Spiro kostof a history of architecture pdf download

ASIA 4. Fuji, Mt. Haku, Mt. Paine, Robert Treat and Alexander Soper. Hayakawa, Masao. Eck, Diana L. Mitchell, George. A History of Architecture: , , Sacred Architecture: Students are encouraged to seek out places of worship, monuments, pilgrimage sites, shrines, gardens, museums and other locations that manifest or document the concept of the sacred. In addition to these more concrete illustrations of your engagement with the course, think of class participation as your responsibility to add energy and insight to our discussion and to share your varying perspectives with your peers and instructor.

Shows good knowledge of readings and relates them to experiences outside the classroom. Summarizes readings accurately and concisely, identifies key issues, makes connections to ideas presented earlier in the course, and has thoughtful answers to questions distributed in advance.

Draws others, especially those who have not yet spoken, into the discussion and directs the flow of discussion by asking questions and helping monitor the group process. A- Does all of the above except for drawing others into the discussion and helping to manage the group process. Overall, a very constructive force in class discussions.

Shows consistent evidence of having done the reading and thought about how it relates to the course. Steps in when there is a silence most of the time. When called upon, always has something worthwhile to say and shows evidence of having done the reading. Summarizes readings and cases accurately and always identifies at least one issue that a particular reading raises. B- Consistently present in class, but only contributes occasionally.

Usually shows evidence of preparation when called upon. Sometimes seems unprepared when called upon. It does not have the immediacy of walking through the streets and public places of towns as diverse a5 Isfahan and London, or stepping into Covered spaces that range in mood from the dappled, swarming tunnels of Muslim suqs to the single-minded sublimity of the Pan- theon in Rome. As the material theater of human activity, it truth isin its use. For fone thing, the book is a compact word.

Then, it is panoramic. Time isthe river that flows toward him, and om its banks are ined the familiar forms of his professional vi- sion: the pyramids, battered walls, and plant columns of Egypt; Greek temples and Ro- man aqueducts; and closer still, outlined against the glow, the pinnacles and lance- like towers of medieval Christendom.

He is an architect, and what he looks upon is the idealized heritage of his craft. A visit t Rome or Istanbul 's bound to be confusing.

There is so very much to see, and it seems to lie about unsorted, helter skelter. A group of temples from the time betore Christ is ringed by recent apartment houses: brick- and-concrete clumps refuse to yield their Identity. The historian brings time under control; isolates random scraps and ar- ranges them ioto a trenchant sequence; sets up relationships among farflung structures, through the hindsight of this day and the collective knowledge of the discipline.

What isa ziggurat and how was it used? And then the historian must go beyond this es: tablished realty of the buildings to under. The Pictorial Ev. Eefore there is a foundation tuench oF a single course of stone, a build- ing has to be conceptualized and its form may be represented in models and draw- ings.

Models of the building in small scale, in day or wood or plaster, give a full impression in three dimensions ofthe final product that is being projected. And there ate other, more ab- Stract drawings. Plans show in two-dimen: sional pattern the horizontal disposition of Solid parts, like walls and columns, and the voids of eniramed or enclosed space. Sec: tions slice theough the building vertically at some imaginec plane to indicate the se- uence of rooms in length and the super.

They are the conventional language through which the architect communicates with his partners in the act of shaping our daily enviconment These are the patron oF client who employ the architect to mold their architectural wishes, and the many hands involved in building the structure. That same language assists students of architectural history to Beto know structures they have never seen fr hive seen and not comprehended in tll and one of the earliest tasks for them is 0 learn to read architectural drawings and mocels with ease.

I might figure on paintings and sculpture in reli fon prints, maps, or photographs. Models of it might be made to serve as votive of ferings to a germane cult, for example, oF to be sold as mementoes to visitors or pil aries. For the history of architecture there fs valuable information in all of these re. Yet it can be just as usetul as the photography; for ar chitectural reality has more to it than stick and stone, and the history of architecture more dimensions than just the categorical We range of its fixed frame The literary Evidence like images, yield much fessential insight for our study of archite ture.

