members and stained glass windows, would become the means to achieve a new light, the lux nova, as the transcendent metaphor for Christ.

St. Denis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suger began with rebuilding of the façade, he inserted an oculus between the two towers. The drive to eliminate the mass from the walls came during the next decade with Suger’s rebuilding of the choir of St. Denis. Here he achieved the crystalline formation of double ambulatory opened through the radial alignment of its piers and columns to a chevet with seven chapels. Luminous but not bright, since the thick panes of stained glass shone only under direct sunlight, the chevet modulated a hushed, chromatic glow.

By the end of the century, lots of large cathedrals were underway in Gothic style, borders extended as the state absorbed new territories. France’s territories tripled during the 13th century, and the Gothic style accompanied this expansion to cities such as Amiens, Troyes and Rouen.

The designers of Notre-Dame consolidated Suger’s disparate concepts to a comprehensive architectonic system. The rebuilding of the church began in the mid-12th century, after a conflict resulted and partial destruction of the church. The cathedral, finished in 1215 provided a symbol of cohesion for the once-divided city.  The piers alternated bundles of five shats corresponding to the ribs at the primary arches, with three shafts at the minor arches between each bay. The ribbed vaults, supported by external flying buttresses, rose between large voided areas for the tall clerestory windows that brought abundant daylight into the tribunes and the nave.

 

Chartres Cathedral

The cathedral at Chartres, began as a smaller church that was rebuilt and expanded  after devastating a fire. The cities prized relic and the tunic of the Virgin Mary miraculously withstood the flames, and this increased the cathedrals strong attraction for pilgrims.

Verticality became a theological imperative for the gothic cathedral builders. They have builded very high naves, they heightened the ceilings with arches and ribbed vaults. And the big, wheel windows was a symbol of patronage as seen in Chartres wheel window. The cathedral grew as a symbol of the city’s prosperity and served as much as a community center as a fall of faith, used for town meetings, law courts, and theatrical events.

 

During the 13^th century, Louis IX reopened work at St. Denis, under the direction of his favored architects; Jean de Chelles and Pierre de Montreuil. The resulting structures, which reduced the walls to shockingly thin skeletons of stone. That style named ‘rayonnant’ during the 19^th century. The exterior walls dissolved into lacey stone tracery strung between the scaffold-like structure of interior piers and exterior flying buttresses.

In Paris the same architects designed the Ste-Chapelle for Louis IX, as a reliquary. Begun in 1240. In the upper chapel the designers attempted to reduce the mass of the walls to leave an ethereal curtain of stained glass. They enhanced the structure of the thin piers with concealed iron tension rods. They painted the groin vaults with a deep blue field of stars, gilded the ribs and tinted all of the exposed surfaces with patterns blending with the tones of the stained glass.

Chelles and Montreuil also redesigned the transept of Notre-Dame of Paris. Work begun around 12th century, resumed by Louis IX’s architects in the 13th century to enlarge the windows, creating a similar effect of rayonnant. Their work on the western facade appeared singularly harmonious.

Like the temples of Khmer, the great Gothic cathedrals doubled as marvels of engineering and immense piles of sculpture. Statues were tucked into the niches, cut into the columns and pitched on the roofs. The pyramidal pinnacles piled on the tops of the buttresses of Notre-Dame sprouted crockets above the level of the flyers. The pinnacles once thought to be pure decoration, served as counterweights to the thrust of the flyers. Gargoyles, sculpted on the downspouts, stuck out as fetish elements animating the upper ranges of the cathedrals. As diabolical figures, they haunted the house of God the way sins disturb human consciousness.

The spread of Gothic : lnternational yet Local

 

Chartres Cathedral

 

The first few bays of the pavement in the nave of Chartres Cathedral contained a labyrinth. In its center were portraits of the master builders who designed the structure. William of Sens, worked on the Gothic cathedral of Sens, gave him excellent qualifications, and the chevet he added to the new choir of the English church showed his preference for French precedents. He was deeply involved in the building process as master mason, structural engineer and building contractor.

 

 

 

Outside of France, people often referred to Gothic style as opus francigenum, thus associating it with French nation building but Gothic soon shook off associations with French to become English, German, Dutch, Spanish, Czech, Portuguese and Italian.

Ribbed vaults had appeared very early at Durham and took on astounding combinations at Lincoln Cathedral, contemporary with the construction of Chartres. The vaults over St Hugh’s choir looked in plan like adjacent Y figures, one inverted, leaving a rhomboid gap between them. A generation later , in the nave of Lincoln Cathedral, the masons created vaults with a profusion of radiating ribs , anticipating the fan vaults of later centuries.

One of the most common structural failures in English cathedrals involved the collapse of the central tower over the crossing. This occured at both Lincoln and Ely cathedrals. The designers at Wells, inserted huge scissor arches at the intersection of the crossing in the 1330s. These curving X shaped forms dramatically interrupted the flow of the nave, adding tangible support to the base of the spire.

