History of Architecture.: Historic Style Is The Particular Phase, The Characteristic Manner of Design, Which Prevails

NAMA : AHMAD KURNIAWAN
N IM :5112413014
PRODI ; TEKNIK ARSITEKTUR
HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE.
A history of architecture is a record of mans efforts to build beautifully. The

erection of structures devoid of beauty is mere building, a trade and not an art. Edifices
in which strength and stability alone are sought, and in designing which only utilitarian
considerations have been followed, are properly works of engineering. Only when the
idea of beauty is added to that of use does a structure take its place among works of
architecture. We may, then, define architecture as the art which seeks to harmonize in a
building the requirements of utility and of beauty. It is the most useful of the fine arts
and the noblest of the useful arts. It touches the life of man at every point. It is
concerned not only in sheltering his person and ministering to his comfort, but also in
providing him with places for worship, amusement, and business; with tombs,
memorials, embellishments for his cities, and other structures for the varied needs of a
complex civilization. It engages the services of a larger portion of the community and
involves greater outlays of money than any other occupation except agriculture.
Everyone at some point comes in contact with the work of the architect, and from this
universal contact architecture derives its significance as an index of the civilization of
an age, a race, or a people.
It is the function of the historian of architecture to trace the origin, growth, and
decline of the architectural styles which have prevailed in different lands and ages, and
to show how they have reflected the great movements of civilization. The migrations,
the conquests, the commercial, social, and religious changes among different peoples
have all manifested themselves in the changes of their architecture, and it is the
historians function to show this. It is also his function to explain the principles of the
styles, their characteristic forms and decoration, and to describe the great masterpieces
of each style and period.
Style is a quality; the historic styles are phases of development. Style is
character expressive of definite conceptions, as of grandeur, gaiety, or solemnity. An
historic style is the particular phase, the characteristic manner of design, which prevails
at a given time and place. It is not the result of mere accident or caprice, but of
intellectual, moral, social, religious, and even political conditions. Gothic architecture
could never have been invented by the Greeks, nor could the Egyptian styles have
grown up in Italy. Each style is based upon some fundamental principle springing from
its surrounding civilization, which undergoes successive developments until it either
reaches perfection or its possibilities are exhausted, after which a period of decline
usually sets in. This is followed either by a reaction and the introduction of some
radically new principle leading to the evolution of a new style, or by the final decay and
extinction of the civilization and its replacement by some younger and more virile
element. Thus the history of architecture appears as a connected chain of causes and
effects succeeding each other without break, each style growing out of that which
preceded it, or springing out of the fecundating contact of a higher with a lower
civilization. To study architectural styles is therefore to study a branch of the history of
civilization.
Technically, architectural styles are identified by the means they employ to cover
enclosed spaces, by the characteristic forms of the supports and other members (piers,
columns, arches, mouldings, traceries, etc.), and by their decoration. The plan should
receive special attention, since it shows the arrangement of the points of support, and
hence the nature of the structural design. A comparison, for example, of the plans of the
Hypostyle Hall at Karnak and of the Basilica of Constantine shows at once a radical
difference in constructive principle between the two edifices, and hence a difference of
style.
Structural principles. All architecture is based on one or more of three
fundamental structural principles; that of the lintel, of the arch or vault, and of the truss.
The principle of the lintel is that of resistance to transverse strains, and appears in all
construction in which a cross-piece or beam rests on two or more vertical supports. The
arch or vault makes use of several pieces to span an opening between two supports.
These pieces are in compression and exert lateral pressures or thrusts which are
transmitted to the supports or abutments. The thrust must be resisted either by the
massiveness of the abutments or by the opposition to it of counter-thrusts from other
arches or vaults. Roman builders used the first, Gothic builders the second of these
means of resistance. The truss is a framework so composed of several pieces of wood
or metal that each shall best resist the particular strain, whether of tension or
compression, to which it is subjected, the whole forming a compound beam or arch. It is
especially applicable to very wide spans, and is the most characteristic feature of
modern construction. How the adoption of one or another of these principles affected
the forms and even the decoration of the various styles, will be shown in the succeeding
chapters.
Historic development. Geographically and chronologically, architecture appears
to have originated in the Nile xxiv valley. A second centre of development is found in
the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, not uninfluenced by the older Egyptian art.
Through various channels the Greeks inherited from both Egyptian and Assyrian art, the
two influences being discernible even through the strongly original aspect of Greek
architecture. The Romans in turn, adopting the external details of Greek architecture,
transformed its substance by substituting the Etruscan arch for the Greek construction of
columns and lintels. They developed a complete and original system of construction and
decoration and spread it over the civilized world, which has never wholly outgrown or
abandoned it.
With the fall of Rome and the rise of Constantinople these forms underwent in
the East another transformation, called the Byzantine, in the development of Christian
domical church architecture. In the North and West, meanwhile, under the growing
institutions of the papacy and of the monastic orders and the emergence of a feudal
civilization out of the chaos of the Dark Ages, the constant preoccupation of architecture
was to evolve from the basilica type of church a vaulted structure, and to adorn it
throughout with an appropriate dress of constructive and symbolic ornament. Gothic
architecture was the outcome of this preoccupation, and it prevailed throughout northern
and western Europe until nearly or quite the close of the fifteenth century.
During this fifteenth century the Renaissance style matured in Italy, where it
speedily triumphed over Gothic fashions and produced a marvellous series of civic
monuments, palaces, and churches, adorned with forms borrowed or imitated from
classic Roman art. This influence spread through Europe in the sixteenth century, and
ran a course of two centuries, after which a period of servile classicism was followed by
a rapid decline in taste. To this succeeded the eclecticism and confusion of the
nineteenth century, to xxv which the rapid growth of new requirements and
development of new resources have largely contributed.
In Eastern lands three great schools of architecture have grown up
contemporaneously with the above phases of Western art; one under the influence of
Mohammedan civilization, another in the Brahman and Buddhist architecture of India,
and the third in China and Japan. The first of these is the richest and most important.
Primarily inspired from Byzantine art, always stronger on the decorative than on the
constructive side, it has given to the world the mosques and palaces of Northern Africa,
Moorish Spain, Persia, Turkey, and India. The other two schools seem to be wholly
unrelated to the first, and have no affinity with the architecture of Western lands.
Of Mexican, Central American, and South American architecture so little is
known, and that little is so remote in history and spirit from the styles above
enumerated, that it belongs rather to archology than to architectural history, and will
not be considered in this work.
Note.The readers attention is called to the Appendix to this volume, in which
are gathered some of the results of recent investigations and of the architectural progress
of the last few years which could not readily be introduced into the text of this edition.
The General Bibliography and the lists of books recommended have been revised and
brought up to date.

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NAMA : AHMAD KURNIAWAN

A history of architecture is a record of mans efforts to build beautifully. The

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