The birth of most structures of con: sequence assumes the existence of written documents, some of which may come to be preserved by design or accident. At times, patrons may express their wishes to the ar chitect in writing. The architect, in turn, may have passed on written instructions to sub- cordinates.

The erection of public monuments necessitated whose tral can be followed in the minutes ff their deliberations, reports, and records fof payment. Patrons often sing the praises of their creation in dedicatory or cammemorative inscriptions oF tablets. It was the function of court his: torians to extol the building program oftheir employer, We also have to heed descrip tions of past buildings in old travel ac- counts oF in an als and local chronicles. And the transla tion of words irto the physical substance of architecture is peculiarly open to conten We might illastrate this point by focus- ing om one mo wment of antiquity, the fa mous tomb of King Mausolos of Caria at Halikarnassos that gave us the word mau: soleum.

It disap. Cn the north and south sides i extends for 63 fet, but the lengths of the facades less, the toa length othe facades an sides being tee. The building rises to a height of 25 cubits and is enclosed by 36 columns Above the coloneade there isa pyramid as high again the lower structure and tapering 24 Stages tothe topo its peak.

The addition of this chariot founds off the whole work and brings it to 3 height of fet Recreating the physical appearance of the Mausoleum on the strength of these words is an exceedingly dificult procedure, First fone has to establish the accuracy of the words themselves, Pliny lived two thou sand years ago. Dimensions, whether written in Roman numerals or sna letters and accents in the Greek manner, are eas- ily miscopied or misread.

And yet they have to be the basis of any reconstruction. The description itself may therefore be inaccurate and Pliny may have erred in writing. And of course the passage in question does not furnish all the particulars. Historians must juggle all these variables and come up with a building that is a fir interpretation of the literary and archaeo- logical evidence—and a credible form ar chitecturally. They must deduce from the fone surviving column the style of the bases And the cornice of the surrounding colon: nade, relying on the current knowledge of the general development of Greek archi tecture.

It should not surprise us, then, that two versions of the Mausoleum of Halkar- nassos as different as the ones we illustrate Could be spawned by the same data.

Fig, w The Total Context of Architecture The effort to establish, through the scru tiny of visual and literary documents, what past architecture really looked like will have already involved us with questions not Strictly pertinent to physical form.

But teven this is not the outermost limit of the legitimate concn of architectural history We have to push further stil, to the broader frame of general history, for those strands fF patterns that illuminate the total setting fof architectural production, Architecture, to state the obvious, is a social act—soci:l both in method and pur- pose.

It is the outcome of teamwork; and itis there to be made use of by groups of people, groups as small as the family or as Targe as an entice nation. Architecture is a costly act. It engages specialized talent, ap- propriate tech ology, handsome funds Because this is s0, the history of architec: ture partakes, in a basic way, of the study of the social, economic, and technological systems of human history.

Every build Ing represents a social artifact of specific: impulse, energ. Neither material realty alone nor general background of culture wil uf- fice to explain the peculiar nature of the building.

Fist the material aspect of every building should be looked atin its entirety. The Es fel Tower, for example, seems structure triumphant. By contrast, the simple under- lying construe! But if for the fille! But what un. We must, then, consider past buildings not as permanent bodies ina vacuum but, instead, components ofa varie gated arrangement subject to constant Change. Tools of design such models and draw architecture, a se 10 sil H.

Burnham and Co. This is what the Parthenon looks like today, the authors are saving: and this depiction carses at once the Guairt appeal of an exotic land and that Sense of the vanity of things which comes ver us atthe sight of the sad dilapidation of onstime splendor. We are confronted again with the tradit onal abstractions of the architect's those architects who, in trade Indeed Subsequent decades, wished to imitate the Parthenon as a venerable form of rich as sociational value could do so readily from these precise plates of Stuart and Revett, without once having seen Athens themselves.

