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Architecture

Architecture

Gothic Architecture

From the mid-12th century to the 16th century northern European architecture was characterized by the use of flying buttresses, pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and traceried windows. The thin walls, slender columns, and very large areas of glass in Gothic buildings gave an impression of lightness that contrasted markedly with the Romanesque. Gothic architecture originated at the royal abbey church of St. Denis, built by Abbot Suger between 1137 and 1144. It was refined in the great churches of northern and central France, such as Amiens Cathedral(1220-70), notable for its great height and the slenderness of its columns, and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (1247-48), in which exceptionally large wall areas were filled with glass and tracery. Indeed, Gothic architecture was most fully developed in France and England, where the style spread in the late 12th century. The spread of Gothic to Germany was delayed until the mid-13th century, and in this country only a few cathedrals, such as the one in Cologne (begun 1248), approached the size and quality of the northern French prototypes. The most thorough application of northern Gothic to Italy was in the Milan Cathedral, built at the end of the 14th century by French and German masons. In general, the Italians tended to use Gothic as a decorative feature rather than as a total building system.
Many Gothic secular buildings survive, some of the finest examples being the Bruges Town Hall (1376-1420) in Belgium, the Palazzo Pubblico (begun 1298) in Siena, Italy, and the Pont Valentre (early 14th century) in Cahors, France. The greatest concentration of Gothic secular buildings is in Belgium, then the most prosperous part of northwest Europe.

Renaissance Architecture

During the early 15th century European culture became inspired by the rediscovery, known as the Renaissance, of classical literature, art, and architecture. Italy was the center of this rebirth, and in Florence, where the movement started, architecture was influenced by the use of the orders, the round arch, the barrel vault, and the dome--all Roman features. In northern Europe, where Gothic continued to flourish well into the 16th century, the Renaissance at first made only a superficial impact and was for a much longer time confined to decorative changes. In both France and England a truly classical style was not established until the first half of the 17th century: in France by Francois Mansart and in England by Inigo Jones.
The Florentine Renaissance did not initially mean the complete break with traditional practice that was implied in the Gothic north. For the church of Santo Spirito (begun c.1436), Filippo Brunelleschi used a basilican plan, round arches, and a flat ceiling; but these traditional Italian Romanesque elements were combined with a new sense of proportion, the use of Corinthian columns, and a dome over the crossing of nave and transepts. Brunelleschi's later design for the vast, still unfinished cathedral of Santa Maria degli Angeli (also called the Duomo of Florence) took the form of a domed octagon with eight radiating chapels, a centralized plan that became the ideal among his contemporaries in Florence (Leon Battista Alberti and Michelozzo) and his followers in Rome. There, during the 16th century, a more monumental version of the style was developed by Donato Bramante, Raphael, and Michelangelo, as in their various plans for Saint Peter's Basilica.

Baroque and Rococo Architecture

In the 15th century Florentine architecture relied for effect upon proportion, simple straight lines, and the correct use of classical details. During the 16th century, however, architects such as Michelangelo and Giulio Romano abandoned this restraint for a more exciting, idiosyncratic version of the style, now called Mannerism, in which the classical rules were deliberately flouted for effect. Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini further developed the style by introducing curvilinear forms and by incorporating sculpture and painting in their buildings to give a rich and dynamic version, known as baroque, which spread during the 17th and 18th centuries from Rome to much of southern Europe and to South America.
In northern Europe, especially in Austria and Germany, baroque architecture achieved an exuberance and freedom unmatched elsewhere, climaxing in the rococo, as in Germany's Wurzburg Residenz. In France baroque and rococo were tempered by neoclassicism, with a resultant elegance and refinement in both architecture and decoration, exemplified by the 18th-century sections of the Palace of Versailles. The spread of neoclassical architecture during the 17th and 18th centuries was due in no small measure to the illustrated books that brought it to the attention of educated patrons. Although fine architecture has never been created by untalented architects, the rules of the classical orders enforced systematic convention in design that enabled many moderately competent architects to produce well-proportioned and finely detailed buildings. In part this explains the extraordinary success of the Palladian (see Palladio, Andrea) interpretation of Romanized Greek architecture. It was, for example, the source of almost all country-house building in England during the 18th century, as well as of numerous mansions, courthouses, state capitols, and universities along the eastern seaboard of North America.

The Age of Revivals

During the late 18th and 19th centuries Europe and America witnessed a series of stylistic revivals. The period was dominated by the proponents of the classical (themselves split between "Greeks" and "Romans") and the northern Gothic. Buildings were also designed in self-conscious imitation of Byzantine, Oriental, Egyptian, Venetian Gothic, and Florentine Renaissance architecture, however. This was not, of course, the first time that ancient styles had been revived; the Italians of the 15th century and the architects of Charlemagne's court in the 9th century had incorporated classical motifs in their buildings. Both the revived classical and the Gothic Revival, however, were essentially different from the architecture that inspired them.
The country mansion of England and colonial America bore a classical portico, but it was attached to a type of building never seen in ancient Rome or Greece. The revived Gothic applied during the 19th century to private houses, office buildings, railroad stations, hospitals, and waterworks was by no means the same as the Gothic architecture of the northern medieval cathedrals. New engineering techniques and modern materials--in particular in cast-iron architecture--removed many of the age-old practical constraints on building design. Rapid urban growth during the 19th century produced a great many fine and essentially original buildings, the quality of which is only beginning to be appreciated.

Modern Architecture

Contemporary architecture takes a bewildering variety of forms and makes use of a far wider range of materials than ever before. The International Style, promulgated by Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in theory and practice, dominated architecture for most of the 20th century. Most of the earlier buildings by these architects were small private houses, usually rectangular, with undecorated walls, flat roofs, and large areas of glass set in metal frames. Conscious avoidance of any previous styles or recognizable antecedents was combined with highly sophisticated proportioning to achieve sleek, elegant structures, such as Mies's German Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona Exhibition. To the dismay of its originators, the International Style was enthusiastically adopted by far lesser talents and profit-minded builders to produce numerous "modern" office buildings, apartment complexes, hospitals, and motels all over the world.
Not all contemporary architects subscribed to Mies's dictum of "less is more," and hence their work is difficult to classify as "modern." Frank Lloyd Wright, probably the outstanding native-born American architect of the 20th century, Kenzo Tange of Japan, Alvar Aalto of Finland, and the Finnish-Americans Eliel Saarinen and Eero Saarinen produced many buildings of great beauty and originality. Although some of their work does reflect the International Style, most of their buildings are instantly recognizable in their individuality, as were the great buildings of the past. In short, these architects and others like them seem to be part of a continuing architectural tradition rejected by the practitioners of the International Style (see modern architecture).
The social turmoil of the 1960s was emphatically reflected in architecture. Complexity and Contradiction in Modern Architecture (1968) by the architect Robert Venturi was a revolt against the ubiquitous glass boxes of the modernists, and it signaled the emergence of postmodern architecture. Since that time, architects have found new strength in the traditions of the past, as well as in the vernacular architecture seen all about them.
Stephen Bayley and Simon Pepper