world architecture

World Architecture

World Architecture is a art or practice of designing and constructing buildings.
171. Solomons Temple
Jerusalem, Israel
No archeological remnant of Solomons Temple survives. The Bible provides descriptions, and since it is generally believed that the architectural style was constrained by regional influences, the biblical account is augmented by knowledge of contemporary buildings in the region. It is very possible that it was the most expensive structure ever built, because the gold alone, valued at 2001 prices, was worth something in the order of U.S.$62 billion. Cost aside, the temple is an architectural achievement because during the seven-year course of its construction no sound of hammer, axe, or any other tool [was heard] at the building site.
172. Statue of Liberty
New York City
Originally titled Liberty Enlightening the World, the colossal statue on Liberty Island in New York Harbor stands nearly 307 feet (93.5 meters) high. It represents a woman of pre-Raphaelite appearance, draped in voluminous robes and crowned with a spiked diadem. Her right hand raises a flaming torch at arms length; her left carries a book emblazoned with, July 4, 1776
173. Stockton and Darlington Railway
England
The Stockton and Darlington line, the worlds first public railroad, was opened on 27 September 1825. As well as carrying coal, the train drawn by Locomotion No. 1
174. Storm Surge Barrier
Rotterdam, the Netherlands
More than half the Netherlands lies below sea level, and the little country is protected from flooding by about 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) of dikes. The process of global warming and the consequent rise in sea levels will challenge their adequacy, and many of them will need to be raised and reinforced. The extensive Deltaworks project, completed in 1986, secured the province of Zeeland by sealing off its sea inlets. Its northern neighbor, South Holland, remained under threat. Responses to disastrous floods in 1953 had included plans to raise the dikes in the region, but by the 1970s there was public resistance to a scheme that entailed demolishing many historic precincts. The alternative was the construction of a movable storm surge barrier in the man-made approach to Rotterdam Europoort. It is the busiest harbor in the world, and an average of ten ships pass through the New Waterway every hour. Technological and economic feasibility studies led to the construction of the Storm Surge Barrier, one of the engineering marvels of the late twentieth century. Otherwise known as the Maeslant Kering, it is located between the Hook of Holland and the town of Maassluis, a little under 4 miles (6 kilometers) from the North Sea. Built at a cost of 1 billion guilders (U.S.$500 million), it was opened on 10 May 1997. In response to the Dutch governments call for submissions, the Bouwkombinatie Maeslant Kering consortiums tender was accepted from among six competitors. Contracts were signed in October 1989, and the first pile for the hinge foundation was driven in November 1991. The barrier has a guaranteed life of 100 years. It consists of a pair of 50-foot-thick (15-meter) hollow, arc-shaped steel gates, each 73 feet (22 meters) high and 700 feet (210 meters) long and weighing 16,500 tons (15,000 tonnes). Each is attached by means of 795-foot-long (238-meter) latticed steel arms to a steel ball joint seated in a massive concrete socket on the riverbank. The 33-foot-diameter (10-meter) ball joints each weigh 760 tons (690 tonnes) and work with a tolerance of 0.04 inch (1 millimeter). The figures are almost meaningless, but in terms of comparative size, each half of the barrier the gate, the two three-dimensional trusses, and one ball joint weighs as much as two Eiffel Towers. Normally, the gates are parked
175. Suez Canal
Egypt
The Suez Canal, an artificial waterway across the Isthmus of Suez in northeastern Egypt, connects Port Said on the Mediterranean coast with Port Tawfiq on the Gulf of Suez, an inlet of the Red Sea. The 101-mile (163-kilometer) canal has no locks, making it the longest of its kind, sea level being the same at both ends. Because it exploits three natural bodies of water Lake Manzala in the north; Lake Timsah, almost exactly at the midpoint; and a chain known as the Great Bitter Lake in the south, accounting for about 18 percent of its length it does not follow the shortest possible route. For most of the canal, traffic is limited to a single lane, but there are passing bays, as well as two-lane bypasses in the Great Bitter Lake. A railway on the west bank runs parallel to the canal from end to end. It took a force of an estimated 1.5 million Egyptian laborers, often working under appalling conditions, eight years to dig the Suez Canal; more than 125,000 lost their lives. In every way, the project is comparable with the architectural and engineering feats of pharaonic Egypt. In fact, the idea of a navigable link between the Mediterranean and Red Seas dates from dynastic Egypt. Earlier canals joined the Red Sea to the Nile, with obvious economic advantages for the land of the Nile. The first, said to have been commissioned