Greek architecture begins with the simple houses of the Dark Age and culminates in the monumental temples of the Classical period and the elaborately planned cities and sanctuaries of the Hellenistic period. As in any time or place, the raw materials available and the technologies developed to utilize them largely determined the nature of the architecture. The principal materials of Greek architecture were wood, used for supports and roof beams; unbaked brick, used for walls, especially of private houses; limestone and marble, used for columns, walls, and upper portions of temples and other public buildings; terracotta (baked clay), used for roof tiles and architectural ornaments; and metals, especially bronze, used for some decorative details. Greek architects of the Archaic and Classical periods used these materials to develop a limited range of building types, each of which served a fixed purposereligious, civic, domestic, funerary, or recreational. The principal forms of religious architecture were open-air altars, temples, and treasuries. The altar, the earliest religious structure, always served as the focus of prayer and sacrifices.
The temple, which developed in the 8th century BC, housed the statue of a god or goddess to whom the sanctuary was dedicated. The treasury, a small temple-like building, held offerings to gods and goddesses made by city-states and their citizens at sanctuaries such as Olympia and Delphi. Other important public structures were not religious in function. They included the council house, where a governing council met; the law court; the fountain-house, a building where women filled their vases with water from a community fountain; and the stoa, a roofed colonnade or portico, open on one side and often with rooms set along the rear wall. These structures typically lined the principal public gathering place of the city, the agora, an open assembly area or marketplace Private houses took many forms. Most early dwellings had just one room, in the shape of a rectangle, an oval, or a rectangle with a curved back wall (an apse).
The Term Paper on Eighteenth Century Palladian Architecture Building
... architecture was popular enough for Lord Kames to bitterly declare it the preferred mode of building before the Gothic or the Greek ... the age of the great town house brought out these absurdly different styles. ... and the Romanesque mode. Stucco d walls, Mosaic floors, Palladian windows and Venetian ... buildings in Britain, but in certain cases sacrilegious. The copying of Greek or Roman temples, ...
Few Greek houses were ever impressive from the outside, because their walls were of relatively flimsy mud-brick or small stones. But when houses expanded into multiple rooms, the interiors could be airy and pleasant, as they were generally organized around a small courtyard. In the Hellenistic period kings and queens had grandiose palaces built at places such as Vergina in Macedonia and Alexandria in Egypt. The principal forms of funerary architecture were circular earthen mounds covering built tombs, rectangular earthen mounds with masonry facades, and mausoleums (large independent tombs typical of the Late Classical and Hellenistic periods).
Entertainment and recreational activities took place in the open-air theater; the roofed concert hall; the gymnasium, an open field surrounded by rows of columns, where youths met for exercise and intellectual discussion; the wrestling ground; the stadium; and baths. These various building types emerged at different times, but once established, remained fundamental. Like Greek art, Greek architecture consists of essential building types that were enriched and refined over time but rarely abandoned or replaced.
A The Temple The most characteristic Greek building is the colonnaded stone temple, built to house a cult statue of a god or goddess, that is, a statue to whom people prayed and dedicated gifts. Developed in the Archaic and Classical periods, the typical temple had a rectangular inner structure known as a cella, which was normally divided by two interior rows of columns. The cult statue usually stood at the rear of this room. Most temples faced east, and visitors entered on that side through a colonnaded front porch. The side walls of the cella extended forward onto the porch and two columns stood either between the projecting walls (in antis) or in front of them (prostyle).
The Essay on Greek Legacies
Greek Legacies The term legacy is depicted as something that is handed down or remains from previous generation or time. (Dictionary) The Greeks formed a new group of thoughts, which lead to the birth of democracy. Greek scientists such as Euclid, Pythagoras, and Archimedes made new discoveries that changed the course of mathematics. Architecture led to new possibilities. Using the definition of ...
A back porch gave symmetry to the whole, but was usually cut off from the interior of the cella by a solid wall.
Completely surrounding this inner core was a continuous line of columns called a peristyle. The best surviving examples of Greek temples are the Temple of Hephaistos (5th century BC) overlooking the Athenian agora and temples in southern Italy and Sicily from the 6th and 5th centuries. The origin of the peripteral temple (that is, one surrounded by columns on all sides) is still open to debate. In the Dark Age there was no obvious distinction between a house and a temple. In fact, the dwelling of a community’s leader or king probably also served as the focus of religious activity, with sacred objects and the statue of a divinity stored within it. One Dark Age building deserves special mention as a possible predecessor to later temple designs: a 10th-century structure at Lefkandi on the island of Euboea. Archaeological remains show that it was about 45 m (148 ft) long and 10 m (33 ft) wide, with walls made of mud brick set on a base of small stones, and a thatched roof.
