What Architecture Means

Connecting Ideas and Design

Denise Costanzo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780415739047
• eBook ISBN: 9781317812142
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

What Architecture Means introduces you to architecture and allows you to explore the connections between design ideas and values across time, space, and culture. It equips you to play an active and informed role in architecture either as a professional or as a consumer, client, and citizen. By analyzing famous and everyday buildings while presenting and questioning the positions of important architects and theorists, this book will help you to evaluate and decide what qualities, ideas, and values you believe are important in architecture.

You'll learn:

-How various definitions of "architecture" establish different relationships with all buildings, and even non-buildings; -How buildings express and accommodate ideas of the sacred, the family, and the community; -What an architect is, and what priorities they bring to design and construction; -How an architect's expertise relates to that of the engineer, and why these are distinct disciplines; -About values like beauty, originality, structural expression, and cultural memory and their purpose in architectural design; -About the interests and ethical values that architects, and architecture, serves and promotes. Topics include sacred spaces, the house, the city, architects and engineers, aesthetics and design, originality and method, technology and form, memory and identity, and power and politics.

PART I

WHERE IS ARCHITECTURE?

DIVINITY, DOMESTICITY, COMMUNITY

CHAPTER 1

SACRED SPACES

ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN NIKOLAUS PEVSNER deliberately illustrated his definition of “architecture” with a religious structure. The designs of many buildings created for spiritual purposes, including Pevsner’s example, Lincoln Cathedral, announce their function as not just practical, but special: they are built to be sacred.

We often associate sacredness with faith, but it also exists outside religious contexts. The 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York that destroyed its two office towers also gave them new meaning. The loss of thousands of lives, obliteration of a city’s tallest structures, and assault on a proud nation’s confidence changed its site into a place of profound significance for millions of people. Such traumatic events can make a place sacred; if the trauma is collective, the sacredness becomes not just personal, but cultural.

The 9/11 Memorial by Michael Arad and Peter Walker was built to express that depth of meaning. It transformed the Twin Towers’ footprints into two vast cubic voids. Water flows from quiet perimeter pools into cascades that crash down the cubes’ sides before vanishing into an abyss. Like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (see introduction), the design leads visitors through a garden, carves simple forms into the earth, uses somber black granite, and emphasizes the names of the lost.

Figure 1.1 Michael Arad and Peter Walker, Reflecting Absence, 9/11 Memorial, New York, NY, November 2004.

Both memorials also use an abstract design vocabulary instead of one drawn from religious architecture. This reflects a more diverse, secular U.S. culture. We readily associate Lincoln Cathedral’s Gothic style with Christianity, but our individual beliefs help determine whether we experience sacredness in that church. Because people of many faiths and no faith died at the World Trade Center, a memorial emphasizing any one religious tradition would not represent all the victims. Its design instead expresses death, loss, and memory through methods that begin in prehistory, and recur in multiple forms of religious architecture.

READING STONES: PREHISTORIC DESIGN

We express sacredness through many different things—foods, rituals, words, symbols, music. Architecture can declare that a place has special significance through constructions as elaborate as Lincoln Cathedral, or as simple as a single stone. Near Carnac, in northwestern France, an enormous, upright megalith—a large stone—rises almost 30 feet (9 meters) above the ground; its total weight is estimated at 150 tons (136,000 kilograms). This menhir is one of many vertical megaliths whose position was not caused by natural forces, but is the product of design and construction. The Kerloas menhir was erected by prehistoric humans, probably 5,000 to 8,000 years ago. It originally stood even higher (some height was lost to lightning); another fallen menhir nearby was twice as tall.

We naturally wonder how Neolithic people made a 150-ton stone stand up. Our next question is probably: why? Unlike Lincoln Cathedral or the Taj Mahal, no other explanatory evidence exists. But we can infer that this location was deeply significant to its builders. People invested enormous energy and ingenuity to ensure that this particular spot would be noticed for as long as this stone endures.

Some might not consider one standing stone (or many—some menhirs are arranged in groups) to be “architecture” because it does not enclose space. But other megalithic structures do: dolmens, in which upright stones support a horizontal one. A menhir occupies one spot, but a dolmen defines the volume around a spot; a person can occupy that special point.

Figure 1.2 Ganghwa Dolmen, Bugeun-ri, Hajeom-myeon, South Korea, first millennium BCE.

Over 30,000 dolmens survive on the Korean peninsula. Unlike Kerloas, memories of their use survive. Most were shrines where families performed rites honoring their ancestors. This, along with a form which resembles a doorway, even a rudimentary house, suggests certain meanings: a gate dividing the living from the dead, or a home where an earthly family can meet relatives living on as memory and spirit.

The Poulnabroune dolmen in Ireland is similarly linked to death and memory. Over twenty sets of human remains were found there, which explains this site’s sacredness: any place we bury someone’s body becomes invested with their memory. Carbon dating shows that the remains belonged to multiple generations, and archaeological evidence shows the builders practiced agriculture. Farming cultures are naturally attached to the land that sustains them. When a community buries its dead in one location over many years, this further connects who they are to where they live. The Poulnabroune dolmen was originally an entry and burial chamber for a barrow, an artificial hill made by piling stones into an enormous, earth-covered mound. Such tombs were also visible landmarks that announced the people’s ownership of the land, and gave them another reason to defend it.