 

SS. Giovanni e Paolo

Gothic style appeared in Germany through both the arrival of French masons and the preferences of elite patronage. Although the tower of Cologne remained incomplete until the 19th century, their design of open-web steeples directly inspired copies at the Spanish church.

Italy, which resisted Gothic style in favor of its strong Roman heritage, hosted new versions of ribbed vaults and pointed arches. Gothic became the preferred style of the Dominican order, which built grand churches such as SS. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice.

 

 

Parler and his descendents pursued a clear style and signed their works with a family emblem, a stylized hook. His son Peter worked with him on projects. And there was another member of the Parler clan, Michael, and his son Heinrich which worked on Strasbourg Cathedral in the 1360s.

Cohorts of experienced builders, under the patronage of knowledgeable clients, added their interpretations. Gothic became an agreed upon language of design that through the variety of regional situations developed into numerous local dialects.

The Spread of Islam: Hypostyle Mosques and Soaring Minarets

Islam, the monotheist religion began in the seminomadic setting of the southern edge of the great Arabian Desert. The Prophet was Mohammad (570-632) and the religion gained a lot of approval because it appeared to be nonhierarchical, easy to grasp and tolerant to differences. After a century of the Prophet’s death Islamic rulers built and empire that included most of the southern half of the Roman Empire and all of the Persian Empire.

The mosque, built as a multicolumned praye rhall, provided the new religios focus of the cities under islamic rule. The minaret, slender tower for the muezzin , or crier, to call the people to pray, added a new vertical axis to urban skylines. The urban development in places  such as Damascus and Baghdad yielded patchworks for neighborhoods, or heradts, without through streets or open public spaces.

Mecca and Medina: The Cities of Muhammad and His Followers

The Arabian Desert is connected to Mesopotamia to the north and Egypt to the south. Even though the inhabitans of this region had witnessede urban civilizations amd had tradeed with the major cities of the Roman, Byzantine and Persian Empires, theirs remained for the most part a nomadic culture. The cold climate of Hejaz region caused the growth of the oasis settlements of Mecca and Medina, where the Islam religion took root.

Muhammed belonged to the Quraysh tribe of Mecca, who claimed responsibility for maintaining the Kaaba. Mohammed was forced to leave Mecca in 622 and spent ten years in exile in Medina, where he refined the religion. After battles Mohammed concured Mecca and stripped the Kaaba of its pagan iconography.

As the focus of muslim prayers, the Kaaba represents the unity of faithful. Aside from Kaaba in Mecca, Mohammed directly influenced the transformation of his own house in Madina into the Islam’s first congregational mosque, ”the place of prostration”.

Mohammed encouraged ascetic attitudes in architecture, using vernatural methods for mud-brick walls and a palm-trunk roof. A long covered portico, two columns deep, protected the faithful of the north side from the sun. His inital prayer faced Jursalem which was favored by the Prophet as the qibla, or direction of prayers. After his conquest of Mecca, he redirected the qibla to the Kabba.

The Mosque of the Prophet in Medina resembled a small traders caravansary. Mohammad’s modest approach to architecture echoed his nomadic origins. The first Muslims rejected the form of pagan tempels, preferring to base their cult buildings on secular structures. The earliest mosques took the place of the forum-basilica core of Roman cities. The Muslim servises had no dramatic action or ceremonies like communion or baptism and Islam didn’t rely on priestly hierarchy to mediate between the believer and the Supreme Being.

The first mosques provided simple architectural settings without apses, side chapels, ambulatories, crypts, baptistreries or choirs. Their program included a fountain for the mandatory purifying ablutions and a large covered hall, arranged for rows of believers to prostrate themselves towards Mecca. The first two generations of Islam requisitioned diverse structures to be transformed into mosques. The three most common plans were the basilica with longitudinal aisles directed to the qibla, the transverse basilica with lateral exposure to the qibla wall, and the isotropic hypostyle hall.

This latter type first appeared in Kufah, Iraq, in the mid-seventh century, where a square hall with a forest of regularly spaced columns spreding equidistant in both directions resembled the Apadana of Darius. It served by a large open courth, or sahn.

After the victory against Persians, the Arabs founded Kufah in 638 on a site near ancient Babylon. The architect, Abu al-Haiyaj, followed Greco-Roman precedents. He structured the new city on a grid with two broad cross streets. At the princible intersection he placed the governor’s palace and the Friday mosque back to back. The four quadrants of Kufah contained an open plaza, or maydan, surronded by orthogonally arranged street. Narrow lanes, one-third the width of the main streets, subdivided the blocks. The inital Arab foundations proved almost as methodically geometric as those of the ancient Romans.

The Ummayad Period: Jerusalem and Damascus

The Ummayyads settled in the Greco-Roman city of Damascus, Syria, similiar to Byzantines in Constantinople. Through the production of fine architecture and grand ceremonies, they attemped to create a charismatic setting to smooth over the succession disputes.

