The Art of Building in the Classical World

The Art of Building in the Classical World PDF Author: John R. Senseney
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113949726X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
This book examines the application of drawing in the design process of classical architecture, exploring how the tools and techniques of drawing developed for architecture subsequently shaped theories of vision and representations of the universe in science and philosophy. Building on recent scholarship that examines and reconstructs the design process of classical architecture, John R. Senseney focuses on technical drawing in the building trade as a model for the expression of visual order, showing that the techniques of ancient Greek drawing actively determined concepts about the world. He argues that the uniquely Greek innovations of graphic construction determined principles that shaped the massing, special qualities and refinements of buildings and the manner in which order itself was envisioned.

The Art of Building in the Classical World

The Art of Building in the Classical World PDF Author: John R. Senseney
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113949726X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
This book examines the application of drawing in the design process of classical architecture, exploring how the tools and techniques of drawing developed for architecture subsequently shaped theories of vision and representations of the universe in science and philosophy. Building on recent scholarship that examines and reconstructs the design process of classical architecture, John R. Senseney focuses on technical drawing in the building trade as a model for the expression of visual order, showing that the techniques of ancient Greek drawing actively determined concepts about the world. He argues that the uniquely Greek innovations of graphic construction determined principles that shaped the massing, special qualities and refinements of buildings and the manner in which order itself was envisioned.

Building the Italian Renaissance

Building the Italian Renaissance PDF Author: Paula Kay Lazrus
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469653400
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
Building the Italian Renaissance focuses on the competition to select a team to execute the final architectural challenge of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore--the erection of its dome. Although the model for the dome was widely known, the question of how this was to be accomplished was the great challenge of the age. This dome would be the largest ever built. This is foremost a technical challenge but it is also a philosophical one. The project takes place at an important time for Florence. The city is transitioning from a High Medieval world view into the new dynamics and ideas and will lead to the full flowering of what we know as the Renaissance. Thus the competition at the heart of this game plays out against the background of new ideas about citizenship, aesthetics, history (and its application to the present), and new technology. The central challenge is to expose players to complex and multifaceted situations and to individuals that animated life in Florence in the early 1400s. Humanism as a guiding philosophy is taking root and scholars are looking for ways to link the mercantile city to the glories of Rome and to the wisdom of the ancients across many fields. The aesthetics of the classical world (buildings, plastic arts and intellectual pursuits) inspired wonder, perhaps even envy, but the new approaches to the past by scholars such as Petrarch suggested that perhaps the creative classes are not simply crafts people, but men of ideas. Three teams compete for the honor to construct the dome, a project overseen by the Arte Della Lana (wool workers guild) and judged by them and a group of Florentine citizens who are merchants, aristocrats, learned men, and laborers. Their goal is to make the case for the building to live up to the ideals of Florence. The game gives students a chance to enter into the world of Florence in the early 1400s to develop an understanding of the challenges and complexity of such a major artistic and technical undertaking while providing an opportunity to grasp the interdisciplinary nature of major public works.

Building in Words

Building in Words PDF Author: Bettina Reitz-Joosse
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197610706
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Building in Words explores the relationship between text and architecture in the Roman world from the perspective of architectural process. Ancient Romans frequently encountered buildings under construction - they experienced noisy building work, disruptive transportation of materials, and sometimes spectacular engineering feats. Bettina Reitz-Joosse analyzes how Roman authors responded to the process of building and construction in their literary works. Roman authors tell stories of architectural creation to give meaning to finished monuments. Their narratives can stress technological or logistic mastery or highlight morally problematic aspects of construction, particularly in large-scale engineering projects. While offering descriptions of the process of creating architecture, Roman writers also reflect on the creation of their own works. Building in Words demonstrates the richness of the image of construction for literary composition: writers use it to comment on the aesthetics or ambition of their literary work, to articulate the power and durability, but also the fragility of literature. Reitz-Joosse here offers original readings of a range of literary authors of the early Roman empire, including Vergil, Pliny the Elder, Tacitus, and Statius, and places literary texts in dialogue with contemporary epigraphic and archaeological material. Through its focus on building as a process, Building in Words furthers our understanding of the aesthetics of both architecture and literature in ancient Rome.

Women in the Classical World

Women in the Classical World PDF Author: Elaine Fantham
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199762163
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
Information about women is scattered throughout the fragmented mosaic of ancient history: the vivid poetry of Sappho survived antiquity on remnants of damaged papyrus; the inscription on a beautiful fourth century B.C.E. grave praises the virtues of Mnesarete, an Athenian woman who died young; a great number of Roman wives were found guilty of poisoning their husbands, but was it accidental food poisoning, or disease, or something more sinister. Apart from the legends of Cleopatra, Dido and Lucretia, and images of graceful maidens dancing on urns, the evidence about the lives of women of the classical world--visual, archaeological, and written--has remained uncollected and uninterpreted. Now, the lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched Women in the Classical World lifts the curtain on the women of ancient Greece and Rome, exploring the lives of slaves and prostitutes, Athenian housewives, and Rome's imperial family. The first book on classical women to give equal weight to written texts and artistic representations, it brings together a great wealth of materials--poetry, vase painting, legislation, medical treatises, architecture, religious and funerary art, women's ornaments, historical epics, political speeches, even ancient coins--to present women in the historical and cultural context of their time. Written by leading experts in the fields of ancient history and art history, women's studies, and Greek and Roman literature, the book's chronological arrangement allows the changing roles of women to unfold over a thousand-year period, beginning in the eighth century B.C.E. Both the art and the literature highlight women's creativity, sexuality and coming of age, marriage and childrearing, religious and public roles, and other themes. Fascinating chapters report on the wild behavior of Spartan and Etruscan women and the mythical Amazons; the changing views of the female body presented in male-authored gynecological treatises; the "new woman" represented by the love poetry of the late Republic and Augustan Age; and the traces of upper- and lower-class life in Pompeii, miraculously preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. Provocative and surprising, Women in the Classical World is a masterly foray into the past, and a definitive statement on the lives of women in ancient Greece and Rome.

