Architectural History

The paper attempts to outline the urban visions and architectural ideas and vocabulary behind the formation of the large urban conglomeration in Japan, South Korea and China, and how the seeds of Western planning theories and architectural design practice have helped shaping and building the contemporary cites along the vast regions of Asia Pacific Region, and frame a local language in envisioning the city of the future.
Reflecting on the contributions from East Asia to the discourse of planning and design a city for the future as promoted by single actors, larger cultural movements and national elites fostering economic ambitions and political agendas of autocratic forces (e.g. from the experimental cities by the Metabolists in Japan, to the more “pragmatic” urban development projects fostered by local and national governments in South Korea and China), the paper tries to explain the key socio-economic factors and engines which have dramatically and radically transformed the skylines of the most dynamic and growing influential area of the world at the dawn of 21st century; it also aims at describe the origins of the various forms and elements of the modern built environments which have been shaped and molded by these same forces, and how/whether these urban forms embodies a true genuine East Asian vision of the city of the future, and what is the current trend in terms of new urban forms and architectural design research at the beginning of 21st century.

The Seagram Building in Manhattan (1954-58), by Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe and Philip Johnson, is one of those rare pieces of architecture
which has come to define an era. For Mies van der Rohe the achievement of the Seagram Building was the resolution of years of theoretical and exacting architectural investigation.
The influence of the Seagram Building stretches beyond that of a single work of a modernist master, however. Its significance is also felt in the way it changed planning legislation and became associated with the fragmentation of the urban realm, through the spread of the generic modernist combination of tower, plaza and artwork.

Las investigaciones realizadas para la elaboración del informe histórico-artístico encargado para la restauración de la torre campanario de la iglesia parroquial de Ricla (Zaragoza) han permitido trazar con bastante precisión la historia constructiva y la correspondiente crítica de autenticidad del monumento. Así, hoy estamos en condiciones de afirmar que fue levantada por Juan Lucas Botero el Joven en 1542 y recrecida durante la segunda mitad del siglo XVI. También se ha podido precisar que ese cuerpo superior terminó generando graves problemas estructurales, que fue derribado a comienzos del siglo XVIII, y reconstruido poco después, para reformarse a mediados del siglo XIX y, por última vez, un siglo más tarde, a mediados del XX. Para entonces, su característico chapitel bulboso fue sustituido por el remate edicular inspirado en el de la torre de Utebo que todavía puede contemplarse en la actualidad.

Early modern Amsterdam was an ultra-modern city, laid out conforming to the triple demand of functionality, beauty and profit; a city that takes a unique place in European urban history because of its location, design, and impressive scale. 'Metropolis in the Making' tells the story of Amsterdam becoming one of the largest cities in Europe in the seventeenth century. Amsterdam was one of the cradles of capitalism, but at the same time one of the most meticulously planned cities in the world.
After the Fall of Antwerp in 1585, Amsterdam took over its position as the main trade hub in northwestern Europe. The city grew rapidly to become the central harbour town – and one of the largest European cities. The boom in harbours and industry went hand in hand with an explosive population growth. This resulted in two huge city extensions in 1613 and 1663, multiplying the territory of Amsterdam by five. Around the old town, the now famous ring of canals was constructed. Beyond this residential zone mixed-use and industrial districts were laid out, with a series of harbour islands along the borders of the IJ. This book deals with the question how Amsterdam’s administration managed to realize these immense projects from the viewpoints of urban design, infrastructure, logistics, and finance.
The first part of this book is dedicated to the extension projects. A thorough analysis of all remaining administrative archives and a great many cartographic documents has enabled the author to reconstruct the decision process about the scale, design, and realization of the extensions. The second part contains chapters concerning land use, public space and water management. 'Metropolis in the Making' tells the story of one of the cradles of early modern capitalism and at the same time one of the most meticulously planned cities in the world.