Like other nomadic people, the Arabs had limited knowledge of masonry architecture. They borrowed techniques from Percian, Roman and Byzantine precedents. Abdal-Malik, the patron of the first great Ummayad monument, the Dome of the Rock in Jursalem, hired a Byzantine architect and mosaic artists from Constantiople. Constructed on an elevated terrace, the central-plan structure resembled a Christian martyrium. Its dome followed the example of the nearby Anastasis built over the tomb of Christ. Inside the Dome of the Rock a frieze of interlacing kufic script encircled the base, distunguishing it as Islamic.

Islam rejected the representation of people and things as idolatry, favoring decorative inscriptions, or alfiz, instead of narrative scenes with human figures. The arcade surrounding the rock had two charasterictics, which became common in Islamic architecture: pointed arches and ablaq, alternating bands of different-colored masonry. An octogonal ring of double ambulatories served the pilgrim circulation around the sacred site. The dome rose as a double shell structure over a cylindrical drum. The outer chell was covered in gilded copper and appeared to slightly bulge at its base.  The Iznik tile decoration on the lower elevations are sixteenth century additipns.

By creating the Dome of the Rock as the most visible monument in the city, they transmitted a major propoganda statement to attract non-muslims. The Temple Mount, known in arabic as Haram ash-Sharif ”the noble sanctuary” prevailed as the largest of all Greco-Roman platforms. The new shrine, bound by eight sets of broad stairs, each framed at the top by a freestanding row of arches, added in the eleventh century.

The Dome of The Rock differed from most central-plan Christian churches in its use of the two concentric ambulatories, which  accommodated the pilgrim’s ritual of the circling the rock under the dome. The major structural elements of the interior piers and arcades followed the intersection of the two superimposed nine-square grids, one rotated 45 degrees over the other to create an eight-pointed star. The discrepancy of the allignment between the columns and the piers of the two ambulatories unchained a superb kinetic effect as one moved in a circular path toward the rock.

 

Mosque of the Prophet

al-Aqsa Mosque

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mecca fell to the Umayyads after the completion of the Dome of the Rock. Abd al-Malik’s son al-Walid built three impressive mosques to celebrate. The first: Mosque of the Prophet in Medina, which he added mosaics and the first mihrab. The secon, the al-Aqsa Mosque, provided a hypostyle hall and had a basilica plan, with a central nave and seven aisles to either side. The third, Great Mosque of Damascus. its triad of ground floor arches and arched windows was recessed inside a single grand arch and above this rested a triangular pediment.

Great Mosque of Damascus

The Ummayads introduced the mihrab niche as the termination of a princely axis and maksuka served to protect the caliph’s and his court. Nect to the mihrab,rosa an elevated sitting platform called minbar. 

The palaces had long high solid walls and seemed fortified, but it was more symbolic than functional. For example Qasr Mshatta, built in the 740s. Octogonal towers flanked the gate and the outer walls were encrusted with carved limestone rosettes. The luxuriousness corresponded to the grandeur of Ummayad imperial power.

The Abbasid Succession: New Capitals in Baghdad and Samarra

The second Abbasid caliph, al-Mansur created a round city in 762 on the Tigris River , called Madinah al-Salam, ”the city of peace” and as the locals called ”Baghdad”. The caliphs constructed several grand imperial palaces on a scale that surpassed all precedents including Roman, Byzantine and Persian. No trace of the round city remains because it was built entirely of adobe. Early Baghdad had two major cross axial streets which were covered by vaults. A vast central void framed the caliph’s palace and the Great Mosque in the center.

 

Samarra came to full maturity under al-Mutawakkil which built the Great Mosque of Samarra. It ceverd roughly the same area as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. A spiral minaret served as an icon than as an acoustic device.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Tunisia the Aghlabid rebuilt the Great Mosque of Kairouan in 836, imitation of the Great Mosque of Baghdad, using tiles and wooden panels from the city. Its outlined followed a parallelogram to adjust to previously built structures around it. The most innovative process of merchanrs resulted in a windingg fabric of narrow alleys. The typical urban neighborhood, or herat, gathered around a blind alley. The herats then attached to each other with no overall geometric coordination.

 

Early Christianity: Italy and Byzantium

Constantine was the first Christian emperor to promote Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. After Constantine left Rome in 326, the Church slowly gained power from the city and it became the only valid institution.

Emperor Diocletian’s (r. 284-305) architects inserted an arch into the pediment between two central columns and it created a fastigium, a stage-like space. This broken- pediment motif derived from the Sophisticated Hellenistic style of South- west Asia for instance, the third-century CE propylon to the temple of Zeus at Baalbek in Lebanon.

