We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
Review of: "Friedrichstein. Das Schloß der Grafen von Dönhoff in Ostpreußen.", Hrsg. von Kilian Heck und Christian Thielemann., Deutscher Kunstverlag. 2., überarb. Aufl. Berlin –München 2019. 380 S., IlI., graph. Darst. ISBN 978-3-422-07361-6.
More...
For thirty years of existence of the Ivanovo school of intellectual studies, it has been long been proved that the intelligentsia is a heterogeneous, multi-faceted, ambiguous phenomenon, but the activities, ideological and moral foundations of such representatives as architects have practically been not considered. An important role in filling this rather interesting gap, according to the author of the article, can be played by the book of M. I. Futlik “Bad Clausura, or the Pursuit of the Wind: in letters, poems and prose”, published in Perm in 2018. The author’s memoirs, from his student days in the 1950s to the present, carefully reproduced fragments of his correspondence with friends, provide a fairly broad and informative panorama of the life of “underdeveloped socialism” and “wild capitalism”, as friends call modern society, contain abundant information about the place in this society of intellectuals and intellectuals in general, and architecture and architects in particular. The book is considered as a valuable historical source, and criticism of the historical source is the main method of the historian's work. The opinion of the author of the article on many of the issues raised is no less individual and debatable than the content of the book itself.
More...
The Main Sanctuary of Amun-Ra in the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari has been studied repeatedly, but never comprehensively (Naville 1906; Winlock 1932; Wysocki 1985). In preparation for a full architectural study of this complex, which is one of the oldest parts of the Eighteenth Dynasty mortuary temple, the paper presents a general specification of the preserved architecture, contextualized in a brief account of the discovery of the sanctuary and the history of its restoration and conservation, tied by necessity with the bigger works conducted by Polish specialists in the temple itself. The sanctuary in its present state is the combined effect of a number of phases of development, the most recent being a rebuilding in the Ptolemaic period. The inventory drawings of the current state of the complex, made by the author, an architect, leave the reader with a good idea of the form of the sanctuary, opening the way to a comprehensive architectural study, which will trace the original plan through all the subsequent phases of development and modern conservation and restoration work.
More...
The 2019 season in Metsamor confirmed the functioning of the settlement in the Urartian period. House II, discovered during the fieldwork, is the first architectural structure built at the beginning of the Early Iron Age period which, after some possible rearrangements, retained control over the Araxes valley during the Urartian kingdom. Pottery discovered there confirms that the already excavated part of the settlement was extensively used after the fall of Urartu. A pit grave dated to the 7th century BC yielded a late Urartian cylinder seal.
More...
The monumental rock-cut tombs of the Graeco-Roman necropolis at the site of Marina el-Alamein on the Egyptian Mediterranean coast, today a sightseeing icon following restoration work by the Polish team, have produced significant information about the town, its inhabitants, and burial traditions. Different aspects of the tombs and their content have already been discussed, but without going into the details of the architectural building process. This paper focuses on ancient quarrying and masonry techniques in an effort to reconstruct the process as applied to the large hypogea. An estimate of the volume of stone material sourced during the execution of the underground parts of these tombs was compared with the reconstructed demand for stone ashlars used in the aboveground superstructures. The issue to be examined in this context is whether the tomb hypogea could have produced a surplus of stone building material, thus serving as a quarry for the city itself.
More...
Participating in the Roman campaign of Emperor Trajan against the Parthians (114–117), the Legio IV Scythica, was stationed in Artaxata, the capital of the province of Armenia at the time. Its presence there was immortalized on stamped rooftiles, bricks and a monumental inscription discovered at the southern edge of the present-day village of Pokr Vedi. The inscription, carved in limestone, confirms building activities carried out by the Roman army. Inscriptions of this kind were frequently placed on the gates and most important buildings in the legionary camps. The investigation of the alleged location of the army camp on the outskirts of Pokr Vedi involved an array of non-invasive survey methods (surface prospection, aerial photography, interviews with inhabitants, topographical scanning of the terrain and geophysical electrical resistivity and magnetic surveys). The prospection and test excavations in areas selected on the basis of the accumulated survey data were carried out by a joint Polish and Armenian team.
More...
The paper looks into the turbulent history of the ancient town of Akrai/Acrae in a mountainous part of southeastern Sicily, encapsulated in the assemblage of finds from a domestic cistern, which was remodeled and adapted in the course of its use. The cistern is considered as an architectural feature against the background of the ancient town, and the assemblage recovered from it is examined thoroughly, category by category, giving insight into the life of the ancient inhabitants of this island in the Mediterranean.
