Nicholas II

Introduction
Russian in full Nikolay Aleksandrovich
born May 6 [May 18, New Style], 1868, Tsarskoye Selo [now Pushkin], near St. Petersburg, Russia died July 16/17, 1918, Yekaterinburg

• Nicholas II, watercolour; in the collection of Mrs. Merriweather Post, Hillwood, Washington, D.C. the last Russian emperor (1894–1917), who, with his wife, Alexandra, and their children, was killed by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution.

Early life and reign Nikolay Aleksandrovich was the eldest son and heir apparent (tsesarevich) of the tsarevich Aleksandr Aleksandrovich (emperor as Alexander III from 1881) and his consort Maria Fyodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark). Succeeding his father on November 1, 1894, he was crowned tsar in Moscow on May 26, 1896.
Nicholas II and his family, 1905.

Neither by upbringing nor by temperament was Nicholas fitted for the complex tasks that awaited him as autocratic ruler of a vast empire. He had received a military education from his tutor, and his tastes and interests were those of the average young Russian officers of his day. He had few intellectual pretensions but delighted in physical exercise and the trappings of army life: uniforms, insignia, parades. Yet on formal occasions he felt ill at ease. Though he possessed great personal charm, he was by nature timid; he shunned close contact with his subjects, preferring the privacy of his family circle. His domestic life was serene. To his wife, Alexandra, whom he had married on November 26, 1894, Nicholas was passionately devoted. She had the strength of character that he lacked, and he fell completely under her sway. Under her influence he sought the advice of spiritualists and faith healers, most notably Rasputin, who eventually acquired great power over the imperial couple.
Nicholas also had other irresponsible favourites, often men of dubious probity who provided him with a distorted picture of Russian life, but one that he found more comforting than that contained in official reports. He distrusted his ministers, mainly because he felt them to be intellectually superior to himself and feared they sought to usurp his sovereign prerogatives. His view of his role as autocrat was childishly simple: he derived his authority from God, to whom alone he was responsible, and it was his sacred duty to preserve his absolute power intact. He lacked, however, the strength of will necessary in one who had such an exalted conception of his task. In pursuing the path of duty, Nicholas had to wage a continual struggle against himself, suppressing his natural indecisiveness and assuming a mask of self-confident resolution. His dedication to the dogma of autocracy was an inadequate substitute for a constructive policy, which alone could have prolonged the imperial regime.
Soon after his accession Nicholas proclaimed his uncompromising views in an address to liberal deputies from the zemstvos, the self-governing local assemblies, in which he dismissed as “senseless dreams” their aspirations to share in the work of government. He met the rising groundswell of popular unrest with intensified police repression. In foreign policy, his naïveté and lighthearted attitude toward international obligations sometimes embarrassed his professional diplomats; for example, he concluded an alliance with the German emperor William II during their meeting at Björkö in July 1905, although Russia was already allied with France, Germany's traditional enemy.
Nicholas was the first Russian sovereign to show personal interest in Asia, visiting in 1891, while still tsesarevich, India, China, and Japan; later he nominally supervised the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. His attempt to maintain and strengthen Russian influence in Korea, where Japan also had a foothold, was partly responsible for the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). Russia's defeat not only frustrated Nicholas's grandiose dreams of making Russia a great Eurasian power, with China, Tibet, and Persia under its control, but also presented him with serious problems at home, where discontent grew into the revolutionary movement of 1905.

Nicholas considered all who opposed him, regardless of their views, as malicious conspirators. Disregarding the advice of his future prime minister Sergey Yulyevich Witte, he refused to make concessions to the constitutionalists until events forced him to yield more than might have been necessary had he been more flexible. On March 3, 1905, he reluctantly agreed to create a national representative assembly, or Duma, with consultative powers, and by the manifesto of October 30 he promised a constitutional regime under which no law was to take effect without the Duma's consent, as well as a democratic franchise and civil liberties. Nicholas, however, cared little for keeping promises extracted from him under duress. He strove to regain his former powers and ensured that in the new Fundamental Laws (May 1906) he was still designated an autocrat. He furthermore patronized an extremist right-wing organization, the Union of the Russian People, which sanctioned terrorist methods and disseminated anti-Semitic propaganda. Witte, whom he blamed for the October Manifesto, was soon dismissed, and the first two Dumas were prematurely dissolved as “insubordinate.”

Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin, who replaced Witte and carried out the coup of June 16, 1907, dissolving the second Duma, was loyal to the dynasty and a capable statesman. But the emperor distrusted him and allowed his position to be undermined by intrigue. Stolypin was one of those who dared to speak out about Rasputin's influence and thereby incurred the displeasure of the empress. In such cases Nicholas generally hesitated but ultimately yielded to Alexandra's pressure. To prevent exposure of the scandalous hold Rasputin had on the imperial family, Nicholas interfered arbitrarily in matters properly within the competence of the Holy Synod, backing reactionary elements against those concerned about the Orthodox church's prestige.

World War I After its ambitions in the Far East were checked by Japan, Russia turned its attention to the Balkans. Nicholas sympathized with the national aspirations of the Slavs and was anxious to win control of the Turkish straits but tempered his expansionist inclinations with a sincere desire to preserve peace among the Great Powers. After the assassination of the Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand at Sarajevo, he tried hard to avert the impending war by diplomatic action and resisted, until July 30, 1914, the pressure of the military for general, rather than partial, mobilization. The outbreak of World War I temporarily strengthened the monarchy, but Nicholas did little to maintain his people's confidence. The Duma was slighted, and voluntary patriotic organizations were hampered in their efforts; the gulf between the ruling group and public opinion grew steadily wider. Alexandra turned Nicholas's mind against the popular commander in chief, his father's cousin the grand duke Nicholas, and on September 5, 1915, the emperor dismissed him, assuming supreme command himself. Since the emperor had no experience of war, almost all his ministers protested against this step as likely to impair the army's morale. They were overruled, however, and soon dismissed. Nicholas II did not, in fact, interfere unduly in operational decisions, but his departure for headquarters had serious political consequences. In his absence, supreme power in effect passed, with his approval and encouragement, to the empress. A grotesque situation resulted: in the midst of a desperate struggle for national survival, competent ministers and officials were dismissed and replaced by worthless nominees of Rasputin. The court was widely suspected of treachery, and antidynastic feeling grew apace. Conservatives plotted Nicholas's deposition in the hope of saving the monarchy. Even the murder of Rasputin failed to dispel Nicholas's illusions: he blindly disregarded this ominous warning, as he did those by other highly placed personages, including members of his own family. His isolation was virtually complete.

Abdication and death

When riots broke out in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) on March 8, 1917, Nicholas instructed the city commandant to take firm measures and sent troops to restore order. It was too late. The government resigned, and the Duma, supported by the army, called on the emperor to abdicate. At Pskov on March 15, with fatalistic composure, Nicholas renounced the throne—not, as he had originally intended, in favour of his son, Alexis, but in favour of his brother Michael, who refused the crown.
Nicholas was detained at Tsarskoye Selo by Prince Lvov's provisional government. It was planned that he and his family would be sent to England; but instead, mainly because of the opposition of the Petrograd Soviet, the revolutionary Workers' and Soldiers' Council, they were removed to Tobolsk in Western Siberia. This step sealed their doom. In April 1918 they were taken to Yekaterinburg in the Urals. When anti-Bolshevik “White” Russian forces approached the area, the local authorities were ordered to prevent a rescue; and on the night of July 16/17 the prisoners were all slaughtered in the cellar of the house where they had been confined. The bodies were burned, cast into an abandoned mine shaft, and then hastily buried elsewhere. A team of Russian scientists located the remains in 1976 but kept the discovery secret until after the collapse of the Soviet Union. By 1994 genetic analyses had positively identified the remains as those of Nicholas, Alexandra, three of their daughters (probably Anastasia, Tatiana, and Olga), and four servants. However, the scientists did not find the skeletons of Alexis and of another daughter (probably Maria). The remains were given a state funeral on July 17, 1998, and reburied in St. Petersburg in the crypt of the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul. On August 20, 2000, the Russian Orthodox church canonized the emperor and his family, designating them “passion bearers” (the lowest rank of sainthood) because of the piety they had shown during their final days.

Additional Reading Dominic Lieven, Nicholas II: Emperor of All the Russias (1993; reissued 1996), is a sympathetic, detailed biography. Also of interest is Marc Ferro, Nicholas II: The Last of the Tsars (1991, reissued 1994; originally published in French, 1990). Andrew M. Verner, The Crisis of Russian Autocracy: Nicholas II and the 1905 Revolution (1990), is an authoritative study of his early reign. More popular is Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra (1967, reissued 2000). The fullest study of the Romanov family's fate, based on 160 documents drawn from Russian archives, is Mark D. Steinberg and Vladimir M. Khrustalëv, The Fall of the Romanovs: Political Dreams and Personal Struggles in a Time of Revolution (1995). Also useful are Edvard Radzinsky, The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II, trans. from Russian (1992); and Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Nicholas II: The Interrupted Transition (2000; originally published in French, 1996).