Constantine’s chief rival, Maxentius started to use a different style of basilica in Rome which was one of the grandest vaulted concrete structures in the world. Maxentius restored the Senate house an the Temple of Venus and Rome which stood to his new basilica. He built a new hippodrome attached to his palace on the Via Appia.

Constantine built Rome’s first sponsored church, St. John’s in the Lateran. Instead of an impressive colonnaded facade, Constantine’s new church had a nondescript exterior. The layout of the Lateran followed a five-aisle longitudinal plan.

Rome after Constantine: The Last Classical Buildings

After Constantine’s departure from Rome, the senatorial class lost its political authority.  They sponsored many new churches like; Santa Sabina, Santa Maria Maggiore, Santo Stefano Rotondo. They used classical style, as a statement of Rome’s ability and dignity for these churches.

Santa Maria Maggiore

 

Santa Maria Maggiore used columns with Ionic capitals supporting flat entablatures. The flat coffered ceiling and the geometric patterns of the pavement provided the feel of interiors in Santa Maria Maggiore as the Basilica Ulpia in Trajan’s Forum.

Santa Sabina

 

Santa Sabina, three-aisle basilica, was built on the Aventine Hill. It had a simple brick exterior, and the interior was also well-arranged like the large reception halls of the empire. Use of arches over columns was the only stylistic move that refered to classical examples. It was a populated area damaged during the sack of Alaric.

Santo Stefano Rotondo

 

 

Santo Stefano Rotondo was remained unfinished.  The was planned to appear like an imperial Mausoleum, with a central domed space covered by a circular vaulted archway.

After some natural disasters, the population of Rome decreased to 30.000 inhabitants. The great imperial monuments were transformed to shelters for church and its institutions such as Senate-house and the Pantheon.

Milan on the Eve of the Gothic Advance

Milan, which means “the land of the middle”, was known as “Mediolanum” and it was the capital of the western empire after Rome. St. Ambrose ,who is Milan’s bishop, made his base in the recently built cathedral of San Tecia. The five-aisle basilica appeared almost as large as the Lateran. The Lateran Baptisteries had circular or octagonal halls. St. Ambrose also financed the three large churches which are Sant’Ambrogio, the Basilica Apostolorum, and San Simpliciano.

Sant’Ambrogio

Basilica of San Simpliciano

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He programmed these churches as martyr’s cemetery churches. Moreover, Ambrose’s imperial rivals created the impressive early Christian church which is San Lorenzo, in Milan. The church has a luxurious double-shell structure that supports a dome. Its particular form of central plan provided an ideological struggle between the bishop and the pro- Arian emperor.

San Lorenzo Maggiore

Byzantium: The Dome as an Act of Faith

After Constantine transferred his political capital to Byzantium churches were included as primary components in the city plan. The design of churches became monumental figures in the city and the domes of these churches appeared as very important symbols of Christianity.

Constantinople: The First Christian Capital

Constantinople included three main church types which are the aisled basilica, the central-plan memorial church, and the pavilion-like baptistery. The emperor put his imprimatur on the city through his palace, hippodrome, palatine church, triumphal plazas and imperial mausoleum.

To the traditional Roman building types, Constantine added churches that fit nodal points of the new city Constantinople. Apostoleion with its arms of equal length in all direction (a Greek-cross plan) had five domes and, the sarcophagus of Constantine located at the center of the church. Constantinople achieved more than expectations as new Rome and its population grew fast that led the increase in the number of baths, harbors, forums, and churches.

There were many similarities between Hagia Sophia and Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Both of them were designed by the same team in the same period. The original church has been destroyed and rebuilt twice. It had five-aisle basilica plan, adding second-story galleries over the central nave. The central plan of it came from the architecture of royal tombs since it is connected with the place Jesus died.

Hagia Sophia after Constantine

Constantinople grew to be the largest city of the Mediterranean during its first century and it had imperial power. But rioters destroyed Constantine’s Hagia Sophia. Building the church of SS. Sergius and Bacchus preceded the reconstruction of the Hagia Sophia. The designers recommended a double- shell structure. The square outer walls enclosed an inner octagonal figure which supported a shallow dome. Hagia Sophia, SS. Sergius an Bacchus were quite different from each other in terms of scale and design form. But these buildings established the concept of a domed central space nested inside a larger orthogonal figure. Justinian was also inspired by the church of Hagia Polyeuktos.

Hagia Sophia covered almost as much area as the Basilica of Maxentius in Rome. Its dome reached a greater continuous span than the diameter of the Pantheon, when combined with the two semidomes. The colored marbles used for the columns and wall revetments, the shimmring gold mosaics and the airiness of the gallery.

Hagia Sophia

 

In Mesopotamian ziggurat or a Greek temple, the combination of architectural parts led to a coherent whole. However, Hagia Sophia’s profile cannot be reduced to a simple figure made of proportional elements. After In the upcoming years Hagia Sophia transformed into a mosque.