Il saggio approfondisce le opere di architettura e scultura realizzate nel castello di Fontainebleau intorno al 1540, individuando un progetto unitario basato su un preciso programma politico e simbolico di auto-rappresentazione di Francesco I. Il coordinatore di questo progetto variegato e complesso è identificato in Francesco Primaticcio

The Gold Coast is Australia’s most rapidly changing city – regularly compared to Miami and Las Vegas for its embrace of bad taste and the good life; and with Dubai for its sudden moments of high-rise assuredness and seeming lack of restraint in either the ambitions of building or their manifestations.
Beautifully illustrated throughout, this book offers the first comprehensive history of the city and its architecture, documenting its rise from a series of seaside villages in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the present-day city, set to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Considering city plans, architectural works, landscape formations and modes of inhabitation over the time in which the Gold Coast has been peopled, it considers the role of architecture in carrying the city forward. Its main focus is on the contemporary city and the conditions that have given rise to its character - high rise, bad taste and skewed towards the beach edge.

This Master thesis directs attention to a paired subset of translation/transformation, namely mediation/derivation, by tracing the architectural work of Jan Ruhtenberg (1896-1975). Despite his leading role as educator and practitioner, Ruhtenberg may well be the best “unknown” architect of the modern era. Part of the forgetting is due to a tragic biography that reveals the prejudices of the 1950s; he was disgraced as a homosexual, dropped by clients, and rejected by his family. Consequently, many of his buildings have been demolished in recent years—most famously the 1939 El Pomar Carriage House Museum at the Broadmoor Resort, Colorado Springs (known as the “Round Barcelona Pavilion”).

The biographical narrative serves as a nodal matrix through which I approach the concepts of mediation—the medium of transmission that surfaces as agency at the interposition of stages between stimulus and reaction—and derivation—which I define as the action of drawing, obtaining, or deducing from a source; the transposition from one point to another—as transformative acts of translation so as to offer an interpretation of selected projects that emerged from his professional experience as well as geographical and socio-cultural displacements.

Zeroing in on Ruhtenberg’s formative years 1929-1932 in Berlin, Germany, this thesis aims to analyze a distinct manipulation of minimalist syntax as a means of understanding what his approach to architecture ultimately represents: a highly particular and inventive reflection about Modernism’s mediation and derivation. The architect’s particular project under investigation is the “Four-Room Apartment for a Childless Couple,” Ruhtenberg's Gold-Medal-winning contribution to the German Building Exhibition in Berlin (1931). By tracing the historical narrative that explores Ruhtenberg’s close friendship with Philip Johnson and his early architectural beginnings as a private assistant to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the philosophical motif of the apprentice manifests warranting closer inspection as a figure that sustains intricate links to the notions of transference and origination; synthetic properties for a unique formulation of architectural Modernism.

In this article we attempt to sketch a few main lines of development in the design and building practice in the cities of Holland over an extended period from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. In examining the leading public works of civic architecture, the authors aim to trace the most significant transformations through the centuries, in the belief that organizational changes can best be explained by reference to shifts in the demand for building work. The emphasis lies on church building in the fifteenth century and on the municipal building industry in later centuries, because these activities showed a high degree of organization.
The article will be published in two consecutive issues of OverHolland, in which we will discuss the periods of growth and contraction in the demand for building work, in chronological order. Each of the two parts will begin with a brief introductory section presenting the periods and major themes to be examined. In part I, which covers the period from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, Hurx begins with the boom in the construction of city churches in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Van Essen then describes how city authorities assumed increasing responsibility for public works in the fifteenth and particularly the sixteenth century. Part II will begin with an examination of the massive increase in the scale of building work in the seventeenth century, stemming from the explosive growth of a number of cities. In this section, Van Essen will describe the development of the office of the stadsfabriek into a largescale municipal construction company. In the second section of part II, Medema will discuss the reorganization of the building sector in the eighteenth century as a result of economic decline.

The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.

