including headings Caves and tents, From tents to round houses, Straight walls with windows, Stone Age graves and temples, Mesopotamia and Egypt, ...
including headings Stupas and temples, The pagoda, Excavated interiors, Ajanta, Ellora and Elephanta, ...
As well as setting in place the administrative structure of the empire (and adopting Zoroastrianism as the state religion), Darius proves himself the greatest builder of the Achaemenid dynasty. In 521 he moves his capita...
The Incas share with another much earlier civilization, that of Mycenaean Greece, a habit of building with massive blocks of masonry. But the precision of the Peruvian masons puts all others to shame. In their capital at...
In the regions bordering the Atlantic coast, the transition from palaeolithic hunter-gatherers to neolithic villagers begins in about 4500 BC. These villagers later develop a striking tradition of prehistoric architectur...
Three Florentine friends, an architect, a sculptor and a painter, are recognized in their own time as being the founders of a new direction in art - subsequently known as the Renaissance. In the preface to an influential...
No architecture survives in China from the early dynasties (with the spectacular exception of the Great Wall) because the Chinese have always built in wood, which decays. On the other hand, wood is easily repaired....
In architecture there has already been a strong classical revival early in the century, particularly in the Palladian movement in Britain. Robert Adam, returning from Rome in 1757 with a multitude of classical themes...
The greatest achievement of Roman architecture and technology lies in the development of these three architectural forms. The dome has long been a familiar concept (appearing dramatically in the passage grave on the &Ici...
The life of a nomad, without architecture or possessions (other than what can be loaded on a camel), leaves few physical traces. The richness of nomadic culture is in the mind. It is embodied in well-loved stories, in he...
Though there is bold innovation in medieval architecture, Europe in the Middle Ages is not notable for technological ingenuity in many other fields. The windmill is a medieval achievement. So is clockwork, and...
The public first becomes aware of the glorious potential of cast-iron architecture in the 1840s, when extraordinary conservatories are erected at Chatsworth and in Kew Gardens. But the technology derives from factory con...
Aurangzeb, Shah Jahan's son, does not inherit his father's passionate interest in architecture. But he commissions two admirable buildings in the same tradition. One is the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, begun in 1673; even...