In nineteenth-century. Phila delphia, for example, the disembodied fa cade of the Parthenon is reconstructed as the Second Bank of the United States in an urban milieu that is completely alien to the setting of the prototype. Instead, we see the temple the way Le Corbusier experienced it, climbing toward it up the steep west slope of this natura citadel, and catching sight of it at 3 dynamic angle through the inner colon- nade of the Propylaia, the ceremonial gate ft the Akropolis. The long view shows the building in relation to the larger shapes of ratur2 that complement its form: the ped: testa of the Akropolis spur that hits it up like ' piece of sculpture and the Attic mountain Chain on the horizon which echoes its mass And when Le Corbusier draws on this ex: perience later in his own work, itis the memory of the building as a foil to nature that guides his vision.

The move lately has been toward respecting the built fabric of our commu: nities a it stands; avoiding egocentsc forms for monumental gestures that would dis rupt its tone and quality; stving for the enhancement of physical continuities in our cities; and, finally, using nature as partne in the act of building rather than as adver: sary. Both hhold important lessons for the history of architecture, 3, The Community of Architecture This is what our third premise is all about that all past buildings, regardless of size 2 status, oF consequence, deserve to be studied.

It has at always been so. Histo Fians have chosen for the most part to-con- centrate on buildings of evident sub: stance—imposing, public monuments, religious architecture, and rich, stately res: idences. It is on such important or grand structures that a culture expends its great fest energy. To insist on ive, architects. In addition, many buildings come about extemporaneously without the roots Froduction of shelter Users themselves Since delight, this scheme of things, is luxury, and since it assumes the tication to feel the need fort and the wealth to afford it, architects have traditic served the highest strata of society.

To be sure, this isan ins rnocent son of visual order, There i no conscious theory behind it, no intellectual: ized system of form.

The general pur: Fig. As with all investigations of the past, the belief persists implicitly that, through a proper understanding of the act fof making places, this most essential skill ff all without which life cannot, literally exist, we come closer to. And so it would be as im- proper to evaluate the constructive im: pulse of a nation exclusively through its lit erate architectue—public monuments and buildings of prestige—as it would be to de- termine its socisl character on the basis of its leading personages alone.

To the extent that American society atthe time of George Washington de vended on slave labor, 10 pick one random instance, the architec: tural history ofthe period must include sive cabins as well as Mount Vernon, The truth is that modest structures in the periphery of menuments are not simply of Intrinsic value; t ey ae also essential to the correct interpretation of the monuments themselves.

This may seem obvious 10 us because Southern plantations are a familiar institution of our Fecent past. If trey were not and we sub- scribed to the avistocratic view of architec. The last lwo observations deserve a fur ther word. They have turned on occasion into active champions of one style at the expense of another, justiving their prefer tence in tees of aesthetic, structural, oF feven moral arguments.

At other, Renaissance atchite tolled over Gothic; Baroque architecture d as excessively gaudy: and the dominant Beaux-Arts cla Hic buildings in America at the turn of the Century was minimized in favor of the oc tasional unorthodoxy of design that pre: saged new directions The historian must attempt to speak of architecture as it was, not asi should have been.

We have no further control over what has happened. We have the duty to under ic sympathetically how it was and why it happened. To scold the nineteenth cen: tury, say, for what it did oF did not do for the historian, no more than personal indulgence. To insist that it should not be repeated is useful and the proper function of the critic History has no alternative but to accept that matters of quality are not absolute, that the terms of quality are set by each period ino: by each building.

Figs, 1. In our these traditions have always held a secondary place. This imbalance is natural given the preoccupa tion of each cu ture with itself. Our esteem for Chartres Cathedral will be more balanced if we were made aware that this master. The Meaning of Architecture The fourth and final premise of this book concems the meaning of buildings.

Build ings are not only physical presences. To study as fully as we can what they are does not exonerate us from asking why they are there. These questions must be answered, of at least asked, and they must be answered in Felation to two extramaterial concepts: time and purpose Time implies sequence. Threads extend from it backward and for ward, to other buildings whose.

