Architecture as a product of culture, history, science, technology, economics, society, religion, and state

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FIVE THOUSAND YEARS OF ARCHITECTURE AND CITY PLANNING IN THE WESTERN WORLD

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A journey through five thousand years of architecture and urban planning in the Western world

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© HILA BERLINER

All rights are reserved to Hila Berliner.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, or copied in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Hila Berliner

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Each generation writes its autobiography in the buildings it creates.

Louis Mumford

Friday, December 3, 2010

THE LANGUAGE OF ARCHITECTURE



The close ties between architecture and language are demonstrated in the Biblical story (Genesis 11, 1-9) on the Tower of Babel. The beginning of the story was, "And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech". Uniform language enabled the construction of the Tower of Babel. And then God said:  "Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city."
The word architecture (archi, literally: master; tecture, literally: form) comes from the Greek word "architecton" which means "chief builder."
Architecture can be compared to language: as language changes and is created as a product of the culture of a period, so too architecture, if it is effective and meaningful, changes following the changes in a society where it is created, as it reflects a philosophical worldview and religious, scientific, economic, social and political conditions.
Vitruvius, the famous Roman architect who lived in the 1st century BCE, named in his boo
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