A ground-breaking volume examining the transnational conditions of the European Enlightenment, Crafting Enlightenment argues that artisans of the long eighteenth-century on four different continents created and disseminated ideas that revolutionized how we understand modern-day craftsmanship, design, labor, and technology. Starting in Europe, this book journeys through France across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas and then on to Asia and Oceania. Highlighting diverse identities of artisans, the authors trace how these historical actors formed networks at local and global levels to assert their own forms of expertise and experience. These artisans – some anonymous, eminent, and outside the margins – translated European Enlightenment thinking into a number of disciplines and trades including architecture, botany, ceramics, construction, furniture, gardening, horology, interior design, manuscript illustration, and mining. In each thematic section of this illustrated volume, two leading scholars present contrasting case studies of artisans in different geographic contexts. These paired chapters are also followed by shorter commentary that reflects on pertinent themes from both chapters. Emphasizing how and why artisanal histories around the world impacted civic and private life, commerce, cultural engagement, and sense of place, this book introduces new richness and depth to the conversations around the ambivalent and fragmented nature of the Enlightenment

Authors: Lauren Cannady (University of Maryland), Dennis Carr (The Huntington Library), Frédéric Dassas (Musée du Louvre), Jennifer Ferng (The University of Sydney), Emine Fetvaci (Boston College), Neil Kamil (University of Texas at Austin), Dorothy Ko (Barnard College), Chandra Mukerji (University of California San Diego), Valérie Nègre (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne), Sugata Ray (University of California Berkeley).

With: Florina Capistrano-Baker (CUNY), Kaijun Chen (Brown University), Thomas Crow (NYU), Richard Taws (UCL), and Nancy Um (Binghamton University).

The nature of the relationship between the Assyrian state and the Syro-Hittite states is often represented in the writings of archaeologists and ancient historians under the rubric of imperialism, Assyrian sovereignty, and the Syro-Hittite resistance, an unchanging formula largely based on center-periphery models. This structuralist model of fixed relationships is thus characterized as a firmly-set trajectory of power relations and a teleological narrative of conquest, ending without exception with the eventual and complete submission and subjugation of Syro-Hittite states to Assyrian military power. While Syro-Hittite states are represented as vulnerable and politically weak entities, the Assyrian state is referred as an “expansionistic imperial power” or “superior invading force”. Had they escaped direct Assyrian sovereignty, these peripheral communities were at least deemed “Assyrianizing” in their material culture. This a priori qualification of Syro-Hittite-Assyrian relationships as an imbalanced power distribution is an outcome of the preponderance of studies of Assyrian sovereignty with an obsession with the (cosmic) image of the sovereign in his visual and verbal manifestations. Secondly it is often assumed that the study of Assyrian imperialism has always operated through coercion and military violence. Alternative forms of engagement between the Neo-Assyrian state and the Syro-Hittite kingdoms such as diplomacy, political negotiation, trade, exchange of ideas, politics of settlement, land management, taxation or traveling craftsmen and circulation of technology and knowledge are much more rarely discussed. In this paper, I suggest that historical perspectives on the unchallenged Assyrian imperialism are often driven by the alluring, yet biased perspectives offered by the sumptuous, if not excessive corpus of Assyrian annalistic accounts, state sponsored texts, and imperial monuments. Therefore such perspectives prioritize short-term political histories of conquest and domination over other longer term and more horizontally distributed aspects of the past such as cultural practices, ecological histories, political landscapes, socialization, or material worlds. The historicist accounts of the Near Eastern past can be challenged and perhaps balanced by evidence offered by archaeological, material, and environmental research, which present alternative and often contrasting perspectives on these particular histories. Prioritizing textual evidence often leaves out the material flows, delicate negotiations of power, dynamics of trade and exchange and the politics of resource extraction. Attending to other forms of evidence allows us to reflect on the complexity of the relationships between Assyria and the Syro-Hittite states. In this article, I pay particular attention to such interactions and encounters that are other than military in nature, and give priority to material evidence that challenge standard imperialist narratives of Assyrian textual accounts.

