The Mystic Age in the history of Architecture is the birth and development of the Gothic in Europe, 1130-1240. Around 1130 a significant change occurred in the Christian religion. The Virgin Mary was gradually introduced as the intercessor in Church stories of the soul’s Judgement, thus bringing an element of feminine sympathy and forgiveness [...]

What most distinguishes Italian neo-classicism is its lack of a unitary character, a result of Italy’s political fragmentation, the absence of a central state, and its domination by foreign powers. Even so, all of the European neo-classical movements drew their inspi – ration from Italy. Its many works of classical Greek and Roman art – [...]

Times began to improve in the West after 900. The climate was gradually becoming warmer, lengthening the growing season, and the population began to expand again. The raiders settled down, the Vikings being granted Normandy. The Arab sorties across the Mediterranean were curbed and the Huns turned to agriculture. Very slowly, people began to build [...]

In England, in the second half of the 18th century, the term Gothic was freed of the negative connotations that had been attached to it by Renaissance art critics. This was a result of the early romantic infatuation with the Middle Ages, which saw medieval art as an expression of the national spirit; it was [...]

The reworkings of urban areas that took place during the 17th century were almost always related to overall systems of defensive fortifications, and these systems evolved steadily in terms of form and type. In response to the increased power of artillery, bastions became lower and wider, and ditches and moats were introduced on such a [...]

The extraordinary period of invention in the history of architecture ended as the increasingly hot, dry climate burnt the fields and desiccated the northern French vineyards which had funded much of this work. As the population continued to increase in spite of worsening conditions, ordinary people became poorer and wealth was increasingly concentrated among the [...]

The religion of Islam was born in the deserts of Arabia in AD 622 with the revelations of the prophet Mohammed and embodied in the Koran, the Holy Book seen by Moslems as the source of divine knowledge, the law, and the correct way of living. After the death of the Prophet Mohammed in AD [...]

Architecture provides shelter and facilitates many different human activities. It also expresses cultural values and it is as champions of traditional values that classical architects returned to the international arena in the late 1970s and 1980s, Although classicism had never entirely disappeared from the architectural scene, it had clearly receded in importance after World War [...]

Early in the 18th century Tsar Peter the Great founded the city of St Petersburg. Russia was beginning to open itself to Europe, and St Petersburg was the ‘window’ looking in that direction. The city took on a Western style, brought there and applied by Italian architects and an international collection of artists. Among the [...]

Postmodern architecture was only one manifestation of the phenomenon that Portoghesi so aptly described as the end of prohibitionism. Challenges within design culture to the hegemony of modernism paralleled similar challenges to prevailing social and political norms elsewhere within contemporary society. In field after field, questions were raised concerning the fundamental assumptions on which different [...]

Hellenistic Architecture was closely related to Alexander the Great in the history of architecture. Early in the 5th century BC, although the defeat of the invading Persians gave the Greek people unchallenged prosperity and established them as the major power in the eastern Mediterranean, the individual states which composed the Greek nation never succeeded [...]

Japan has a distinct architectural tradition in the history of architecture despite its debt to foreign cultures. What Japan has learned from others, it has reinterpreted in ways more congenial to the national sensibility. In particular, there is a feeling of oneness with nature evident both in the close integration of buildings with the land?scape [...]