Calculus

Introduction
The field of mathematics called calculus deals with change in processes or systems. In science many quantities change as we deal with them. The heat in a billet of steel begins to lessen the instant the billet is poured from molten metal. The number of bacteria in a culture changes measurably every fraction of a second. So, likewise, does the direction of a planet's motion in space as it speeds along its orbit around the sun.
In such instances we may want to know the rate of change. We may also want to know the rate as a basis for figuring the amount of change over a certain interval of space or time. The methods that solve these problems determine areas or volumes embraced within curved lines or surfaces—a calculation that often cannot be made with arithmetic or algebra.
Calculus Uses Functions and Variables
The formula for the volume V of a sphere in terms of its radius r is V=4/3πr3. This formula gives a definite relation between V and r because, for any value of r, the value of V is determined. For instance, if r=3 inches, then V=36π cubic inches. Thus, the value of V may be thought of as depending on r. To express this idea, we say that V is a function of r.
In the formula, r and V are variables because each may have different values. The variable to which values are assigned freely is called the independent variable; the one whose values are determined by those assigned to the other is the dependent variable.
If a formula is known that expresses the relation between variables, it is spoken of as the function. A functional relation need not be given by means of an algebraic formula. It may be given by a table of corresponding values or by a graph.
The fact that the volume of a sphere in terms of its radius is 4/3πr3 may be indicated by functional notation as V=f(r). In general, the statement that y is a function of x is abbreviated to y=f(x). The “f” stands for the terms that define the relation. Thus, since V=f(r) and V = 4/3πr3, we may use f(r) interchangeably with 4/3πr3.
The notation y=f(x) can be used conveniently to indicate that the values of y to be considered are those that correspond to a value of x. For example, if y=x2–5x+6, we may write y=f(x)=x2–5x+6.
If we wish to find the value of y corresponding to x=2, we may replace x by 2. Then we have y=f(2)=4–10+6=0. If we wish to find the volume of a sphere with a 3-inch radius, we replace r by 3 in the formula V=f(r)= 4/3πr3 and obtain V=f(3)= 4/3π•33, or 36π cubic inches.

Graphs of Functions

Functions can also be represented by graphs. A system of coordinates is used as shown in Fig. 1.

Let X′X be a number line drawn horizontally with its positive direction to the right. Let Y′Y be a number line drawn perpendicular to X′X so the point of intersection O is the origin on both lines. Let the positive direction of Y′Y be upward. The line X′X is called the x-axis, and the line Y′Y, the y-axis. The two lines together are the coordinate axes.

Let P be any point in the plane. From P drop a perpendicular to the x-axis. It cuts the x-axis at point M, which corresponds to the number x, called the abscissa of P. Also from P extend a perpendicular to the y-axis. It cuts the y-axis at point N, which corresponds to the number y, called the ordinate of P. The numbers x and y are called the rectangular coordinates of P. To indicate that P has the coordinates x and y, write P(x,y) or the point (x,y).

When a function y=f(x) is given by an algebraic formula for f(x), we must first construct from the formula a table of number pairs from which the points on the plane may be plotted. We select a convenient number of pairs and plot the corresponding points. Then a curve drawn through them is the graph of the function. The method can be illustrated by plotting 2x2–5x+7. If we say that y=f(x)=2x2–5x+7, we find for various values of x the corresponding values of the function as given below.



We plot these points to define a curve. Connecting them in the order of increasing value, we have the graph of Fig. 2.

The Nature of Analytic Geometry

In plane geometry, problems are solved by constructions and geometrical reasonings. A coordinate system as already described, however, makes it possible to use algebraic processes, which usually are easier than geometric reasoning, for solving geometrical problems. Thus algebra and geometry are united. The subject is called analytic geometry.

In analytic geometry certain geometric concepts, such as “point,” “distance,” “line,” “angle,” and so on, as well as geometric figures such as curves, are expressed by means of algebraic symbols, expressions, and equations. This creates a geometry-algebra dictionary. Here are a few terms from such a dictionary:


Differential Calculus

Functions are studied in such fields as algebra and analytic geometry. These divisions of mathematics cannot provide satisfactory solutions for many problems that involve rates of change. Some problems are: What is the best way of describing the speed of a car or the cooling of a hot object? How does the change of the plate current in a vacuum tube depend upon any change in the grid voltage? In such problems, the rate of change must be computed. The methods used for doing so make up the divisions of mathematics called differential calculus.

The Average Rate of Change

The solution starts with finding the average rate of change. For instance, assume a car begins a trip at noon and at 2:00 PM is 50 miles from the starting point. At 5:00 PM it has gone 140 miles. From 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM it traveled 140−50 miles, or 90 miles. Since it did so in three hours, it traveled at an average rate of 90/3, or 30, miles an hour.

The distance s from the starting point is regarded as a function of the time t, denoted by the symbol s=f(t). We find that f(2)=50 and f(5)=140. The increment of t is Δt=5–2=3, and the increment of s is Δs=f(2+Δt)–f(2)=f(5)–f(2)=140–50=90. Then:

The average rate of change can be defined generally as follows: the average rate of change of a function y=f(x) in the interval from x to x+Δx is defined as the ratio of the increments of y and x. In symbols:

A geometrical interpretation of the average rate of change can be given in a graph of the function. The function y=f(x) is plotted in Fig. 3 below.

The increment Δx is given by the segment P′Q′=PR. The corresponding increment Δy=Δf(x) is given by the segment RQ. Hence the average rate of change in the interval P′Q′ is given by


average rate of change of the function y=f(x) in the interval from x to x+Δx is equal to the slope of the straight line PQ, which connects points on the graph that correspond to the values x and x+Δx. Such a straight line connecting two points on a curve is called a secant of the curve.


The average rate of change is computed very easily when the function is given by a formula. For example, to compute the average rate of change of the function y=f(x)=3x2–2, if x changes from 1 to 3:



The Problem of Instantaneous Rate


Many rate problems in practical life are not satisfactorily solved by merely computing an average rate of change of a function. If an automobile accident happens, the driver cannot shake his responsibility by proving that he drove at an average rate of 20 miles an hour during the preceding two hours. The important fact is his “instantaneous” rate of speed at the instant of the accident, especially if the rate happened to have been changing.

The meaning of an instantaneous rate therefore needs to be established. The approach that defined an average rate does not work as well for an instantaneous rate. There is no interval of time that spreads over the instant of the accident and no corresponding distance covered by the automobile. A definition can be reached by “creeping up to it” from each side; that is, if the definition can be made increasingly sharper for ever-smaller intervals of time and distance traveled and the same is done for “afterward” by assuming the car could have gone on, then there will be a set of values that separates everything “before” from everything “after.” These values can be called a limit. It will provide the desired instantaneous rate at the moment the accident occurred.


Meaning of Instantaneous Change


This “limiting set of values” can be illustrated in geometric terms in Fig. 4 below.



In a function given by the graph points P1, P2, P3, and so on to the right of P are selected. They establish secants PP1, PP2, PP3. Points P′1, P′2, P′3, and so on to the left establish secants PP′1, PP′2, PP′3.



The average rate of change of the function for the segment QQ1, for example, will be equal to the slope of the secant PP1. Other secants define other average rates. The figure shows, however, that one line, PT, separates the secants meeting the curve to the right of P from those meeting to the left. This line is called the tangent of the curve at P.



The slopes of secants on either side of P approach the slope of the tangent as the defining points are taken nearer to P. Thus the slope of the tangent at P is the limit of the slopes of the secants through P as the defining points approach P. If the slopes of the secants define average rates of change on either side of P, then the slope of the tangent must be the instantaneous rate at P. Thus the instantaneous rate of change at P is equal to the slope of the tangent at P. To find the slope of the tangent, take any point, T, on the tangent in Fig. 5.

The increments of the coordinates, if one passes from P to T, may be denoted by dx and dy. The slope (angle θ from the horizontal) of the tangent PT therefore is:



It was stated above, however, that the instantaneous rate of change at the point P, which may be denoted by m, is equal to the slope of the tangent PT. We then have an expression for the value of m: <
br>

Since the instantaneous rate of change was defined as the limit (lim) of the average rate of change for the interval Δx, as Δx approaches zero, we also have



Therefore the derivative (or instantaneous rate of change) of a function y=f(x) at a particular point


This value is equal to the slope of the tangent at P. If dx and dy are increments of x and y from P to a freely chosen point on the tangent, then the derivative at P is given by

The Formula for a Derivative


To show how to find the derivative of a function that is defined by a formula, consider the function

y=f(x)=3x2–5

To find the derivative of this function at some particular point (for example, x=2), first find the average rate of change in the interval from x=2 to x=2+Δx. This can be done as follows:

Such a computation of a derivative applies to any power function of x—that is, x with any exponent, thus, xn. A formula for problems in xn is as follows (together with other important derivatives):
br>

Once the derivative of a function is known, it can be used directly or in “inverse,” or “turn-about,” ways. The “inverse” ways use a process called integration. As an operation, this is the inverse of differentiation, just as subtraction is the inverse of addition. All these operations make up integral calculus.

A simple example of integral calculus is a computation of the area under a portion of a curve y=f(x). In Fig. 6 we want the area defined by the segment AB of the curve itself, the segment A′B′ of the base, or x-axis, and the side boundaries (A′A and B′B).

Divide the base into segments of length Δx and upon these segments erect rectangles with heights P1Q1, P2Q2, and so on. The area of each rectangle will be its base Δx multiplied by the height. The sum of these areas will be
=(P . . . + II + I1Q1(P + ) Δx2Q2(1) . . . +  Δx )
=f(x1Δx+f(x • )2(2) . . . + •Δx )
This sum obviously gives an approximate value for the area ABB′A′. The area can be found with any desired degree of precision by taking a large enough number of segments (rectangles). The expression (2) above can be abbreviated Sf(x)Δx.
Here the symbol S signifies that a series of similar terms—f(x1)•Δx, f(x2)•Δx, and so on—is to be added. In order to show that the area can be found as precisely as we desire by taking Δx small enough, we use the symbol dx instead of Δx, and the
In order to indicate that the area bounded by the lines x=a and x=b is to be computed, we write

The right-hand member of this equation is called the definite integral of f(x)dx between the limits a and b (or it can be said, “from a to b”).
Integration as the Inverse of Differentiation
From this stage, we must find a way to obtain an exact value, in algebraic terms, for the definite integral. This value can be computed, because if the f(x) in the integral is considered as a derivative of some other function, that other function will provide the basis for the desired answer.
This can be done readily for simple functions. If the curve that helps define the desired area, for example, is y=x2, the integral (in part) will be

The problem now is to discover “what other function” will yield x2 as a derivative. Knowledge of differentiation tells us that “the other function” can only be x3/3. (Under the rule for differentiating a power function in which n is 3, the derivative is 3x2/3, or x2.) This reasoning can be “turned around” by using n for 2, 3, or any other exponent and saying that the integral (in part) of
The final step in applying the result above (use of x3/3 for x2 in the integral) is evaluating

This can be done for a definite integral by subtracting the lesser value (at x=a) from the greater (at x=b). For an example, use the parabola y=mx2 (Fig. 7). Since it cuts the coordinate axes (x and y) at their origin (O), the value of a can be considered 0 and we need only deal with the value x=b.