More...
The early Middle Kingdom mortuary complexes of Khety and Meru continued to be the main research target of the Polish Archaeological Mission to North Asasif in the two winter seasons of 2018/2019 and 2020. The rubble dump on the eastern side of Khety’s forecourt, left over from the 1922/1923 excavation, was now explored, leading to the discovery of hundreds of objects—fragments of wooden statues and models, cartonnages and coffins, shabti figurines and pottery—shedding light on the Middle Kingdom burial assemblages as well as the later usurpation of the tomb, mainly in the Third Intermediate Period. Conservation objectives included treatment of the decorated burial crypt and sarcophagus in the tomb of Meru and stabilization and cleaning of the plaster decoration in the mortuary cult chapel of Khety. The season in 2018/2019 was also devoted to a reconnaissance of the underground structures and protection of tomb MMA 507. Specialists studies of finds from the excavations, both recent and earlier, were continued.
More...
The Tell el-Farkha site, which is under excavation since 1998, is formed of three tells. All three were excavated in the course of the two seasons, reopening already established trenches. Breweries discovered earlier on the Western Kom were explored, two completely, two in the early stages of exploration. Thick, poorly preserved mud-brick walls were unearthed northeast of one of the breweries. Remains of a multi-roomed structure continued to be cleared in the northern trench on the Central Kom. D-shaped red bricks in this area suggest the presence of a brewery in the vicinity. A Naqada IIB and IIC settlement was recognized in the southern trench: storage pits, postholes, and furrows from a big house built of wood. A part of a settlement dated to the Tell el-Farkha Phases 3 and 4 (Naqada IID2–mid IIIB) was explored on the Eastern Kom. Of greatest interest is a structure composed of rectangular rooms around an open space, probably a courtyard. Three graves were discovered including one dated to the Naqada IIIB with the first pottery coffin discovered at Tell el-Farkha.
More...
The ‘Marea’ project of the University of Warsaw expanded the program to survey and excavate in the northern and eastern parts of the city in order to establish the character and chronology of the structures there. The eastern waterfront was uncovered, along with the adjacent latrines, streets and buildings, which are presumed to be residential. The structures which were examined were very regularly formed and involved large-scale earthworks. They were built no earlier than the mid-6th century AD, and, although their purpose sometimes changed, they remained in use until about the mid-8th century AD. Accumulations of Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic date were discovered, including the oldest remains this season, that is, a row of locally-manufactured amphorae serving an unexplained purpose.
More...
The beginnings of Soba, the capital of the medieval Kingdom of Alwa, are usually dated to the 5th–6th centuries AD. Despite the consensus on the date, the question of what the city looked like during the initial period of its existence is still under discussion. The data on the early settlement at Soba is fragmentary. The results of recent excavations in the 2019–2020 season, including new radiocarbon datings, have provided additional information. Remains of early medieval brick architecture in Area CW and an early dating of Mound OS have been cross-referenced with archival data, leading the authors to hypothesize about the beginnings of Soba as a polycentric city with several areas featuring permanent buildings (of stone and/or brick) and vast areas dominated by frequently changing wooden architecture.
More...
The ruins of the Ketema Ra’isi site in the northern Tigray region of Ethiopia could prove to be the southernmost site on the westernmost border of the Aksumite empire, at least during the times of king Ezana and his immediate successors. The mound of ruins contains a residential complex enclosed inside a stone wall featuring typical Aksumite architectural building techniques. Three Aksumite coins collected from the site yield a terminus ante quem date for the settlement in the Middle Aksumite period (mid-4th century AD). Therefore, the potential of the site for future archaeological exploration by the PolART expedition is substantial.
More...
The article discusses the stratigraphy and chronological phasing of a late antique trash deposit discovered just outside the north wall of the Isis Temple courtyard. It appears to be consumption waste collected from a large-scale event taking place in the immediate vicinity over a short period of time. Several elements of architectural decoration were found among the rubble, including three fragments of ‘Ionic’ cornice blocks that are an indication of the presence of at least one building with a classical-style architecture in the urban landscape. The fragments are quite unusual in the southern part of the Eastern Desert of Egypt and the first and somewhat unexpected attestation of this style recorded from Berenike.
More...
Review of: Роберт Аргенбрайт. “Москва строящаяся. Градостроительство, протесты градо-защитников и гражданское общество”. Пер. с англ. А. Рудаковой. Санкт-Петербург: Academic Studies Press, 2021. 319 с. ISBN 9785604614846.
