In this chapter and video I want to start talking about architecture. And so architecture is actually the last medium we're going to talk about and then we're going to move on to history. So kind of an important chapter and medium to discuss. So first of all, just like with any of the other mediums, why don't you pause the video for a second and think about what is different about architecture than the other mediums that we've talked about so far. because there's actually a big difference between architecture and painting and sculpture, which are, of course, the three traditional fine arts, according to Vasari.
But architecture is dealing with something very different. So why don't you think about that for a second? And the biggest difference between architecture and the other fine art mediums is, of course, you need an engineer, right? An architect is not only a fine artist, but they either need to be an engineer or they have an engineer or a group of engineers that work. Forum.
And here's the perfect example. This is one of the most prominent architects of today, very well known. You've seen his work all over the country. And his name is Frank Gehry. Well, this is one of the sketches for one of Frank Gehry's buildings.
So they almost looks like he's scribbling on a napkin here. So he'll do these sketches and then he'll send it to a whole team of engineers that are able to build a building that's going to be stable. right? We hope that our architect isn't someone just like Van Gogh, right, is a painter who doesn't understand structure and engineering, otherwise these buildings would collapse.
Here's another sketch by Frank Gehry, and this is a building that you may know of. You may have actually been there, you've probably seen it at some point in your life, trying to hide the answer there, but you could probably see it over on the side. Anyone know what building this one is?
Can't you read it down there? His writing is about as sloppy as his drawing. This is the Disney Concert Hall up in L.A.
And so what Frank Gehry, his theory of this building, is he wanted a building that felt like a piece of paper blowing in the wind. If you've ever seen a piece of paper kind of flip or a bag or something blow in the wind, that's the kind of feeling that he wanted his building to take on. Do you see it there? Do you see some of the movement? You can see the bag kind of flowing through.
And then his team of architects came up with this amazing structure. I actually have never heard a concert there, but I've heard not only is it aesthetically beautiful from the outside, but inside the acoustics in there are some of the best acoustics in any other building or concert hall, which is another thing that an engineer needs to take into consideration. So one thing that architects deal with quite often is the relationship between weight.
tensile strength. Okay, know these terms. Weight is obviously the weight of the material and the structure that they're building.
As buildings get higher and higher they're obviously going to get heavier and you need a material that can deal with that type of weight. Tensile strength is almost the rigidity of material. It's how you can distribute that weight across a material and still hold. So a really good example is if I was to lay down on the ground And I was to have two people try to lift me up, one person in my shoulders, one person in my feet.
And if they were to try to lift me, well, I got a lot of weight in the middle. And so I'm going to kind of sag in the middle. But if they were to take two pulls and take two pulls and put them underneath me, well, now they're taking that weight and distributing across a form, just like a gurney, and it'd lift me much easier.
And so that's what tensile strength is, is distributing that weight on a more rigid form. so that you can handle it. And that's what architects need to deal with.
Now, just like with the other materials, we're going to go through different types of architectural systems, different techniques or structures that architects use. And each one of these architectural systems throughout history can be put in two categories. One category is known as a shell system. A shell system would be whatever is on the interior wall. That's the same material on the exterior wall.
Think about a shell. right? The shell is the same material on the interior and exterior.
The second type of system is known as a skeleton and skin system, and a skeleton and skin is like your modern house. You have studs on the inside, the exterior is stucco or siding, and the interior is either plaster or drywall. So it's a different material on the inside and the outside, and you have a skeleton that holds the form together. All right, so our first architectural system is one of the oldest. It's called load-bearing construction.
A nickname for load-bearing construction is stacking and piling. And think about building a sandcastle, right? It's sort of stacking material and piling material on top of one another.
These are the Great Pyramids of Giza. and the architects used stacking and piling or load-bearing construction for this one. One of the interesting things is if you've ever built a sandcastle, you realize that as you go higher your material has to get lighter. So one way to do that is to taper your building in to a pyramid.
There used to be this commercial not too long ago, I think it was by GEICO or something, where the architects for the pyramids of Giza, they were looking at their blueprints and then they looked at the pyramids and said, uh-oh. because their blueprints had these cubes that it was supposed to be but then they turned into pyramids and although it's supposed to be a joke I'm sure that this took trial and error over time that if you try to make a cube out of adobe or stone or sand or whatever it's gonna have a tendency to want to fall out or it's gonna collapse on its weight but if you start tapering up like this you'll realize that you can go higher and bigger. This is the Great Friday Mosque this is a contemporary building There are some places that still have this style.
This is an adobe structure, meaning it's all made out of clay, so they stack and build this clay. These little sticks that are sticking out the building, they put those into the clay because every so often, depending on when different weather comes, they start to melt, right? The clay and adobe start to melt, so they have to repack the structure. And so by setting those up, they can put up ladders and scaffolding very easily to keep packing the material.
The next architectural system is known as a post and lintel system. This image here is obviously from Stonehenge. So it's an architectural system that's been around for a very long time. Even these megaliths are posts and lintels.
Posts are these vertical objects and then the lintel goes across it. Okay, you may know of post as columns, right? The lintel could be like an architrave or a frieze or something that goes across the top.
This is a post and lintel system that you should know definitely memorize these terms down here It is known as the Greek orders and the Greek orders obviously invented by the Greeks There are three Greek orders and you can disseminate the difference between the Greek orders by the base of the columns and Also the capital of the columns so a column in a Greek order is built up of a base a shaft and a capital the cornice freeze and architrave That's the lintel that goes in between the columns or the posts. And so they do go in an order of history. The oldest Greek order is known as the Doric order.
