Architecture Timeline - Western Influences on Building Design

Posted on 11th Oct 2018

Article By: Jackie Craven

The Evolution of Classical Style Architecture

 

The buildings man constructs have evolved in design and technology, beginning with the earliest civilizations — in Western history, this means ancient Greece and Rome. America's great buildings evolved from Greek and Roman architecture, a period called classical style architecture. Sometimes architects imitated classical styles and often designers would reject or improve on the classical, but this era continues to inform design even today.

Historians have categorized what is called "the built environment" into architectural eras. This brief timeline traces the history of architecture in the Western world, beginning with the first known structures made by Eurocentric people up to the soaring skyscrapers and swirling designs of the modern era.

Recorded history did not begin in a certain year or in a particular part of the world. Mankind has always carried ideas from place to place, and similar construction techniques evolved centuries and eons apart in distant locations. This review illustrates how each new movement builds on the one before. Although our timeline lists dates related mostly to American architecture, historic periods do not start and stop at precise points on a calendar. Periods and styles flow together, sometimes merging contradictory ideas, sometimes inventing new approaches, and often re-awakening and re-inventing older movements.

Dates are always approximate — architecture is a fluid art.

11,600 B.C. to 3,500 B.C. — Prehistoric Times

Archaeologists "dig" prehistory. Göbekli Tepe in present day Turkey is a good example of archaeological architecture. Before recorded history, humans constructed earthen mounds, stone circles, megaliths, and structures that often puzzle modern-day archaeologists.

Prehistoric architecture includes monumental structures such as Stonehenge, cliff dwellings in the Americas, and thatch and mud structures lost to time. The dawn of architecture is found in these structures built by man.

Prehistoric builders moved earth and stone into geometric forms, creating our earliest human-made structures. We don't know why primitive people began building geometric structures. Archaeologists can only guess that prehistoric people looked to the heavens to imitate the circular forms of the sun and the moon, using that natural shape in their creations of earth mounds and monolithic henges.

Many fine examples of well-preserved prehistoric architecture are found in southern England. Stonehenge in Amesbury, United Kingdom is a well-known example of the prehistoric stone circle. Nearby Silbury Hill, also in Wiltshire, is the largest man-made, prehistoric earthen mound in Europe. At 30 meters high and 160 meters wide, the gravel mound is layers of soil, mud, and grass, with dug pits and tunnels of chalk and clay. Completed in the late Neolithic period, approximately 2,400 BC, its architects were a Neolithic civilization in Britain.

The prehistoric sites in southern Britain (Stonehenge, Avebury, and associated sites) are collectively a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

"The design, position, and inter-relationship of the monuments and sites," according to UNESCO, "are evidence of a wealthy and highly organized prehistoric society able to impose its concepts on the environment." To some, the ability to change the environment is key for a structure to be called architecture. Prehistoric structures are sometimes considered the birth of architecture. If nothing else, primitive structures certainly raise the question, what is architecture?

Why does the circle dominate man's earliest architecture? It is the shape of the sun and the moon, the first shape humans realized to be significant to their lives. The duo of architecture and geometry goes way back in time and may be the source of what humans find "beautiful" even today.

3,050 B.C. to 900 B.C. — Ancient Egypt

In ancient Egypt, powerful rulers constructed monumental pyramids, temples, and shrines.

Far from primitive, enormous structures such as the Pyramids of Giza were feats of engineering capable of reaching great heights. Scholars have delineated the periods of history in ancient Egypt.

Wood was not widely available in the arid Egyptian landscape. Houses in ancient Egypt were made with blocks of sun-baked mud. Flooding of the Nile River and the ravages of time destroyed most of these ancient homes. Much of what we know about ancient Egypt is based on great temples and tombs, which were made with granite and limestone and decorated with hieroglyphics, carvings, and brightly colored frescoes. The ancient Egyptians didn't use mortar, so the stones were carefully cut to fit together.

The pyramid form was a marvel of engineering that allowed ancient Egyptians to build enormous structures. The development of the pyramid form allowed Egyptians to build enormous tombs for their kings. The sloping walls could reach great heights because their weight was supported by the wide pyramid base. An innovative Egyptian named Imhotep is said to have designed one of the earliest of the massive stone monuments, the Step Pyramid of Djoser (2,667 B.C. to 2,648 B.C.).

Builders in ancient Egypt didn't use load-bearing arches. Instead, columns were placed close together to support the heavy stone entablature above. Brightly painted and elaborately carved, the columns often mimicked palms, papyrus plants, and other plant forms. Over the centuries, at least thirty distinct column styles evolved.

As the Roman Empire occupied these lands, both Persian and Egyptian columns have influenced Western architecture.

Archaeological discoveries in Egypt reawakened an interest in the ancient temples and monuments. Egyptian Revival architecture became fashionable during the 1800s. In the early 1900s, the discovery of King Tut's tomb stirred a fascination for Egyptian artifacts and the rise of Art Deco architecture.

850 B.C. to A.D. 476 — Classical

Classical architecture is the style and design of buildings and the built environment of ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Classical architecture has always shaped the way we have built in Western colonies around the world.

From the rise of ancient Greece until the fall of the Roman empire, great buildings were constructed according to precise rules. The Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius, who lived during first century B.C., believed that builders should use mathematical principles when constructing temples. "For without symmetry and proportion no temple can have a regular plan," Vitruvius wrote in his famous treatise De Architectura, or Ten Books on Architecture.

In his writings, Vitruvius introduced the Classical orders, which defined column stylesand entablature designs used in Classical architecture. The earliest Classical orders were Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian.

Although we combine this architectural era and call it "Classical," historians have described these three Classical periods:

700 to 323 B.C. — Greek. The Doric column was first developed in Greece and it was used for great temples, including the famous Parthenon in Athens.

Simple Ionic columns were used for smaller temples and building interiors.

323 to 146 B.C. — Hellenistic. When Greece was at the height of its power in Europe and Asia, the empire built elaborate temples and secular buildings with Ionic and Corinthian columns. The Hellenistic period ended with conquests by the Roman Empire.

44 B.C. to A.D. 476 — Roman. The Romans borrowed heavily from the earlier Greek and Hellenistic styles, but their buildings were more highly ornamented. They used Corinthian and composite style columns along with decorative brackets. The invention of concrete allowed the Romans to build arches, vaults, and domes. Famous examples of Roman architecture iinclude the Roman Colosseum and the Pantheon in Rome.

Much of this ancient architecture is in ruins or partially rebuilt. Virtual reality programs like Romereborn.org attempt to digitally recreate the environment of this important civilization.

527 to 565 — Byzantine

After Constantine moved the capital of the Roman empire to Byzantium (now called Istanbul in Turkey) in A.D. 330, Roman architecture evolved into a graceful, classically-inspired style that used brick instead of stone, domed roofs, elaborate mosaics, and classical forms. Emperor Justinian (527 to 565) led the way.

Eastern and Western traditions combined in the sacred buildings of the Byzantine period. Buildings were designed with a central dome that eventually rose to new heights by using engineering practices refined in the Middle East. This era of architectural history was transitional and transformational.

800 to 1200 — Romanesque

As Rome spread across Europe, heavier, stocky Romanesque architecture with rounded arches emerged. Churches and castles of the early Medieval period were constructed with thick walls and heavy piers.