Abstract
In the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece, is a heretofore unknown large-format volume that contains many extra illustrations, original drawings, and proofs of plates for The Arabian Antiquities of Spain by James Cavanah Murphy (1760–1814). Based on research conducted between 1802 and 1809, The Arabian Antiquities of Spain features engravings of major monuments of Hispano-Islamic architecture, including the Alhambra, the Great Mosque at Cordoba, and the Generalife at Granada; the work was published posthumously in 1816. Since the Gennadius volume also includes sketches of Islamic monuments from Malaga, Seville, and Xeres, it appears that Murphy originally intended to publish a complete survey of Hispano-Islamic monuments in southern Spain. In the Gennadius volume, grangerized drawings are placed opposite published engravings for comparative purposes; the drawings include notes written by Murphy to the engravers, and several are hand-tinted, which reveal Murphy’s interest in polychromy. This article presents the newly discovered drawings in the Gennadius volume, which adds to our understanding of the monuments depicted in the published plates of Arabian Antiquities, and serves to position Murphy’s pioneering efforts in the context of architectural scholarship, chromolithography, and the book trade in the early nineteenth century.

The symposium “The found Christ” took place in Cervignano del Friuli (Udine) on Saturday, December 3, 2005, within the homonymous multi-year project (coord. scient. S. Blason Scarel and P. Casadio) dedicated to the rediscovery of the "Christ of the Countess", a colossal medieval wooden crucifix preserved in the chapel of St. Cross, the gentilitial oratory of the villa Bresciani in Cervignano. The Conference Proceedings are published two years later, enriched by further updates: in the volume the author outlines – for the first time – the history of the residence founded by the noble Bresciani family in Cervignano (the precious 'background' of the ancient sculpture) and he describes the different buildings, the dependencies and the furnishings including his famous 'guest', suggesting again the proposal that he already put forth at the symposium: that it is to be identified with the "Christ of St. Felix", a gigantic wooden crucifix seen in 1570 by the apostolic visitor Bartolomeo of Porcia & Brugnera inside the Basilica of Sts. Felix e Fortunate in Aquileia, at that time still raised although no more flourishing

Sabato 3 dicembre 2005 a Cervignano si svolse il convegno “Il Cristo ritrovato”, nell’ambito dell’omonimo progetto pluriennale (coordinamento scientifico: S. Blason Scarel - P. Casadio) dedicato alla riscoperta del “Cristo della Contessa”, il colossale crocifisso ligneo medievale conservato nella cappella di S. Croce, l’oratorio gentilizio della villa Bresciani a Cervignano. A due anni di distanza vede la luce il volume degli atti – arricchito da ulteriori aggiornamenti – al cui interno l’autore per la prima volta delinea le vicende storiche della dimora cervignanese fatta costruire dalla nobile famiglia Bresciani (il prezioso ‘sfondo’ dell’antica scultura) e ne descrive i diversi fabbricati, le pertinenze e l’arredo compreso il suo celebre ‘ospite’, riproponendo la proposta già avanzata durante il convegno: che esso sia da identificare con il “Cristo di San Felice”, il gigantesco crocifisso in legno visto dal visitatore apostolico Bartolomeo di Porcia e Brugnera nel 1570 all’interno della basilica aquileiese dei Santi Felice e Fortunato, all’epoca non più fiorente ma ancora in alzato

Lambrequins, florões, remates, ou montagem de peças num plano verical, em telhados,  são ornamentos hoje mal amados pois fazem aumentar a despesa da reparação de um telhado.
Para clarificar a sua utilidade e definir o que são, preparam-se estas notas, apresentando alguns exemplos.
Nestas minhas notas avanço como origem destes ornamentos o Reino Unido. A evolução das casas vitorianas do final do sec XIX e das casas de veraneio que se construíam na mesma época em França, deram origem a um movimento que se espalhou pela Europa. A ida destas ideias  para o Basil epara a  ilha da Reunião foi possível pela mão de carpinteiros navais que por la se fixaram e conheciam as “modernices” ornamentais da época na Europa. Claro que é clara a influência indiana e marroquina em alguns destes ornamentos

