Portal:Architecture
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Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings or other structures. The term comes from Latin architectura; from Ancient Greek ἀρχιτέκτων (arkhitéktōn) 'architect'; from ἀρχι- (arkhi-) 'chief' and τέκτων (téktōn) 'creator'. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols and as works of art. Historical civilisations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements.
Architecture began as rural, oral vernacular architecture that developed from trial and error to successful replication. Ancient urban architecture was preoccupied with building religious structures and buildings symbolizing the political power of rulers until Greek and Roman architecture shifted focus to civic virtues. Indian and Chinese architecture influenced forms all over Asia and Buddhist architecture in particular took diverse local flavors. During the Middle Ages, pan-European styles of Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals and abbeys emerged while the Renaissance favored Classical forms implemented by architects known by name. Later, the roles of architects and engineers became separated.
Modern architecture began after World War I as an avant-garde movement that sought to develop a completely new style appropriate for a new post-war social and economic order focused on meeting the needs of the middle and working classes. Emphasis was put on modern techniques, materials, and simplified geometric forms, paving the way for high-rise superstructures. Many architects became disillusioned with modernism which they perceived as ahistorical and anti-aesthetic, and postmodern and contemporary architecture developed. Over the years, the field of architectural construction has branched out to include everything from ship design to interior decorating. (Full article...)
Selected article –
Park Avenue Plaza is an office building at 55 East 52nd Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The 575-foot (175 m) tall, 44-story building was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) for development company Fisher Brothers and was completed in 1981. Despite its name, the building is not actually on Park Avenue, although it abuts the Racquet and Tennis Club building along the avenue. Rather, the building is in the middle of a city block, with entrances on 52nd and 53rd Streets.
The building has a 15-sided massing, with wide diagonal facades to its northeast and southeast, as well as a deep notch on its east. Park Avenue Plaza's facade is made of blue-green reflective panels of glass. The building has one basement, shallower than in other nearby skyscrapers. The building's lowest ten stories include a lobby, atrium, and mechanical equipment, enabling all the office stories to have windows facing Park Avenue. At the base of the building is an enclosed atrium measuring about 30 feet (9.1 m) tall and connecting the two entrances to the building's elevators. Each office story has about 28,000 square feet (2,600 m2) of rentable area; the entire building covers over a million square feet. The building's design prompted mixed reviews upon its completion. (Full article...)
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that former New Jersey first lady Lucinda Florio restored the Italianate gardens at Drumthwacket?
- ... that Eberhard Zeidler envisaged Toronto Eaton Centre, which opened 45 years ago today, to be an "interior street" instead of simply a shopping mall?
- ... that Tenta's architectural remains, artefacts, human burials, flora and fauna have been "virtually unchanged for two millennia"?
- ... that William Aitken, William J. Bain, J. Lister Holmes, John T. Jacobsen, and George W. Stoddard collaborated in the early 1940s to design America's first racially integrated public housing development?
- ... that when the Bowery Savings Bank Building opened in 1895, "the bank as a work of architecture went from the merely big to the colossal"?
- ... that the architect of the Asakusa Culture Tourist Information Center thought of stacked nagaya houses while designing it?
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