Ravenna: The Byzantine Satellite in Italy

Ravenna was a small city on the Adriatic coast and it far away from Rome and Milan. The city had churches, baptisteries and mausoleums. Galla Placidia who was a female patron, built the large three-aisle Basilica of St. John. She also built the church of Santa Croce which had cruciform shape reffering to the Christian emblem.

Galla Placidia also sponsored Ravenna’s new cathedral and basilica which were called ‘orthodox’. The basilica had five-aisles like the Lateran and a baptistery. The mosaics, painted stucco and colored marbles provided a sacred hierarchy over its frame.

At the end of the fifth century general Theodoric took control of Italy. He built The Mausoleum of Theodoric in Ravenna with stone. It was planned as a monumental tomb. The extraordinary feature of Theodoric’s mausoleum was its monolithic dome, a single, cup-shape and marble.

Basilica of San Vitale

During the year of Theodoric’s death, Justinian started to work on two great churches in Ravenna: Sant’Apollinare in Classe and San Vitale. Sant’Apollinare in Classe had a three-aisle basilica which close to the design of Santa Sabina in Rome. It also had a courtyard atrium, nave lined with arcades and columns on each side. San Vitale, like San Lorenzo in Milan, had a central plan as a martyrium, a square atrium and court. San Vitale’S octagonal double-shell structure shared many typological characters with SS. Sergio and Bacchus in Constantinople.

Sant’Apollinare in Classe

Ancient Rome: Governing through Architecture

In the first century BCE Ancient Rome was one of the large empires that dominated world history, among China and Zapotecs. Roma had a hilly topography so they could never developed a rational structure. They learned orthogonal planning from Greek and typically colonnaded streets an strict grid in the development of their city. Then military leaders started to discover new urban set pieces such as arches and vaults and architectural structures such as magnificent temples, aqueducts, etc.

Roma Caput Mundi: A Regime of Architecture

The city of Rome considered itself Caput Mundi means “the head of the world” because it was a vast international empire. They created Grand colonnaded enclosures and changed their architectural repertoires. They used arches, vaults and a new method of concrete construction to defying gravity and overcome the complex terrain.

Their engineer architects in their military, (such as Vitruvius, author of the single treatise on architecture that survived) worked as agents of Rome’ imperial expansion. Romans improved the conquered people’s quality of life, an equitable legal system, theater, etc.  Romans designed their cities on a cross-axis of streets. They used new building techniques such as basilicas, colonnaded streets, vaulted thermal bath structures and freestanding theaters after Etruscans (used frontal organizations) dominated by Rome.

Pompeii: The Architecture of Public Space

Pompeii , which Rome acquired as a colony in 80 BCE, contained the best -preserved examples of Roman architecture ( thanks to the eruption of Vesuvius ). It possesed a complete urban system that illustrates the importance of public space to Roman daily life. The city pattern blended the ideas of  Oscan, Etruscan, Greek and Roman. It included both Greek’s long orthogonal blocks and Roman square blocks.

Roman civic centers always included a forum, a temple, and a basilica. There was aqueduct which carries water to fountains and thermal baths and Forum of Pompeii in an axial orientation to streets.   The center of the city first began its development into what would become the Forum which is a centrally located open area that was surrounded by public buildings and colonnades and that served as a public gathering place. Roman architects used easily reproduced standart models based on a modular proportional system. (ex. rule of building a temple which is temple depth must be twice its width.) Most basilicas were arranged transversely, with the entrances on the long side.

Theater of Pompeii

Forum of Pompeii

Theater And Baths: Roman Leisure Society

The Romans also produced a disproportionate number of secular monuments such as theaters and baths.  Romans built freestanding monuments using arches and concrete vaults unlike the Greeks which located their theaters into the contours of sloping sites. The first permanent theater in Rome, built for the great general Pompey in 62 BCE. The theaters included temples and created an amphitheater which formed an ellipse, closed on two edges, and it had a large capacity for people, the system of arches carried the sitting places.

The Colosseum in Rome was the empire’s largest building in terms of mass. It had cliff-like exterior and the facade rose on three levels of piers and arches with half- columns connected onto the piers.

Roman baths or thermae, were public places and thought as cultural centers. They consisted of a palaestra (a court for outdoor exercises) and a natatorium (a swimming pool). It was underfloor and in-wall heating system which was called “hypocaust”.

Roman baths

The Colosseum

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Domus And Insula: Roman Domestic Architecture

The Roma house or domus, was tightly organized around colonnade courts. The street facade had shops to either side of entry and there were secondary- story dwellings for the shopkeepers. Romans had atriums which were produced as a stage for the extended family and its clients. In Pompeii’s typical domus, court served for households that had peristyle, kitchens, triclinium dining rooms, baths, and privies. Pompeii houses were decorated: walls covered with narrative scenes and framing with architectural elements painted in perspective.

