Arch i spermæ

Plants usually known as Gymnospermæ. Architecture. Art of building with reference to beauty or to expre ion as well as to use. The term, thus restricted, excludes constructions in which utility alone is sought. These belong, according to their importance, their durability, and the science exhibited in their erection, to building or to engineering. Architecture includes some dwellings and the edifices erccted to expre ideas, civic or religious, or to perpetuate the memory of men or of events. These last two cla es of buildings comprise monumental architecture. Scarcely any race or nation above savagery has failed to contribute some durable reminder of its existence and some expre ion of its prevailing beliefs to the architecture of the world, the form of this contribution depending upon the nature of the idea sought to be expre ed, the skill of the builders, and the materials and modes of construction available to them. While every race has left monuments, by far the most important line of architectural development, artistically as well as historically, began in Egypt ab. 3500 B.C. and is the main current of architectural history. For styles developed by it, or outside it, see ASSYRIAN, BYZANTINE, CHINESE, GOTHIC, GRECIAN. MAHOMETAN, RENAISSANCE, ROMAN, and ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE. The earliest works of man that now remain, the Pyramids of Egypt, are purely monumental. Whatever scientific or other utility they may have had was incidental to their main purpose to preserve the memories of their builders. Their forms are simply those which promise the longest duration, and they are entirely without exterior ornament; but the exactitude and finish of the workmanship are not only wonderful, in view of their vast antiquity, but exceed the attainment, in these respects, of intervening or of modern times. The great pyramid of Cheops contains far more material than any other human erection (eighty-five million cubic ft. of stone). Other IMG:content-0241.png:[merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][merged small][subsumed][ocr errors] Grecian architecture arise from the fact that the earliest Egyptian buildings were not properly constructions, but excavations, and that the forms and ma ivene of design proper to excavations were retained in buildings that were erected and not excavated; whereas the design of the Grecian temples was in every respect suitable to actual constructions. Three orders resulted from the Grecian application of the Egyptian elements of construction; of each the most conspicuous badge is the form and decoration of the capital of the column, but in each minor differences are observable, modifying the entire work. An order properly includes the forms and proportions of the members of the portico, the inclosed cellar being merely faced with plain walls. The order prescribes not only the pro IMG:content-0242.jpg:[blocks in formation] The cla ification of the orders was made after Grecian architecture had ceased to be practiced, and is that of Vitruvius, ab. 14 B.C. The Grecian orders were the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. The occasional employment, notably in the Erechtheum at Athens, of representations of human figures, instead of columns, to support an entablature, has led some writers to add a The Roman temples were imitated from those of the Greeks, and the imitation was in the main a debasement, tending to substitute an expre ion of luxury and magnificence for the more intellectual qualities of simplicity, purity and harmony of the originals. There is no completely developed Roman example of a Doric temple, and none of an Ionic temple that does not lose by comparison with the Greek. With the Corinthian order the case was somewhat different. As used in Greece, the elegance aimed at in this order degenerated into feeblene , IMG:content-0243.jpg:[graphic][graphic] IMG:content-0244.jpg:[graphic] Par the non, Athens, Restored (Greek Doric). Caryatic order. The Par the non at Athens, the most famous of Grecian buildings, is an octastyle (having eight columns in front), peripteral (entirely surrounded by columns) Doric temple. In the Doric order the stylobate (base) is continuous, each shaft resting directly upon it, without the intervention of a separate base; the columns are fluted, tapering slightly from the base, not regularly but with a slight outward curve (entasis), and four to six diameters in height. The capital consists of a necking (echinus), a convex curve (ovolo), and a straight-sided abacus. The entablature is subdivided into architrave, frieze and cornice, each of these members being subdivided. The frieze is a succe ion of triglyphs (upright members, each bearing two grooves), and metopes (square panels), the latter occupied by the sculptured and tinted reliefs that constitute the chief decoration of a Doric temple. Above the entablature at each end is the pediment, also occupied by a group of statuary. The Ionic order is supposed to have been derived from Asia, and A yrian and Persian examples support this supposition, as respects its most distinguishing feature, the voluted capital. The Ionic order is more slenderly proportioned than the Doric, the column being, in the best examples, more than nine diameters in height, of which the molded base occupies of a diameter, and the capital, including the necking, to f. The entablature is subdivided as in the Doric order, but the frieze is continuous, the decoration being the richly carved moldings of the capital, architrave, and upper member of the cornice. Grecian Ionic Erechtheum, Athens (Greek Ionic). temples were seldom or never peripteral, being restricted to a portico at each end. The Corinthian order is doubtle of Grecian origin, its distinguishing mark being a capital much taller than that of either of the other orders, attaining com IMG:content-0245.jpg:[blocks in formation] especially in the design of the capital. The Roman architects perceived this weakne and undertook to remedy it by developing the volutes at the angles, and confining the foliage more closely to the bell of the capital. These changes