The Doric has no base and its capital looks like a cup. The Ionic has a base and the capital is Rams Horms. And the Corinthian has some kind of foliage in the capital.
Usually it's some kind of an ivy, but it could be any type of foliage on top. And so if you look at any structure or any temple from the Greeks, you can tell if it's Doric, Ionic, or Corinthian. Anyone know what this one is?
Feel free to rewind the video and see. Yeah, this is the Ionic with the ram's horns on top. Here's the whole Greek order.
You can see the posts are the columns, and then the architrave, frieze, and cornice, or the capital, that's the lintel system. There's also a pediment on top. This whole thing is called the entablature.
Don't cloud your brain with all these terms But just know the three Greek orders and the system that was put into place still used today If you go through Washington DC, you can see all the Greek orders that are still used in certain types of buildings Within the frieze they would put relief sculpture in there And we talked about relief sculpture when we talked about sculpture and in the pediment they would actually have sculpture in the round that they would put up in the pediment up there. For those of you in your debate that you're doing on the Parthenon marbles, the Parthenon marbles were in the pediment of the Parthenon. Our next architectural system is known as the round arch.
There's two different systems. There's a round arch, which is this one, and there's also a pointed arch that we'll talk about in a second. The round arch is a really fascinating system. Because the round arch is an architectural system that wants to constantly collapse.
Gravity wants to take this thing down. And because of that pressure of gravity, it actually holds itself up. Obviously, the keystone is really important. And you can imagine if you were to take that middle stone out, which is why it's known as the keystone, the whole thing would collapse, right? And so I don't know if you've ever played this game when you were a kid, but you push hands against someone else and you guys...
take your feet and you kick back more and more and more as you're pushing and your pressure pushing against will hold yourself up. Once your feet get too far back, like if these legs got too far back, then the whole thing would collapse. But you get to a point where you get pretty far back and just with that equal amount of pressure it'll hold up.
Oh did you also, I don't, some, we used to play a game when we were a kid where we would lay on the ground and we would do a mantra. And we would say, light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff as a board. And we'd have two people that would try to lift you up, one on your shoulders and your feet, like I said earlier.
And you would do the mantra, light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather, stiff as a board. So hopefully they could lift you. Well, that's what that weight and tensile strength is all about. Light as a feather, less weight, tensile strength, being relatively rigid. All right, this is a version of a rounded arch.
You could use it as a barrel vault. There's also the groin vault that you could have a round arch this way and then you could have bays that go through the side As well, so just different versions of a round arch and of course all this is in your book as well This is one of the oldest round arches. That's amazing that it's still up It's still structurally sound today because for over a thousand years this thing has wanted to collapse Oh geez two thousand years now. This thing has wanted to collapse in on itself It's called the Pont du Gard.
It's in Nimes, France, and this is built by the Romans. These are people right here, so it's actually a huge structure. If you ever watch the Tour de France, they actually ride along this thing in their route.
So the next one is the pointed arch. The pointed arch is because a round arch, when you go up too high with a round arch, it has a tendency to want to fall out this way. So if you turn it from a round arch to a point arch, you have the ability to go higher.
Okay. So that's the difference between a point and a round. One of the things with a round, I'm sorry, a pointed arch though, is because when they do get too high, it still has a tendency to want to fall out.
They put on the outside of some of these buildings, they'll put what's called a flying buttress. And a flying buttress is basically like crutches or like stilts that hold the building in. And so it doesn't have a tendency to want to sort of flail out. The next architectural system is the dome. There's an interesting backstory of how the dome was invented.
Supposedly, an ancient architect from the Roman period went to some people that were building a building, and he brought with him an egg, and he showed the stability of the egg. If you ever try to squeeze an egg in one hand, it's impossible to break, because as you squeeze it, it distributes the pressure equally, unless actually part of that structure is broken. We used to do this as kids.
You take an egg and you punch a tiny little hole in one of them. So much, so small that you can't even get the yolk out. And you give that to a friend and then you hold one that's solid and you squeeze it as hard as you can and say, look, I can't break it with one hand.
You try and then he'll try and it'll shatter because of the little hole. But anyway, nothing to do with this. But the dome is basically a round arch that goes all the way around.
This is a dome with a drum, with a solid. If you have an open base, it's called a pentative. Again, don't cloud your brain unless you plan on being an architect.
But just know the dome architectural system. This is one of the oldest domes. This is the Pantheon in Rome. Not to get confused with the Parthenon in Greece that we'll talk about when we get to the early Mediterranean worlds. But the Pantheon has this beautiful large dome structure that actually has the Greek orders built as the entablature as you go in.
And then once you go in, it's this huge open structure. The opening in the top of the dome is called the oculus, and it's known as the eye. Excuse me. Just allergies. Nothing to be concerned about.
The opening is known as the eye of the Pantheon. And it's for two reasons. Number one, it lets in light in the dome.
And the second, it is known as the Eye of the Gods. So these old temples were built for the gods, and it was an eye up from the heavens, so you could supposedly see the gods. Now, I've been to the Pantheon, but I've never been when it's snowing.
But supposedly, it's one of the most beautiful places you could ever be on this earth when snow comes in through the Pantheon. And people have asked, why don't they block it off? Rain and snow, doesn't it ruin the interior of the building?
Well, no, because the interior... is built out of marble, which is the same as the exterior, right? So it's a shell system where the interior and exterior are the same.