History of architecture
Taj Mahal in India
According to the popular topic at the earliest treatise on the subject is preserved, De Architectura of Vitruvius, BC, says that architecture is based on three principles: Beauty (Venustas), Firmness (Firmitas ) and Utility (Utilitas). The architecture can be defined, then, as a balance between these three elements, without exceeding any other. It would be pointless trying to understand a work of architecture without accepting these three aspects.
However, just read the treaty to realize that Vitruvius called such for some very specific public buildings. In fact, when Vitruvius dare to attempt an analysis on the art of writing, aims to understand the architecture as consisting of four elements: architectural order (list of each part with their use), provision ( "provision species [.. .] are the path to ground, in elevation and in perspective "), share (" Consistency is uniform across the whole work and its members ") and distribution (Greek oikonomia, is" in the proper and best use of materials and of land, and seek the lowest cost of the work achieved in a rational and thoughtful ").
Burj Al Arab in Dubai (UAE)
Their doubts are quite intense, as four pages later divided the architecture into three parts: construction, gnomic and Mechanics. As interesting and suggestive as it is, do not forget that this treaty is the only classic treatise which has survived, and the probability that it is the best of his time is small.
The history of the various versions of the Vitruvian treatise sums up the conflict when defining the architecture. In 1674 Claude Perrault, medical physiologist in cadaver dissection and good artist, he published his translation of Vitruvius summary of the treaty, which is completely reorganized. The summary of Perrault is the means by Vitruvius was known and since then influenced the theories of treaties and subsequent centuries. It is in this summary that the Vitruvian triad will see the light.
The substantial difference between the version of Perrault and the previous lies, according to José Luis González Moreno-Navarro, in which Perrault misrepresents "the synthetic character of architecture in a strictly analytical and fragmented into three autonomous branches [which] is a consequence [...] his mental structure formed along a life dedicated to the analysis of living organisms, which evidently never reassembled and returned to give life. " By contrast, according to Vitruvius:
Skyscrapers in Japan.
Architecture is a science that emerges from many other sciences, and adorned with much and varied learning: by the aid of a trial that is formed of those works that are the result of other arts. The practice and theory are its parents. Practice is the frequent and continued contemplation of how to execute a given job, or the mere operation of his hands, for the conversion of matter to the best and most complete way. The theory is the result of that reasoning which demonstrates and explains that the material wrought has been converted to be like the end proposed. For purely practical architect is not able to assign sufficient reasons for the forms he adopts, and the architect of theory also fails, grasping the shadow instead of substance. He who is theoretic as well as practical, therefore doubly constructed, able not only to test the suitability of its design but also to take him running.
Beijing National Stadium "Bird's Nest" in China
In academia the architectural production process, or project, involves the sensitivity and cut through the various disciplines associated, even in the past because they were written treatise, today the legal and technical standards dictate, but not the same. It then-from contemporary architecture and supported by the new technological resources-an exercise in order to effectively wrap, synthesis, semiology, matter, but more importantly than that, quite creative, innovative, unpublished, provided that excluding the architecture produced since the real estate industry.
Angkor, Cambodia.
The importance of architecture in the twentieth century has been enormous, as its exercise was responsible for no less than a third of the materials carried by the humanity in that period.
Mimran bridge between Strasbourg and Kehl.
During this period not only has there been a large increase in population, their needs for edification (especially housing), but significant movements of populations from rural to urban areas and, after the Cold War, from countries poor to rich countries. immigration procedures have meant not only increased the demand for new buildings in urban areas but also the abandonment of the built heritage that in many cases been lost forever.
This constant change in the needs and uses associated with the building helps explain another feature of modern architecture. This constant reappraisal of concepts, which goes back to the Enlightenment, have developed various and numerous architectural styles with the desire to provide an answer to this question, in the nineteenth century, there is the abandonment of the neoclassical orthodoxy in favor of eclecticism stylistic character of historicism, leading to the neo-Gothic, neo-Romanesque, Mudejar ... Only with the arrival of the twentieth century truly original styles emerge as the Arts and Crafts, the Art Nouveau, the Art Nouveau, the Bauhaus, the International Style, the Post-Modernism, etc.