by Ramses I around 2000 b.c., linked the Red Sea and the Nile, and a second component was formed by a branch of the Pelusian River that extended to the Mediterranean. Other sources claim that the first canal was constructed in the reign of Tuthmosis III (1512 1448 b.c.), and still others that Necho II (reigned 610 595 b.c.) initiated it, but lack of maintenance meant that it later became unnavigable. Whatever the case, the Persian king Darius I (558 486 b.c.) ordered the work to be completed. His canal, linking the Gulf of Suez to the Great Bitter Lake and the lake to the Nile Delta, remained in good repair through the Macedonian era. It was redug in the time of the Roman emperor Trajan (a.d. 53 117) and again by the Arab ruler Amr Ibn-Al-Aas. When a trade route around Africa was discovered, it again fell into disuse until about 1800. About then, Napoleon Bonapartes engineers proposed a shorter route to India by digging a north-south canal through the Isthmus of Suez. But they wrongly believed that there was a difference in sea level of about 32 feet (10 meters), an error that undermined the feasibility of the project. The Egyptian khedive Mohammed-Ali (reigned 1811 1848) showed little interest in the scheme, and it lapsed for almost half a century. On 15 November 1854 the French diplomat and engineer Vicomte Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps, who had long championed a canal across the isthmus, approached Egypts new ruler, his old friend khedive Said, with a plan privately devised by a French engineer in Mohammed-Alis service. A. Linant de Bellefonds proposed a canal between Suez and Peluse, crossing the Great Bitter Lake and Lake Timsah. By the end of the month de Lesseps was granted a decree allowing him to dig the canal and manage it for ninety-nine years. A second agreement, signed in January 1856, ensured that the Suez Canal would be open to shipping of all nationalities and accessible for a transit fee. By December 1858 the Frenchman established the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez, and shares were quickly bought by investors from all over Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Construction work started on the Suez Canal in April 1859. Even during its construction, the canal was at the center of a political storm because of its critical military and economic importance. Before work started, the British and particularly the prime minister, Lord Palmerston were afraid that the French project would threaten their interests in India, and they tried to have the khedives decree set aside. When that failed, they used political pressure in an attempt to have the digging stopped, only six months after it had started. Such interference continued into the 1860s, after Said was succeeded by the khedive Ismael, who was persuaded to sell his shares in the Compagnie Universelle to Britain, making it the largest single shareholder. The Suez Canal was completed in August 1869. In the course of its construction, three new towns had been built Suez, Ismailia, and Port Said and millions of hectares of farmland had been created. Built at immense human and economic cost (about $330 million in modern values), it was officially opened at Port Said by the French empress Eugenie on November 1869. The great waterway originally had a width of 72 feet (22 meters) at the bottom and 190 feet (58 meters) on the surface. The channel was 26 feet (8 meters) deep. It has been enlarged and deepened many times. A couple of incidents have highlighted, at great economic cost, the Suez Canals critical strategic importance. In July 1956 Egypts President Nasser, in response to the British, French, and U.S. refusal of loans for the Aswan High Dam, nationalized the canal. That provoked the so-called Suez Crisis, beginning with the British and French invasion of Egypt in October. The Egyptians scuttled forty ships that were then in the canal. By the following March the United Nations had prevailed upon Egypt to clear and reopen the waterway. Ten years later, following the Six-Day War, when Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the canal was again closed to shipping. The Egyptians reclaimed it after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, and, cleared of mines and obstructions, it was reopened in 1975. In 2001, about 6 percent of the worlds seaborne trade passes through it. Of course, it dramatically reduces the east-west voyage distance for vessels; for example, the route between Tokyo and Europoort in the Netherlands is only three-quarters of the distance of that around the Cape of Good Hope. The canal is a major source of income for Egypt, and the Suez Canal Authority continually makes improvements to it. The worlds largest bulk carriers vessels that are 1,600 feet long and 230 feet wide (500 by 70 meters), with drafts up to 70 feet (21.4 meters) can now navigate the Suez Canal. The duration of the passage is normally about twelve hours. Its present annual traffic capacity is over 25,000 vessels. Tanker traffic has declined, mostly because of competition from the 200-mile (320-kilometer) Sumed oil pipeline between the Gulf and the Mediterranean.