Its most remarkable feature was an exterior colonnade of wooden posts, which seems to predict the peripteral temples of later eras. But this building was not a temple, and it could not have influenced later architects. It was built over the graves of a hero, his wife, and his horses, and was apparently intentionally destroyed soon after its construction. The Lefkandi hero-shrine is the first monumental structure in the history of Greek architecture, and testifies to the surprising capabilities of Dark Age builders. The earliest Greek temples looked like large one-room houses. Clay models and remains from a number of 8th-century BC sites indicate that most were rectangular or horseshoe-shaped, with wooden posts or pillars set in a porch at the front ends of the cella walls.
But the Temple of Hera (8th century BC) on the island of Smos was different. It was barnlike, long and narrow, with a single row of columns running down the middle of the cella. Sometime after its initial construction (possibly still during the 8th century BC), a continuous colonnade was added around the cella, making this the earliest truly peripteral temple in Greece. Hereafter, the exterior colonnade became the principal distinguishing feature of most Greek temples. The first monumental temples of stone were built in the 7th century BC, possibly in emulation of the massive buildings in Egypt that the Greeks would have seen or heard about. Also because of Egyptian influence, the Greeks began to carve monumental stone statues at this time.
The Term Paper on The Parthenon Doric Columns
When work began on the Parthenon in 447 BC, the Athenian Empire was at the height of its power. Work on the temple continued until 432; the Parthenon, then, represents the tangible and visible efflorescence of Athenian imperial power, unencumbered by the depredations of the Peloponnesian War. Likewise, it symbolizes the power and influence of the Athenian politician, Pericles, who championed its ...
Another factor leading to greater use of stone may have been the invention of heavy terracotta roof tiles, which needed more support than wood and mud brick could offer. The Temple of Poseidon at Isthmia (early 7th century BC) had a tile roof and was one of the first temples to use cut stone for its walls (its columns were still of wood).
B Architectural Orders By the end of the 7th century BC, two major architectural styles, or orders, emerged that dominated Greek architecture for centuries: Doric and Ionic. The Doric order developed on the Greek mainland and in southern Italy and Sicily, while the Ionic order developed a little later than the Doric order, in Ionia and on some of the Greek islands. In addition to Doric and Ionic, a third order, the Aeolic, developed in northwestern Asia Minor, but died out by the end of the Archaic period, and a fourth, the Corinthian, emerged late in the 5th century BC. No matter what order it belonged to, a temple facade was made up of three main parts, the steps, the columns, and the entablature (the part that rested on the columns).
Each of these parts also had three parts. There were three steps leading into the temple, the topmost of which was called the stylobate, and each column typically consisted of a base, shaft, and capital. The entablature consisted of an architrave (plain horizontal beam resting on the columns), a frieze, which corresponded to the beams supporting the ceiling, and a cornice, a set of decorative moldings that overhung the parts below. B1 Doric Order The Doric order was the simplest and sturdiest of the three orders. Its tapering columns rest directly on the stylobate. Doric columns have no base.
Shallow parallel grooves called flutes rise from the bottom to the top of the shaft and emphasize its function as a vertical support. Sharp ridges divide the flutes. At the top of the shaft a fluted ring called the necking provides a transition to the columns capital. The Doric capital consists of a rounded, cushionlike element called the echinus, and a horizontal square element called the abacus, which bears the load of the building above. The Doric architrave is a plain beam left undecorated so as not to disguise its function. Above it, the Doric frieze consists of alternating triglyphs and metopes.
The Term Paper on Greek Engineering Architecture Doric Order
... integral part of structures great and small, the Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian orders. The orders are also known for their columns style. ... The Greek Orders... 4 Doric Order... 4 Ionic Order... 5 Corinthian Order... 6 The Parthenon... 6 The Theater at Epidaurus... 7 The Temple of Athena ... touches for the roof had to have flat gables called pediments. The gutter ran along the top of the ...
Triglyphs are thick grooved panels that help support the weight of the structure above. Metopes are thinner panels that do no work in holding up the temple and hence invite decoration in the form of painting or sculpture. Overhanging the parts below is the decorative cornice molding. Like an eave it helps keep rainwater clear of the building. Above the horizontal cornice a low, pitched roof rises to produce a triangular pediment at either end of the temple. Sculpture fills the pediments of many Doric temples.
The simplicity of the Doric order clearly emphasizes the structural function of each part. Originally, paint also enlivened its surfaces. Architectural elements (especially in the entablature) were often painted deep red, yellow-gold, white, or blue. The oldest well-preserved Doric temple is the Temple of Hera at Olympia (590? BC), although there were temples built earlier in the Doric style. The propo ….
