CULTURE AND HISTORY 1A: ONLINE DISCUSSION FORUM

"If you don't know history then you don't know anything. You're like a leaf that doesn't know it's part of a tree"

- Michael Crichton

Architecture came across a long journey. From simple tree shelter, to building structures that touches the clouds. Decades, or even centuries of perfections and errors can either be studied in books or to be in awe as they still stand  as architecture is defined as frozen music by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

So to start things off, a random ancient building is given to a group of 6 for us to study. A group is required to submit an online forum filled with information gathered by all the members which includes:

• Who was the founder, where and when was the building built?
• What is the form or shape of the building?
• What is the function or purpose of the building?
• What Materials / Methods Are Used For Construction?
• What Makes Your Building Historically Significant/ Meaningful

I've chosen the fourth question and following is my research.

PARTHENON

Most religious buildings today are intended for congregational worship, where groups of people get together on a regular basis to celebrate their god, reaffirm their faith and receive spiritual comfort.

However, Ancient Greek temples were rarely used this way. They were meant to serve as homes for the individual god or goddess who protected and sustained the community. It was the needs of the gods that were most important. They controlled the forces of nature— the sun and rain, which nourished their crops, and the winds that drove their ships. Although generally benevolent, the gods could be quite capricious and were liable to turn against the community— so it was in everyone's interest to make sure that they should feel relaxed and at home. Their houses were the finest, equipped with a staff of servants to look after their every need. They received daily offerings of food and drink along with a proper share of the harvest as well as a share in the profits of any trading or military activity.

WHY WAS IT BUILT

Long before the construction of the Parthenon the site had been a sacred place of other cultures. The Parthenon was built to supplant the temples of the earlier cultures and to replace the former Temple of Athena that had been ruined during the Persian war. It was also built to celebrate the victory over the Persians, and to give thanks to Athena, goddess of war, who they believed had helped them win the battles.

BUILT TO PAY HONOUR TO ATHENA AFTER DEFEATING THE PERSIANS

The Parthenon frieze made a unique statement about the relationship between Athenians and the gods by showing its citizens in the company of the gods. A temple adorned with pictures of citizens, albeit idealized citizens of perfect physique and beauty, amounted to a claim of special intimacy between the city-state and the gods, a statement of confidence that these honored deities favored the Athenians. Presumably this claim reflected the Athenian interpretation of their success in helping to turn back the Persians, in achieving leadership of a powerful naval alliance, and in controlling, from their silver mines5 and the allies' dues, an amount of revenue which made Athens richer than all its neighbors in mainland Greece. The Parthenon, like the rest of the Periclean building program, paid honor to the gods with whom the city-state was identified and expressed the Athenian view that the gods looked favorably on their empire.

WHY IS IT A SYMBOL OF DEMOCRACY

The Parthenon was said to be the first democratic building in Greek history. In this regard, the frieze, the most interesting element of the building was not part of the original plan. It was actually the last to be designed. After the decision to build a temple was taken, a committee was appointed to select the best project; the project that was selected was presented to the senate, and then to the assembly. It was these organs of Athenian democracy that made the final decision on the project. And they could propose changes—also very significant—so it all looks like the Parthenon was designed in a certain way, but in this process of submission to the council, to the assembly, a change was proposed regarding the frieze. So the most innovative part of the building didn't come out of the brain of Pericles or the architect, it was sort of a discussion in the middle of Athenian society.

WHY IS IT BUILT ON TOP OF THE ACROPOLIS

"Acropolis" means the high point of the city. And since the buildings of classical Athens rarely reached higher than a storey or two, the Parthenon, which stands atop the Acropolis like a muscular statue upon a pedestal, would have dominated the skyline of ancient Athens from almost any angle. It would have been hard to live your daily life in Athens and not at some point see the Parthenon looming above the city as an expression of the city's greatness.

WHY IS IT BUILT TO PERFECTION

The Parthenon epitomizes all the ideals of Greek thought during the apogee of the Classical era through artistic means. The idealism of the Greek way of living, the attention to detail, as well as the understanding of a mathematically explained harmony in the natural world were concepts that in every Athenian’s eyes set them apart from the barbarians. These ideals are represented in the perfect proportions of the building, in its intricate architectural elements, and in the anthropomorphic statues that adorned it.

Vitruvius, who was an architect of the Roman period, believed that refinements like the upward curvature of the steps were made to compensate for optical illusion. Vitruvius believed that a perfectly straight line carried over a long distance would appear to sag, and he suggested the upward curvature of the long steps of the Parthenon would counteract that optical illusion, making the line look straight. Vitruvius would seem to be assuming that the architects of the Parthenon wanted the Parthenon to look perfectly straight, wanted its lines to look perfectly horizontal and perfectly vertical.

Refinements were made to give the Parthenon an impression of being a living mass that responded to its own weight. For example, each column has a slight swelling at its center called entasis—it's a bulge of only a couple of centimeters, but it's measurable and it's visible. The slight swelling makes the columns seem to be tense; they seem to swell up to respond to the weight that they carry. In fact, entasis is the Greek word for tension or swelling. 

Despite the aesthetical refinements, there are also refinements that possess practical uses. The best example of both of these purposes is the stylobate. The stylobate is the platform upon which the temple stands, and though it appears horizontal, it curves upward in the middle. In practical terms this has the function of shedding rain water, but yet it can also be argued that it is for aesthetic reasons.

The kinds of optical refinements that were detected in the architecture of the Parthenon were far older than the fifth century. In the sixth century, in what was called the Archaic period, entasis can be far more exaggerated than it is on the Parthenon. But the Parthenon brings all these various refinements together in a particularly harmonious and integrated way. The steps curve upward, the columns tilt inward, the metopes tilt outward, the columns swell, and the corner columns of the building are slightly thicker than the other columns of the building. All of these refinements are combined masterfully.

SPATIAL USAGE

The Parthenon was built as a peripteros - a temple surrounded by columns - in the Doric order. It has eight columns at the façade, and seventeen columns at the flanks, conforming to the established ratio of 9:4. This ratio governed the vertical and horizontal proportions of the temple as well as many other relationships of the building like the spacing between the columns and their height.

The temple measures 30.86 by 69.51 meters (approx. 101 x 228 ft) and contained two cellae (inner chambers). The east cella was unusually large to accommodate the oversized statue of Athena, confining the front and back porch to a much smaller than usual size. A line of six Doric columns supported the front and back porch, while a colonnade of 23 smaller Doric columns surrounded the statue in a two-storied arrangement. The placement of columns behind the statue was an unusual development since in previous Doric temples they only appeared on the flanks, but the greater width and length of the Parthenon allowed for a dramatic backdrop of double decked columns instead of a wall. The west cella was exclusively used by priests and contained the treasury of the Delian League.

The Parthenon is a peripteral octastyle Doric temple. Doric orders are the simplest. Although plain, it is very powerful-looking in its design.

 

DORIC ORDER

The Doric column stands without a base directly on a crepis, conventionally of three steps in temples. The earliest columns are very slender, but later ones are excessively thick, with a height no more than 4 times the diameter at the base. The circular shaft is divided into 20 shallow flutes. The shaft has a slightly convex profile called the entasis, to counteract the concave appearance produced by straight sided columns

The Doric entablature has three main divisions. (i) The architrave is the outermost, showing a vertical face in one plane. Capping it is a flat projecting band called taenia. (ii) The frieze, which is formed of triglyphs alternating with metopes or square spaces ornamented with fine relief sculpture. (iii) The cornice, which is the upper crowning part.