Colossal stone temples are one of the most immediately recognisable products of ancient Egyptian civilisation: distinctive in appearance, striking in sheer size and impressive in the skill shown in the carving and painting of their walls. This book looks at what is known about Egyptian temples, their chronological development, and the range of different religious structures referred to under the general heading of temples. Different chapters explain, with illustrations, the nature of Egyptian gods and why they needed temples to built for them, what went on within the buildings, and how priests, acting on behalf of the king, served the god on a daily basis and in regular festivals which involved the population as a whole. It explains the underlying ideas which result in Egyptian temples developing such a particular and peculiar appearance and why both architecture and decoration in Egyptian temples reflect different periods of temple building and different types of temple.

Mark Wilson Jones explores how the architects of ancient Rome approached design. Drawing on new archaeological discoveries and his own analyses of Roman monuments, the author discusses how the ancient architects dealt with the principles of architecture and the practicalities of construction as they engaged in the creative process.

A clearly distilled architectural atlas based on 144 major designs from ancient times to the twenty-first century, showcasing the cultural dimension of building.

However disparate the style or ethos, beneath architecture’s pluralism lies a number of categorical typologies. In Th­inking Design, Austrian architect Andreas Lechner has condensed his profound typological understanding into a single book.
Divided into three chapters—Tectonics, Type, and Topos—Lechner’s book reflects upon twelve fundamental typologies: theater, museum, library, state, office, recreation, religion, retail, factory, education, surveillance, and hospital. Encompassing a total of 144 carefully selected examples of classic designs and buildings, ranging across an epic sweep from antiquity to the present, the book not only explains the fundamentals of collective architectural knowledge but traces the interconnected reiterations that lie at the heart of architecture’s transformative power.
As such, Th­inking Design outlines a new building theory rooted in the act of composition as an aesthetic determinant of architectural form. This emphasis on composition in the design process over the more commonplace aspects of function, purpose, or atmosphere makes it more than a mere planning manual. It reveals also the cultural dimension of architecture that gives it the ability to transcend not only use cycles but entire epochs. Each example is meticulously illustrated with a newly drawn elevation or axonometric projection, floor plan, and section, not only invigorating the underlying ideas but also making the book an ideal comparative compendium.
An enclosed booklet (32 pages, 19.5 x 28 cm, 58 b/ illustrations) features theses by twelve students of Graz university of Technology that further illustrate Andreas Lechner's approach in teaching and design.

La tesi di Laurea in Architettura dal titolo “L’ISOLA DELLA PENA, L’ARCHITETTURA DEL RISCATTO. Castiadas, la più grande Colonia penale agricola d’Italia”, riguarda lo studio dell’ex Colonia penale agricola di Castiadas e dei suoi fabbricati.
L’intento è stato quello di ricercare ed analizzare i documenti, molti dei quali inediti, secondo un approccio di tipo scientifico, per poter ricomporre i processi storici, politici ed architettonici che hanno contraddistinto la nascita e l’evoluzione dell'ex Carcere, dall'impianto nel 1875 ai successivi ampliamenti, fino alla sua chiusura.

The study aims to analyse the two static models most widely adopted by Bernardo
Antonio Vittone, through the comparison of two churches in Turin: Santa Chiara and San
Leonardo. They are double envelope buildings, with central dome, respectively 10 and 15
meters in diameter, supported by eight pillars and surrounded by a continuous ambulatory.
The static model of Santa Chiara provides the internal pillars that play the main structural role
and cooperative outer envelope: the dome transmits his loads directly to the interior pillars.
The walls and vaults of the lateral chapels have an important role, arranging themselves
around the main dome, like a ring of containment of the horizontal thrusts induced by the
dome itself. Also the choirs, that Vittone places in smaller spaces behind the pillars, play an
important static role: their horizontal structures connect the pillars with the rear wall, which
thus offers its collaboration to contain the horizontal thrusts.
The church of San Leonardo has a reverse operation, with the dome that rests on the
outer walls, while the internal pillars support only a raised gallery.
Through three-dimensional info graphics models, the study shows that the entire
structure is designed as a discretized system, which replaces the traditional structure based
on continuous wall and uniformly distributed loads. The brick vaults are ribbed structure, in
which arches and ribs convey loads on the pillars or in precise high-resistance points of the
external masonry. This feature makes the space open to the light; also reduces the masonry
mass, saving material and reducing construction costs.
The formal representation of structural components agrees with the effective static
operation of buildings: the decoration on the surface of the dome indicates the presence of
ribs. The groins are hollow and open in order to highlight the condition of non-load bearing
element.