STONEHENGE: GEOMETRY, ORIENTATION, AND MEANING

The British Isles’ most famous megalithic structure is Stonehenge, the largest, most elaborate Neolithic monument still standing. Its megaliths are smaller than the Kerloas menhir. The largest of these sarsen stones is about 24 feet (7.3 meters) tall and weighs 50 tons (45,000 kilograms); the others average 25 tons (22,600 kilograms) each. Their geological source was 19 miles (30 kilometers) away. Eighty dolerite “bluestones” weighing up to 4 tons (3,600 kilograms) each were also transported over 150 miles (240 kilometers) from their source in Wales. Obtaining these materials and coordinating the site’s construction were enormous logistical and technological undertakings.

Figure 1.3 Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England, ca. 2600–1600 BCE.

Although these megaliths appear irregular, they were shaped with tools. The vertical stones each have a small knob on top (a tenon) meant to slip into a corresponding hole (a mortise) in a lintel stone. The lintels were connected laterally with tongue-and-groove joints to form a continuous ring. Such interlocking details stabilized the construction, but demanded precision stonework along with heavy lifting.

Archaeological research has reconstructed much of the site’s long, complex history. Stonehenge was built in three major phases over more than a thousand years. Its first phase consisted of wooden structures and a circular ditch with a gap toward the northeast, plus a series of small, chalk-filled holes just inside (called “Aubrey holes,” after the first person to document them). Centuries later, builders added an inner circle of bluestones. Finally, a perimeter ring with a continuous lintel was built using the sarsen stones, and five trilithons (two vertical megaliths supporting a horizontal one) were arranged in a U-shape at the center. The bluestones were then rearranged into a circle and horseshoe that mirrored the sarsen forms.

These design phases were all concentric: their circular forms, including the U-shape’s curve, all shared one center, just above the so-called “altar stone.” But the U’s straight sides also define a parallel line through that center: an axis. This axis aligns with the ditch’s gap, a fallen stone inside the ditch (the so-called “slaughter stone”), and another farther out (the “heel stone”).

During every phase, Stonehenge’s geometry pointed in two directions: inward, toward the circle’s center, and outward from that center along the axis. This line conveys movement—a path. Center and path combined suggest a procession, a ceremonial journey to and from this significant spot. The axis also points in two astronomically significant directions: the point on the horizon where the sun rises on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year and, viewed in reverse, the point of midwinter sunset. Both mark when the sun’s annual cycle changes direction, as increasing darkness becomes increasing light, and back again. For agrarian people, knowing when to plant and harvest is crucial for survival, so accurate prediction of seasonal changes was vital information. Ancient farmers experienced celestial bodies and weather patterns as powerful forces, arbiters of life and death.

Stonehenge’s link to death was reinforced when archaeologists discovered over 200 sets of human remains in the Aubrey holes. They were buried over a period of 500 years, mostly during the phase of sarsen stone construction. Nearby remains of a circular wooden settlement date to this same period, and probably housed Stonehenge’s builders. The similar forms suggest they were “twin” cities, for the living and the dead. Taken together, Stonehenge’s geometry, the monumental construction effort involved, the length of time it was used, and the functions it seems to accommodate—ritual, burial, and cosmically linked ones—all confirm that this site was deeply sacred to early Britons.

One question we cannot answer about Stonehenge is: why there? Whatever feature or event motivated a millennium of construction in that precise location is lost to us. Such questions are answerable only for historic cultures, those whose stories have survived in writings or oral traditions that help explain their beliefs. These can sometimes confirm the sacredness of certain structures and explain their use, choice of location, and design strategies.

THE ACROPOLIS: STORIES IN STONE

Ancient Greeks, like prehistoric Britons, marked sacred sites with elaborate stone architecture. The most famous is the Acropolis (meaning “high city” in Greek) in Athens. Prehistoric inhabitants had settled on this defensible hilltop for safety. Later, it housed and protected signs of the city’s relationship with the divine.

The Acropolis is a temenos, a sanctuary surrounded by a wall. Stonehenge’s circles define spatial boundaries, but the Acropolis’ encircling wall creates a literal separation. Its main entrance is a monumental gateway, the Propylaea (Figure 1.4, photo; below, at center). Inside, several temples stand as free-standing objects. The most famous are the enormous Parthenon (at right in photo; see also Figure 4.2) and the smaller Erechtheion (left). Between them lie the foundations of another destroyed temple.

This site, like Stonehenge, was modified many times over many centuries. But Greek writings explain what made this hilltop sacred: here the city forged its special relationship with Athena, goddess of wisdom, through a divine contest. She and Poseidon, god of the sea, competed to be the city’s patron. Each offered a gift: Poseidon a salt spring, Athena an olive tree. After the people preferred Athena’s gift and named their city in her honor, the spring and the tree were preserved as relics of the gods’ presence, holy sites on a holy mountain.

Figure 1.4 Acropolis, Athens, rebuilt fifth century BCE.

The Erechtheion was built to honor those relics. It also replaced the temple of Athena Polias (“Ath...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• What Architecture Means
• Endorsement
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction: What is “Architecture”?
• PART I Where is Architecture? Divinity, Domesticity, Community
• PART II Who Makes Architecture? Builders, Professionals, Artists
• PART III What is Architecture About? Physics, Places, People
• Conclusion: Two Films, Two Architects, your Ideas
• List of Illustrations
• The Author
• Glossary
• References
• Index