The area A can now be obtained immediately by substituting b for x in the partial solution x3/3 obtained above as follows:

In many problems f(x)dx is given without limits. It is to be evaluated over its entire range. Evaluation depends upon this fact: the derivatives of both x2+2 and x2+3 will be 2x because the derivative of any constant (such as 2 or 3) is 0. In using x3/3 for integrating x2dx, the possible existence of a constant with x3/3 (a constant that would “disappear in differentiating”) is recognized by writing x3/3+C. C is called the constant of integration; the result, an indefinite integral, because its value depends in part upon whatever value the constant C may have.

Architecture

By the simplest definition, architecture is the design of buildings, executed by architects. However, it is more. It is the expression of thought in building. It is not simply construction, the piling of stones or the spanning of spaces with steel girders. It is the intelligent creation of forms and spaces that in themselves express an idea.

Construction becomes intelligent and thus architectural when it is efficient and immediately appears so. If it is the simplest and most advanced type of structure, solving the task set for it, and conceivable in its age, construction will have the quality of perfect appropriateness and will also be the expression of the mechanical knowledge of a culture. It becomes intelligent also when it is made to emphasize its simplicity and to express its system of support so that both can be immediately understood.
Construction, however, only became a basic factor in architectural thought during the Roman era at the time of the birth of Christ. Before then architecture had been almost exclusively symbolic in form and decoration. The symbols that were materialized in the Egyptian pyramid, Sumerian ziggurat, Hindu stupa, and Japanese pagoda were the most powerful expression of each culture's religious beliefs. They were designed according to the most complex and all-embracing symbolic systems; their shape, decoration, dimensions, and orientation to the sun were the result of the most profound meditation. But they enclosed little or no internal space. They were works of architecture but not of construction.
When intelligent, permanent construction enclosing space replaced the symbolic architecture of primitive cultures, a new type of architectural art appeared. It became possible for a whole city to become a work of architecture with each contributing element—places of worship, government institutions, markets, houses—enclosed in an appropriate structure and decorated to express its individual character.

The cities of Rome, Ravenna, Constantinople, and Isfahan became possible with their colorful domes, cavernous markets, and decorated palaces. Their interior spaces also became symbolic in their shape and decoration as seen in the Islamic mosque and in Byzantine and Gothic churches.

With the Renaissance in Europe around 1400, there came a new sort of architecture in which mass and interior space were manipulated to produce aesthetically pleasing pictures like those in paintings and sculptures. The elaborate symbolism of primitive and medieval art disappeared. In its place was a purely human-centered handling of form and space to produce visual delight.

The demystification of architecture during the Renaissance prepared the way for modern design. In the 19th century the picturesque, the design of both buildings and their landscape surroundings as if they were pictures, evolved.

But the simultaneous evolution of society, science, and industry collided with this view of architecture, suggesting the very different idea that building could be an important instrument of social betterment if made healthy and efficient. Thus it has come about that next to the theater-set architecture of New York City's Fifth Avenue there is that of the hospital-like housing projects, which has left many architects with the difficult choice between working as decorative artists or as social planners.

Symbolism

Mankind first used indestructible materials to erect large structures not to live in but to worship their gods. From the beginning of settled habitation about 10,000 BC to the rise of the Roman Empire, houses were built of the flimsiest materials and were not expected to outlast the lives of their inhabitants. A few early civilizations—especially the Assyrians, Persians, and Minoans—erected monumental palaces, but these were the residences of priest-kings. Architecture originated in the religious impulse and thus was originally symbolic.

The earliest permanent constructions consist of huge stones, roughly shaped, arranged in lines or circles. The one at Stonehenge in England is the best known of these complexes. The stones were set up by several successive peoples inhabiting the region between 3000 and 1600 BC. They are grouped in four concentric circles, two of which are formed by paired uprights bearing huge capstones.

Because they are arranged to align with the sun at the summer and winter solstices, it is generally assumed that the complex served as a monumental calendar in which rites were performed on significant days of the year. Similar circles of stones were set up elsewhere in England, at Avebury most particularly, and in France at Carnac. Clusters of stones spanned by roof slabs, called dolmens, and single stones that stood on end, called menhirs, were also erected in large numbers, especially in Europe.

Egypt

The Egyptian pyramids were far more sophisticated and larger in size but similar symbolically: sacred stones. The fertile Nile Valley permitted civilization to develop there around 3000 BC ruled by god-kings, the pharaohs. The necessity of carrying out extensive irrigation projects meant that the Egyptians were organized to build on a large scale. Furthermore, the high limestone cliffs hemming in the valley provided an inexhaustible supply of fine building stone.

Royal tombs were built along the edges of cliffs, at first as low rectangular mastabas, then as tall four-sided pyramids. The earliest of the pyramids was that of the pharaoh Zoser erected at Saqqara about 2700–2600 BC. Three huge pyramids built at Giza, near Cairo, about 2500 BC were the culmination of the series (see Pyramids). The largest of these, the great pyramid of the pharaoh Cheops, measured 756 feet (230 meters) on a side at its base and was 481 feet (147 meters) high. In spite of its huge size, however, it enclosed no space other than a narrow passage leading to a small tomb chamber in its center. It was constructed of limestone blocks weighing between 3 and 15 tons that were simply piled on top of each other.

The Egyptians worshiped the sun as their chief god, often represented by a symbolic pyramidal stone, or ben-ben. The Egyptian hieroglyph for the sun was a triangle divided into three zones horizontally—red, white, and yellow. It would seem to represent the sun (the top, or yellow zone) spreading its rays upon the Earth (the bottom, or red zone). The pyramids at Giza were once faced in a smooth coating of white marble with a band of pink at the base and a pyramidal block of pure gold at the top.

It has been concluded that the pyramids themselves were huge ben-bens, symbols of the sun and its rays reaching down to Earth. When the pharaoh died he was said to ascend the sun's rays to join his father, the sun-god. Thus the pyramid would also seem to have been the symbolic staircase up which its occupant, the pharaoh, would climb to reach heaven. What breathtaking symbols these must have been lined up on the west rim of the Nile Valley!

To the east of Egypt another civilization appeared about 3000 BC, that of the Sumerians in the river valley of the Tigris and Euphrates called Mesopotamia, or the “land between the rivers.” This too was a highly organized culture capable of carrying out large irrigation and construction projects. But it differed from Egypt in two respects: it had no stone with which to build, only river clay, so that its architecture is entirely in brick; and it had no single divine ruler but was divided into a number of independent city-states and worshiped unseen gods.

Sumeria

The Sumerian temple was a small brick house that the god was supposed to visit periodically. It was ornamented so as to recall the reed houses built by the earliest Sumerians in the valley. This house, however, was set on a brick platform, which became larger and taller as time progressed until the platform at Ur (built around 2100 BC) was 150 by 200 feet (45 by 60 meters) and 75 feet (23 meters) high. These Mesopotamian temple platforms are called ziggurats, a word derived from the Assyrian ziqquratu, meaning “high.” They were symbols in themselves; the ziggurat at Ur was planted with trees to make it represent a mountain. There the god visited Earth, and the priests climbed to its top to worship.

The ziggurat continued as the essential temple form of Mesopotamia during the later Assyrian and Babylonian eras. In these later times it became taller and more towerlike, perhaps with a spiral path leading up to the temple at the top. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the main temple of Babylon, the famous Tower of Babel, was such a tower divided into seven diminishing stages, each a different color: white, black, purple, blue, orange, silver, and gold.

India

A third civilization emerged about 300 BC east of Mesopotamia, beyond the Iranian plateau, in the Indus River valley of India. From it evolved the Hindu culture of India that produced another characteristic temple form, the stupa. The earliest example surviving in its entirety is that at Sanchi, erected during the 1st century BC. More is known about the symbolism of the stupa because the Hindu religion has survived to the present day, while the religions of the ancient Egyptians and the Sumerians have not.

The Hindu stupa again symbolized a sacred mountain. It was an ovoid mass of stone blocks that became increasingly tall as time progressed. Here, however, the deity was placed deep inside a small, unlit womb chamber at its core, directly under the structure's highest peak. During ceremonies a statue of the god placed there was believed to be inhabited by the deity. These statues had originally been placed in rock-cut caves deep in the faces of cliffs, and it was only after many centuries that the Hindu place of worship emerged from the Earth and became a freestanding construction symbolizing the mountain in which it had formerly been excavated.

As in the case of the pyramid and the ziggurat, there is very little space inside a stupa. But its exterior was richly carved in decorative patterns derived from the wooden construction of palaces and covered with masses of statues and reliefs depicting religious scenes. These statues were placed to mark the hieratic system of the Hindu universe so that around the tiny womb chamber and its sacred image there spread a series of secondary blocks, courtyards, and avenues. At Angkor Wat, erected in Cambodia in the 12th century AD, these grew to huge size and complexity (see Angkor Wat).

