Unit Summary

And we are on to Unit Two! The following is a summary of my depiction of Unit One.

• UNIT ONE
• "There is a great need to revise and broaden our view of the human situation, a need to be both comprehensive and more realistic, not only about others, but about ourselves as well." - E.T Hall
• Description, Deduction, and Speculation as well as Double Meaning, Maps of Meaning, and Subculture. 
• Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay, a short book about interpreting the past, 3000 years after the world is destroyed in 2011. It is really interesting and shows how very wrong we could be about how we interpret archeological finds from the past. 
• Plurality, rather than singular ideas. 
• Stone Henge, what is it about? Stone Henge is a series of standing stones in a perfect circle. Some of the stone openings align with certain aspects of outer space. There are about 500 other Stone Henge-esq, circular, stone organizations found on earth. Apparently 20 miles away from stone henge a wooden model it was found, The model was precise and exactly the same size and scale as Stone Henge! Stone Henge was NOT a burial site. 
• We began to look at what the design concept of a circle might be. It marks something that isn the center as sacred. Is it religious? You can either be inside or outside the circle, some things or people are included and some are not. A circle geometrically and structurally relies on all of the parts. 
• PYRAMIDS! Pyramids are like upward arrows. The size and weight mattered greatly. They are light weight (respectively) because you had to carry your tomb when you got to the after life. Heliopolis: City of the Sun.
• Elements of design: CIRCLES, GROVES, STACKS, PEOPLE: 
• CIRCLES: sun & moon, sacred spots
• GROVES: groves of trees, reaching vertical, groups of people
• STACKS: mountains, gathering recourses
• PEOPLE: emulating the human body
• Prototype vs. Archetype
• Archetype: The original pattern or model
• Prototype: Something that follows the pattern given by the archetype
• First civilizations looked at nature for things to emulate.
• Repetition can lead to:
• contrast/unity
• emphasis/harmony
• balance/proportion 
• We thought about if environments influenced rituals or vice versa, it's virtually impossible to know. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
• Greek Temples and Palaces: 
• Minoan: 3000-1400 BCE
• Mycenae: 1400-1200 BCE
• Helenistic: 500-30 BCE
• Greek temples and palaces use the archeological qualities of both Stacks and Groves
• Their relationship between ratio, relative importance, and balance.
• Columns
  
• Doric
• Ionic
• Corinthian
• Tuscan
• Composite
• We looked at the temple of Hera and the two temples of Athena of Nike
• How do we view sculpture? 
• It is usually unpainted
• Terracotta Army, two thousand out of eight thousand warriors have been uncovered and not two sculptures are the same. 
  
• As a group we compared the Acropolis vs. the Xianyang by looking at space, power, precedent, order, experience, principles, site, scale, technology, and surface.
  
  
• COMMODITY, FIRMNESS, AND DELIGHT
• Utilitas: (commodity) useful arangement, quality, and interrelationship of spaces.
• Firmitas: (firmness) performance, stability, integration, safety.
• Venustas: (delight) ability to create a sense of place, a positive effect, aesthetics.
• Rome
• Plan: Cardo+Decumanus
• Road: All roads lead to Rome
• Aqueduct: aqua vitae
• Bath: architecture + ritual
• Basilica: gathering place
• Temple: adaption, frontal orientation
• Column: Wu-wu
• Market: edge
• Forum: major open space
• Amphitheatre: atop landscape instead of in it
• Colosseum: bread and circuses
• Dome: bring the world under one roof
• Rome was primarily a military society.
• Roman urbanizations used a grid method, much like our cities today. 
• Aqueduct translates as "water over water"
• How to create a Roman City:
• First roads, then water
• Include baths that help show social status by the time that you are allowed to go
• Use color
• Wu-wu columns, they were built to represent one's power. The bigger the column the more powerful the person. It's not difficult to figure out why it is referred to as a "wu-wu.