Category Social Sciences

HOW HAVE BUILDING STYLES DEVELOPED THROUGH HISTORY?

Although many traditional building styles are still in use, the appearance of buildings and the way in which they are built changes as outside influences are brought to bear on their architects and builders. Naturally, buildings are based on shapes that give the strongest structures: rectangles, cylinders, triangles and domes. In the search for new forms, architects have often looked back to the past. In the fourteenth century in Italy, for example, designers rediscovered the architecture of ancient Rome and neo-classical (“new” classical) buildings in the subsequent centuries were built all over the world, especially where a building was meant to embody power, learning and dignity. New buildings today still combine recent ideas with traditional motifs.

Modernism could be described as one of the most optimistic styles in architectural history, drawing from notions of utopia, innovation, and the reimagination of how humans would live, work, and interact. As we reflected in our AD Essentials Guide to Modernism, the philosophy of Modernism still dominates much of architectural discourse today, even if the world that gave rise to Modernism has changed utterly.

As we say goodbye to 2019, a year that saw the centenary of the Bauhaus, we have collated a list of key architectural styles that defined Modernism in architecture. This tool for understanding the development of 20th-century design is complete with examples of each style, showcasing the practice of Modernism that lay behind the theory.

The Modern Era is broadly defined in the United States as the period from 1930 through the 1970s. Buildings or sites of the period often looked to the future without overt references to historical precedent; expressed functional, technical or spatial properties; and was conscious of being modern, expressing the principles of modern design. The architecture produced during this period took on many forms and represented a range of complex ideology. The terms included here represent a means of categorizing these disparate resources based on design similarities, but are in no way intended to limit or fully define them.

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HOW WERE THE PYRAMIDS BUILT?

The Egyptians were building massive pyramids almost 5000 years ago. We are still not sure how they achieved this without the mechanical lifting and cutting equipment that we have today, but the answer must be that they used huge numbers of slaves to shape and haul the enormous stones with which they built. Recently, scientists have calculated that as many as 10,000 slaves were probably needed to work on these structures.

The first, and largest, pyramid at Giza was built by the pharoh Khufu (reign started around 2551 B.C.). His pyramid, which today stands 455 feet (138 meters) tall, is known as the “Great Pyramid” and was considered to be a wonder of the world by ancient writers.

The pyramid of Khafre (reign started around 2520 B.C.) was only slightly smaller than Khufu’s but stood on higher ground. Many scholars believe that the Sphinx monument, which lies near Khafre’s pyramid, was built by Khafre, and that the face of the Sphinx was modeled after him. The third pharaoh to build a pyramid at Giza was Menkaure (reign started around 2490 B.C.), who opted for a smaller pyramid that stood 215 feet (65 m) high.

Over the past two decades, researchers have made a number of discoveries related to the pyramids, including a town built near the pyramid of Menkaure, a study showing how water can make blocks easier to move and a papyrus found by the Red Sea. These have allowed researchers to gain a better understanding of how the Giza pyramids were built. The new finds add to older knowledge gained over the last two centuries.

The techniques used to build the Giza pyramids were developed over a period of centuries, with all of the problems and setbacks that any modern-day scientist or engineer would face.

Pyramids originated from simple rectangular “mastaba” tombs that were being constructed in Egypt over 5,000 years ago, according to finds made by archaeologist Sir Flinders Petrie. A major advance occurred during the reign of the pharaoh Djoser (reign started around 2630 B.C). His mastaba tomb at Saqqara started off as a simple rectangular tomb before being developed into a six-layered atep pyramind with underground tunnels and chambers.

Another leap in pyramid-building techniques came during the reign of the pharaoh Snefru (reign started around 2575 B.C.) who built at least three pyramids. Rather than constructing step pyramids, Snefru’s architects developed methods to design smooth-faced, true pyramids.

It appears that Snefru’s architects ran into trouble. One of the pyramids he constructed at the site of Dahshur is known today as the “bent pyramid” because the angle of the pyramid changes partway up, giving the structure a bent appearance. Scholars generally regard the bent angle as being the result of a design flaw.

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DID EARLY BUILDERS HAVE PLANS TO FOLLOW?

For thousands of years, people have been building homes, temples and monuments, but until only a few centuries ago, they had no proper plans to follow before building began. They based their work on tried and tested methods, estimating how strongly walls had to be built to support the floors above and the roof. Of course, many buildings collapsed or subsided, but others are still standing to this day, a tribute to the skill of builders in times past.

The last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the great pyramids of Giza are perhaps the most famous and discussed structures in history. These massive monuments were unsurpassed in height for thousands of years after their construction and continue to amaze and enthrall us with their overwhelming mass and seemingly impossible perfection. Their exacting orientation and mind-boggling construction has elicited many theories about their origins, including unsupported suggestions that they had extra-terrestrial impetus. However, by examining the several hundred years prior to their emergence on the Giza plateau, it becomes clear that these incredible structures were the result of many experiments, some more successful than others, and represent an apogee in the development of the royal mortuary complex.

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WHAT ARE THE EARLIEST BUILDINGS KNOWN?

