The essence of architecture design, International architectural styles, History of buildings

The essence of architecture

30 Mar 2022

Today we want to encourage ourselves with this little reflection on the origin of architecture and a particular look throughout history in search of the essentials of architecture. Basically, architecture is universal and if you take it in a broader direction, it covers a lot of things including the architectural style of online games.

Acropolis, Athens, Greece:

The essence of architecture design

Architecture began when our ancestors, 7 million years ago, decided to come down from the trees, ceasing to be australopithecines and becoming our ancestors: the homo habilis. While all this was happening, these little beings learned how to use very simple tools and, little by little, they began to walk through the African savannah. Thus, chasing herds of animals, which, in turn, used to follow some water course, they gave a good account of their new means of locomotion: their legs.

Thanks to this new form of mobility, when they found a place that gave them some security, they looked for caves to protect themselves and stayed there for a long time until the resources of the environment were exhausted. In the choice of these caves is the first founding act of architecture, later the first open-air camps would arrive, made with wood, animal bones and some skins. In this way, the millennia passed and we planted ourselves in the year 10,000 before our era and, finally, these wonderful walkers, getting bigger and stronger, abandon their nomadic life.

The commitment to livestock and the domain of agriculture were the excuse to consider a new way of life; a historical change comparable to the industrial revolution, a sedentary lifestyle. Thus, these settlements were the origin of our cities and the seed of trade, giving rise to what we understand as civilizations, adding identity or symbolic concepts in their own architecture.

In this way, the largest buildings have always presided over public spaces, while the houses have given the necessary body to towns and cities. Subsequently, the architectural styles followed one another, maintaining the structure of representative architecture, made, from the ego of men, to relate to the divine and make it clear who is in charge, together with an architecture made with the minimum to cover the housing needs of the people. This popular architecture, made without architects, but, in many cases, with a lot of architecture, has survived to this day as an example of wisdom and common sense.

This succession of centuries came to an abrupt end with the arrival of the 20th century, where, in 1908, Loos questioned ornament and all those who saw ornament as a form of false elegance. Subsequently, modern architecture came to break with everything established, putting new dreams on the table that were raised on the five pillars of Le Corbusier.

Well, actually not all the great heroes of this period gave history a kick. Fortunately, architects like Aalto could not betray their roots, and Barragán, on the other side of the pond, was able to collect the best of the white architecture that tried to reach all corners of the planet, but endow it with a world of color and tradition that no European could ever dream of.

They were brilliant years, with their great lights and, like everything in life, with their shadows and failures. Even so, this explosion of creativity and hope made a reality in architectures that aspired to give a lot with very little, even if they had to break with the past, would come to an end in the middle of the 20th century.

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