As a building goes up it cannot ignore the millennial landscape of form into which it will soon emerge. Once itis up, it will itself be irrevocable, however long its natural life, as a sound is irrevocable once ithas been uttered. The building may de- light or disgust us: we may grow to revere it or make fun of it, cross ourselves as we go by itor call it by an unilattering nick name. This is not to imply a historical determin: ism of form, whereby each building must be considered the ineluctable offspring of its predecessors, There are many factors that condition sequence, not the least of which is the intention of the patron and the ar chiteet.

But tradition is there: itis a lan guage, a source, a challenge. Its the great Container of architectural experience, and no building can live outside of it. Behind What we call architectural revivals lies the desire to emulate the architectural mode of another place and another time, not only to show esteem for the older tradition, but aso in order to associate ourselves with the spirit and values that we think were preva lent there and then.

What is being recalled in these is not the physical form but the fame of the prototype. The function of a tomb isto house the dead. But how adequate a purpose is this for the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Cheops! Ritual may be sad to be the poetry of func- tion: insofar asa building is shaped by it ual it does not simply house function, it comments on it. Magia Sophia sings the ineffable- hess of Christian mystery in providing a space of which one user is man and the other user is unseen and unpredictable.

To the extent, then, that architecture is the useful art that lays ready the stage for Further Reading 3B. It tenters the seductive reaches of interpreta: tion where proo! Reading buildings as the embodiment of the social forder that produced them is no easy mat ter.

For one thing, buildings do not always passively reflect society. But this sno :rave danger. When did architecture begin? Human beings, in their own distinctive form, have been inhabiting the earth for more than one million years, For most of that time they were unaware of architec: ture, if by that term we want to understand the ambitious creation of an environment separate from the natural order, But if, as we suggested, architecture describes sim ply the act of making places for ritual use, it was one of the earliest human needs, Indeed, architecture may be said to have beer there from the beginning, in raw foe as it were, in the very arrangement of na ture.

For only if we conceive of the earth a5 a vast and featureless plain stretching Uunendingly in all directions would we have the total absence of architecture. Once there are ridges and rivers to divide this expanse, hills to punctuate it, and caves 10 gouge it, the business of architecture has already begun. That is what all architecture provides, regardless of its complenity. It raises solid masses that blot out as much space as their bulk, And it rears about our heads barriers, to contain shel: tered space The last ofthese isthe easiest to see.

The sense of refuge is instinctive, It seems natural to build to attain it Bur architecture is more than protective shells, In seeking to bring about places for fitual action, it must set out to deine the boundless, that is, to limit space without necessarily enclosing it in all three dimen sions, It does this in two specific ways through circumscription and accent. The second way involves the Setting up of free structures that, by theie very mass and height, might focus an oth fenwise undifferentiated stretch of open space—architecture as monument Boundary and monument both imply a determined marking of nature.

Now the frst human generations lacked such conti- dence in their own standing within nature. As they moved about in search of tolerable climate and food, the special environments they gave shape to were tentative and un- obtrusive, an architecture of shelter con- tained in the pleats of the earth The shelter, for the most part, was there ready to be used, in the caves that had to bbe wrested from Savage predators such as bears, lions, and the giant hyena. We have proof, however, of huts in the open, like the ones atthe encampment of Terta Amat near Nice in southern France, dating back to about , years ago.

But beyond this, the burning fire molded an ambience of companionship, a station for the hunter to pause, cook his game, harden his tools, and communicate with his band of fellows.

The earliest hearth known to us, fat the great cave of Fscale in. It as a stone age camp, used for a number of years, it seems, ahvays brietly during the late spring. Ina cove by the beach, traces of some twenty huts were found, often disposed on top of one an- fother-—on a sardbar, on the beach isel, and on a dune. Within, the long axis vas lined with larger posts to help hold up the roof—just how we do not know. We do know something about building tools gen: erally.

