Architecture: A Very Short Introduction

Given that a building has all these aspects, it is possible to write about architecture in ways that bring one or another of them to the fore. A history of building technology would be one possibility. This would be a story of progress, as more technically sophisticated ways of building superseded the more primitive ones. There would be significant advances, like the introduction of cement, and the arch, and a demonstration of the new types of building that these innovations made possible. What we lose sight of in this particular narrative is the fact that, at a given time, it is likely that few buildings will be technically advanced. Most buildings are just ordinary, and do not fall down or stop being useful the moment a technical advance has been made. Just as many people in Europe live in houses that were built a hundred years or more ago, so in ancient Rome the vaulted structures for which we now particularly remember the Romans were not the buildings that made up the fabric of most of the city, and in fact nearly all the famous Roman structures date from quite late in the history of the Roman Empire, so they were unknown to most Romans. Most significantly, they were unknown to the only Roman writer on architecture whose writings are known to us: Vitruvius. He lived too early.

It is possible to exclude technical matters, or relegate them to the background. Then the history of architecture can become a story about different styles of building. One set of shapes gradually transformed into another over the course of time. This type of history makes it sound as if there is in architectural forms a will to evolve and develop. Traditions grow up, and the architects keep trying out new possibilities, some of which are seen as improvements and are copied by others, before being improved upon in their turn. This approach can lead to a preoccupation with stylistic analysis that can lose sight of the fact that there is a practical rationale to building. It can also lead to the setting aside of the social and economic issues, which can be interesting, and which are sometimes certainly the most important aspects of a building. There is also the complicating fact that things look different from close at hand and from a distance. What looks to us like a gradual change across the course of centuries might well have been a much less even-tempered process at the time. It is always unusual for people to change their ways of doing things, and often what happens when a new idea takes over is that a generation of people grows old and inactive, while younger people inculcated with the new idea take up the tools. Whether the change looks gradual or abrupt may depend on how far we are from the event. Tragedy is farce in close-up.

There is a great deal of architecture around, from the recent and distant past around the world. It would be impossible to collect it all together and present it to a reader, especially in a very short introduction. It is necessary to be selective, and the particular buildings that one selects will very according to the story that has to be told. The aim of this book is to open up ways of thinking about architecture that show how rich the topic is, which might make it confusing at times. The following chapters discuss different themes, and I have introduced buildings in order to help make particular points in the argument. Therefore the illustrated buildings are not ordered chronologically. In order to help give an idea of the order in which things happened, there is a timeline at the back of the book. It will be noticed that there are more examples of recent architecture than from the distant past. This is for two reasons. One is that there simply are more buildings now standing that are of recent date. The other is that we tend to be more interested in things that are closer to us. If I look at a pyramid as a building that stands for a civilization that lasted for, say, 3,000 years, then I can feel that in the grand sweep of things the coverage is adequate. But if I were to take the same approach to the architecture of the last 3,000 years, then I would feel that the coverage had been ludicrously inadequate. It would sound facetious and satirical to summarize European architecture in a single monument. The medieval cathedrals would be the large monuments from the middle of the period in question, but I would worry about presenting them as the only things that really mattered.