Architectural History Game

Scores and Answers

Below are pictures of the same nine buildings you have been studying.

Following each building's picture-with-information block are some reasonable responses to the statements and questions on the previous page.

1st England, Salisbury Plain, Stonehenge, 2750-1500 B.C., a Neolithic (New Stone Age) monumental stone temple / observatory.

Three of the main reasons ancient sites are in ruins include the effects of nature, souvenir hunters, and vandalism in peace time and in wars. Describe how these occur. Running water erodes surfaces. When water freezes it causes cracks to expand. Fire burns. Souvenir hunters break pieces off and remove them. Vandals and soldiers destroy out of need to impress with their superior power, and often in anger.

2nd Roman Colosseum, or Flavian Amphitheater, A.D. 70 to 82, a vast ellipse with tiers of seating for 50,000 spectators around a central elliptical arena. The Colosseum had approximately eighty entrances so crowds could arrive and leave easily and quickly. The plan is a vast ellipse, measuring externally 188 m x 156 m (615 ft x 510 ft), with the base of the building covering about 6 acres. Vaults span between eighty radial walls to support tiers of seating and for passageways and stairs. The façade of three tiers of arches and an attic storey is about 48.5 m (158 feet) tall. Below the wooden arena floor, there were numerous rooms and passageways for wild beasts and other provisions for staging the spectacles. Eighty walls radiate from the arena and support vaults for passageways, stairways and the tiers of seats. At the outer edge circumferential arcades link each level and the stairways between levels. The three tiers of arcades are faced by three-quarter columns and entablatures, Doric in the first story, Ionic in the second, and Corinthian in the third. Above them is an attic story with Corinthian pilasters and small square window openings in alternate bays. At the top, brackets and sockets carried the masts from which the velarium, a canopy for shade, was suspended. The construction utilized a careful combination of types: concrete for the foundations, travertine for the piers and arcades, tufa infill between piers for the walls of the lower two levels, and brick-faced concrete used for the upper levels and for most of the vaults. Two other Roman buildings are: The Pantheon, Rome, 118-126. It consists of a great circular hall (roofed by a hemispherical vault), which is entered by passing through the pronaos (porch). All sixteen columns of the pronaos are monoliths (single large stones) of Egyptian granite. The interior has a diameter of 42.75 m., equal to the greatest height of the building. Roman, Rome, Arch of Severus, 205, bearing masonry. A classic example of a triumphal arch.

Each of these Roman buildings is constructed almost entirely of masonry. The Romans invented cement. Five uses for cement today are: (Also name some alternative materials that might be used in place of concrete to create the same forms, and tell how building with those different materials would make the resulting building different.) 1. Paving sidewalks and roadways. If wood were used it would become uneven and rot. 2. Reinforced with steel, for parking garages. Plastics would be too expensive, and would probably weather poorly. 3. Swimming pools. If metals were used they would be much more expensive, and likely to oxidize and corrode.

3rd Maurice de Sully (French), Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, 1163 - 1250, bearing masonry, cut stone. Notre Dame Cathedral was seminal in the evolution of the French Gothic style. It is 110 feet high -- the first cathedral built on a truly monumental scale. With its compact, cruciform plan, its sexpartite vaulting, flying buttresses and vastly enlarged windows, it became a prototype for future French cathedrals.

Because one result of building cathedrals in the Gothic style was the enlarging of windows, other art forms were effected too, and people's experience of these buildings were effected as well. These effects included . . . 1. The development of stained glass windows. 2. The ability to light the large interior spaces of these churches without having to illuminate them artificially.

4th Shah Jahan (Indian, Mughal emperor who reigned 1627-1658), Taj Mahal, 1630-1653, an Islamic tomb in a walled garden built for Shah Jahan's wife Mumatz Mahal, of bearing masonry and inlaid marble, with onion-shape domes and flanking towers (called minarets), in Agra, India, seat of the Mughal Empire. Sir Banister Fletcher wrote in A History of Architecture, "The interior of the building is dimly lit through pierced marble lattices and contains a virtuoso display of carved marble. Externally the building gains an ethereal quality from its marble facings, which respond with extraordinary subtlety to changing light and weather."