The digging was probably done with fireshardened wooden spears; the pruning and trimming, with hand axes made of pieces of flint or limestone, What is significant isthe way in which the hunters made use of the enclosed space. The hearth was in the middle, protected from the prevailing northwest wind by a screen of pebbles.

The immediate area around it was free of litter, indicating that there the band must have slept. Further out from this social focus of the hut there were work spaces and, in one case, a kind of Kitchen, to judge from the large smooth stone that was marked by tiny scratches, most likely resulting from the cutting of meat.

Dur ing the litespan of the Neanderthals be- tween 40, and , years ago, and of their successors the Cro-Magnon people, stone tools noticeably improved and now Included cutting knives, sharp and easy to grasp. It was not only surviving day after day that mattered.

AV its mouth the hunter might still live, but the dark in ner recesses came to be reserved for cer- temonies of life and death and aterlite. The cave at Monte Citceo, a limestone hill south fof Rome, contained a unique chamber B where a single battered skull was stood in 4 trench along the farthest wall, with stones arranged around it in an oval ring.

The dead man had been laid out in a shallow grave filed with tools and animal bones. Cn his ches a bison leg had been deliberate'y placed, perhaps as pro vision for the world he had slipped into.

Sometime fairly late during this long search for elerrental beliels, the hunters started using art as a tool of expression. Art too was reality.

It ditfered from the physical world In that it was free of erratic movement and the biological dictates of growth and death, The mammoth cr woolly rhinoceros, fixed to the wall by the artist in a mixture of ground mineral earths and charcoal com- pressed into bone tubes, stayed there, the Sure target of tie disabling spear. These images of magic compulsion, if such they were, reintorcec the strange power of the cult and quickened its sense of mystery. As ritual use had transformed caves into rel gious architecture, so art now made tang ble a range of meaning in these hidden sanctuaries of the earth The Cave at Lascaux We can see all this in the celebrated cave at Lascaux.

They had been created tcward the end of the last slacal period. There were smaller glaciers in the Aps and the Pyrenees. The tal. The animal must be killed to suppor Ht was the great adversary the hunter deadly in attack and hie-sustaining in death. The hunter must preval he knew, would be bound up with deteat 4 to kill Fo animals he man the feaer of them there were and theretore the magic that secured the t Of the quarry must also advance its abun dance And so, in these deep caves of France and Spain, the hunter painted the anima truthiully, in the context of this par adox of life and death, of fertility and ex tinction, Plentiful game was the boon of fertile.

The paintings convey, across millennia, a striking sense for the build and habits of the sented. The attitude towaed them seems feverent. According tone of animal spirit, and the hunter's guarantee ff participating in the special power of the animal.

The painted image is hope Piation in one—the hope of drawing the Animal to the kill, and expiation for having To kill i Weapons themselves were often carved into animal forms, and men dance in animal masks.

There was no attempt to change the given contiguration, by dropping the tl level, for example, passages. At Laseaux, not only wer hands busy working on the ca of images and the too that tuncertain limits of the cave imph ished thing. Th he led The far end of the Hall is taken up by a of four immense bulls in thick black the fourth Three are in Indian file faces them, its huge horns extended across tempty space.

Then there are circles marked by uprights: either stones, as at Avebury 27 kilometers 17 miles north of Stonehenge, with two huge interrelated circles; or else wooden posts, as at Woodhenge, closer still, about 3 ki- lome:ers northeast. Over stone circles are known today all across the British Isles— jn northeast Scotland and Ulster, in Corn: wall and Wales. Fig, 2. To mark the circumter: fence, a ditch was dug through the solid chalk, with the usual tools—digging sticks, picks of antler, and shoulder bones of oxen for shovels, The dazzling white earth was piled up on two banks.

The circle was bro- ken at one place only, in the northeast quadrant. It stood just off the centerline of the break, next to a wooden gateway of four posts, and it stands there stil tited to one side. The point of this arrangement was frst surm sed in the eighteenth century. A per son standing at the center of the white ci le on the morning of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and looking in the direction of this so-called Heel Stone, would have seen the sun rise alittle tothe left of its imposing mass, on axis with the break.

