Architecture History Notes

Technical glitch with main projector; using a smaller one.
Welcome to the fifth week of History of Architecture I and II.
This week's focus: Protection and its influence on relationships and space.
Exploring fortifications and systems of protection, often overlooked in architectural discourse.

Traditional focus on cities in architectural studies.
Cities are in a reciprocal relationship with the countryside (source of resources, food).
The countryside is often repressed in architectural discourse, considered architecture's subconscious.
Protecting the countryside and territory is fundamental.

Professor of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Unile.
Research focus: Greek fortification and landscape archaeology.
Students from Professor Faschacht's class are also attending.
Reading: Sylvain's article on the relationship between the Greek polis and the acropolis.
Crossing institutional and physical boundaries between UNILE and EPFL.

Introduction on a complementary subject before guest lectures.
Guest lecturers help expand on topics and reveal what the discipline has obscured.
Introduction serves as a counterpoint to the guest's ideas.
This week's introduction: Sigfried Gideon's The Eternal Present, The Beginning of Architecture and the Temple Of Hatshepsut.

Sigfried Gideon: Influential Swiss art historian and theorist of the modern movement.
Key figure in promoting architects like Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius.
The Eternal Present is a later work focusing on the origins of architecture.
Gideon was not an archaeologist or anthropologist.

Bound in Frankreich, Bound in Eisen, Bound in Eisbettone (1928): History of steel and early concrete construction.
Space, Time and Architecture (1941): Connected modern architecture with scientific discoveries (Einstein's theory of relativity) and artists (Picasso, Duchamp).
Mechanization Takes Command (1947): Examined the shift from artisanal to industrialized production.

Before the 20th century, architects rarely used the word "space."
Architecture in the 20th century became concerned with the idea of space.
Gideon's work traces the history of architecture through the evolution of the idea of space.
The myth of origin is concerned with the idea of space.

Gideon divides architectural history into three space conceptions:
- Space radiating volumes (Sumer, Egypt, classical Greece).
- Inner space (Imperial Rome).
- Modern space (synthesis of the first two).
Gideon saw the first phase as a thesis, the Roman as antithesis, and modern as a synthesis.

Course began in the mid-18th century with Enlightenment humanism (Loger's theory of the primitive hut).
Fischel von Erlach's global history of architecture.
Violet LeDoux's theories influenced by science of race and national identity.
Deep time and its impact on architecture (geology and paleontology).
Gideon jumps to the 20th century, relating it to the Temple of Hatshepsut (15th century BC).
As time progresses, architectural historians relate to objects further back in time.

Gideon situates the origin of architecture in Egypt with authoritarian governments.
Architecture begins with writing and centralized authority.
Anything before is prehistory, not architecture.
Architecture requires authoritarian political organizations.

Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh, used architecture to establish her political legitimacy.
Senenmut oversaw the construction of her temple and all civil aspects of her reign.
The Temple of Hatshepsut features three terraces, rising vertically.
Hypostyle rooms are embryonic manifestations of space, oriented towards the sky.

Greek architecture falls into the first stage (space radiating volumes).
Gideon sees a transition in the Greek classical world.
Emphasis on relationships between objects rather than one radiating object.
Change in politics: split between god and ruler, birth of Western democracy.
Gideon argues that Greeks are the first European architecture.
Relationships among objects are crucial; seen through the lens of 20th-century art (Auguste Tracey, Sergei Eisenstein).

Developed in Imperial Rome around year zero.
Example: Pantheon, built by Roman Emperor Augustus.
Focus on the vast emptiness inside the building.
Inclusion of natural light is important.
Examples: Mausoleum of Santa Constanza, Basilica of Santa Sabina, Roman thermal baths.
Middle Ages saw minor changes; Renaissance and Baroque remained within the same tradition.

Focus on monuments and centralized governments excludes other aspects of the built environment.
Ignores the countryside, agriculture, and natural resources.
Obsession with objects and monuments.
Excludes caves and other prehistoric structures (e.g., Cave of Lascaux) because they are not tied to authoritarian governments.

Gideon's framework is useful for understanding certain aspects of architectural history.
However, it excludes anything that is not an object or monument.
Professor Sylvain will likely present ideas that fall outside of this framework.