The earliest human homes that we know of are caves. We know that they were inhabited because paintings have been found on the walls, but these homes were not built – they were made by nature, not human beings. The earliest mud and wooden shelters and huts have not survived intact, but from about 2700BC people began to build some of the huge stone structures that have survived to this day. Apart from the Egyptian pyramids, one of the earliest was the circle of stones known as Stonehenge, in England. It is not known exactly what this was for, but it probably had religious significance. Throughout history, religion has spurred builders to create many of the largest and most impressive buildings ever seen.

Stonehenge, on Salisbury plain in England, is one of the most recognizable monuments of the Neolithic world and one of the most popular, with over one million visitors a year. People come to see Stonehenge because it is so impossibly big and so impossibly old; some are searching for a connection with a prehistoric past; some come to witness the workings of a massive astronomical observatory. The people living in the fourth millennium BC who began work on Stonehenge were contemporary with the first dynasties of Ancient Egypt, and their efforts predate the building of the Pyramids. What they created has endured millennia and still intrigues us today.

In fact, what we see today is the result of at least three phases of construction, although there is still a lot of controversy among archaeologists about exactly how and when these phases occurred. It is generally agreed that the first phase of construction at Stonehenge occurred around 3100 BCE, when a great circular ditch about six feet deep was dug with a bank of dirt within it about 360 feet in diameter, with a large entrance to the northeast and a smaller one to the south. This circular ditch and bank together is called a henge.  Within the henge were dug 56 pits, each slightly more than three feet in diameter, called Aubrey holes, after John Aubrey, the 17th century English archaeologist who first found them. These holes, it is thought, were either originally filled with upright bluestones or upright wooden beams. If it was bluestones which filled the Aubrey holes, it involved quite a bit of effort as each weighed between 2 and 4 tons and were mined from the Preseli Hills, about 250 miles away in Wales.

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Which kind of main farming is there around the world?

The world relies on farming (also called agriculture) for its food. Farms range in size from large commercial businesses that provide food for sale at home and abroad (cash crops), to small farms that produce only enough food for the community (subsistence farming).

There are several different kinds of farming. Arable farming is the cultivation of crops, which include cereals, vegetables and plants for making industrial products such as oil and cotton cloth. Another type of cultivation is growing trees or vines, such as fruit orchards, vineyards, and rubber or coffee plantations. Livestock farming involves keeping animals such as pigs, cows and sheep for meat, milk or wool. The animals graze on permanent grassland or rough pasture, including heath land, scrub, mountain slopes or tundra grasses. Some farmers concentrate on one type of farming, while others have mixed farms where they both grow crops and keep livestock.

Intensive farming methods are used to increase food production. For example, intensive egg production involves keeping hens in tiny, crowded cages where they spend their lives just laying eggs. Many people regard this type of farming as cruel.

“Free-range” products come from animals kept in more natural surroundings. These include eggs from hens that have been allowed to roam around in the farmyard. Farmers on commercial farms use chemicals to keep pests and weeds at bay. These chemicals cause pollution of the soil and water, and may get into the crops or livestock themselves. Organic farmers do not use artificial pesticides or fertilizers, but enrich the soil with natural fertilizers such as seaweed and manure. Some people prefer free-range and organic products, believing them to taste better and be safer to eat.

Not all farmers settle in one place. Some livestock farmers are nomadic – they move around with their herds, looking for fresh grazing land. Shifting cultivation is a system where arable farmers move on when the soil becomes exhausted. The most common method is slash-and-burn, which is practised in tropical regions such as the Amazon rainforests. Land is cleared by burning patches of forest. After a few years of planting crops such as maize, manioc, millet and yams, the rainforest soil is no longer fertile, so the farmers clear a new area, leaving the previous land to return to its natural state.

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What is Arable Farming?

People first started to grow crops about 12,000 years ago. They discovered that certain wild plants, which produced seeds that were ground for flour to make bread, could be made to grow in fields. Crop, or arable, farming had begun.

Today, huge swathes of land that were once natural grasslands or woodlands are under cultivation. Finding new land to farm is sometimes so important that tropical rainforest, desert and swamp are turned into farmland. Even land under the sea has been reclaimed to find more room for crops.

In rich countries, farmers use modern machines and methods to produce better crop yields – more grain from a certain size of field. In poorer countries, most of the population still work in the fields and depend on a small number of crops, together with a few animals, for their livelihood. They grow only enough food for themselves. This is known as subsistence farming.

THE WORLD’S CROPS

The most important crops are the cereals: wheat, rice, maize, barley, rye and millet. These provide many people with their basic source of food, their staple diet.

Rice is the main food for millions of Asians. Rice-fields, known as paddies, must be flooded, so in hilly country flat shelves of land, or terraces, are built so that the floodwaters do not flow away. The rice seedlings are planted in rows under water, often by hand. After harvesting, the crop is threshed, to separate out the grain, and then winnowed, to lose the husks and grit.

Other important staple crops include beans, peas and lentils. Fruit and vegetables add vitamins and carbohydrates to our diet.

Soya beans, groundnuts and palms are also useful for the oils in their seeds. A range of crops are grown as fodder (livestock feed). They include grasses, some root vegetables and alfalfa.

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