Architecture: A Very Short Introduction

The buildings that are most consistently associated with virtue and high-mindedness in the Western tradition are the buildings of ancient Greece, especially the Parthenon in Athens, which has always been seen as a high point of artistic accomplishment (Figure 7). One of the things that marks out Athens culturally is that a great many ideas were developed there that are with us still — ideas such as democracy, and philosophy. The monuments that were built at the time of the golden age of Athens, in the 5th century BC, are associated with the foundations of Western society, and because of that association have unmatched authority. This was the case even during periods of time when the actual form of the buildings was not widely known, such as in the 18th century, when the ancient sanctuary was used for military purposes by the Turks — and casual visitors have never been welcomed into military bases. Also by then the form of the ancient buildings was not altogether clear, because there had been an accumulation of various additions — towers and fortifications. Back in ancient times, classical architecture had been adopted by the Romans, and their versions of it spread throughout their vast empire — across Europe, and into Africa and the Middle East. There have been many versions of this ‘classical’ architecture over the centuries, and it has been understood in different ways, so we find it adopted for its democratic and philosophical overtones by Thomas Jefferson when he laid out the university campus at Virginia, inspired by the ideals that launched the constitution of the newly independent USA, while Albert Speer played up its capacity for imperial pomp in his designs for Hitler’s Berlin. There was a vogue for specifically Greek classicism among Irish Catholics in the earlier 19th century, because they felt kinship not with the ancient but with the modern Greeks in their struggle for independence.

_{7. The Parthenon, Athens, Greece (447–436 BC); architects: Ictinus and Callicrates working with the sculptor Phidias. The Parthenon was the largest of the Greek temples from the 5th century BC, the ‘classical’ age of Greece. It was extravagant, on account of decorations and refinements that are not apparent in a general photograph. Phidias, the greatest sculptor of the age was employed here, certainly to make the cult figure of the goddess Athena, and perhaps to supervise the building works. There were fine sculpted decorations showing Greeks wrestling with centaurs and Amazons in the square panels visible above the columns that run right round the building. Uniquely there was also a frieze in low relief on the wall of the temple, depicting a great procession. The building is of solid marble, which can be worked very precisely, and the use of optical refinement is more evident here than anywhere else. All the architectural lines that look straight are in fact very slightly curved.}