Lecture 2: Ancient Greek Architecture

Ant 293: Lecture Three:Ancient Greek Architecture

Contents1. FormMaterials; Bondings; Facia; Mouldings;Relief; Sculptures;2. StyleDoric Order; Ionic Order3. Case Study: The Parthenonthe architects' purpose; varied widths;curved lines; entasis; column spacing;divine proportion;

1. Form‣MaterialsEarly buildings in ancient Greece wereconstructed of wood, but by the Neolithic,stone began to be used more and more;At first softer stone was used, then limestone,then marble from 6 th C BCE;

Almost always, materials came from aneighbouring site, as transportation ofstone was costly, slow and dangerous;Marble was often reserved for upper parts,while other stone like tufa or limestone forlower parts;

‣Bondingsby the 6 th C BCE, blocks were shaped andarranged in a wall both for decoration andstructural reasons;Polygonal and trapezoidal bonds werecommon in military architecture, andrectangular for religious and civilarchitecture;

A wall may have had polygonal andtrapezoidal bonds in the lower part,altering to rectangular in the higher part;

Regular Bonds: Isodome (Delphi)

RegularBonds:Isodome

Regular Bonds: irregular (Delos)

Regular Bonds: irregular (Delos)

TrapezoidalBondsirregularisodomePseudo-isodome

PolygonalBondsroughstraight jointscurved joints

Polygonal, straight joints, Delphi

Rectangular Bond with Squares and ParpenssquareparpenPseudo-isodomeisodome

Rectangular bond with parpens

‣Faciawalls were often intricately worked:carving, beveling, chamfers, and rabbetsemphasized corners and joints;

chamferbeveling

Chamfer(Erichtheum)

‣Mouldingsemphasize and refine the articulation of thebuilding;these could be at the base of a column, orthe crowning of a wall;

used on flat, concave and convex surfaces;They carved in relief lotus flowers,rosettes, beads;On higher parts of the building they oftenused paintwork;

moulding

ase and capital of an Ionic column of theErechtheion;

detail of a doorway ata tholos at Epidaurus;an illustration of IonicOrder embellishment;

‣ReliefFull relief: where more the 50% of thedepth is shown;Mid reliefLow relief (aka „bas‟):Shallow relief: background material barelyscratched;Counter –relief: etched into surface

Full relief

Mid relief

Low relief

Counter relief

‣Temple sculptures

'Elgin Marbles': pediment sculptures

East Pediment

Possibly Hestia, Goddess of the HearthEast Pediment, north side

perhaps Aphrodite and Dione;

Head of the horse from the chariot of themoon-goddess Selene

East pediment, south side

Maybe Hebe the cup-bearer of Zeus

Two Goddesses seated on chests.perhaps Demeter and Persephone

Probably Dionysios

2. Style‣Doric OrderCorinth and Argos seem to have beenpivotal players in the development of theOrder in the Archaic period;A return to monumental architecture of theMycenaean period, with a standardizationof design;

CorinthArgos

Doric Order

Doric Order

the Doric Order saw a change to stonematerials, inheriting the features ofprevious wooden structures;frieze (metope and triglyph), as well ascornices, were all terracotta, meant toprotect wooden beams;

Early Doric Order• buildings were awkward;• columns were „squat‟;• entablatures were high;• interior spaces were small;• exterior colonnades had no base;

Late Doric Order• equilibrium was achieved by the end ofthe 6 th C:• short sides were equal to half the longsides;

six columns in the front, usually 13 alongthe sides (2n+1)

Extra width freed-up interior space;Columns were thinner than previously,Entablatures lower and lighter;Entasis was more subtle;

Paestum: Temple to Poseidon: ca 460 BCEpedimentfriezearchitrave

The Doric temple was austere, coherent,mathematically balanced in every way;By the end of the 5 th C, it had become„archaic‟, although it remained the basicelement of later Orders and styles;

within a century and a half, the Doricorder found its perfect balance:• improved proportions;• colonnades better integrated with theplan;• inside space fully adapted to function;

Temple of Hephaistos, Athens, 449 BCEopisthodomosperistyleantaepronaos(vestibule)naos (cella)columns“in antis”

Temple of Hephaistos, Athens, 449 BCE

Temple of Hephaistos, Athens, 449 BCE

‣Ionic Orderseems to have developed along the westerncoast of Asia Minor;the Ionic order lacked the „severity‟ of theDoric Order;forms were much less standardized, andregional variations were considerable;