The date of this frst scheme, known as Stonehenge I 's now thought to be around s. It fan on straight for a while, and then curved Fight to reach the river Avon a short dis- tance away. A narrow embanked enclosure about 3 kilometers miles long to the forth of the sanctuary seems to belong with the avenue. Its known as the Cursus. Unless the bluestones were de- posited in the area by glaciers, the teat was amazing. It seems probable that the a fenue af Stonehenge Il commemorates the last stretch of portage.

Monumentalized boundaries like the alignments of Carnac differ trom them because at Stonehenge the spatial Units were cast nto total frames through the added definition of the lintels.

But the dit- ference is more fundamental, For the builders of Stonehenge Ill, architecture implies a weldig together of units that Would read 2s a ingle sustained arttact. OF Course, Ggantia and the megalithic tombs, too, were complicated assemblages. But as architecture of shelter, they molded interior spaces where incidents of detail were not crucial to the enveloping Impact of the steme fabric.

The stone core ff the tombs let sland impertections ot joining. At Ggantija, dressed stones and Slabs of decoration heightened surface ap- peal as an applied, rather than inherent, bffect of the ste.

We have here 4 skeletal construct, like a stone dance. Uprights were tapered toward the top, to make them look sprightlier under their burden. Thi too is a familiar system of joining used in Cabinetmaking, called mortse-and-tenon— perhaps to recall the wooden prototypes of The precinct was reorganized one time. The bluestones, which were boeing moved back during the building of Stonehenge It!

This last arrange possibly a late a in these final incar In the opinion of se er was, Always, there had mic implications. Even were this true—and much of it has been disputed—we must be careful not 10 confuse our own modern demands on sci- fence and the more elemental needs of pre storic farmers and herders for celes- tial indicators of the seasons.

Furthermore, we must not confuse function and ritual, as Wwe Fave distinguished these in our inteo- ductory chapter. Function in architecture is, Further Reading RI. Evan, Malia London: Thames and Hudson, A Laing.

Lscaue tans. It is an abstraction in that it applies to an activity without reference to human involvement. Ritual is the tran- scendence of function to the level of 3 meaningiul act. That would be its function, But the meaning of Stonehenge resides in the ritual, tis ths that humanizes this calendar of stone and earth in the open countryside; itis this that explains the prodigies of engineering and labor that went into its making.

Function did not demand the choice of bluestones and igrey sarsens and their transport from long distances away. Wainwright, the Yenge Monuments. There are two. And second, the ppassoge sings rapturously of a thing called the cty, set on a river, serviced by canals, blessed with good freshwater.

So atthe very same time in history in two separate corners of the ancient world, dit: ferent patterns of community were in ex istence. While Neolithic Eurape carried on a stone-using peasant economy well into the Secord millennium 8. They had leit their Neolithic past behind them long before Europe and had gone on to forge a complex society of reat technological achievement and ma: terial wealth. How was this fabric wrought? What were its components? Physically, what is it that differentiates the ty from the village?

The city,is an involved organism under constant change. The city presents us with a new set of enviconmental ideas, such as the street, the public square, the deensive wall and its gates. Itcromds our discussion with 4 score of building inventions—tor exam- ple, the canal and the granary, the palace and the bath, the market, the bakery, shops, Festaurants, and ibraries, The urban revolution difers from the Neolithic revolution in one essential way.

It does not atfect the basic relationship of people to nature, as the passage from hunting to food production certainly di Agriculture and animal husbandry survive asthe principal modes of subsistence inthe urban period. Even trade cannot be credited exclusively t0 the ise of cities.

The city, above ail ese, typified a social process. The Settlement at Jericho about 9, years ago. Catalhoyuk in southern An- tol, a Thectare acre Neolithic set- tlement ofthe seventh millennium.