Japan
Angkor Wat was a Buddhist rather than a Hindu shrine. In the early centuries of the Christian Era, Buddhism spread eastward from India across China, becoming established in Japan by AD 600. There the Indian stupa reappeared in the similar but greatly transformed pagoda. The earliest and most perfect surviving example of the pagoda is that in the monastery of Horyuji, which was erected in 607. Built in 711, the pagoda is in wood, the primary material of construction in Japan. Its basic form is that of a house, repeated five times vertically. The spreading roof of each tier displays the characteristic construction in posts and lintels joined by elaborate brackets perfected in the houses and palaces of China and Japan. There is little internal space. A relic of the Buddha is set in the stone base of the tall pole that rises the entire height of the pagoda, emerging at the peak as a finial. Located around the base of the pole are four statues that face the four cardinal points.
Buddhism in Japan also emphasized other, newer architectural forms, most particularly the image hall. At Horyuji this is called the golden hall and is set beside the pagoda in the monastic courtyard to share its ritual emphasis. The golden hall encloses a large space, like a palace hall, but is occupied principally by cult statues and painted screens. Religious ceremonies took place chiefly out-of-doors in the courtyard. The wooden palace construction of the pagoda is repeated in the golden hall and in all the monastic buildings, producing a lighter and more habitable environment than the stone masses of Sanchi and Angkor Wat.
Greece
The greatest of the early religious types is the Greek temple, which evolved during the thousand years before the birth of Jesus. Until the age of Alexander the Great, the Greeks erected permanent stone buildings almost exclusively for religious monuments, like the Egyptians, Sumerians, and Hindus. Their temples were not large enclosures of space but statue chambers containing a god's sacred image. These chambers were accessible only to priests. Yet the Greek temple has always been seen as fundamentally distinct from and superior to most other early religious types, partly because of the simplicity of its form, partly because of the exquisite refinement of the best examples (especially the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens), and partly because it is seen to reflect the emergence in Greece of a rational, philosophical approach to art that replaced earlier belief systems. (See also Acropolis.)
• Corinthian
• Ionic
• Greek architecture developed two distinct orders, or styles--the Doric and the Ionic--and later a … There are two types of Greek temple: the Ionic, evolved in Ionia on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea, and the Doric, evolved on the western shore. The two systems are called orders because their parts and proportions are ordered and coordinated. Their forms must originally have had symbolic meaning. Both show the same basic plan: a central windowless statue chamber, the cella; a porch, usually with two columns in front; and a ring of columns, the peristyle, around the four sides. The cella and porch seem to have been the original elements of the temple. They reproduce the primitive Greek house so that the god is symbolically depicted as living like a chief. The temple is usually set on a natural hill, or acropolis, but has no artificial platform beyond a three-step foundation, or stylobate. The peristyle was a later addition, apparently borrowed from the Egyptians, evidently to enlarge and ornament the symbolic god-house inside. A low, sloping roof tops the building with gables, called pediments, on the short sides. The Ionic and Doric temples differ in their details. The Doric temple is simple in plan, the Ionic larger with a double peristyle. The columns differ: the Doric has a dish-shaped top, or capital, and no base, while the Ionic has paired volutes at its capital and carved rings at its base. The lintels, or entablatures, spanning the columns are also distinct, the Doric having a row of projecting blocks, or triglyphs, between sculpted metopes. The Ionic elements are smaller and taller, the Doric forms shorter and broader. What is remarkable and unique about the Greek temple is the conscious adjustment of these orders by Greek architects for purely aesthetic effect. For the first time in history, architects, not priests, directed these building projects. Many of their names are known, and several wrote books about their aesthetic experiments. A book that has survived to the present is De Architectura (On Architecture) by the Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, who was active at the time of the birth of Christ. It is an authoritative source of information on much of Greek architectural theory and practice.
Greek designers sought perfect orderliness in their rendition of the temple form. They adjusted the number of columns across the ends in relation to those down the sides. They aligned all the accents along the elevations so that each unit defined by one column (in the Doric order) was divided in the entablature into two triglyphs and metopes, four mutules under the cornice, four water spouts along the roof edge, and eight roof tiles. The most perfect example of this, the Parthenon in Athens, was built in 447–438 BC by the architects Ictinus and Callicrates for the political leader Pericles.
Within this strictly ordered framework, the Greek architect worked to endow every part with interest and life in the carving of its surface. The spiral of the Ionic volute, the curve of the Doric capital, the depth and breadth of the flutes were varied endlessly for effect. The translucence and fine grain of the marble used in the most important buildings were an important help in making these refinements perceptible. Most amazing was the application of this work of adjustment to the temple as a whole, particularly in the case of the Parthenon. Here the stylobate and entablature are very slightly curved so that they rise in the center of each side, while the columns are made to lean slightly inward—the angle increasing as they approach the corners—and the distance between the shafts varied. Nor are the column shafts themselves straight but bulge slightly toward their middles in entasis. Thus the whole building was treated with the subtlety and delicacy of the marble sculptures that filled its metopes and pediment. Callicrates and Ictinus' attitude toward religious architecture ceased to be that of the superstitious priest-architect held subject to unvaryingly precise (and often hypnotically elaborate) repetition of prescribed forms and became instead that of the artist rationalist—adjusting, refining, and simplifying forms to make them quietly effective and satisfying to the eye.
In the 5th century BC, the age of Pericles, Greece was still an assortment of independent city-states, many of them democracies. In 338 BC Philip II of Macedon forced them all together into a single empire. Between 334 and 323 his son, Alexander the Great, conquered Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, and parts of India, transforming the whole into the most powerful state in the civilized world. Greek architecture suddenly became that of this rich, powerful Hellenic empire and was forced to break out of the fixed, small-scale vocabulary of forms that had been satisfactory for the Periclean temple. The orders were retained and a new one added, the Corinthian, a variation of the Ionic with realistic leaves of the acanthus plant on its capital. Construction was still in stone blocks—preferably marble—following the system of the column-post and entablature-lintel. But now this simple system was extended and multiplied to make monumental cities with colonnaded avenues and squares, palaces and public meeting halls, libraries and tombs. A series of great Hellenistic metropolises grew up, Alexandria in Egypt in particular (today completely buried underneath the modern city). At the royal city of Pergamum, which was built during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, one can see even today a series of colonnaded plazas stepping up a concave hillside, a single huge composition of architectural forms that are expressive of Hellenistic wealth and political power. This was no longer an architecture of detail and refinement but one of massive (if simple) construction and political show. The vocabulary of the Periclean temple was no longer appropriate, and the Roman Empire that succeeded the Hellenistic adopted another, revolutionary solution.

Space
The Roman Empire, founded by Augustus Caesar in 27 BC and lasting in Western Europe for 500 years, reorganized world politics and economics. Almost the entirety of the civilized world became a single centralized state. In place of Greek democracy, piety, and independence came Roman authoritarianism and practicality. Vast prosperity resulted. Europe and the Mediterranean bloomed with trading cities ten times the size of their predecessors with public amenities previously unheard of: basilicas (law courts), theaters, circuses, public baths. And these were now large permanent masonry buildings as were the habitations, tall apartment houses covering whole city blocks, or insulae.
This architectural revolution brought about by the Romans required two innovations: the invention of a new building method—concrete vaulting—and the organization of labor and capital on a large scale so that huge projects could be executed quickly after the plans of a single master architect.
Pagan Rome
Roman concrete was a fluid mixture of lime and small stones poured into the hollow centers of walls faced with brick or stone and over curved wooden molds, or forms, to span spaces as vaults. The Mediterranean is an active volcanic region, and a spongy, light, tightly adhering stone called pozzolana was used to produce a concrete that was both light and extremely strong.
The Romans had developed pozzolana concrete about 100 BC but at first used it only for terrace walls and foundations, as, for example, at the Temple of Fortuna Primigenia at Palestrina, erected about 80 BC. It apparently was the notorious emperor Nero who first used the material on a grand scale to rebuild a region of the city of Rome around his palace, the expansive Domus Aurea (Golden House), after the great fire of AD 64 (which he is erroneously said to have set). Here broad streets, regular blocks of masonry apartment houses, and continuous colonnaded porticoes were erected according to a single plan and partially at state expense. The Domus Aurea itself was a labyrinth of concrete vaulted rooms, many in complex geometric forms. An extensive garden with a lake and forest spread around it.
The architect Severus seems to have been in charge of this great project. Emperors and emperors' architects succeeding Nero and Severus continued and expanded their work of rebuilding and regularizing Rome. Vespasian (emperor AD 63–79) began the Colosseum. Domitian (81–96) rebuilt the Palatine Hill as a huge palace of vaulted concrete designed by his architect Rabirius. Trajan (97–117) erected the expansive forum that bears his name (designed by his architect Apollodorus) and a huge public bath. Hadrian (117–138)—proud to serve as his own architect—built the Pantheon as well as a villa the size of a small city for himself at Tivoli. Later Caracalla (211–217) and Diocletian (284–305) erected two mammoth baths that bear their names, and Maxentius (306–312) built a huge vaulted basilica, now called the Basilica of Constantine.

The Baths of Caracalla have long been accepted as a summation of Roman culture and engineering. It is a vast building, 360 by 702 feet (110 by 214 meters), set in 50 acres (20 hectares) of gardens. It was one of a dozen establishments of similar size in ancient Rome devoted to recreation and bathing. There were a 60- by 120-foot (18- by 36-meter) swimming pool, hot and cold baths (each not much smaller than the pool), gymnasia, a library, and game rooms. These rooms were of various geometric shapes. The walls were thick, with recesses, corridors, and staircases cut into them. The building was entirely constructed of concrete with barrel, groined, and domical vaults spanning as far as 60 feet (18 meters) in many places. Inside, all the walls were covered with thin slabs of colored marble or with painted stucco. The decorative forms of this coating, strangely enough, were derived from Greek architecture as though the Romans could build but could not ornament. Therefore, what is Roman about the Baths of Caracalla and the other great constructions of the Romans is merely the skeleton.

