UNITY: many things can create unity throughout a composition (color, ideas, scale, materials). The Greeks created proportional unity by basing all the measurements of a structure on the diameter of the columns. The tripartite system of the megaron is a system that unifies architecture throughout time periods. I found unity looking at my friends desk. I was thinking about my opus when I looked up and saw a sea of green, which seemed rather appropriate.
SECTION: things are usually not what the appear to be. This is why we look at section views of an object. They allow us to see what is beneath the surface. Sections of walls reveal the studs, insulation, and other components. The Egyptians also proved that things are not what they appear to be. They frequently used veneers of expensive wood or material over lower quality products (Blakemore 15). The use of veneers makes a statement about the fact that rulers built structures of increasing grandeur to convey importance, yet they may not have been as great as they believed themselves to be.
SCALE: throughout history, architecture at a superhuman scale has been used to create a sense of awe or otherworldliness. The ancient Egyptians used it in tombs and temples because the gods and pharaohs were powerful and important. Why shouldn’t they have the most imposing buildings on the landscape? Blakemore argues that the large scale due to the nature of the stone and materials used (2). I think it shows the importance of religion and the afterlife. My church at home is at a superhuman scale relative to the other buildings in the vicinity. There are many instances in which religious architecture is excessively large to convey importance, and perhaps be closest to the heavens.
BOUNDARIES: The boundary between outside and inside becomes increasingly important. The hot, sunny climate in Egypt yielded “features that fostered indoor-outdoor relationships, including flat roofs, porticoes and loggias, windows placed high on walls… and open interior courts” (Blakemore 3). It is sometimes desirable to blur the boundary between interior and exterior. They can also create distinctions between the spaces. Entrances are a transition into a new environment and designers use that them to set the tone for the space you are entering, such as with the Propylaia at the Acropolis. I do find it interesting that the Greeks were not open to welcoming citizens from other city-states, yet they placed so much emphasis on entryways (Roth 221).
VIGNETTE: snapshots or pinhole peeks into life can reveal useful information about the context of the scene. The ruins of ancient Greece and Egypt are in essence vignettes because they almost never provide a complete picture, yet they still reveal facts about that time in history. The difficult thing about Egyptian remains is that “once the forms of Egyptian religion, literature, art, and architecture had be defined… they changed very little for almost three thousand years” (Roth 191). These vignettes of ancient Egypt reveal the same information for each time period (to the untrained eye).
To sum it all up, I think the words this week are important in how we define designs. It is important to delineate the components of a design and to decide how they will be perceived. Defining the parameters of a design provides a setting for better analysis.
Blakemore, Robbie G. (1997). History of Interior Design & Furniture. New York, NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold Roth,
Leland M. (2007). Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, and Meaning. Boulder, CO: Westview Press
