III. You misheard the information. Make it more exact putting the questions.
Example:
These styles are called orders. — How are these styles called?
1. They are called orders.
2. The orders defined the pattern of the columnar facades and upper-works.
3. Greek Doric has the simple columns without a base, the spreading capitals and the triglyph- metope frieze above the columns.
4. The Ionic order was more ornate than the Doric.
5. The Romans preferred the Corinthian order for its showiness.
6. The Corinthian order has the advantage of facing equally in four directions.
7. The Tuscan and Composite orders were developed by the Romans.
IV. Prove the following, using the information from the text.
1. The Romans were not the first to invent the architectural orders.
2. Archaic forms of the Doric temples dominated the townscape through the Classical and later periods.
3. The Ionic order was used only for the smaller temples.
4. An alternative for the Ionic order that could be viewed from any side was provided by the sculptor-architect Callimachus.
5. The Greeks didn't often use the Corinthian order.
6. The Tuscan order wasn't developed by the Greeks.
7. The Composite order is a version of the Corinthian.
V. Answer the following questions.
1. What is the order in classical architecture?
2. Which orders were invented by the Greeks?
3. What is the difference between Greek Doric and Roman Doric?
4. What can be said about the evolution of the Ionic order?
5. Why did the Romans often use the Corinthian order?
VI. Read the text and tell about the use of the Dork and Ionic orders in the architecture of the Acropolis.
The Acropolis architecture exhibits considerable subtlety of design in the use of Doric and Ionic orders. The ensemble of the major buildings — the Parthenon, a temple to Athena; the Erechtheum, a temple to Athena and Poseidon — shows the orders used in deliberate contrast: the Erechtheum provides a decorative Ionic counterpart to the severe Doric of the Parthenon, which itself has an Ionic frieze; and in the Propylaea, columns of both orders complement each other.
VII. Ask your friend to describe one of the Orders of Architecture.
Text B.
SHELLS
The term shell is used to denote a spanning and space-enclosing element of domed or other vaultlike form, but with a thickness and order of magnitude less than was usual for these masonry and mass-concrete forms. Like the latter, a shell may be curved in two directions or in one only; but the two curvatures of the doubly curved form may be of opposite sense, like those of a saddle — a possibility almost restricted to the fan vault in masonry — and the singly curved form may be taken to include barrel-shaped and folded or corrugated forms that span along the length of the barrel or the folds, and act as deep beams. To achieve the reduction in thickness, tensile strength must be provided in the shell itself, or at the level of support, or in both places, in accordance with the requirements of the surface geometry, the pattern of loading, and the type of support.
The shelf, together with the doubly curved tensile membrane or cable net, has so enlarged the formal vocabulary of architecture that it will continue to play an important role where economy is not the overriding consideration. The Saarinen/Ammann and Whitney roof of the TWA Terminal Building at Kennedy Airport demonstrates its versatility at the limits of practicality; Jorn Utzon's (b. 1918) original impracticable proposal of sharply ridged shells for the Sydney Opera House went beyond these limits and called for a different arched type of construction.
Text C. Read the text and speak on the difference between the Baroque and Rococo.
ROCOCO
During the
period of the Enlightenment (about 1700 to 1780), various currents of
post-Baroque art and architecture evolved. A principal current,
generally known as Rococo, refined the robust architecture of the 17
century to suit elegant 18
-century
tastes. Vivid colours were replaced by pastel shades; diffuse light
flooded the building volume; violent surface relief was replaced by
smooth flowing masses with emphasis only at isolated points. Churches
and palaces still exhibited an integration of the three arts, but the
building structure was lightened to render interiors graceful and
ethereal. Interior and exterior space retained none of the bravado
and dominance of the Baroque but entertained and captured the
imagination by intricacy and subtlety.
By progressively modifying the Renaissance-Baroque horizontal separation into discrete parts, Rococo architects obtained unified spaces, emphasized structural elements, created continuous decorative schemes, and reduced column sizes to a minimum. In churches, the ceilings of side aisles were raised to the height of the nave ceiling to unify the space from wall to wall (Church of the Carmine, Turin, Italy, 1732, by Filippo Juvarra; Pilgrimage Church, Steinhausen, near Biberach, Germany, 1728, by Domini-kus Zimmermann; Saint-Jacques, Luneville, France, 1730, by Germain Boffrand.
Text D. Read the text and say what facts mentioned in it you have never heard before.