In second century BCE, the villa type emerged with combining the courts of domus type with gardens, orchards, and landscape vistas. The room types of Domus were repeated more broadly and more clearly to the view. In addition, they developed an insula– a multilevel apartment block.

 

 

 

 

The Greek City State

Ancient Greek architecture is a very special source for classicism. Greek’s classical style of arcitecture has been revived by veriaty of cultures, obtaining nearly universal acceptance. Classical architecture represented either one of the political ideas: egalitarianism of Greek democracy or the authoritarian order of Helenistic tyrannies and the Roman Empire that followed.

The Greek City, polis, produced a democratic process of rule so need for the spaces of dialogue shaped the buildings of classical Athens. The agora, the stoa , the senate house and the hillside theater enabled exchanges of opinion. Even the temple’s proportions were decided by public debate.

After the declain of democratic Athens, they continued to improve on classical style for the various exponents of Helenism. Alexander the Great’s goal was to unite the world into a single empire and as he tried to turn the humanity to Hellenism he relied on the classical architecture. The Greek city states developed a unique form of government ; Their rule by public assembly is exceptional for its direct participation. Instead of big palaces and tombs for tyrants and hierarchical temple compounds like in Egypt, Assyria and Persia, the Greeks designed open public spaces with a few colonnaded buildings for citizen meetings.

Their system of living eliminated the power struggles of dynasties, tribes and clans. During 8th century BCE the Greeks began to revive their cities through synoikismos (living together). And this required open public spaces and accesible public buildings.

The fragmantation of their chobby landscape encouraged independent , self-managed cities . A lack od arable land limited Greek agriculture , so colonization spreaded through Italy and Sicily resulting in important urban centers (such as Neapolis and Syracuse). There were debates over urban form and institutions. So the Greek planners and politicians developed reproductible methods of orthogonal planning  as well as guaranteeing justice to a diversified class structure.

Athens produced the most influential models of Greek architecture and urbanism. The villages at the base of Acropolis united through synoikismos. They thought to keep the balance between citizens and provide democracy and in conclusion acropolis meaning ”head of the sky” was more appropriate for the gods than a place for citizens.

The agora (meaning gathering)served as the prime public space for the Greek polis.  It was an indeterminate void in the middle of the city. The Athenian Agora was about half the area of the temenos of the Entermenanki in Babylon. This setting served as the city’s space of imformation. The emptiness of the Agora and its lack of architectural definition had the opposite effect of the fullness and prescribed sequences of imperial palaces. Socially, the open space of the Greeks proved more interactive than the cult space of the Processional Way in Babylon.

The major streets of Athens crossed the Agora, providing a variety of activities such as market functions, religious ceremonies, athletic events and theatrical performances. Male dominans could be seen through the guardian herms, pillars with human heads and erect phalluses.

At the northern edge of Agora the open-air Altar to the Twelve Gods welcomed political refugees seeking sanctuary. Terracotta conduits and drains served a fountain house, built on the southeast edge in the late sixth century. Athenians improvised theatricals in the Agore while using temporary wooden bleachers until a stone theater was constructed in the fourth century.

Building types increased as the complexity of Athenian government increased. Pryraneion (the city hall) housed the city’s methaporic hearth. Skias (a cylindrical tholos structure) served as a dining hall. Strategeion stood as a chamber for debating military policies. A senate house, Bouleuterion  , similiar to the square hypostyle rooms in the Persian palace at Persepolis.Open porticoes, called stoas,  loosely framed the edges of the Agora. The Royal Stoa had four tiered columns to hold up the crest of the gabled roof.

Political communities met in the Agora before but later a larger, undistrubed setting was required. So, they cleared and leveled the great terrace of the Pnyx. This acoustically calibrated shelf anticipated the seating of Greek theaters.

The Greek grid appeared in the seventh century, to mainly control the future growth. They used the per strigas scheme to plan colonial cities such as Paestum in southern Italy as  way of orthogonal planning in Egyptians. The grid determined the size and shape of the buildings.

In Hippodamus’ ideal city plan he formed a grid according to a rigorous geometrical formula, dividing the square into quarters which were further divided more, leaving urban blocks suitable for six courtyard houses. his hometown closely corresponded to this theory. Starting with the L-shaped Harbor Stoa, the city built colonnaded courtyards, plazas, fountains, and temples at its monumental core, forming a special route of expanding and contracting public spaces.

Priene, another colony, was rebuilt a century later with a more tightly integrated plan. Here, the prytanelon, the bouleuterion, the theater and the temple were fit carefully into a staggered pattern within the geometry of standard blocks.  Priene was on a slope which caused a series of dynamic relationships between parts also caused them to overlook eachother. This geometric organization of the polis provided a controlled social experiment.

The Greeks built their colony’s houses (oikos) comfortably but without distinction. The houses of Olynthus displayed remarkable uniformity similiar to modern row housing. The oikos gathered around a veranda (pastas), a semienclosed corridor somewhat like a stoa, set between the court and the rooms. It provided naturally cooled living spaces. The colonical plan for the oikos implied that a well-governed city was only as good as a well-organised household.