This paper is dealing with new industrial architecture as emerging, re-birthed phenomenon in
architectural practice. Although the industrial buildings are not a new building typology, industrial
architecture was not always, so to say, “present” in construction of industrial facilities. Through
discussion in this paper we will try to define what we can call a new industrial architecture and
what the boundaries of this definition are. In this context, we made a distinction between the
vastness of the industrial buildings built as mass production facilities without any architectural
integrity and at the same time tried to find and present several examples of architectural works that
belong to the same building typology, but that can be considered as really representations of
industrial architecture.

این کتاب پژوهشی در باب تاریخ معماری و شهرسازی تهران در زمان ناصرالدین شاه قاجار است. در اواخر سدۀ سیزدهم هجری، گسترش تهران و شکل‌گیری محله‌های مسکونی جدید در دارالخلافۀ ناصری فرصتی تازه به بانیان معماری و عاملان شهرسازی داد تا نیازها و خواست‌های نوظهور جامعۀ در حال دگرگونی ایران را در کالبد و نوع زندگی تازه در محله‌های جدید شهر محقق کنند. محلۀ دولت یکی از مهم‌ترین بخش‌های شهر جدید بود که عناصر ضروری زندگی مدرن را در خود جای داد و با نوع معماری و بافت شهری متفاوت پاسخی به نیازهای جامعه بود.
در مقام نخستین پژوهش متمرکز بر تاریخ محلۀ دولت و گسترش تهران بر اساس منابع دست‌اول نوشتاری و شواهد تصویری، شامل اسناد تاریخی، روزنامه‌ها، خاطرات شخصی، عکس‌ها، نقشه‌ها و آمار دارالخلافۀ ناصری، این کتاب در پی ارائۀ روایتی تاریخی از فرایند تحولات تهران در این دوره و شیوۀ سکونت ساکنان در این محله است. تاریخ شکل‌گیری محلۀ دولت مثال بارزی است از چگونگی تطابق محیط مصنوع با تحولات فرهنگی و اجتماعی تهران در دورۀ گذار تاریخ معماری و شهرسازی ایران.

In the late 1940s, American builders found themselves competing against a growing number of prefabricated housing manufacturers in a race to meet demand for detached, single-family homes in the suburbs. The National Homes Corporation of Lafayette, Indiana and its competitors were pioneering the mass manufacture of room-sized panels that could be shipped by truck to the building site and assembled by unskilled workers. Although the production experience prefabricators’ gained during the war made the factory-built home’s peacetime success seem sure, manufacturers were met with skeptical consumers. National Homes propelled itself to the top of the prefab industry with a three-pronged campaign aimed at banks, builders, and buyers. Advertising for National Homes, which ran in nationally circulating financial publications, building trade journals, and consumer magazines, reveals prefabricators’ struggle to gain traction in a competitive housing market and sheds light on the shift within the building industry from the production of standardized economy dwellings in the 1940s to individualized homes offering the latest design trends and custom features in the 1950s. Analysis of the company’s “revolution in home merchandising” enriches our understanding of the competing interests and conflicting values that shaped the postwar housing boom.

There are several buildings in The Bronx that were built in the early twentieth century and which now stand as vestiges of an era when the borough served as a center of charitable "homes" that provided refuge and aid to people with special needs.