PUSAT PENGAJIAN PERUMAHAN BANGUNAN DAN PERANCANGAN
Pensyarah : En. Wan Burhanuddin & Prof Madya
Dr. Ahmad Sanusi
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PUSAT PENGAJIAN PERUMAHAN BANGUNAN DAN PERANCANGAN
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TUGASAN 04 GREEK ARCHITECTURE (english version)
GREEK
Their temples were not large enclosures of space but statue chambers containing a god's sacred image. These chambers were accessible only to priests. Yet the Greek temple has always been seen as fundamentally distinct from and superior to most other early religious types, partly because of the simplicity of its form, partly because of the exquisite refinement of the best examples, and partly because it is seen to reflect the emergence in Greece of a rational, philosophical approach to art that replaced earlier belief systems. There are three types of Greek temples: · Ionic, evolved in Ionia on the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea
· Erechtheum - temple from the middle classical period of Greek art and architecture, built on the Acropolis of Athens between 421 and 405BC. · The Temple of Apollo at Didyma · The Temple of Athena Nike · Doric, evolved on the western shore.
The Doric column has a dish-shaped top, or capital, and no base, while the Ionic has paired volutes at its capital and carved rings at its base. The lintels, or entablatures, spanning the columns are also distinct, the Doric having a row of projecting blocks, or triglyphs, between sculpted metopes.
Corinthian
The three systems are called orders because their parts and proportions are ordered and coordinated. Their forms must originally have had symbolic meaning. The cella and porch seem to have been the original elements of the temple. They reproduce the primitive Greek house so that the god is symbolically depicted as living like a chief. The temple is usually set on a natural hill, or acropolis, but has no artificial platform beyond a three-step foundation, or stylobate. The peristyle was a later addition, apparently borrowed from the Egyptians, evidently to enlarge and ornament the symbolic god-house inside. A low, sloping roof tops the building with gables, called pediments, on the short sides. What is remarkable and unique about the Greek temple is the conscious adjustment of these orders by Greek architects for purely aesthetic effect. For the first time in history, architects, not priests, directed these building projects. Many of their names are known, and several wrote books about their aesthetic experiments. It is an authoritative source of information on much of Greek architectural theory and practice. Greek designers sought perfect orderliness in their rendition of the temple form. They adjusted the number of columns across the ends in relation to those down the sides. They aligned all the accents along the elevations so that each unit defined by one column (in the Doric order) was divided in the entablature into two triglyphs and metopes, four mutules under the cornice, four water spouts along the roof edge, and eight roof tiles. The most perfect example of this, the Parthenon in Athens, was built in 447-438 BC by the architects Ictinus and Callicrates for the political leader Pericles. Within this strictly ordered framework, the Greek architect worked to endow every part with interest and life in the carving of its surface. The spiral of the Ionic volute, the curve of the Doric capital, the depth and breadth of the flutes were varied endlessly for effect. The translucence and fine grain of the marble used in the most important buildings were an important help in making these refinements perceptible. Most amazing was the application of this work of adjustment to the temple as a whole, particularly in the case of the Parthenon. Here the stylobate and entablature are very slightly curved so that they rise in the center of each side, while the columns are made to lean slightly inward--the angle increasing as they approach the corners--and the distance between the shafts varied. Nor are the column shafts themselves straight but bulge slightly toward their middles in entasis. Thus the whole building was treated with the subtlety and delicacy of the marble sculptures that filled its metopes and pediment. Callicrates and Ictinus' attitude toward religious architecture ceased to be that of the superstitious priest-architect held subject to unvaryingly precise (and often hypnotically elaborate) repetition of prescribed forms and became instead that of the artist rationalist--adjusting, refining, and simplifying forms to make them quietly effective and satisfying to the eye. In the 5th century BC, the age of Pericles, Greece was still an assortment of independent city-states, many of them democracies. In 338 BC Philip II of Macedon forced them all together into a single empire. Between 334 and 323 his son, Alexander the Great, conquered Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, and parts of India, transforming the whole into the most powerful state in the civilized world. Greek architecture suddenly became that of this rich, powerful Hellenic empire and was forced to break out of the fixed, small-scale vocabulary of forms that had been satisfactory for the Periclean temple. The orders were retained and a new one added, the Corinthian, a variation of the Ionic with realistic leaves of the acanthus plant on its capital. Construction was still in stone blocks--preferably marble--following the system of the column-post and entablature-lintel. But now this simple system was extended and multiplied to make monumental cities with colonnaded avenues and squares, palaces and public meeting halls, libraries and tombs. A series of great Hellenistic metropolises grew up, Alexandria in Egypt in particular (today completely buried underneath the modern city). At the royal city of Pergamum, which was built during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, one can see even today a series of colonnaded plazas stepping up a concave hillside, a single huge composition of architectural forms that are expressive of Hellenistic wealth and political power. This was no longer an architecture of detail and refinement but one of massive (if simple) construction and political show. The vocabulary of the Periclean temple was no longer appropriate, and the Roman Empire that succeeded the Hellenistic adopted another, revolutionary solution.
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ARCHITECTURE 
The
Ionic style is thinner and more elegant. Its capital is decorated with a
scroll-like design (a volute). This style was found in eastern Greece and the
islands. 
The
Doric style is rather sturdy and its top (the capital), is plain. This style was
used in mainland Greece and the colonies in southern Italy and Sicily. 
Parthenon
- temple of Athena Parthenos ("Virginn"), Greek goddess of wisdom, on the
Acropolis in Athens. The Parthenon was built in the 5th century BC, and despite
the enormous damage it has sustained over the centuries, it still communicates
the ideals of order and harmony for which Greek architecture is known. 
The
Corinthian style is seldom used in the Greek world, but often seen on Roman
temples. Its capital is very elaborate and decorated with acanthus leaves. It
was also the latest, not arriving at full development until the middle of the
4th cent. B.C. The oldest known example, however, is found in the temple of
Apollo at Bassae (c.420 B.C.). The Greeks made little use of the order; the
chief example is the circular structure at Athens known as the choragic monument
of Lysicrates ( 335 B.C.). The temple of Zeus at Athens (started in the 2d cent.
B.C. and completed by Emperor Hadrian in the 2d cent. A.D.) was perhaps the most
notable of the Corinthian temples. 