The Greeks usually sited their temples in remote, associating the landmark with the legends of their gods. Their design is shown off by wrapping its volume with beautifully crafted colums, creating a play of light and shade against the solid inner core. There are three column styles in temples: Doric, Ionic or Corinthian. The diameter of the column established the module to measure all the other dimensions. The Doric order, was typically six modules high and two modules of intercolumniation between one and the next.

Doric and Ionic represented specific zones of influence in the Greek world. The mainland and western colonies preferred the Doric order. A doric temple such as the second temple Hera at Paestum carried six columns on the short sides and fourteen columns on the long.   A ionic order style temple such as the TEmple of Artemis at Ephesus, eight columns across and twenty deep. On the Corinthian style the temples such as Temple pf ApolloEpicurius at Bassae. the temple’s exterior columns were Doric, the imterior chamber, or cella, was lined with versions of Ionic columns.

Greek temples were painted with colors as strong as those on the ziggurats. They were designed in a way that the marble would shine in the light and above the architrave they painted the friezes with blue trigiyohs and red metopes.

Greek temples’ style changed slightly when architects introduced visual correctives known as ”refinements”. They arched the ground plane of the temple platform towards the center so that the straight lines seem to deflect when seen from a distance. Doric columns taper upward and swell with entasis. The vertical fluting of the shafts also helped to convey the idea of compression. Often, on Doric temples the intercolumnation at the corner columns were narrower, to give visual strength to the corners and compensate for the awkward allignment of the triglyphs in the frieze.

The Greek temples appeared to be made of identical parts, but no two were alike.

Biblical Jerusalem : Architecture and Memory

While we’re looking back in history, our point of view of a nation is leaded  by what remains of them/ our findings. There are lots of examples to that but as oppose to that,  Jerusalem is one of the few examples where our acknowledgement has nothing to do with findings. Even though city’s artifacts were disappeared, the memory of it endured because of the idea that it represents.

Jerusalem plays a special role in world history. It has cosmological meaning attached to it by Jews, Christians and Muslims. More than half the world’s population accepts that Jerusalem represents a holy place by religious ideals. Over time the place has been divided, sacked and rebuilt. If it wasn’t for the Jews who inhabited it, it would be  destroyed by now. Jews valued their faith more than anything, assigned the role of a sacred center to Jerusalem, related the city’s existance compeletly to religion. The city had enough water coming from the Gihan Spring but there was no way to access the river.  It couldn’t develop in terms of industry or trade and this helped with religion being the sole focus of the city.

Jerusalem grew in Jewish culture around the year 1000 BCE. The Leader, David chose Jerusalem as the national capital for strategic reasons: to eliminate the competition of the resident Jesubites and not give avantage to the previous villages of the Jewish tribes.

The Jews were seminomadic people so they lacked traditions of masonry architecture, city building and city administration. David and his son reigned and followed the precedents of the nearby Phoenicians. Their  temple represented the validity of their dynasty and it was as the home for the deity that protected their rule.

Against Architecture: The Rise and Fall of the Temple

Before settling, the tribes honored a mobile sanctuary, known as the Ark the Covenant. So, David programmed a stable ritual for new state and placed it in a permanent sanctuary,a hill called Mount Moriah. The temple was named ‘Solomon’s Temple’ or as known properly ‘First Temple’.

It resembled a Mycenaean megaron by its narrow oblong volume raised on a tall platform reached by the axial stair. it had hypostyle halls, residential courts and a harem. Like Egyptian and Mesopotamian temples, its walls formed a temenos and it also had an outdoor altar for sacrifices.

 

Their economy was highly damaged after the creation of the temple . However, the temple had contribution to the monumental architecture in terms of being part natural and part human-made. After the state began to disintegrate, Babylonians destroyed temple completely and then in order to honour god, Second Temple was built.

The second temple of Jerusalem was built around 535 BCE and King Harold rebuilt it during the late first century in Grand style. For protection, he transformed the hill into the largest temple mount. Builders created artificial plateau not only just for the temple to sat on also it is compelling monumentality in the city.

Cities Of Mesopotamia: Mud, Gods and Urbanism

Mesopotamia is the name of the regions that one of the first places that the first people gathered around. The earliest urban settlements were in Mesopotamia in 5000 BCE in Sumer. Eridu, Uruk, Nippur and Ur were some of the city-states in Mesopotamia.

They constrcted massive mud brick towels over their collective grain deposits. These ziggurats represented the union of heavenly and human agency strunggling to defend the area’s agricultural output. In Egypti Nile yielded a much more stable agricultural supply. The pyramids symbolized the continuity of daily life into the afterlife within the eternal cycle of fertility.

