Unit Summary 2: Reverberations

Unit 1 in history and theory of design class was about learning and analyzing the foundations of early architecture. Unit 2 was about taking different buildings and analyzing its architecture as a whole. The main word that we tied in class with architecture was the idea of reverberations. Reverberations, in music, is the persistence of sound in a particular room after the original sound is removed causing echoes that slowly fade away. Like sound, architecture also had its moments during the second unit, were an idea was persistent for a period of time and then slowly it would fade away.

Basilica of Constantine

Ancient Indian Temple


The second unit began with the idea of frozen music within buildings and the places where people began to worship. The idea of frozen music was introduced when we began to look at buildings that had more detail and color than the usual. For instance we look at buildings especially temples from ancient India and we recognized that the building was like music for the eye because your eye constantly kept moving around looking at the building. There was never a point where your eyes would stop and stare at a particular point in the building so like someone dancing to music. Moving away from the ancient Indian temples we began looking at early places of worship. The basilica of Constantine was one of the first basilicas, but initially this place was used as a place to have speeches nothing was said about religion or god. One of the thing that was discussed in class also was the basic plan of early churches which you can see below:

Finally the first millennium ends and people began to make places that were more enlightened and mainly I’m talking about cathedrals and basilicas. These places would focus mainly in stability, balance, the idea of man to heaven, and geometry. Verticality was an important element of almost every cathedral and basilica, in fact, the reason why many of the cathedrals were so tall is because the designers wanted to show this connection of man with heaven, the taller the better. Continuing with the idea of verticality, cathedrals were often or if not all the times a major part of a civilization and if the cathedrals were bigger than it would so more importance. Cathedrals also had different structures and central points so they were not the same structurally. The cathedral of Amiens in France and the Duomo cathedral in Florence, Italy are a clear example of two different types of cathedrals.

During the third week we analyzed the differences of the west and east architecture and their own design rule. The main thing you need to know about this week is that the west was based on harmony, meaning that all of the elements belong together in a building. In the other hand, east architecture was made out of temples. While designers in the east maintained their architectural approach the same, in the west architects would often be breaking and remaking rules on architecture. Most architects would make new buildings based on previous architectural styles such as Roman and Greek.
Colonial expansion was important during this unit because we began to see the influence of ancient styles around the world. The principal countries involved in the colonial expansion were Portugal, Spain, Holland, France, and England, this countries were responsible for bringing new architecture to the new world. Even though new architecture was being built, the idea of taking ancient architecture was still present. Again we continue to see the idea of reverberations throughout history, styles continue for a period of time then disappear and then come back again in another form.
Finally the unit concluded with architecture as a symbol for revolution. We studied how buildings could represent revolution especially in the united states. One building in particular was the US State Capitol building in Washington DC. This building is important because the building shows elements from ancient Greece to emphasize the connection between Greek laws and American laws. We didn't not only analyzed buildings, we also talked about the dollar bill and how it represents revolution.