Primarily Ordered
I'm reading a book I highly recommend, Ancient Rome on Five Denari a Day, by Philip Matyszak.
The title tells you just what the book is about, and it is very cleverly and entertainingly written. I've been thinking about our trip to Rome and walking the very streets Mayyszak talks about, especially the time we spent strolling through the ancient Forum. It was ironic that the architecture seemed so familiar, yet it was 2,000 years old. Just goes to show ya how western architecture has embraced the classical orders of ancient design.
There are five recognized orders: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan and Composite. The first three
were introduced by the Greeks and used by the Romans, while the last two originate from the Etruscans and Romans. At the dawn of the Renaissance, a book of architecture from antiquity, became the authoritative guidebook of design for the masters of the era like Bramante, da Vinci, Michelangelo and Palladio. It was written by the emperor Augustus' architect and engineer, Vitruvius. De architectura, asserted that a structure must exhibit the three qualities of firmitas, utilitas, venustas, that is: strong or durable, useful and beautiful.
He also documented the orders of ancient Greece and Rome, and the application of the formulas
that applied to them. The entire exercise was a study in the precision and proportion that was imperative in classical building. Nothing was left to chance. An order was an entire building system, from the column to the capital to the horizontal piece that the capital held up; the entablature. If you followed these rules, you could build a classical building any where in the world, which is exactly what the Romans accomplished. There are Roman ruins spread across the breadth of the Mediterranean countryside and beyond.
The simplest and plainest from the Greeks was the Doric, and the Tuscan for the Italians. Doric is
considered to be the oldest of the orders and one of the most famous buildings in the world was built under the Doric formula; the Parthenon. Each of the ordered systems had their own unique blueprint that spelled out whether or not a column sat on a base, the size of the shaft, the flutes (the scooped out parts of the shaft), the capital, or top, and the entablature, that part of the building that sat on the column capital.
The Ionic had its origins in Ionia in Asia Minor around the 6th century B.C. Unlike the Doric, the shaft
sat on a base and was more elaborate than its predecessor. The Ionians added turning scrolls at the ends of their capitals called Volutes. It was more decorative than the plain-jane Doric, and added a little more flair.
By the time the Greeks came up with the Corinthian, decoration was the name of the day.
It was a no-holds-barred flourish of design for the Corinthian capital. But, it wasn't quite enough for the Romans who added their own embellishments and came up with the Composite order. So many bank and government buildings in our country, are the bastard children of Corinthian parents that you'd be hard pressed to find someone who wouldn't be able to identify a Corinthian inspired building. The U.S. Capital is one such edifice, though you can see an original in Rome's Forum or the Emperor Hadrian's Pantheon (not to be confused with the Parthenon in Athens).
I guess it's because architects and designers have been copying the Greek and Roman originals
for so many centuries, that it was disconcerting to see the real thing. It just seemed so weird that we were standing looking at a 2,000 year old column and capital that looked like it could have been built in the last century. Imitation is definitely some sort of flattery.
Comments