The term urban has turned into 2 Value judgment; rural or pastoral, in con- trast, carry with them a note of regression or conservatism This bias is unfair.

It is not enough t0 grant the truism that cities, for the most part, could not survive without the sustain ing labor of peripheral fields and pastue. There were moments in history when the turban and pastoral modes of lite wore competing high cultures. There were mo- ments, , when the collapse of an urban civilization ushered in, after a period of painful adjustment, an equally viable social structure that made do without cities.

We are given to falling them the Dark Ages. The city-form a pired to be compact and versatile. And the future of this proud amalgam of people and buildings could be secured only through faultless detense and aggressive progress. The Lieal interaction among its people, complicated by numbers, was only fone dimension of its social mobility. Out- side, there were other centers of closely controlled resot ces that envied it or re- plenished its wants.

To defend itself against the envious and till carry on trade, the city formed a larger sphere of social contact. The citizenry -vas forced to organize it self in a way that could contend with the diversified tasks fits supple existence. And spe- Cialization went hand in hand with social Stratification. The gods looked after the entire citizenry, both the humble and the high: the temples solemnized pious community The ring of wals expressed the fears andthe strer gthof acommoniate.

Jericivo Precisely how it all started is unclear. Rev- olution implies a sudden break, but it may have been in several places at once, and with varying motives, that the idea of the ty gradually took root. At this stage of our knowledge. This clinging to a place of birth wil prove a durable habit for cities, Time and again until our own day, cities ravaged by Conquest of natural disaster will elect t0 rebuild on theit ashes, fully aware that they will 9e vulnerable anew.

In large measure itis tradition, the genius of the place, that accounts for this stubbornness. The life- giving value of such a spring, inthe desert, ff the Dead Sea, is obvious.

Here by the welling water, where their quarry came to drink, hunters had pitched their tents on bedrock and reserved a small plot of land a8 a sanctuary: and here, within a thou- sand years, the transition had occurred to a settled lite based on agriculture. The frst Permanent settlement had solid domed houses of muct:brick, with an entrance porch and curved walls, probably in irita tion of the round tents of the nomadic hunters.

The fort was overseen by a massive round tower, also of stone, built against the inside of the wal. The houses were now rec- tangulae, with slightly rounded comers.

They were arranged. Each house Consisted of several rooms, interconnect- ing through wide doorways. Sitting among the houses were several buildings Set aside for worship; they shared features of resi dential architecture, such as rounded doorway jambs. Like the townspeople they displaced, the newcomers were also compelled to use earth as their main building material, but they went to some pains to improve its look.

Stone was in short supply; what little could bbe found within easy portage was used for defenses, the substructure of houses, and for other extraordinary purposes.

A shrine ina private house features a dressed pillar ff volcanic rock set on a stone pedestal in 8 semicicular niche. But mud has its own problems. Although itis feminently plastic, it has t0 be shaped somehow and stiffened so that it will stand. Second, it has to be protected from damp: ress, And because itis a drab material that 46 yields lackluster surfaces, the urge is keen to do something more with it—whitewash it, liven it with volor, or modulate it for ef fect.

One clever expedient is to devise a sheathing that both protects and embel- lishes—for example, sheathing like tle that will be hard, water-resistant, and colortul But the invention of tile lies several thou- sand years ahead in time. But the two most satisfactory variants of eatth Fig.

Small shops were at tines incorporated into the houses, but the norm was to have structures devoted exclusively to commercial or industrial use interspersed throughout the city. In the later Sumerian period at Ur, an example of abi zaar was found: a concentration of litte boot's along a narrow passage, probably sheltared by awnings, with doors at ether fend that were closed at night.

The , that classic beast of burden, navigated easily enough. At Ur, one sees on occasion, low flight of steps against a building from which riders could mount, and street cor- ners were regularly rounded to facibtate passage.

Street width, al the very most, would be 3 meters 9 feet or so, and that only forthe few principal thoroughfares that led te the public buildings. These would be bordered with the houses of the rich Poorer folk lived atthe back, along narrow lanes and alleys. It is hard to imagine much whee'ed trafic in this maze, though both Service carts with solid wheels and char tots had been in use trom an early date.