The rebuilding of Rome set a pattern copied all over the empire. Nearby, the ruins of Ostia, Rome's port (principally constructed in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD), reflect that model. Farther away it reappears at Trier in northwestern Germany, at Autun in central France, at Antioch in Syria, and at Timgad and Leptis Magna in North Africa. When political disintegration and barbarian invasions disrupted the western part of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD, new cities were founded and built in concrete during short construction campaigns: Ravenna, the capital of the Western Empire from 492–539, and Constantinople in Turkey, where the seat of the empire was moved by Constantine in 330 and which continued thereafter to be the capital of the Eastern, or Byzantine, Empire

Christian Rome

One important thing had changed by the time of the founding of Ravenna and Constantinople; after 313 this was the Christian Roman Empire. The principal challenge to the imperial architects was now the construction of churches. These churches were large vaulted enclosures of interior space, unlike the temples of the Greeks and the pagan Romans that were mere statue-chambers set in open precincts. The earliest imperial churches in Rome, like the first church of St. Peter's erected by Constantine from 333, were vast barns with wooden roofs supported on lines of columns. They resembled basilicas, which had carried on the Hellenistic style of columnar architecture. Roman concrete vaulted construction was used in certain cases, for example, in the tomb church in Rome of Constantine's daughter, Santa Costanza, of about 350. In the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, erected in 526–547, this was expanded to the scale of a middle-sized church. Here a domed octagon 60 feet (18 meters) across is surrounded by a corridor, or aisle, and balcony 30 feet (9 meters) deep. On each side a semicircular projection from the central space pushes outward to blend these spaces together.

Byzantine Empire

An impressive series of domical churches was built about the same time as San Vitale, especially in the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople. Here in 532–537 the emperor Justinian had his architects Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus build Hagia Sophia. A low dome 107 feet (33 meters) in diameter is supported on four triangular vaults, or pendentives, so that two half-domes of the same dimension can open at either side. The central space measures 107 by 220 feet (33 by 67 meters). A deep aisle and balcony surround this, opening into it through arcades and blending with it across semicircular recesses. Externally the building is brought to a rectangle that is 220 by 320 feet (67 by 98 meters) on a side, terracing upward by stages to the dominant central dome

The symbolic religious buildings of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Japan, and Greece stood apart from the surrounding cities and stated a religious belief in every detail. The Byzantine church, however, was buried in the new masonry city, another domical block like the baths and basilicas nearby. But symbolic expression found a new and powerful medium in the illusionistic decoration of the vast interior church spaces. The interiors of the Baths of Caracalla had been decorated with fragments of Greek architecture, and the walls of Nero's Domus Aurea had been painted in fantastic stage architecture and landscapes. Now the interior of the Byzantine church was covered with glass mosaic pieces. These depicted Biblical scenes and images of saints set against a continuous gold background. The mosaics at Hagia Sophia have been plastered over, but an impression of the original effect survives in the smaller, later churches at Daphni and Hosios Loukas and, especially, San Marco in Venice, begun in 1063. Here the walls of the space are made to disappear in a glow of mystical light, and the worshiper seems to be carried up into the court of Heaven with Christ and all the saints.

Islam
Roman concrete vaulted construction was paralleled and indeed preceded by brick vaulted techniques evolved in Mesopotamia during the thousand years before the birth of Christ. This tradition created a sophisticated type of palace design, seen, for example, in that at Ctesiphon, near Baghdad, built in AD 550. It was passed on to the Islamic dynasties after the foundation of that aggressive religion in 622. Islam, like Christianity, required large covered interior spaces. Also like Christianity, it first created such spaces by the erection of broad wooden roofed enclosures divided by lines of columns, as are seen in the Mosque of Cordoba, Spain, built between 786 and 987. Vaulting was restricted to palaces. In the 12th century, however, masonry vaulting was used in Persia to span the wide spaces of the “Friday” Mosque at Isfahan. Here four deep tunnel vaults open from each side of a courtyard with a dome extending the vault on the side facing toward Mecca. This became the model of the great Egyptian and Iranian mosques of the 16th and 17th centuries. It is seen expanded in scale and ornamented in glowing blue ceramic tile in the Royal Mosque (Masjid-i-Shah) at Isfahan. With their conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottomans developed a type of mosque that combined the Persian type, especially its tile decoration, and the single domical space of the Byzantine church. The celebrated architect Sinan built a series of mosques in the 16th century that displayed a structural resourcefulness and decorative refinement equal to that of his European contemporaries of the High Renaissance. The Islamic tradition closed impressively with the Taj Mahal, erected in Agra, India, in 1630–48, during Muslim rule. It is a domical tomb monument covered in carved marble (see Taj Mahal).
Romanesque For seven centuries, from 300 to 1000, Europe was a shambles of crude wooden houses and churches. This was in sharp contrast to the continuation of Roman building techniques in the Byzantine and Islamic empires in the East. There had been only one short break in these Dark Ages: the reign of Charlemagne (768–814) was marked by the erection of his palace and palace chapel (792–805) at Aachen (now in Germany), which is a copy of San Vitale in Ravenna. Shortly after 1000, however, a miraculous transformation occurred. Large masonry churches were simultaneously begun all over Europe. The 11th-century monk Raoul Glaber wrote that it was as if the continent was putting on “a white mantle of churches.” This was religious architecture built by anonymous architects according to symbolic prescriptions. A new period of architecture commenced, called Romanesque today because it was the reproduction of Roman vaulted style. The methods of construction were the same, although often very crudely carried out, but great originality was shown in interior spatial planning and in exterior massing and decoration. A new type of church evolved that is excellently represented in St. Sernin at Toulouse, built from about 1080 to 1120. The plan is cross-shaped instead of centralized as at Hagia Sophia. The longest of its four arms extends westward and is the nave. It is crossed by shorter transepts and is balanced by a short chevet, or head, where the altar is set in front of a semicircular end-wall roofed with a half dome. Each arm has an aisle on either side below a high balcony, or triforium. These arms are vaulted with simple half-cylindrical barrel vaults and are narrow so that the intersection, or crossing, is less important for the tiny dome inside than for the tall tower built in tiers above it on the exterior. In the chevet the aisles are carried around the curved end as an ambulatory from which open individual semicircular chapels. Romanesque churches of this type are in France and northern Spain and Italy and have been called pilgrimage churches because they stand along the route of pilgrimage roads leading to San Juan Campostella. Relics were displayed for veneration in the chapels around the chevet, and sleeping space for pilgrims was provided in the triforium

Other similar Romanesque church types developed all over Europe. Along the Rhine River large churches were built with narrow, vaulted naves, no transepts, and groups of tall towers at both ends. In northern France the Norman Romanesque evolved with skillful vaulting and pairs of tall towers at the west facades. This style was carried to England by William the Conqueror after 1066 and produced the Anglo-Norman Romanesque of Durham and Ely cathedrals. The Romanesque's most striking manifestation was probably in Italy, among the ruins of the ancient Roman Empire and near the continuing Byzantine culture. Here trading cities were experiencing new prosperity. The Venetians, beginning in 1063, built San Marco with five domes, an elaborate imitation of Byzantine architecture. In Pisa, beginning in 1053, a complex of structures was built—a cathedral, bell tower, baptistery, and monumental cemetery—of sparkling colored marbles covered with carved decoration, in part Roman, in part fantastic and barbarian.

Gothic
The prosperity and the building campaigns of the Romanesque period were slight, however, in comparison to the vast development of economic and building power of the Gothic period, which began in the late 12th century. In France, between 1140 and 1200, a new and more efficient type of masonry vaulted construction was invented. The Roman vault was a consistent mass of concrete that had been poured over a heavy wooden mold and left to harden. The new Gothic vault consisted of a network of separate stone arches, or ribs, spanning the space, between which were laid a thin webbing of small stones. This kind of vault was lighter and its thrusts were more clearly defined, since they passed down the ribs. This meant that the walls of the building supporting the vaults could be made thinner and opened with large windows. Furthermore, beginning in 1194 with the construction of Chartres cathedral, the weight of these vaults was supported on flying buttresses, light structures of stone piers and arches standing outside the mass of the building itself
The plan of a Gothic church resembled that of the Romanesque but was more unified because the arms were shorter, the spaces broader, and the walls between the parts made thinner or entirely removed. Gothic interior spaces, however, did not look at all the same. The efficient vaulting system enabled these spaces to be much taller and to be entirely surrounded with windows that were filled with stained glass depicting Biblical scenes and saints. These figures, in deep red and blue colors, seemed to float above the worshiper like the figures depicted in Byzantine mosaics, but they glowed as daylight beamed through. To hold these great expanses of glass in place, thin stone ribs of tracery in decorative forms were built across the windows. Externally the Gothic church was more complex and expressive than the Romanesque. Tall towers with tiers of openings and slender stone spires marked at least the facade and crossing, and usually were intended at the transept ends as well. Along the sides flying buttresses stood out from the wall and bore pinnacles and tracery as well as carved figures and fantastic rainspouts called gargoyles. At the doors at the end of the nave, and sometimes also at those at the ends of the transepts, were elaborate symbolic sculptural compositions of Biblical scenes and saints. Above would sometimes be a huge round stained-glass rose window. The Gothic style was used not only in the construction of churches but, like the Roman vaulted style, was a building technique and permitted a whole city-full of masonry vaulted forms to be created.
Although Europe was as prosperous as it had been under the Romans, it was disturbed by continual wars between the separate city-states. Thus the finest achievements of the Gothic builders were the mighty rings of city walls, like those at Carcassonne in France, or castles, like Harlech Castle in England. Inside these were expansive rib-vaulted rooms and chapels. In the free-trading cities of France, the Netherlands, and northern Germany, there arose large town halls, like the Cloth Hall (about 1250–1300) at Ypres (now in Belgium). There were also palaces such as that at Nuremberg, with its wooden beamed ceiling. Rich merchants built expensive houses with traceried windows and carved fireplaces, as Jacques Coeur did in Bourges, France, in 1443–51.