Ionia

generally, there was emphasis on slenderform and for ornamentation in which theimagination of the architect could begiven free reign;there were two variants of the Ionic Order:• Aeolic• Corinthian

the Aeolic capital was borrowed fromPalestine, Phoenicia, and Assyria duringthe 8 th and 7 th C BCE;elegant but frail, thiscapital could supportonly a lightentablature;

After the Persian invasions in the 5 th CBCE, most of Greece reverted to theDoric Order, and in some places therewas a mixture, such as the Parthenon inAthens;during the Periclean period, Athensembraced the Ionic Order (Aeolian) in theTemple to Athene Nike and theErectheion;

Temple to Athena Nike, 427-424 BCEAttic Ionian

The Erichtheion, 421-406 BCE

The Ionic Order with Corinthian capitalbecame a competitor with Aeolic Ionic bythe mid 4 th C BCE;

Corinthian capitals in Corinth

Plans of Ionic Templesthe diversity of the Ionic Order is seen inthe variety of plans;the first three types are characteristic ofCycladic architecture;

Cycladic architecture:

other styles:

3. Case Study: Athen's Parthenon

the Greeks believed that Nature wasorderly, and that her laws could becomprehended rationally;with this came a belief that there is an idealform for every class of objects and thatsuch a true form is characterized by itsgeometric simplicity;

the Parthenon is a rational structure andgeometrically comprehensible;it is believed it was designed 'on paper'before it was ever built;

the Parthenon was built from 447-432 BCEduring the period of Pericles;Ictinus and Callicrates, the architects, andPhidias, the sculptor, were responsible forthe aesthetics of the work;its function was to serve as both a treasuryand a dwelling house for the GoddessAthena;

in order to reach the Parthenon, theworshippers had to move along thePanathenaic way, the main avenue of thecity, go up a difficult steep climb, andenter a gateway before coming upon thetemple;the axis of the building was carefullycalculated so that, on the birthday ofAthena, the rising sun would comethrough the east doorway to illuminatethe gold covered statue;

Pan-Athenaic Way, Athens

the building is the culmination of a longevolution of the Doric Order;it is a rectangular marble structure that is69.5m long by 31.7m wide, and 10.4m inheight;it was marble apart from the timbered roofunder ceramic tiles and the wooden doorsand frames;

‣The architects' purposethe desire seemed to be to create a sense ofthe organic, filled with life, rather than toproduce a mechanical, 'mathematicallycorrect' system;this was achieved in the following ways:

‣Varied widthsthough the stepped courses of the'crepidoma' at the base of the buildingappear to be equal in height, they are not;the lowest (euthynteria) is the narrowest,and the heighest (stylobate) is the widest;

‣Curved linesthe entire platform is not evenly horizontalbut rises convexly in the centre;the stylobate arches slightly from corner tocorner having the centre point on theshort ends about 7cm higher than thecorners, and the long sides rise about10cm in the centre;

if the measurements were even, theplatform would appear to be „sink‟ in themiddle when seen from the side;above the column, the architrave echoesthis curve;the entire structure, therefore, opticallyresists the downward pull of themonument;

‣Entasisthe columns have a slight swelling (2cm) asthey rise to give the eye the sense ofstraining, as if these were human musclesmeant to carry the heavy load of theentablature;Also, this compensates for what wouldappear to be columns narrowing in themiddle;

‣Column Spacingthe columns appear equally spaced, but arenot;the ones at the four corners are nearer totheir neighbours than the others;this is because they are seen against openspace rather than against the solid massof the inner cella wall;

these outside columns are also 5cm thicker,and incline to varying degrees toward thecenter, some off plumb by 8cm, so thatthe whole appeared to converge at somepoint in the sky;also, this compensated for columns thatotherwise would appear to splay outwardif they were perfectly plumb;

‣The 'Divine Proportion'the Parthenon employed the „divineproportion‟ throughout;this proportion is derived from dividing aline segment into two segments with thespecial property that the ratio of thewhole segment to the longer part is thesame as the ratio of the longer part to theshorter part;

DivineProportion

the ratio expressed by either side of theequation is called the Golden Ratio or theGolden Mean;the point which divides a line segment intotwo segments in the Golden Ratio iscalled the Golden Section or the GoldenCut;

Golden Section

'Phi' is the Golden RatioPhi = 1.61803the letter phi was perhaps used to honourPhidias, the sculptor who used theGolden Ratio so extensively in his work;

Golden Rectangle

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