Page 224 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol I - Abraham to Coal

architecture 109

group of buildings. However, the field overlaps with
interior design and with landscape and urban design.
Architects respond to the socioeconomic and cultural
contexts in which they are practicing. Many architects
agree with the ancient Roman Vitruvius (c. 90 BCE–c. 20
BCE ), who wrote that architecture must be stable, useful,
and beautiful.To accomplish this architects must under-
stand (a) how to employ one or more structural systems
to support the design, (b) how the design will be used
The remains of peat and a stone wall of a
once it is built, and (c) what a client or society will find
Neolithic settlement in Ireland.
visually pleasing. Therefore, architects are faced with
choices regarding approaches to the building site, avail-
able materials, and building technologies. roof. In Cameroon’s Fali culture, residential compounds
are inspired by the forms, orientation, and dimensions of
Prehistoric and Nonurban the ideal human body.The Dogon culture of Mali builds
Architecture men’s assembly houses, open-sided huts in which anthro-
Paleolithic era (c. 35,000 BCE–8000 BCE) habitations pomorphic wooden pillars, representing the ancestors,
were caves and rock shelters. Early nomadic humans also support a thick roof of dried vegetation that shades the
created portable woven architecture—oval huts of verti- interior but allows air to circulate.
cal poles that were covered with hides or thatched reeds. A similar situation is found in North America, where
In the Neolithic era (c. 8000 BCE–1500 BCE), herders and the Anasazi people built “Great Houses,” such as Pueblo
farmers erected permanent settlements, including monu- Bonito, New Mexico (tenth–eleventh centuries CE), in
mental buildings that merged with surrounding land- which sandstone walls defined adjacent living units
scapes. They crudely quarried large stones (megaliths), accessed from openings in the wooden roofs. Hundreds
moved them by barge and by sled on rollers, and raised of units encircled central plazas that served as the roof of
them on earthen ramps to create trabeated (or post-and- subterranean kivas. Entered through their ceilings of cor-
lintel) structures of vertical columns supporting horizon- belled logs (each layer projecting farther inward than the
tal beams.The most famous example of such a structure layer below), kivas were sacred gathering spaces. When
is Stonehenge (c. 2750 BCE–1500 BCE) on Salisbury threatened by enemies, the Anasazi abandoned the Great
Plain, England, a series of concentric circles probably Houses for dwellings built into the sides of easily defen-
built to accommodate festivals held by related warrior sible, south-facing cliffs, such as those at Mesa Verde, Col-
tribes. The more common dolmen was a sepulchral orado (twelfth–thirteenth centuries CE).
chamber that was built of trabeated megaliths and buried
within an artificial hill, called a cairn. Ancient Temple Ziggurats,
Little remains of more humble buildings, except their Tombs, and Palaces
influence on the surviving vernacular architecture of vil- Urban civilization—dependent on the development of
lages around the world, rooted in the myths and tradi- writing, trade, diversified employment, and a centralized
tions of the people. In African Cameroon each Bamileke government—produced a variety of monumental build-
village has a central open space, chosen as sacred by the ing types, generally to glorify its gods and god-kings. In
ancestors.The adjacent chief’s house, an aggrandized ver- the first cities of Mesopotamia, temples were raised heav-
sion of the others in the village, has bamboo walls enward on giant stepped platforms called ziggurats. Both
fronted by a porch and sheltered by a thatched conical temple and ziggurat were built of sun-dried mud brick