Classical New York

Classical New York PDF Author: Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 0823281043
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
During the rise of New York from the capital of an upstart nation to a global metropolis, the visual language of Greek and Roman antiquity played a formative role in the development of the city’s art and architecture. This compilation of essays offers a survey of diverse reinterpretations of classical forms in some of New York’s most iconic buildings, public monuments, and civic spaces. Classical New York examines the influence of Greco-Roman thought and design from the Greek Revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through the late-nineteenth-century American Renaissance and Beaux Arts period and into the twentieth century’s Art Deco. At every juncture, New Yorkers looked to the classical past for knowledge and inspiration in seeking out new ways to cultivate a civic identity, to design their buildings and monuments, and to structure their public and private spaces. Specialists from a range of disciplines—archaeology, architectural history, art history, classics, and history— focus on how classical art and architecture are repurposed to help shape many of New York City’s most evocative buildings and works of art. Federal Hall evoked the Parthenon as an architectural and democratic model; the Pantheon served as a model for the creation of Libraries at New York University and Columbia University; Pennsylvania Station derived its form from the Baths of Caracalla; and Atlas and Prometheus of Rockefeller Center recast ancient myths in a new light during the Great Depression. Designed to add breadth and depth to the exchange of ideas about the place and meaning of ancient Greece and Rome in our experience of New York City today, this examination of post-Revolutionary art, politics, and philosophy enriches the conversation about how we shape space—be it civic, religious, academic, theatrical, or domestic—and how we make use of that space and the objects in it.

The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World

The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World PDF Author: John Peter Oleson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199734852
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 884

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Book Description
Nearly every aspect of daily life in the Mediterranean world and Europe during the florescence of the Greek and Roman cultures is relevant to engineering and technology. This text highlights the accomplishments of the ancient societies, the research problems, and stimulates further progress in the history of ancient technology.

Building Beautiful

Building Beautiful PDF Author: Clive Aslet
Publisher: Rizzoli Publications
ISBN: 0847870634
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Inside elegant homes designed by architect John Simpson—famed designer of the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace and one of the world’s leading practitioners of New Classicism. Stunning color photography and beautiful drawings bring to life Simpson’s rich ideas for architecture, interior design, and furniture design. Inviting, perfect in proportion, exquisite in detail—such are a few of the ways to describe homes designed by John Simpson. Well known for his work with the British royal family at Buckingham and Kensington palaces and for his buildings at Eton College in the U.K. and at the University of Notre Dame in the U.S., he is perhaps most brilliant at the level of the house and home. Building Beautiful is an invitation to enter the work of this master designer, as one might visit with a treasured friend. From a dream made real within a Venetian palazzo—a former seventeenth-century near-ruin, brought back to glorious, fancifully detailed life—to an English countryside cottage with a thatched roof, the featured homes are expressions of Simpson’s unerring eye and extraordinary sense of beauty. Here we find drama in contrasts of scale and the seductive effects of light, where a cozy reading nook opens to an expansive living room with a double-height ceiling that nevertheless feels not overly large but rather just right. This is Simpson’s subtle art—a mastery of scale, balance, and a pervading sense of elegance. “ . . . brings Simpson’s dreamiest, most dazzling projects all in one place . . . You’ll return to these pages again and again for inspiration and wanderlust fulfillment.” —Veranda.com

Peace and Reconciliation in the Classical World

Peace and Reconciliation in the Classical World PDF Author: E. P. Moloney
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317082869
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 658

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Book Description
Warfare has long been central to a proper understanding of ancient Greece and Rome, worlds where war was, as the philosopher Heraclitus observed, ‘both king and father of all’. More recently, however, the understanding of Classical antiquity solely in such terms has been challenged; it is recognised that while war was pervasive, and a key concern in the narratives of ancient historians, a concomitant desire for peace was also constant. This volume places peace in the prime position as a panel of scholars stresses the importance of ‘peace’ as a positive concept in the ancient world (and not just the absence of, or necessarily even related to, war), and considers examples of conflict resolution, conciliation, and concession from Homer to Augustine. Comparing and contrasting theories and practice across different periods and regions, this collection highlights, first, the open and dynamic nature of peace, and then seeks to review a wide variety of initiatives from across the Classical world.

Grassmannians of Classical Buildings

Grassmannians of Classical Buildings PDF Author: Mark Pankov
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 981431756X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Buildings are combinatorial constructions successfully exploited to study groups of various types. The vertex set of a building can be naturally decomposed into subsets called Grassmannians. The book contains both classical and more recent results on Grassmannians of buildings of classical types. It gives a modern interpretation of some classical results from the geometry of linear groups. The presented methods are applied to some geometric constructions non-related to buildings Grassmannians of infinite-dimensional vector spaces and the sets of conjugate linear involutions. The book is self-contained and the requirement for the reader is a knowledge of basic algebra and graph theory. This makes it very suitable for use in a course for graduate students.

Chicago's Classical Architecture

Chicago's Classical Architecture PDF Author: David Stone
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738534268
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
A pictorial tour of Chicago's connection to classical architecture begins at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, with it's gleaming "White City" of ornate Beaux-Arts buildings to Daniel Burnham's "Plan of Chicago" which furthered classical building inChicago and throught the country.