Unit Summary: Foundations

IAR221 – History + Theory of Design I

Patrick Lee Lucas

Gregory Hickman

February 21, 2009

Unit Summary: Foundations

“The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.”

Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans

The Foundations unit was very influential. Being that a foundation is the basis or groundwork for any ideal to build from; it is no surprise that this unit shaped the world and its future. Although it has been centuries since traceable architecture has been determined, the distinction between “real and ideal,” is still among us today.

With the media being the way it is, we as individuals struggle with the “ideal” image, so it is no surprise that we as designers do the same with the concepts that we create. Much like Greek civilizations, our society has an ideal imagine of how the duality of male and female should be. When comparing the roles of a female to male in society, people tend to think of the female as a weaker being in society, which is even traced back to the way the Greeks portrayed their architecture. Symbolic to how society views males as more dominant, the Greeks built structures that surrounded this ideal. These structures typically used more land mass or was stretched high, making the “male” structure closer to the Gods. The structure typically built for females is generally smaller or shorter using the structure to show their rank below the males in society. Hatshepsut’s temple complex at Deir el-Bahri is a good example of this, because this mortuary was built to house a woman and ended up being noticeably shorter than the pyramids built for men. Both building types were unified with society by setting a prime example of how males and females fit into society. These ideas that started off as locally spread ideals rapidly made its way into the international mainstream influencing architecture worldwide. Taking something that is seen daily, such as a column, can be applied to this idea in the sense that it’s it male. Along with its “male-like” shape the column also provides structural support as well as having a visually appealing look that usually towers over the average human showing its dominance. This symbolic reference to the male figure in society serves as an archetype for the evolution of columns to come. With commodity, firmness, and delight in mind the columns being what they are, evolved from of the Stonehenge (post and lintel) method, which continues to serve as a foundation for many designs today. With the Greeks taking the idea of Stonehenge as an archetype, they created a hierarchy of column types with Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite exhibited on the Acropolis and the repeated once more onto the Colosseum in the Roman Empire.

Stonehenge [http://homepages.vvm.com/~cdhoit/stone.html]

The Orders

The Colosuem

Pyramids at Giza

Broken Obelisk at University of Washington [http://www.flickr.com/photos/travelguy/2306008647/]

“The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible. Since as foundation is something to be build from.”

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans

Stepping out of the foundations unit while considering this quote, it is no surprise that the alternative unit will be next. Given that we are constantly exploring several alternatives, alternatives are the present and will continue to be the future as long as we inhabit this earth.