Art

About 1400 a great change took place in society and culture in Italy. As it evolved it came to be called the Renaissance, or “rebirth,” because of the rediscovery of ancient Roman literature and art in the period. This was, however, only one of its aspects, and many would say only a minor one. First of all, it was the moment of the discovery of individuality, of people able to think and act for themselves. The medieval worker had been an anonymous toiler for the glory of God. On the medieval facade of the church of St. Hubert in Troyes, one reads non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam—“Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name be glory.” But one reads across the front of the Renaissance church of San Francesco in Rimini simply the name of the ruler who built it, Sigismondo Malatesta, and the date. The building came to be called Tempio Malatestiano, the Temple of Malatesta. The Renaissance individual, freed from medieval superstition, cynically experimented in politics (as can be seen in Niccolò Machiavelli's book Il Principe [The Prince] of 1513), explored new areas of science and nature (as did Galileo), conceived a new philosophy—Neoplatonism—that combined Christian and ancient thought, reintroduced realism into painting and sculpture, and created a new style in architecture. The Renaissance architect was a new and different sort. In place of the medieval craftsman-architect, there were now men skilled in all artistic media, men who understood theory as well as practice and who pretended to personal worth and even genius. Among the leading architects of the period were two sculptors—Filippo Brunelleschi and Michelangelo—and three painters—Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Giulio Romano. Leonardo was a scientist, Michelangelo a philosopher and poet. Leon Battista Alberti and Andrea Palladio wrote treatises on architecture. To these men architecture was not a mechanical art pursued by traditional craft rules but a liberal art controlled by abstract intellectual speculation.

Alberti The new state of architecture can be seen most clearly in the person of Leon Battista Alberti. Medieval architects had risen from the anonymity of stonemasons, but Alberti was a gentleman and sportsman who practiced painting and music and who applied his general theorizing to architecture. In 1452 he wrote De re aedificatoria (Ten Books on Architecture), which was the first theoretical essay on building. Here he sought to rewrite the ancient Roman architectural book De architectura (On Architecture) by Vitruvius to clarify and Christianize it as his philosopher friends in Florence were then rewriting and Christianizing the philosophy of Plato. Alberti conceived of architecture in terms of simple geometric volumes and numerical proportions, combining Plato's belief that beauty lies in numbers and Vitruvius' assertions that the orders were fixed in proportion. Alberti described an ideal city with all its streets laid out geometrically, centering on a cylindrical domed church set on a high base, with its windows placed far up the walls so that only the sky could be seen from inside. The church's decoration was to be very simple and its ornament to be faithfully copied from ancient Roman buildings. (See also Alberti, Leon Battista.)
Brunelleschi
Alberti's vision was a startlingly new one and a difficult one to realize. Alberti's young friend Filippo Brunelleschi had made the first attempt in his design for the church of San Lorenzo in Florence, begun in 1421. The plan is not centralized, but the dark stained glass and tall proportions of the Gothic style have been replaced by light, open regular spaces in the proportion of one to two. Greek columns and entablatures in dark gray stone define the spaces and measure the white stucco walls. Alberti had not yet written De re aedificatoria in 1421, but he was working on a treatise on perspective in painting, which was dedicated to Brunelleschi, and San Lorenzo seems to reflect Alberti's interest in the precise definition of space. (See also Brunelleschi, Filippo.) Alberti himself, beginning about the time of Brunelleschi's death in 1446, designed a number of buildings. Some were only exteriors added to existing structures, like the Tempio Malatestiano or the Rucellai Palace in Florence. He made the church facade in the form of a three-part Roman triumphal arch, intending that the tombs of Sigismondo Malatesta and his wife should be set on each side of the entrance opening. Alberti decorated the palace facade with a grid of Roman pilasters, setting up a proportional system followed also in the windows and doors. Two churches he later built in their entirety, those of San Andrea and San Sebastiano, were given pediments and pilasters surmounting broad flights of stairs like ancient Roman temples.
Bramante
Alberti moved from Florence to Rome about 1450. The power and the wealth of the pope at Rome were increasing, and about this time the center of the Renaissance moved there. The years from 1503 to 1513 marked the glorious papacy of Julius II. He brought Michelangelo and Raphael to work for him in Rome, and in 1506 he commenced the huge project of rebuilding St. Peter's. The man he employed to replace the venerable but dilapidated basilica (built by the emperor Constantine) was Donato Bramante. He was about 60 when he went to Rome from Milan, and he is supposed to have been trained as a painter by Piero della Francesco and Andrea Mantegna. While working as an architect in Milan, he would have known Leonardo, who was there at the time working out a series of geometric solutions for an ideal centralized church on Alberti's lines. From 1506 until his death in 1514, Bramante worked to design and begin construction of the first full expression of the new Renaissance church. Only the four central piers and the four arches linking them to support the central dome were completed before Bramante died, and he seems to have still been changing his design. It was a composition of spaces defined by piers, vaults, and domes like the great Roman ruins nearby. It was principally, if not completely, centralized with a huge central dome at the meeting of four vaulted arms. This form was repeated in the cross-shaped, domed spaces set in the corners. From the exterior it would have made a unified composition of simple geometric forms, building step by step to a hemispheric dome supported on a ring of Roman columns. (See also Bramante, Donato.)
Michelangelo
Delay and confusion followed Julius' and Bramante's deaths within a year of each other, but in 1546 work was recommenced by a worthy successor, Michelangelo. He was 70 but had been executing architectural projects in Florence since the 1520s. His Medici Chapel in the church of San Lorenzo of 1520–34 and his Laurentian Library of 1523–59 were extraordinary for the expressive distortions of their details. Michelangelo extended these to his new design for St. Peter's. He simplified Bramante's composition, strengthened the proportions, and designed details as huge and powerful as the construction itself. He made the exterior wall to ripple in response to the intricate interior spaces as though they were pushing against an elastic membrane. He made its thickness palpable with deeply cut windows and niches and then held it together with a row of massive pilasters. (See also Michelangelo.)
Giulio Romano
Bramante had realized Alberti's Neoplatonic ideal. Michelangelo's architecture shows an elaboration and expressiveness that might seem excessive and that has been called Mannerist. The painter Raphael lived to 1520, and, in his last works as well as in architectural designs done at the end of his life, he displayed similar Mannerist tendencies. In the hands of Raphael's student Giulio Romano, Mannerism received its most dramatic expression. In the Palazzo del Te in Mantua (erected and decorated from 1524 to 1535), Giulio Romano made the most adventurous distortions: keystones that seem to be falling from arches and painted ceilings that appear to be collapsing.
Palladio
While Mannerism dominated Rome and central Italy, the rich island city of Venice and its region experienced in the work of Andrea Palladio the extension and final perfection of the balanced Neoplatonic architecture of Alberti and Bramante. Palladio had begun as a stonemason, but beginning about 1535 he was educated as a scholar by the literary reformer Giangiorgio Trissino. He later became a close friend of other scholars, most particularly the editor of Vitruvius, Daniele Barbaro, and in 1555 Palladio became a founding member of the Accademia Olympica in Vicenza. In 1570 Palladio published his highly respected treatise, I quattro libri dell'architettura (The Four Books of Architecture). His work is remarkable for applying geometry and proportion as well as simplicity and correctness of precedent to all genres of architecture. He coordinated the proportions of every room in designs such as that for the Villa Rotonda near Vicenza of 1550. He also tried to apply the simple forms of the Roman temple—the evenly spaced rows of columns and the pediment—to both villas and churches, developing a uniquely satisfying type of church facade in San Giorgio Magno and Il Redentore in Venice. His buildings, especially as illustrated and described in his book, were to become the principal models of imitation as the Renaissance spread outward from Italy around 1600.
Organization
About 1600, European culture was again revolutionized. In northern Europe the Renaissance gave way to the Protestant Reformation. In Italy, beginning with the foundation of the Jesuit Order in 1539 and the Council of Trent of 1545–63, the Roman Catholic church began the Counter-Reformation, a campaign to strengthen itself in reaction. There resulted a more purely Catholic and emotional style, the baroque. Italy, however, was becoming less and less the center of European civilization. The discovery of America brought great wealth to Spain in the 16th century; the expansion of trade made Holland and Britain major powers in the centuries following; and political centralization made France under Louis XIV the most influential state on the Continent. In these northern states religious architecture was overshadowed by political building—palaces and government institutions. The profession of architecture evolved in response. The architect had become a gentleman during the Renaissance. Now he became a government official, a bureaucrat, a part of the centralized administration of building. The greatest architects of the age—Jules Hardouin-Mansart, Sir Christopher Wren, Jacques-Germain Soufflot, Balthasar Neumann—were heads of corps of designers and builders who were assembled to carry out national construction projects of all sorts. These were educated men, but they were not (with the exception of Wren) philosophers or (with the exception of Bernini) practitioners of many arts.
Italy
The first great architect of this period was the Italian Gian Lorenzo Bernini. He was the last Renaissance architect in the sense that he was equally able in sculpture, painting, and building. But already there was a difference; instead of being a free-thinking Humanist like Alberti or Leonardo, Bernini was a faithful Catholic and a lay member of the Jesuit Order. This was reflected in his works, which were stage sets for the dramatization of Catholic ritual. (See also Bernini, Gian Lorenzo.) A nave, at the clergy's insistence, had been added to the front of Michelangelo's St. Peter's by Carlo Maderna in 1607–15. In 1656 Bernini began a plaza in front of it defined by dramatic curving and angled colonnades. Connecting this to the papal apartments, he erected the Scala Regia of 1663–69, made dramatic by concealed light sources and a progressive diminishing of width as it rises. His little church of San Andrea al Quirinale of 1658–78 was his most perfect work. It is no longer round, like Alberti and Bramante's ideal, but expressively oval. A concealed light source illuminates a vision of religious figures in stucco over the altar that seems to float in the real space of the building. What in the 16th century had been cerebral and static became, in the 17th century, actual and dynamic. Bernini had a brilliant assistant, Francesco Borromini, who in the 1630s emerged as his competitor in architecture. If Bernini's designs appear dramatic, Borromini's seem bizarre. His largest work, the chapel of San Ivo della Sapienza in the Collegio Romano of 1642–60 displays a distorted triangular space internally and a stepped dome that culminates in a spiral on the exterior. His intentions were evidently symbolic. The plan shows the triangular emblem of divine wisdom, and the spiral evokes the pillar of truth. The whole building has thus been made to become the Domus Sapientiae, the “House of Wisdom,” expressive of its location in a college and its dedication to a saint of learning. (See also Borromini, Francesco.) At the end of the 17th century, Bernini's use of dramatic lighting and Borromini's free spatial geometry were combined by Guarino Guarini in a series of churches in Turin. Here space opens mysteriously behind space, and webs of dome ribs seem to float in front of bursts of divine light, producing the highest expression of the Italian baroque.
Spain
The Spanish Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries enjoyed great prosperity as well as close proximity and political interrelationship with Italy. In 1563–84 there arose the first great non-Italian work of the High Renaissance, Philip II's Escorial. It was simultaneously a monastery, mausoleum, fortress, and palace—a symbol of royal piety and power that became characteristic of the age. The principal architect, Juan de Herrera, worked closely with the king. The result, built in black granite, has the clarity of Bramante and the massiveness of Michelangelo and achieves the king's desire that it have “simplicity of form, severity in the whole, nobility without arrogance, majesty without ostentation.”
France
France equaled Spain in power and finally, during the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), outshone its rival. The Renaissance had arrived early there also, during the reign of Francis I (1494–1547) in his palace at Fontainebleau. He had imported Italian artists, including Leonardo (who died at Amboise in 1519), but the architectural results during the 16th century were largely decorative and fantastic. In 1615, however, an equivalent to the Escorial began to rise in Paris in the Luxembourg Palace designed by Solomon de Brosse for the regent Marie de Medicis. This was followed by the châteaux and churches of François Mansart, especially his Val de Grace of 1645–67, and by the whole town and château of the Cardinal Richelieu commenced to a single design by Jacques Lemercier in 1631. It was Louis XIV, upon his accession to power in 1661, who carried the combined expression of central power and state church to a new plane. He started by projecting the completion of his city palace, the Louvre, and in 1664 invited Bernini to Paris to execute it. But what had started as an admission of Italian supremacy ended as an assertion of French independence when Bernini returned to Rome after a few months' stay, and his baroque project was superseded by a simpler, more correct one by Claude Perrault, executed from 1667 to 1670. Paris, however, was becoming too small a canvas for Louis XIV's architectural display of royal authority. His superintendent of finances, Nicolas Fouquet, had employed in 1657–61 the architect Louis Le Vau, the painter Charles Le Brun, and the landscape gardener André Le Nôtre to coordinate their three arts to produce his château at Vaux-le-Vicomte. Louis was deeply impressed. He had Fouquet's finances investigated, took over his team of artists, and in 1668 set them to work producing an even grander ensemble for him at Versailles. Here huge expanses of formal gardens on one side and three monumental avenues on the other culminate in a vast palace designed in the severe style of the Louvre and the Escorial (see Versailles). Versailles was built slowly in parts. Upon Le Vau's death in 1670, Jules Hardouin-Mansart took over, designing the famous Galérie des Glaces (begun 1678). He rose to be first royal architect and then, in 1699, superintendent des bâtiments. He designed Louis XIV's last and largest projects in a style that finally began to show baroque complexity and richness—the château at Marly (begun 1679), the Dome of the Invalides (1679–91, intended as Louis's mausoleum), and the Place Vendôme (begun 1698). Significantly, Hardouin-Mansart was one of the first architects to be accused by his contemporaries of not producing his own designs but of using the talents of skillful assistants.