Several elements of the Taj Mahal's design mark it as having an Eastern -- specifically Islamic -- design. Three of these elements are: 1. The onion-shaped domes 2. The minarets from which muslims are called to prayer 3. The non-figurative decorations 4. The pierced marble lattices

5th Gustave Eiffel (French, 1832-1923) , Eiffel Tower, 1887-1889, exposition observation tower, exposed iron construction, height 985 feet, a symbol of Paris worldwide. Built for Paris's 1889 International Exhibition, the centenary celebration of the French Revolution, Eiffel's structure became a symbol of the Industrial Age.

The Eiffel Tower was very controversial when it was being built. Two reasons why so many French citizens disliked it are: 1. Its height was so much greater than previously known 2. Its materials -- cast and wrought iron -- had not been part of French traditional architecture. 3. It cost a lot of money, and many thought they had better ideas about what that money should be spent on.

6th Gerrit T. Rietveld (Dutch, 1884-1964), Schroder House, 1924-25, steel beams and columns, wood and concrete, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Rietveld's style became known as Der Stijl and the International Style.

This is the first residence we have looked at here. One reason this must be a "modern" design is . . . 1. Construction components are so rigidly rectilinear that they project modern manufacturing methods. 2. Red, blue, and yellow were colors little used in pre-modern architecture.

7th Frank Lloyd Wright (American, 1867-1959), Fallingwater House, 1937-39, [83 k,] Bear Run, PA. This house is the paradigm of organic architecture, where a building becomes an integral part of its natural setting. Readers of the Journal of the American Institute of Architects voted it the best building of the last 125 years. Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for the New York Times, called it "one of the most sublime works of art of our time." Frank Lloyd Wright designed numerous other buildings, including: Robie House, Chicago, 1909, Chicago, IL, with long overhangs on low-pitched roofs and horizontally raked brick joints. Francis W. Little House, 1912-1914, Wayzata, Minnesota. Originally Francis W. Little's country house, here it's living room is seen as it has been installed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, an art museum art constructed of concrete as a spiral ramping gallery which expands as it coils around an unobstructed well of space, topped by a flat-ribbed glass dome. This building evoked for Wright "the quiet unbroken wave."

This building is such a "sublime work of art" because . . . 1. it is designed to blend so greatly into its beautiful natural site. 2. its design is such a pleasing blend of horizonatal and vertical elements. 3. the sound of the waterfall beside it is an ever-present source of serenity.

8th Charles Edouard Jeanneret, known as "Le Corbusier" (French, 1887-1965), Notre Dame du Haut, or the church called Ronchamp, 1955, reinforced concrete, soft-form composition, deep windows with colored glass, wall thickness 4-12 feet, Ronchamp, France. Sited atop a hillside, it has rough masonry walls faced with whitewashed Gunite (sprayed concrete) and a roof of contrasting beton brut. Surrealism is a key to many of Le Corbusier's late works, and notably the church at Ronchamp. Its form has been considered analogous to a nun's habit, or a ship, or a dove. Among Le Corbusier's earlier designs, an outstanding example is the house called Villa Savoye, built in 1928-29 of concrete and plastered unit masonry, Poissy, France.

Le Corbusier's Notre Dame du Haut is an example of a building that reminds people of shapes of subjects they associate with the purpose of the building. How could other buildings (such as restaurants) be designed so that their forms would immediately tell people what they are for? 1. A hamburger restaurant in the shape of a hamburger. 2. A hotdog stand in the shape of a hotdog. 3. An ice cream store in the shape of an icecream cone. 4. A jungle cuisine cafe in the guise of a rainforest.

This is the most recently designed building we've looked at. Its form might be described this way: The Guggenheim Bilbao Museum exhibits a pattern of wavy golden amorphic shapes. This building is reminiscent of the lines of certain old auto bodies. I'm reminded of a cluster of huge flames. It looks as if it may have fallen down.

Congratulations! You already know so much about architectural history!

Return to the "Architectural Model" lesson.