176. Sultan Ahmet Mosque
Istanbul, Turkey
The deeply religious Ottoman sultan of Istanbul Ahmet I (reigned a.d. 1603 1617) was enthroned at the age of fourteen. Six years later he commissioned his architect Sedefkar Mehmet Agha to build a mosque that would compete for size and splendor with the sixth-century Byzantine church of Hagia Sofia. A site was chosen facing the church across what is now Sultanahmet Square, and Ayse Sultan, whose palace stood on it, was duly compensated for its demolition. Construction started in 1609 on the Sultan Ahmet Mosque, also known as the Blue Mosque, probably the greatest achievement of Ottoman architecture. Its architect had been a pupil of Sinan, considered by many to be the best architect of the early Ottoman Empire. Mehmet Agha worked in the tradition of his former master, and one of the precedents for his design was Sinans Suleymaniye Mosque (1550 1557) on the west bank of the Golden Horn. The other was Hagia Sofia itself, on which the Suleymaniye Mosque was based anyway. All, Islamic or Christian, grew around the same major element: an almost square, vast central space crowned with a dome. The Sultan Ahmet Mosque occupies an area of 209 by 235 feet (64 by 72 meters). Its central dome, 77 feet (23.5 meters) in diameter and reaching a height of 140 feet (43 meters), is carried on pendentives above four pointed arches, themselves supported on round, fluted piers. The central structure is stiffened by a hemidome on each of its four sides and by cupola-covered piers at the corners; then, in the manner of much Byzantine and Ottoman architecture, the loads and thrusts are transmitted to the ground by a cascade of flanking ancillary structures.In front of the mosque stands a wide courtyard, enclosed by an openwork wall and entered on three sides through any of eight monumental gateways with bronze doors. The marble-paved inner court, with a central domed fountain for ritual ablutions, is surrounded by an arcade of slender columns of pink granite, marble, and porphyry, each bay-roofed with a cupola. Four marble minarets with pointed spires rise from the corners of the mosque; and two others, not as tall, at the outer corners of the court make the building, with six minarets, unique in Istanbul. They have a total of sixteen balconies, from which the muezzin calls the faithful to prayer, honoring the sixteen Ottoman sultans. Around the mosque was the extensive kulliye, a collection of buildings and functions including the Imperial Lodge (hunkar) on its north side, a hospital, a caravansary, a primary school, public kitchen and service kiosk, a bazaar for the trades guilds, two-storied shops, and a college (medrese). The architectural excellence of the Blue Mosque lies not in its structural ingenuity, because it was in fact highly derivative, nor in its challenge to the grandeur of Hagia Sofia, because it was much smaller than the ancient church. Rather, Sultan Ahmets building is remarkable for the splendor of its extraordinary decoration, especially the beautiful blue tiles that give the mosque its alternative name. Daylight is admitted through no fewer than 260 carefully placed windows, once glazed with stained glass, and when conditions are right the interior of the mosque is endowed with an ethereal blue haze. These tiles there are more than 21,000 of them were produced in nearby Iznik just when the industry was enjoying its highest level of achievement. There is an unsubstantiated tradition that the production of so many hand-decorated tiles completely exhausted the ceramicists, and the Iznik workshops began to decline. The tiles are painted with traditional floral and plant motifs, including roses, carnations, tulips, lilies, and cypresses, all in soft shades of green and blue on a white ground, and they cover the interior walls and piers to about a third of their height. The stunning effect of tiles and light is enhanced by other decorative details, including painted floral and geometrical arabesques on the domes and upper parts of the walls, although these are now for the most part modern replicas of traditional seventeenth-century designs. The graceful calligraphy everywhere is the work of Ameti Kasim Gubari. The wooden doors and window shutters, designed by Mehmet Agha, are inlaid with shell, mother-of-pearl, and ivory, and the pulpit (mimbar) as well as the niche indicating the direction of Mecca (mihrab) are both made of white Proconnesian marble, fine examples of Ottoman stone carving. Sultan Ahmet I died of typhus only a year after his mosque was finished, and his nearby tomb and that of his wife Kosem Sultan was completed by his son Osman II.
177. Sydney Harbour Bridge
Australia
The Sydney Harbour Bridge, irreverently known as the coat hanger
178. Sydney Opera House
Sydney, Australia
The Opera House stands on Bennelong Point, which reaches out into Sydney Harbour, close to the famous bridge. It was designed by the Danish architect J
179. Taj Mahal
Agra, India
The Taj Mahal, Indias most recognizable icon, was built on the banks of the River Jamuna at Agra by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (reigned a.d.1628 1666), in memory of his beloved wife Arjumand Banu Begam, known as Mumtaz Mahal (Elect of the Palace), who died in childbirth in 1631. There is a tradition that, on her deathbed, she entreated her husband to build a tomb that would preserve her name forever. The funerary mosque, faced with white marble, was completed in 1653 after twenty-two years in the building. When it was inscribed on UNESCOs World Heritage List in 1983, the Taj Mahal was acclaimed as the most perfect jewel of Moslem art in India and
180. Temple of Amun The Hypostyle Hall
Thebes, Egypt
On the east bank of the Nile at Thebes, 440 miles (700 kilometers) south of the site of modern Cairo, stood the most extensive temple complex in ancient Egypt. From the time of the New Kingdom (1550 1069 b.c.), the northern end of this religious compound (near the modern village of Karnak) was dominated by the great temple devoted exclusively to the worship of Amun-Ra, King of the Gods