More...
During the interwar period, the North-Western Romanian territory, unified with the Old Kingdom at the end of World War I, remained a battlefield: besides the political and administrative appropriation of the united regions, a symbolic “taking into possession” was very much at stake too. Thereby, public buildings played a prominent role as national-cohesion signifiers. In architecture, nationalism and modernity, while apparently complementary cultural goals, brought forth stylistic dilemmas and debates. Furthermore, the Hungarian annexation of Northern Transylvania between 1940 and 1944 occasioned competing territorial-appropriation discourses, made visible through architectural signifiers as well. While the Paris Peace Treaties returned Northern Transylvania to Romania, public architecture produced immediately before and during World War II reflected re-appropriation discourses through hybrid stylistic choices, idiosyncratically mediating between vernacular sources, Classicism and Modernism.
More...
One of the most relevant topics of the modernist heritage is the changing valuation of the examples that have a strong relationship with the historic surroundings. These variations come not only from different evaluations of the modernist heritage but also from the ever-changing approaches to the heritage. That is why it is worth examining the modernist cases that are directly connected to the historic part of the cities.
More...
The aesthetic component, together with the ethical as well as the technical-functional, is an integral part of the creative process of urban planning – that most complex form of architectural design. Throughout history, it has been more or less present, depending on various factors – the current architectural and artistic theories, natural, social and political context, the aesthetic attitude of the author – architect and planner. Aristotle’s view that cities must be safe but also happy places for their inhabitants, and that urban forms are not only a matter of technology but also of art in the highest and most complete sense, was the basis of architectural ethics and aesthetics, which the creative genius followed and developed through plans, projects and final urban forms – buildings, streets, and squares.
More...
In the 18th century in Europe, aesthetics in architecture were connected to the beauty of nature, ornament, Antiquity and their research. The need of representation and interpretation of the visible reality impelled artists and architects to create sceneries with gradation of light, contrasts and “discovery” of nature. They also started to appreciate the value of ruins and to experiment with creating “temporary ones.” The concept that emerged and incorporated all these features was called “picturesque” and was explored mainly in England, Scotland and Wales. One of the architects that examined this domain to a great extent was the English architect Sir John Soane (1753-1837). In the works and lectures he delivered as a Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy of Arts, he demonstrated that beautiful architecture is interwoven with Antiquity. This relationship blossomed when Soane created “narratives” in his buildings that represented picturesque landscapes.
More...
The environmental paradigm has resonated in architecture since we began learning about the magnitude of climate and socioeconomic change and its repercussions on the world. We now know that we have entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene, in which human beings have definitively incorporated themselves as another force shaping the terrestrial ecosystems. Faced with this challenging ecological context, the environmental paradigm in architecture is often presented in relation to designs that are defined in terms of efficiency and sustainability. However, its potential is significantly diminished when limited to this purely instrumental perspective. The ecological challenge not only compels us to seek out correct scientific indicators, but – as Bruno Latour points out – to also question at an existential level, “what does it mean to be morally responsible in the time of the Anthropocene?” In this context, the contribution of art is necessary to bridge the gap, or “the total disconnect between the range, nature, and scale of the phenomenon and the set of emotions, habits of thoughts, and feelings that would be necessary to handle those crises.” This means that the ecological challenge includes the emergence of sensations, and is therefore also an aesthetic problem. In this paper, I will attempt to present the idea of an environmental aesthetic through which architecture finds itself in a position to address this urgency. To do so, I will recall the indisputable power of architecture, in its function as a form of art, to create cultural products with interpretative authority; that is, to provide representative examples in distinguishable and interpretable ways.
More...
“Do spaces have politics?” With this question, raised in the introduction to their acclaimed book Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc, historians David Crowley and Susan E. Reid open their research into the interactions between space and politics. Are there any physical and aesthetic characteristics that allow spaces to be classified according to a particular political ideology? In the public urban domain of the Eastern bloc it is fairly easy to detect spaces that, in the context of socialist ideology, answer this question in the affirmative. For the most part these are ceremonial spaces, monuments, people’s palaces, often with recognizable Socialist Realism aesthetic features. However, Crowley and Reid’s book also offers a whole range of examples that demonstrate how ideology permeated those spaces that did not necessarily possess the potential for representation, but rather belonged to the intimate domain of everyday life. Our paper follows this thread, examining the implications that socialist ideology had on the domain of housing in post-war Croatia, which was at that time part of Yugoslavia.
More...