improved the capital as a structural member. The temple of Jupiter Stator in Rome is the best example. The volutes were finally developed into the proportions of an Ionic capital, being still set diagonally, and the foliage beneath retained. This modification is the distinguishing feature of the Composite, the fourth of the five orders recognized by Vitruvius, the fifth being the so-called Tuscan, a Roman modification of the Doric, commonly used on a much smaller scale, in which the column is not fluted, is provided with a separate base, and is crowned with a capital materially modified from the Greek Doric, though retaining its several members. The arch was first extensively employed by the Romans as a constructive expedient, together with its derivatives, the dome, the half-dome, the wagon, or continuous vault, and the cro vault; but none of these structural features was developed, or made the basis of the design. Columns were employed, except in the temples, as decorative features, and applied to the faces of the piers, which were the real supports, the column never appearing in cla ical Roman architecture, except in part of the order, and in connection with an entablature, which, when used in connection with an arched construction, was not a continuous, horizontal member, but a fragment of a lintel, obviously performing no economical function. For this reason Roman architecture has been said to be transitional between the Grecian, in which the construction of post and lintel was the basis of the architecture, and the Romanesque, in which the arched construction served the same purpose. The epithet Cla ic is restricted to the works of the Greek and Roman builders, in which the Grecian orders were employed, and to modern works in imitation of these. IMG:content-0246.jpg:[graphic] Roman Doric Order. During the decline of the Empire and after its fall, the Roman methods of construction were adopted in all the countries in which the Romans had left monuments, and in these the influence of Roman building continued to be traceable throughout the whole of the Romanesque and Gothic periods, till 1400. The Basilica, a building of purely Roman type, is memorable as having furnished the type of the Christian church. It was a combined market-place, or merchants' exchange, and tribunal. It was a hall, its length twice to thrice its width. with a roof supported by columns; on each side of the colonnade was a lower building. The tribunal or court-room had a rece , often apsidal in plan, at one end, sometimes at each end, as in Trajan's at Rome, sometimes at one side, as in that of Fano, designed and described by Vitruvius. The basilicas were commonly of wood; our knowledge of them is derived from descrip; tions, from fragments of ground-plans preserved in tablets and from examinations, as that of Trajan and of Pompeii, IMG:content-0247.jpg:[blocks in formation] Pantheon, the same rationalizing proce which the early Romanesque builders applied to the wall-arch. The St. Sophia, in Constantinople, 532-537, is as clearly the earliest example of Byzantine building as the palace of Diocletian of w. Romanesque. In this is found the origin of the domed architecture of Mahometan countries, of the mosques of Spain, Egypt, Persia and India, as well as of the Greek Church architecture, including that of Ru ia, On the Italian shore of the Adriatic the style derived from Rome through Constantinople was practiced together with that derived directly from Rome. St. Mark's at Venice, consecrated 1085, and San Vitale at Ravenna, 530, are distinctly Byzantine buildings, and the style penetrated as far as Perigneux (St. Front, 1047) and even to Aix-la-Chapelle (Charlemagne's chapel, 796-804). These domed churches are exceptional; the Roman basilica remained the church type throughout western Europe. The desire for a durable roof of masonry was the motive of the development of Romanesque architecture. The mechanical difficulty of bridging wide spaces with masonry is illustrated in some Romanesque churches by the fact that while the aisles were roofed with groined vaulting, the wider naves were covered with continuous wagon vaults, as with roofs and ceilings of timber. The difficulty and awkwardne of uniting semi-circular arches of different spans and heights led to the introduction, in France, ab. 1150, of the pointed arch, which had been employed by the Arabian builders in Egypt, three centuries earlier. The application of this device made comparatively easy a more complicated system of vaulting than had before been po ible. Within le than a century after its first appearance the vault-and-buttre system of the cathedrals was fully developed, while a system of modeling, with reference to the expre ion of function, had been extended to all the details of buildings. Gothic architecture prevailed throughout Europe during the 13th and 14th centuries. During the 15th the revival of letters in Italy led to a diligent study of the forms of cla ical architecture, and the result was the so-called Renai ance, in which these forms were again introduced. The only new structural form then introduced was a cupola, much taller in proportion to its diameter than that employed by the Roman or Byzantine builders. The first example of this was furnished by Brunelleschi in the dome of the cathedral of Florence, 1420-44; it was followed by Albert i, Bramante, and Michelangelo (in St. Peter's at Rome), in which the dome was the dominating feature of the building, both within and without. Architectural details were borrowed or compiled from cla ical Roman architecture. The style thus formed has continued to prevail throughout Europe. In France, some parts of Germany, Great Britain, and America, churches are often designed in Romanesque or Gothic forms; and in these countries, especially in England, Germany, and the U. S., systematic efforts have been made, within the past half century, to revive med iæval architecture, and to apply its principles to secular as well as to ecclesiastical structures. In spite of these efforts, the Renai ance continues to be the architectural style most in vogue with all civilized nations.