GREEK ARCHITECTURE

3,000 30 B.C.

GEOGRAPHICAL
Island of Crete
Aegean
Eastern Mediterranean seaboard, Asia
Minor , Cyprus , Syria , Palestine, Egypt
and Libya
Aegean and The Greek cultures
Internal communication
The mountains inland Greece
Peace or War

CLIMATIC
Rigorous and relaxing heat
Clear atmosphere and intensity of light
the admin. Of Justice , dramatic presentations
and most public ceremonies
The hot summer sun and sudden winter showers
, together with the Greek love of conversation

HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL

1. AEGEAN

Crete and Mainland Greece

1,100 B.C.
3,000-1,800 B.C.
Commercial empire protected by naval power
Crafts ,pottery, communications and trade

 2,000 B.C.
Introduced houses originally designed for more
wintry climates
North and east Europe
1,800 and 1,600 B.C.
Egypt and Mesopotamia
1,600 and 1,400 B.C.
1,500 B.C.
Knossos and other palace towns
Control of the sea

2. MYCENAEAN OR HELLADIC GREECE (1,400-1,100)

Mainland centres
Mycenae and Tiryns
Refined architecture, art and living
Cretan ideas and the use of Cretan craftsmen
Citadel palaces
1,300 B.C.
1,200 B.C.
End of Bronze age civilization and the advent of the iron
age in Greece

3. HELLENIC GREECE (800-323 B.C.)

By eight century B.C. the city states emerged as the
basis of Greek society
Greek adopted an alphabet from the Phoenicians
Expanding population
Sicily and south Italy
Colonial cities developed with remarkable rapidity, and
Paestum in south Italy, Syracuse, selinus and agrigentum
in sicily among colonial cities in the western Greek world.

4. HELLENISTIC GREECE (323-30 B.C.)

The succession of Sparta was short lived and the fourth
century saw a sequence of attempts by city-states to
dominate Greece
Supremacy of Macedonia
Philip (359-336 B.C.)
National crusade against Persia
Within five Persia was destroyed
The vast territory became a Hellenistic empire through
which Greek civilization was extended

RELIGIOUS
1. AEGEAN RELIGION

Primitive stages
Sacred bull
Horns of consecrations
Fertility or mother-goddess, Rhea, priestesses
Sacrificial altars, in open air enclosures, caves, small
chapels or household shrines.

2. GREEK RELIGION
Natural phenomena and highly developed
There was not regular priesthood
The principal Greek deities with their attributes and roman
names are as follows
Zeus-Jupiter
Hera - Juno
Apollo -Apollo
Athena - Minerva
Poseidon -Neptune

 Dionysus - Bacchus
Demeter - Ceres
Artemis - Diana
Hermes - Mercury
Aphrodite - Venus
Hephaestus - Vulcan
Ares - Mars

AEGEAN ARCHITECTURE
CIRCA 3,000 1,100 B.C

ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER
1.The island peoples were partly Asiatic in origin
Flat roofs
Large blocks
Light wells
Spacious stairways

ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER
2.The mainland peoples
Northern practices
Low-pitched roofs
Single-storeyed
Megaron
PARTS
(1)Thalamus
(2) Anteroom w/ Central doorway
(3) Living apartment
(4) Central Hearth
(5) Columned entrance porch

Megaron

In general...
Houses and palaces are the principal
building types representative of the
Aegean architecture, with an important
class of underground tomb.
EXAMPLES

(1) Treasury of Atreus

(2) Palace of King Minos

Rubble or cut stone work to dado height

Heavy double frame of timber
Stone rubbles
Stucco outside and either tinted or painted with
patterns inspired by the framed construction
which lay behind

The Lions Gate

Entrance

passage
to the To
mb of At
reus

 Gypsum
Masonry technique was developed, and particularly comprised
of great boulder like stones. Used in fortifications, to coarse or
fine ashlar of heavy blocks

METHODS OF WALLING
No mortars was ever
employed through clay
sometimes served for bedding
in rubble or cyclopean works.
Polygonal walling, an advance
technique was not invented
until Hellenic times. False
arches of heavy blocks, or of
corbels advance course by
course until a triangular head
had been formed, covered the
openings in stone walls.

The corbel method

 A corbel arch (or corbeled /

corbelled arch) is an arch-like
construction method that uses
the architectural technique of
corbelling to span a space or
void in a structure, such as an
entranceway in a wall or as the
span of a bridge. A corbel vault
uses this technique to support

 Square masonry pillars with a bracket form of capital

sometimes gave intermediate support on lower floors
Echinus
Examples:
1. palaces- palace of king Minos Knossos
. The palace Tiryns
. Lion gate, Mycenae
2. Tombs
. Rock cut or chamber tomb
. Treasury or atreus, Mycenae

GREEK ARCHITECTURE
(650-30 B.C.)

ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER

1. Hellenic period (650-323 B.C.)

. Greek architecture was essentially
columnar and trabeated
. Wooden roofs were untrussed
. Longitudinal beams-wall plates
. Purlins and ridge-piece-laid
. colonnades

 As the principle of triangulation was

unknown spans could not be large,
unless internal lines of columns were
supplied, and these usually were in
two superimposed tiers

 Dado

Ceiling sometimes omitted, leaving an

open roof, were treated decoratively
with timber- paneled coffers or within
the colonnades around the temples,
were flat stone slabs coffered to imitate
the timber

 Coffers

 Entasis
Methods of entasis

 Narrowed spacing
Triglyphs

2. Hellenistic period (323-30 B.C.)

This period provided much of the
decorative inspiration of some roman
building types. Greek hellenic
architecture mostly had been of a
religious character, but from the 4 th
century B.C. onwards, public buildings
multiplied in type and number and
passed into permanent form. They
were dignified and gracious structures.

Space
Symmetrical lines
stoas
Trabeated
Exedrae
voussoirs
The orders were lost
Parts were interchanges