Sayre Unit Summary IAR 221

Expression of the Human Experience

                The evolution of the Human mind, otherwise known as the “big bang of the mind”, found humans expanding their lives to more than just surviving. They developed rituals, ceremony, ideas of the afterlife and deified nature. In architecture I feel that this knowledge is the most important aspect in relation to ritual influencing structure. Circles, Stacks and Groves are perfect and simplified ideas which can be seen in architecture over the ages. The best example of these lie in the remnants of Stonehenge and the thousands of other dolmen’s in Britain. These structures exemplify the importance of nature in the lives of humans, although many find the idea of the “universe” to be a strange and completely different subject, the universe is simply an extent of nature its beginning and end. The cosmos have lived in humans’ legacy of architecture as we used them to signal us to certain periods of the year, and later to represent our ideas of religion. This also brings up my reaction to the Power’s of Ten video: “Things are the same on the outside, as they are within.”

 As seen in Hershey’s chapter “Architecture and Sacrifice” the proto-Greek mix of Hittite and Macenean cultures worshipped nature. In their forest altars, sacrifices were made to their gods either found in the stars or in nature. Later, the replication of nature in architecture expanded as society and civilization found their place in the world. From Greece to Rome one of the most influential building types, temples, were developed to resemble the primordial temples of ancient proto-Greeks forest altars. The column, ionic, Doric, and Corinthian all represent an expounding of an age old idea that has continued to this day influencing architecture even here at UNCG. The Greeks attempts to reach a perfection of their building led to experimental and in-between types of columns that I find to be a representation of humans as they evolved over time in body and in ideas. An example of the experimental building types lie in the transformation through the goat horn, transformed to wood, and eventually placed in stone at the tops of columns.

The stacks and alignments of the Egyptian pyramids also represent an important example of devotion by humans to a way of life. Development of the pyramids to signify the death and rebirth into the most glorious afterlife was spiritually bonded to each stone that went into their monuments. The Nile River was the focus of this area whose drying and flooding of the surrounding basin led the Egyptians religious ideas so powerfully that the same ideas were represented in their architecture for almost two thousand years. For example Pharaoh Akhenaton’s attempt to change their religion from nature gods (such as Ra the Sun God etc.) to monotheism, effectively changing their entire social ideals, was immediately swept away when his reign ended.

The perfection of the universe (which is essentially nature) in architecture however can truly be found in the Pantheon. This is in my opinion the embodiment of all the previous ideas of architecture captured in a building. The technology found in this building to attain such perfection adds the importance this building has for architecture. In my eyes it is an epithet to circles and groves which governed ancient Greek as well as the mysterious Stonehenge circles. I feel that this building fulfills all aspects of utilitas, firmitas and especially venustas and thus represents the culmination of this first unit in Interior Architecture 221.

http://www.valenciastonesarasota.com/images/roman_pantheon.jpg

http://www.earthinpictures.com/world/italy/rome/inside_the_pantheon_768x1024.jpg