I stood fon a tremendous platform called the zig gurat, and being free of the pressures of density in its ample precinct, its form could afford to be both regular and open. It seems that standard temples as well as ziggurat temples grew out of a common archetype. There, 2 series of temples was buill on sand dunes lover the years. Two circular tables for burnt offerings stood outside. One side of the rectan- gle broke out inte a projecting bay Containing podium or altar; a second po- dium, most likely an offering table, stood in the middle.

The corner rooms formed projecting bastions. A cross-ax's was set up by an oblong room in the middle of each aisle. These acted as vestibules to doors cut into the long sides of the tem- Fig. There was also 4a double entrance on the short side oppo- site the altar.

The walls were now thick and buttressed all along the exterior periphery. Inside, spur walls and buttresses, were spaced in relation to the ceiling beams and rafters that would rest along the tops of the walls At this point the temple form began to diverge. The ziggurat had swelled to Brandiose proportions in stages by absorb ing the frames of earlier temples, which in accordance with local practice would be filled solid after serving theie time, to be used as terraces forthe replacement struc ture, The walls of the zigaurat were sloped and striped with diagonal luting.

Access 10 the top was by means of a stair and ramp built against the northeast face, The tem: ple stood toward the southwest, uneneum bered by parapets. Its four corners pointed toward the main directions of the com. Whitewashed and lofty. One of the aisles of the tripartite temple plan now housed a narrow stat. Additional courts con: tained the bread overs associated with the daily meals of the deity, and offices. Rather than beirg an abject in mide Space with openings cn three sides, as was the White Temple at Warka, the temple now became the innermost af a series of em closed spaces witha single entrance in one of its long sides.

Work: shops, bakeries, and storage rooms ar- ranged themselves on four sides, while the temple was lifted on its own platform at the far end. In front of the court, there was a more public area with the offices of the temple administration to one side.

Here at this fortified gate the transition was made from the profane world of city streets into the sacred world of the temple complex. The worshipper's axial progress moved through the outer and inner courts toward the elevated sanctuery, ina controlled ex perience of augmonting privilege and Sanctity The experience of the ziggurat temple, in contrast, tested on reverential climbing. Godhead in the urban temple resided in 2 remote and guarded sanctum at the end of 2 planned sequence.

In the ziggurat com- plex, godhead was lited up above the city, hovering between the heavens and the daly sea. In nature, this intermediate territory was represented by the mountain. It was in the mountain that the earth and the sky were united. It became the traditional stage of communion between gods and chosen mertals. In the mud plain of the south, the need to re-create the nat- ural architecture of their homeland must have been keenly felt. This atavistic urge i, evident in the naming of ziggurats: one of them, for instance, is called "House of the Mountain, Mountair of the Storm, Bond between Heaven anc Earth.

The ziggurat tem- ple was, among other things, marriage bed. We recall the Greek historian Hero. Precise measurements were spoken to the king in secret, We have the account of King Gudea of Lagash and how he first realized that something was ex- pected of him when the Tigris refused to rise during the normal period of inunda.

We en. Gudea was given appropriate instruc- tions. Then the piling began. The king himself and his fam- ily led the community in this ritual ofl bor.

In the next register, the ing. ASW were the rains trom on high which are measuroess oe great torent eased streams of bitumen to be brought by the canal Arahtu.. In con- trast to the ziggurat at Warka with its single stair, later ziggurats were usually towers Fig. The approach was on the northeast side, Here, thee sta rcases led upward: one of them seat right angles to the building, the other two leaning against the wall.

None ofthe lines of the iggurat 's straight. The sloping walls are, fin addition, slightly convex, The wall line on the ground plan is similarly curved out- ward. These calculated diversions were in tended to correct the look of stifiness and tenervation that strict rectilinearity tends to induce in steutures of this size.