A History of Architecture Settings and Rituals

by Kostof, Spiro; Tobias, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780195034721
• ISBN10: 0195034724
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1985-03-21
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Ten years in the making, A History of Architecture ranges from the first prehistoric environments on record to the most recent examples of urban design. A landmark work of impressive scope, the book is enhanced by 700 halftone illustrations and 150 drawings especially prepared by architect Richard Tobias. Kostof's range of study includes not only the monumental religious, governmental and upper-class structures around which architectural history has usually been written but also the diversity of ordinary domestic, rural, and urban buildings, and landscapes which surround them. Moreover, Kostof evaluates Western achievement in the context of contemporary cultures elsewhere. Thus he duscusses the high points of imperial Rome along with Buddhist stupas and Han palaces, compares medieval Florence with medieval Cairo, and introduces Inca and Aztec cities as the Spanish conquistadores would have seen them. The author's premise is that buldings are conditioned by the social, economic, and political frame of their time; in this sense, Kostof concludes, the history of architecture can be considered an aspect of the history of human institutions. "Architecture, in the end," he writes, "is nothing less than the gift of making places for some human purpose." About the Author: Spiro Kostof is Professor of Architectural History at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a former president of the Society of Architectural Historians and is the author of several books, among them Caves of God and The Third Rime, 1870-1950: Traffic and Glory, and editor of The Architect: Chapters in the History of the Profession

Table of Contents

A Place On Earth

The Study of What We Built

The Cave and the Sky: Stone Age Europe

The Rise of the City: Architecture in Western Asia

The Architecture of Ancient Egypt

Bronze Age Cities: The Aegean and Asia Minor

Greek Temple and ""Barbarian"" Alternatives

Polis and Akropolis

The Hellenistic Realm

Rome: Caput Mundi

The World at Large: Roman Concurrences

Measuring Up

The Triumph of Christ

The Mediterranean in the Early Middle Ages

The Birth of Nations: Europe after Charles

The French Manner

The Urbanization of Europe

Edges of Medievalism

The Renaissance: Ideal and Fad

Spain and the New World

Istanbul and Venice

The Popes as Planners: Rome 150-1650

Absolutism and Bourgeoisie: European Architecture 1600-1750

The Search For Self

Architecture for a New World

Architectural Art and the Landscape of Industry

The American Experience

Victorian Environments

The Trials of Modernism

Architecture and the State: Interwar Years

At Peace with the Past: The Last Decades

Designing the Fin-de-Siecle

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