Holy Roman Empire

To the east of France lay the Holy Roman Empire with its capital at Vienna. Beginning in 1690, Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach worked there, starting the baroque Karlskirche in 1716. The most extraordinary work in the German sphere was produced in the early 18th century in the bishopric of Würzburg, where Balthasar Neumann, trained locally as a military engineer, served as state architect. He designed the magnificent bishop's Residenz (palace), with ceiling frescoes by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, as well as the pilgrimage church of Vierzehnheiligen (1741–71, near Lichtenfels in Bavaria). In the latter building the spatial geometry of Borromini is combined with a richness of decoration and an openness of structure that make the whole space a religious apparition. England France's real competitor for domination of northern Europe, however, was the developing maritime nation of England. The Renaissance had arrived especially late there. After an almost abortive introduction of Palladianism by Inigo Jones in the early 17th century, the development was suspended until Sir Christopher Wren's appointment as surveyor of the king's works in 1669. He was the last scholar-architect, having pursued mathematics and astronomy before becoming involved in building. He became one of the most brilliant and prolific architect-bureaucrats of the age. Before his death in 1723 he had designed 52 London churches (after the 1666 fire), carried through the construction of St. Paul's Cathedral from foundation to cupola-top between 1673 and 1710, extended several palaces, and built two huge military hospitals at Chelsea and Greenwich. (See also Wren, Christopher; London.) Wren is chiefly remembered for St. Paul's. It is French in its severity but original in its Gothic plan (insisted upon by the cathedral chapter) and ingenious in its vaulting and dome. From Wren's office emerged Nicholas Hawksmoor who, together with the gentleman-architect Sir John Vanbrugh, erected a series of huge ducal palaces in the early 18th century, notably Blenheim Palace near Oxford (begun 1705). France continued in the 18th century to be the center of northern European culture and architecture, producing Ange-Jacques Gabriel's Place de la Concorde (begun 1757) and Jacques-Germain Soufflot's Panthéon (1755–92). The latter structure was built originally as the church of Ste-Geneviève, and all of its complication of colonnades, domes, and windows restates the original Renaissance theme of the centralized, vaulted space that is decorated with sober ancient Roman ornamentation.
Neoclassicism
Soufflot's Panthéon was not only the culmination of the baroque tradition but also the first hint of the future course of architecture. It shows a growing awareness of the possibility of achieving pictorial effects. The building uses an ingenious hidden system of Gothic buttresses, which make possible the high windows that bring light streaming through the layers of columns and arches, which, in turn, support the roof vaults. The interior of the Panthéon is dramatized in much the same way as Soufflot's contemporary, the Italian engraver Giovanni Battista Piranesi, dramatized his views of ancient Roman monuments and buildings. Piranesi's engravings influenced many architects in France and England and helped to begin a movement toward what has been called Romantic Classicism, or Neoclassicism. Classical forms began to be put together for dramatic and expressive effect rather than purely to create orderly compositions. With the writings of the theorist Marc-Antoine Laugier in France, architecture began to be seen as originating in natural rather than human form, and architects began to try to recreate the effect of landscape in their works. This point of view paralleled the thinking of philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who saw nature as the source of mankind's fundamental character. About the time of the French Revolution, the architect Étienne-Louis Boullée worked on projects for buildings that were intended to evoke natural phenomena such as the four seasons through their forms and character. Many of Boullée's projects also reflected a popular philosophical concept, that of the sublime, which was put forward by the Englishman Edmund Burke in 1756 in his Philosophical Inquiry into Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful in Art. Burke tried to categorize the natural effects that combined to make something sublime; that is, those that are impressive beyond the normal range of experience. An offshoot of his theory was the development of the concept of the picturesque, which was based on a painter's interpretation of nature. The picturesque caught the imagination of architects, particularly in England, where the ancient form of the Roman villa was now freely adapted to suburban and country houses with features such as asymmetrical towers. A system of purposely irregular landscaping, whose best known practitioner was Humphrey Repton, was developed to complement these houses.
Picturesque and Gothic Revival
The picturesque soon came to include exotic forms from the Near East and the Orient, as well as from Gothic architecture, by then a form of building that had survived only in rural areas. As early as 1750, the writer Horace Walpole had put Gothic decorations on his villa, Strawberry Hill, just outside London. But the fashion for the medieval historical novel, introduced by Sir Walter Scott, combined with enthusiasm for the picturesque, made the Gothic an alternative style of building by the early 1800s. Early efforts at reviving the Gothic style tended to be superficial, involving the application of pointed arches, battlements, and finials to fundamentally classical buildings. The first architect to study Gothic forms and structure carefully with the aim of accurately reproducing them was the Englishman Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, who worked in the 1830s and '40s. Pugin, a convert to Roman Catholicism, linked the revival of Gothic architecture to the revival of religion in society. He espoused the Gothic as a morally correct form of building. Pugin's ideas were adopted and further developed by the art critic John Ruskin, who contrasted the structural honesty of Gothic architecture with the manipulations and concealments of structure practiced by Renaissance architects. Ruskin's writings, notably The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1853) in which he defended truthfulness of structure and richness of ornament in natural forms, were enormously influential. Their effect was reinforced by that of the Anglican ecclesiological movement, which inspired Gothic-revival churches in England and America. These ranged from the extraordinarily expressive and richly decorated church of All Saints, Margaret Street, in London of 1849–59, by William Butterfield, to the modest wood and stone churches designed for rural U.S. sites by Richard Upjohn in the 1840s and '50s. The idea of structural honesty was also extended to secular buildings, resulting in the United States in the simple country villas designed by Andrew Jackson Downing and his followers and culminating in the great houses of the shingle-style movement of the 1870s and '80s and the buildings of Henry Hobson Richardson.
Structural honesty became structural rationalism in the works and writings of the French architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc. The most conscientious 19th-century student of Gothic structural techniques, Viollet-le-Duc wrote in favor of the creation of a modern architecture that would use modern materials like iron and glass as rationally as Gothic architecture had used stone. Viollet-le-Duc's writings were widely read in Europe and the United States well into the early 20th century, and they influenced architects as diverse as the Spaniard Antonio Gaudí and the Belgian Victor Horta (both designers in the naturalistic Art Nouveau style) and the American Frank Lloyd Wright, who espoused the organic use of materials.
New Forms

