Architecture: A Very Short Introduction

If we look more widely then this division of time becomes problematic, because the cultural changes that they signify were not in fact changes in the history of the world, just changes in Western European culture as we have chosen to constitute it. Not only were Asia and the Americas going through completely independent developments, even Eastern Europe developed quite differently. Ancient Greece is certainly included in the Western tradition, because of the influence it had on the Roman ways of thinking about fine buildings. Properly it makes no sense to speak of ‘medieval Greece’, because despite the fact that the Byzantine Empire produced memorable and sophisticated buildings, there was no Renaissance. In a way the whole of Byzantine culture was a succession of renaissances, and the Greek emperors’ sense of who they were was built on their links back to the ancient world. In 1453, just at the point when we might want to say that the Greek ‘middle ages’ came to an end, the capital Constantinople was overrun and the cultural change relocated the city, now called Istanbul, in a different tradition, where it became the capital of the Ottoman Empire. This caused the flight of Greek scholars to the west, and was one of the causes of the upsurge of knowledge of ancient texts that was so important in bringing about the Renaissance. So it is clear that the idea of the Middle Ages and a Renaissance is a fairly local tradition. There was no medieval period in America, because there had not been a classical civilization. There was no medieval period to the east of Europe because there was no reawakening of classical culture. It is worth noticing also that there is some doubt about whether, with the Renaissance, we are talking about a change in the art world or in a wider socio-economic world. In architectural history it is commonly agreed that the Renaissance began in 1420, when Brunelleschi started to build the dome of the cathedral at Florence. The dome not only surpassed the achievements of the Roman dome-builders, but Brunelleschi is supposed to have made careful studies of Roman ruins before embarking on the enterprise.

In art history the corresponding break is seen to be with the discovery of geometrical perspective, in Brunelleschi’s circle. However there was another far-reaching change that had been making more gradual progress, and that was the breakdown of feudal power as the merchant traders amassed fortunes that were greater than those of the hereditary princes. The sense of the novelty of Brunelleschi’s artistic enterprise was perhaps more because it was funded by new money than because it marked any radical break with the artistic achievements of his predecessors. I would not want to argue that the break away from feudalism and the invention of geometric perspective might have sprung from a common cause, which to me sounds too metaphysical. What does make sense to me is that the adoption of the new art by the people with new money made it seem all the more radical a departure. In our own day we see the great fortunes made from film, music, and computer businesses taking their place alongside the great inherited fortunes, and a different sense of style is associated with the way of life. The houses of the rich and famous often do not conform to the established canons of respectable taste, and may not be treated seriously by architectural historians now, but in the future, looking back, they will look as astonishing and unrepeatable as the houses of the 18th-century landed aristocracy. And strange as it may seem, we could find our own era represented in the architectural history books by these outlandish creations that seem utterly remote from our own experience of living now. Written up with one critical agenda the story might be called ‘Late Capitalism and the Triumph of Kitsch’. From another, imbued with the values of the new age, the same buildings could be exhibited as evidence that ‘Your Dreams Can Come True’.