In Southwest Asia, people used written language to informations. The first written language in Mesopotamia was Sumerian. To store these informations, architects designed monumental structures, which is called mud tablets. Design professionals tried to develop a new urban order for living, different approach from the world’s nature. Street alignments, drainage and roofing are some of the developments of the dwellings. They discovered some new techniques and materials to simplify their life for example: dikes, buttresses and cladding.

Ziggurats were built by createing stairways that goes to the their Gods by putting mud-bricks on top of each other. The ziggurat was an elevated temple that consists of steps and they saw it as a sacred place. It loomed as a tangible  axis mundi (a sacred center of the world) where the priveleged class of high priests and governers performed rituals. So, it refers to Mesopotamian historic religious and a transition between the earth and heaven.

The Sumerians created architecturally distinct parts of the city for the storage of agricultural surplus and the orchestration of rituals meant guarantee the land’s continued fertility. Their architects designed sacred enclosures, what the Greeks later called a temenos, using orthogonally aligned storehouses to frame elevated temples. ”Ziggurat” meant ”house of the mountain, mountain of the storm, bond between heaven and earth”

The first Ziggurat – The White Temple of Uruk

 

 

 

  The Great Ziggurat of Ur.

 

 

 

 

People used clay for writing in addition to material in structures and constructs. Muds are used for both as a mud bricks for materiel of constructs and mud tablets for common language of architectural systems. As a result of this, reproducible architectural system was created. Military duty in walls, water management in its canals and the circulation of goods and people in streets can be given as examples for this common system.

 

 

The Oval Temple at Khafaje

 

 

 

 

 

The Oval Temple begun around 2650 BCE, demonstrates the development of formal order in the creation of urban temples. Rather than adjusting to its surroundings, the new structure requirted the demolition of many nearby houses to accommodate the oval figure of its outer walls. Extended outer walls to protecting the priestly residance. Entry court consisted of public zones,offices for the temple administrarions. The inner court had workshops, storage rooms, bakeries.

Uruk’s White Temple, dedicated to Anu, the first true ziggurat, rose as the focus of the city’s religion and government. While the ziggurat offered a palpable symbol of Uruk and its founding destinyi the city produced many other types of temples to important cults.The constant building and rebuilding of temples in Uruk came as a response to the fragility of existence in Sumer.

 

Vernacular Archietcture: A Language of Mud, Logs, Hides and Stones

The part we were assigned to read was about vernacular architecture. This part starts with stating that all animals have an instinct to bouild a shelter for themselves and homans differ from them by learning how to bouild from others/ sharing ideas. and that the humans used a lot of elements that served in different purposes (huge oval leaves being used as covering and bedding.)

While the humans were living in temporary places before they move to a next campsite the most features that they took into account while thy were bouilding was the wind and the safety from other animals/fights.They used minimum of materials and caused little disturbance to the land. And they transported their materials on top the camels that they were travelling with. During seasonal migration the occupants left some material that they were going to use in place for when they come back next year. Their tents were had flexibility that allowed them to adjust to the land’s conditions without changing the ecology.

People started using mud bricks but it’s not durable to tremors (in 2003 in Iran all the buildings were leveled by a great tremor). But there are other ways to use build with earth: dig or cut into it; mixing soil, straw, reeds and leaves balls that can be stacked.. There are a lot of examples to dug out hauses through history : villages in China are some of the examples of it. pit hauses also had a recurring problems with humidity.

The other method of piling up mud balls (which is called banco in West Africa and cob tecnique in English) was the most common form of constrution until recently.Togo, Burkina Faso and Benin had designed baco dwellings as documented in 1970s. in the villages of Koufitoukou used that tecnique in form and decoration that provided a metapor of the human body. The mothod of building with mud brick continued in Southwest Asia in the immense stepped towers and ziggurats that were built during the third millenium BCE.

The Fulani’s solidified wigarm huts suggest that the design of temporary nomadic structures served as the logical souce of  permanent architectural solutions.

The reading also explains how people made buildings that is stable to the force of gravity; they used compression and tension to create arches. So that the walls of vernacular buildings are often twice as thick as the base than the top. And there are different methods to create this: post&beam, cantilever, corbelled arch and true arch. Different methots also added to this’ making; to make buildings more durable, people tried baking mud bricks which worked.

Overall the same dwelling methods has been found at different places in the world which states that the human tried different methods to survive and change their place’s as their needs change/ make better shelters and shared ideas with each other to make better living conditions for themselves. Like some hauses were made so that their hauses could serve extended family of twenty to thirty members. in some places the structures may have housed up to 200 people.

People’s one of the consern while building was getting the smoke out of their houses. They used different tecniques to solve that problem. The people used fire to shape their sculptures and later they started using geometry to organized the layings of stones and draft perfectly randered surfaces; make more durable buildings .

Some specialists worked with stone masonry and the art of its assembly and decoration. Trained architects designed the worksthat were built to endure more years unlike vernacular buildings.