Unit summary 1

Unit summary

            These past few weeks in our class has been learning about stacks circles and groves and their relevance in ancient, present, and future architecture.  Luckily this is not the only thing that we have discussed in class or read about for I feel that would grow to become a rather dull and unexciting topic to talk and read about.  Our discussions and readings have taken us, so far, from the pyramids of ancient Egypt to the Parthenon in Greece, to the Horyu-Ji temple in china and back.  Whilst reading these passages of immense fruition that pay tribute to humanities best feats as architects builders and over all bat shit craziness.  We as a race have built gigantic limestone pyramids in the middle of the desert where limestone is not abundant, massive obelisks to show our dominance over the land or to perhaps compensate for something. 

            As our discussions and visual and verbal representations have shown the ideas of stacks, circles, and groves being a mainstay in architecture is not something of the present; however, is a repeating idea throughout the ages.  Stonehenge perhaps the most famous of all circular “buildings”, and I put buildings in quotations because to this day we are uncertain how, why and for what purpose was it built.  The Colosseum in Rome is another famous example of circular architecture that also incorporates stacking.  Groves may buildings have been built with groves churches, temples, even beyond the buildings themselves. UNCGs campus has a very effective example of groves; College Avenue is lined on both sides with trees marking the path for students to use whilst navigating along its way. 

            Stacks are in my opinion the most evident of all the three when it comes to architectural design of buildings.  Stacking is seen in almost every single building on campus there are layers to buildings called floors which are for the most part neatly stacked portions of the building.  Multiple level buildings have been evident in architecture for a very long time since the first pyramid built.  The great pyramid of Giza is a series of stacked stones that go up to a point; it is arguable that the pyramid is the most widely recognized stacking form of architecture to date.

            Towards the end of the unit we discussed music and architecture being designed for each other.  Music has been tuned to be played in certain venues so that the clarity of the music is accented by the surroundings.  The buildings have also been designed with regards to what kind of music is going to be played inside the music hall, opera halls were designed to hold large numbers of people with big open performance stages that allow for loud vocal performances to be done with clarity and articulation. 

             All in all the main point to be taken from this unit in our class is that we see repeating ideals and values that are seen throughout history.  History has repeated itself in almost every aspect known to humanity, war, death, famine, massacre, revolutions, revelations, and why not architecture.