At the same time that the revival of Gothic architecture and the development of new forms based on Gothic structure were taking place, Classicism was continuing to develop in European and American architecture. The monumental Romantic Classicism that appeared about the time of the French Revolution, and its parallel—though more modest—in the new American republic, gradually gave way to more experimental forms. When Thomas Jefferson designed the University of Virginia at Charlottesville in 1817–26, he used Classical forms to evoke the spirit of ancient republics and to teach proper taste to the students. The German architect and painter Karl Friedrich Schinkel put a vast row of columns across the front of his Altes Museum in Berlin (1824–28) in order to produce the sense of grandeur appropriate to a major public building. But even in the work of Schinkel, the Classical style was beginning to be abstracted into a system of post-and-lintel construction that organized space into regular bays.
By the 1830s architects were beginning to question whether the repetition of ancient forms had any meaning for modern society with its new industries, institutions, and standards of living. When Henri Labrouste designed the Bibliothèque Ste-Geneviève in Paris in 1838–51, he used the more practical and less imposing arched forms of the Renaissance in a building whose composition and decoration were dictated by its interior organization and purpose rather than by historical model. As the century progressed, architects turned to using the forms of the Classical tradition in more decorative and pictorial ways. In France, Charles Garnier's Paris Opéra of 1861–75 reflected the opulence of contemporary society in its baroque forms and rich decorations. It also served as a set piece in the new system of grand boulevards laid out by Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann with the encouragement of the emperor Napoleon III. In the United States the Renaissance and baroque became favored styles for the houses of wealthy businessmen and for the buildings where they worked and the public institutions they endowed. The firm of McKim, Mead, and White was the best known and most successful architectural servant of the merchant classes, designing such varied works in New York City alone as the Villard houses of 1885 (now part of the Helmsley Palace Hotel), Columbia University of 1893, the University Club of 1900, and Pennsylvania Station of 1906–10.

Technology

A dramatic growth in the influence of technology on architecture occurred in the 19th century. With the Industrial Revolution architecture developed a relationship with manufacturing. Industry created a need for new types of buildings, and at the same time new building materials and techniques were being made available by industry. Huge spaces, unobstructed by bulky vertical supports, were needed for factories and mills. The goods they produced were stored in warehouses and shipped from docks and train sheds. When they reached their destinations, they were sold in shops joined by great covered passages or, later in the 19th century, vast department stores. These new buildings were made possible by the development of new technology: first, cast and wrought iron in the late 18th century, and, after the Bessemer process was invented in 1856, steel. Iron and steel are lighter than stone and stronger than wood and can be made quickly into structural elements at a factory and shipped to a construction site.
Skyscraper It soon became clear that the technology of industrial buildings could be turned to other uses, the most important of which was building more efficiently in the cities where growing population pushed up land values until it became desirable to put tall buildings on small lots. In the booming cities of the United States in the late 19th century, the skyscraper gradually came into being. Little by little, iron and steel supporting elements were added to stone and brick buildings, until in 1885 William LeBaron Jenney designed the Home Insurance Company Building in Chicago, Ill. It was the first building in which the exterior walls were entirely supported on a steel frame. By the 1890s U.S. cities were dotted with tall office buildings. Architects like Louis Sullivan of Chicago tried to emphasize the simplicity and rugged strength of the steel frame in their works but also strove to make them artistic by shaping them or decorating their surfaces. Sullivan, though claiming originality, drew from the geometric and naturalistic ornament of the past, like the Moorish and Gothic, in tall office buildings such as the Wainwright Building in St. Louis of 1890–91. Other architects turned to Classical and medieval forms. The blend of steel construction and stylistic revival produced some of the great U.S. skyscrapers of the early 20th century such as Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building of 1911–13 in New York City and Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells' Tribune Tower of 1922–25 in Chicago.
Wright
American technical and stylistic innovations of the period were quickly recognized in Europe. Not only the skyscrapers but also the houses of Chicago architect Frank Lloyd Wright were widely written about and admired (see Wright, Frank Lloyd). The abstract, floating planes of the exterior of a building like the Robie house of 1909 in Chicago were seen by Europeans as an escape from historical forms. After the crisis of World War I and the political changes of that period, architects in France, Germany, and Russia started looking for ways to create a new architecture that did not use past styles.
International Style
The architecture that developed during this period came to be called the International Style because it spread throughout Europe and the United States. It was not really a style in the traditional sense of the word, with features like Doric columns or pointed arches, but was rather an attitude toward design. The buildings that were grouped together under this name tended to be nonsymmetrical in form, with flowing interior spaces, flat roofs, and large areas of glass in plain, undecorated walls. They were intended to represent an abstract, machined simplicity of built form and a modern clarity of thought and action in the lives of those who designed and used them
The architects of these buildings also tried to extend their modernist ideals to every area of design through the medium of craft and manufacturing. Thus a group of German architects and artists formed the Deutscher Werkbund in 1907 to promote craft education and production through groups modeled on medieval guilds. The Werkbund sponsored an exhibition in Cologne in 1914 in which exhibition pavilions were assigned to architects representing a range of philosophies. This was the first time that modern buildings were put “on display” as a group of works of art.
Bauhaus
The Deutscher Werkbund gave way to a school of design and was refounded as the Bauhaus. Directed by architect Walter Gropius and, after 1926, housed in a building designed by him at Dessau, Germany, the Bauhaus produced designs for furniture and household goods that are still used today and laid the groundwork for the creation of a modern aesthetic that dominated the next 50 years. Extensive postwar building in Germany also provided opportunities to try new building techniques and modernist forms. Many housing developments were built in the 1920s in major German cities, including the Weissenhof Siedlung near Stuttgart, where 17 architects from Germany and other European countries were invited in 1927 to contribute designs for houses and apartment buildings.
Le Corbusier
Modernist architecture developed in two main directions between the late 1910s and the 1960s. These were led by the work of two individuals: Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris (known as Le Corbusier), who was a Swiss working in France, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a German working first in Germany and then in the United States. Le Corbusier created architecture of asymmetrical volumes enclosed by smooth white walls raised off the ground by slender, cylindrical columns, the best known example of which is the Villa Savoye of 1929 at Poissy, near Paris. He called his houses “machines for living in,” emphasizing their organization around modern domestic life rather than a formal ideal. As Le Corbusier's career developed, his buildings became more complex in form, using curves and irregularly shaped solid elements, as in his distinctive chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut (1950–55) at Ronchamp, France. These late works inspired an entire generation of architects who worked in roughly finished forms of poured concrete. Le Corbusier was also important for his lifelong interest in urban planning—giving a new form to the city. As early as 1922 he proposed a contemporary city for 3 million inhabitants with low residential blocks separated by large areas of park. This idea has since been adapted many times for housing projects. (See also Le Corbusier.)
Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed mainly steel-and-glass structures in simple geometric forms, developing a vocabulary of steel detailing that was almost the equivalent of the ancient orders. As early as 1919 Mies was making projects for steel-and-glass towers, though he did not have the chance to build any until his Lake Shore Drive apartments of 1948–51 in Chicago. His early buildings, all done in Europe, were mostly houses and were highly abstract compositions of vertical and horizontal planes that shaped, but did not completely enclose, spaces. When Mies came to the United States in 1938, he started a new and influential architectural career for himself. His buildings for the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where he taught architecture from 1938 to 1958, and his high-rise office and apartment buildings set the pace for new commercial and institutional architecture in the United States. American business embraced his sleek, modern-looking style to the extent that most of the tall office buildings constructed since the 1950s in the United States were based on Mies's use of the steel-and-glass curtain wall. His Seagram Building of 1958 in New York City—which he designed in collaboration with distinguished U.S. architect Philip Johnson—was recognized as a masterpiece of American corporate architecture. (See also Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig.)
Postmodernism
In the 1960s some modification of the prevailing attitudes toward design of the previous 50 years began to take place. There was a revival of interest in traditional forms and historical styles. The U.S. architect Louis Kahn reacted to the abstraction in the works of Le Corbusier and Mies by using regular geometric compositions and materials such as brick, stone, and wood that made reference to the spirit of some of the architecture from the past, especially Egyptian, Greek, and Roman. Other architects rejected International Style modernism in more literal ways, using past forms like Classical columns or drawing on the architecture of modern popular culture, the highway, and the suburb for inspiration. This artistic experimentation has run parallel to the explosion of construction for purely practical purposes. (See also Kahn, Louis.)
Additional references about architecture Adams, Henry. Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres (Penguin, 1986). Brown, David. The Random House Book of How Things Were Built (Random Books Young Reader, 1992). Curl, J.S. Classical Architecture (Van Nostrand Rheinhold, 1993). Hiller, C.E. Caves to Cathedrals: Architecture of the World's Great Religions (Little, 1974). Huntington, L.P. Americans at Home (Coward, 1981). Huxtable, A.L. Inventing Reality: Architectural Themes and Variations (New Press, 1993). Kostof, Spiro. America by Design (Oxford Univ. Press, 1987). Lampugnani, V.M. Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Architecture, rev. ed. (Abrams, 1986). Lang, Jon. Urban Design: The American Experience (Van Nostrand Rheinhold, 1994). McAlester, Virginia, and McAlester, Lee. A Field Guide to American Houses (Knopf, 1984). Macaulay, David. City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction (Houghton, 1983). MacGregor, Anne, and MacGregor, Scott. Skyscrapers (Lothrop, 1981). Perrella, Stephen. Aspects of Modern Architecture (St. Martin's, 1991). Pierson, W.H., Jr. American Buildings and Their Architects (Oxford Univ. Press, 1986). Platt, Richard. Incredible Cross Sections (Knopf Books Young Reader, 1992). Pressman, Andy. Architecture 101 (Wiley, 1993). Roth, L.M. Understanding Architecture (HarperCollins, 1993). Stelle, James, ed. Architecture for a Changing World (St. Martin's, 1993). Trachtenberg, Marvin, and Hyman, Isabelle. Architecture (Prentice, 1986). Wright, F.L. American Architecture (Horizon, 1955). Yarwood, Doreen. The Architecture of Europe (Trafalgar, 1993). Yarwood, Doreen. A Chronology of Western Architecture (Facts on File, 1987). (See also bibliographies for Housing; Shelter.)