FLOOR SYSTEMS
The continuous slab constitutes a self-contained floor system, though it may be desirable for non-structural reasons to add a separate top surface and a separate ceiling below. Before the development of the reinforced-concrete slab, the nearest equivalents were the floor composed of beams of timber or stone set immediately alongside one another, and the floor provided by a more or less solid fill above a brick or concrete vault. The first of these involved a very extravagant use of material and hence expenditure of effort, so it usually gave way to a more differentiated form with increasing skill in construction. The second was more efficient, inherently strong, and fireproof, and continued to be used for these reasons until supplanted by the reinforced-concrete slab. But it had the drawbacks of greater overall depth than alternative forms, and of greater weight plus the generation of outward thrusts, so that stronger walls were called for.
The alternative to these forms was always some composite system, with beams as the principal spanning and load-bearing elements. In the commonest of these systems, still widely used, light timber beams span at short intervals between opposite walls and are covered by boards or twigs and rammed earth.
Today the usual floor system, apart from intermediate floors within single dwellings, is the reinforced-concrete slab with or without projecting beams. For very heavy loadings and wide spans, a grid of beams within a bay may be used to stiffen and strengthen the slab without requiring it to be of great thickness throughout. In all cases, the slab has a great advantage over the earlier systems because it is a good horizontal diaphragm, binding the walls or columns together and distributing any side loads between them.
Unit 3
Text А.
EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE
During the
Old Kingdom, the period when Egypt was ruled by the Kings of the 3
to 6
Dynasties, artists and craftsmen were drawn to the court to work
under the patronage of the king and his great nobles. Techniques of
working in stone, wood, and metal made tremendous progress,
demonstrated by surviving large scale monuments, such as the
pyramids of the 4
Dynasty and the sun temples built by the 5
-Dynasty
kings. The pyramids of the 4
Dynasty are the most spectacular of all funerary works and the only
remained wonder of the world. These monuments celebrated the
divinity of the kings of Egypt, linking the people with the
great gods of earth and sky.
This was a
time when trade and the economy flourished. Craftsmen worked in the
finest materials which were often brought great distances, and were
able to experiment with recalcitrant stones as well as new
techniques of metalworking. This enabled them by the 6
Dynasty to produce large metal figures. The earliest that survive are
the copper statues of Pepi I and his son, found at Hierakonpolis.
Made c. 2330 EC they are badly corroded but still impressive in
their stiffly formal poses. The eyes are inlaid, and the crown and
the kilt of the king, now missing, were probably originally made
of gilded plaster.
During the prosperous period known as the Middle Kingdom fortresses were built to defend the southern and eastern borders, and new areas of
land were brought under cultivation. Craftsmen achieved new levels of excellence. Very little architecture remains — many royal monuments were robbed for their stone in later periods — but what has survived shows great simplicity and refinement. The example is the pyramid of Sesostris I at Lisht.
The
establishment of the 18
Dynasty marked the beginning of the New Kingdom and a new blossoming
of the arts and crafts of ancient Egypt. Craftsmen benefited from
wider contact with other civilizations, such as those of Crete and
Mesopotamia, and were also able to work with imported raw
materials.
The kings gave encouragement to artists and craftsmen by ordering great temples and palaces to be built throughout Egypt. The temple walls were covered with reliefs celebrating the achievements of the kings and the powers of the gods. The courtyards and inner sanctuaries were enriched with statuary. The most notable monuments are the Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatsheput at Deir-el-Bahari (c. 1480 BC), which had a series of pillared colonnades on three sides of three superimposed terraces linked by gigantic ramps and magnificent Great Temple at Karnak to Amon as the universal god of Egypt.
Ancient Egyptian architecture was revived under the Ptolemies, the successors of Alexander the Great, who built numerous temples of traditional style of which the finest examples that survive are the Temple of Horus at Etfu and the temples on the islands of Philae (c. 323—30 BC).
Vocabulary
kingdom — (зд.) царство
craftsman — ремесленник
surviving — уцелевший
large-scale — крупномасштабный
divinity —божество
recalcitrant — непокорный
to enable — давать возможность
copper — медь
inlaid — инкрустирован
c circa лат. — приблизительно
B.C. (before Christ) — до нашей эры
to miss — пропустить, утратить
gilded plaster — позолота
prosperous — процветающий
to rob — грабить
refinement — усовершенствование
blossoming — расцвет
raw materials — сырье
encouragement — поощрение
mortuary — погребальный
ramp — скат, уклон
to revive — возрождать
successor — последователь, наследник