Architecture: A Very Short Introduction

What I am trying to do here is to give a sense of how different perspectives influence what it is that we see when we see buildings. They are involved in a complex way with an indefinite number of cultural and technical matters, and therefore they can have different levels of significance in different spheres. Moreover, when we try to pigeonhole them in categories, they have ways of escaping. We establish the categories, but then have to acknowledge that if we look closely they are not exact, and there are borderline cases. The more we know about a specific culture, the more statements about it sound like sweeping generalizations. What looks like a gradual evolution from a distance might have been a painful disillusionment for individuals, and on the contrary something that looks like a fault-line across Western culture might actually have been a fairly gentle process that was no more traumatic than a number of other changes. Nevertheless, we need some sort of framework if we are to understand anything about our orientation in the subject, and this is the framework that we have. It is just as well, though, to realize that it must not be expected to carry too heavy a load.

A closer look

Within each of the broad periods mentioned above, there is room for subdivision. For example, when the ancient world is understood in a very general way it can be quite adequate to call the architecture of Greece and Rome generically ‘classical’, but for a more detailed discussion this would not be helpful. The architecture of ancient Greece itself has a classical era, the 5th century BC, preceded by an archaic era, and followed by the Hellenistic era. Rome has its own archaic period, a Republican, and then an Imperial period. These divisions are taken from a mixture of artistic and political changes. The work from the archaic periods looks less accomplished and developed than the later work, but the Greek Hellenistic and the Roman Imperial phases are political eras, which had an effect on architecture, because the increased concentration of wealth in each of these periods meant that some buildings could be more lavish than ever before.

In the medieval period many different styles of architecture developed. Churches that tried to imitate Roman vaults and arches are now called ‘Romanesque’. Later churches that used pointed arches and more decorative window tracery are called ‘Gothic’. Gothic is subdivided into different local styles. In England we find the Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular styles. In France we find High Gothic, Flamboyant, and Rayonnant. The names of local styles are mostly derived from ideas that describe the effect of the architecture, or the shapes of tracery. ‘Romanesque’ also refers us back to the form of the building, which is reminiscent of those of Rome. In England and northern France, Romanesque architecture can be called ‘Norman’, after the dukes of Normandy who commissioned it, so this is a ‘political’ name for the same style. Similarly the name ‘Gothic’ is political, in that it refers to a body of people, the Goths, who laid waste to Rome. This does not tell us anything useful about the architecture, but it does tell us about how the architecture was seen at the time that the name was coined, in the 17th century, long after the cathedral-builders had stopped building in that manner.

Similarly, it no longer seems quite satisfactory for us to think of ourselves as living in the late days of the Renaissance. At some time, somewhere, it must have come to an end, but just when that happened is difficult to decide. The austere work of Brunelleschi and Alberti was followed by more decorative work by architects such as Bernini and Borromini, that overlaid rich ornament on a classical background, in a manner that we call Baroque and which reached its fullest development in 18th-century France and Germany (Figure 11). While this is certainly part of the same tradition, there is a different range of artistic intentions here, and so there is a different stylistic name. There was a reaction to these excesses, when the elaboration was, so to speak, stripped away and the classical order made clear again. This movement, known as Neoclassicism, was also nourished with new knowledge from archaeological investigations in Greece, which brought to light a better understanding of the architectural forms of the ancient Greek world, which had been officially revered, even when they were not really known.