World Architecture
World Architecture is a art or practice of designing and constructing buildings.
31. Chandigarh
Punjab, India
When India won independence from the British in 1947, Pakistan and India were partitioned. The Punjab was divided and its capital, Lahore, was lost to Pakistan. Soon, East Punjabs population was quickly doubled by the flood of refugees from Pakistan. In March 1948 the provincial government, in consultation with the Indian central government and the enthusiastic support of Prime Minister Pandit Nehru, approved a new 45-square-mile 114-square-kilometer capital site on a sloping plain near the Shivalik foothills. Designed by an international team under the leadership of Le Corbusierit was his only realized urban planning schemethe new city introduced India to a modern architectural and urbanistic idiom. Named for one of the two dozen existing villages in the area, Chandigarh, about 150 miles 240 kilometers north of New Delhi, has been calledone of the most significant urban planning experiments of the twentieth century and asymbol of planned urbanism. The Punjab government, on the crest of a wave of nationalism, probably would have preferred to commission Indian professionals, but none was suitably qualified. In December 1949 it approached the New York architect-planner Albert Mayer, who was then engaged on master plans for Greater Bombay and Kanpur. He accepted the Chandigarh brief: a master plan for a city of 500,000, detailed designs for selected buildings, and planning controls for adjacent areas. He assembled an expert consultancy team and involved Matthew Nowicki as codesigner. Their fan-shaped plan sat between two seasonal riverbeds that crossed the site. The seat of the state government was at its head, and the city center was located at its heart. Two linear parklands ran from the northeast head of the plan to its southwest tip, and a curving road network definedsuperblock neighborhood units like those of Bras
When India won independence from the British in 1947, Pakistan and India were partitioned. The Punjab was divided and its capital, Lahore, was lost to Pakistan. Soon, East Punjabs population was quickly doubled by the flood of refugees from Pakistan. In March 1948 the provincial government, in consultation with the Indian central government and the enthusiastic support of Prime Minister Pandit Nehru, approved a new 45-square-mile 114-square-kilometer capital site on a sloping plain near the Shivalik foothills. Designed by an international team under the leadership of Le Corbusierit was his only realized urban planning schemethe new city introduced India to a modern architectural and urbanistic idiom. Named for one of the two dozen existing villages in the area, Chandigarh, about 150 miles 240 kilometers north of New Delhi, has been calledone of the most significant urban planning experiments of the twentieth century and asymbol of planned urbanism. The Punjab government, on the crest of a wave of nationalism, probably would have preferred to commission Indian professionals, but none was suitably qualified. In December 1949 it approached the New York architect-planner Albert Mayer, who was then engaged on master plans for Greater Bombay and Kanpur. He accepted the Chandigarh brief: a master plan for a city of 500,000, detailed designs for selected buildings, and planning controls for adjacent areas. He assembled an expert consultancy team and involved Matthew Nowicki as codesigner. Their fan-shaped plan sat between two seasonal riverbeds that crossed the site. The seat of the state government was at its head, and the city center was located at its heart. Two linear parklands ran from the northeast head of the plan to its southwest tip, and a curving road network definedsuperblock neighborhood units like those of Bras
32. Channel Tunnel
England and France
The English Channel, known, to the French as la Manche the Sleeve, is a narrow strip of the Atlantic Ocean that separates England from the rest of Europe. It is at its narrowest at the hazardous Dover Strait, notorious for its strong tides, dense fogs, and frequent gale-force winds. The Channel Tunnel popularly calledthe Chunnelprovides a railroad connection between Britain and France under the Dover Strait and is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever undertaken in Europe, among the great engineering feats of the twentieth century. The complicated, visionary project was dogged by financial, logistical, and safety problems, exacerbated by two languages, two governments, two sets of legal requirements, ten contractors, and 220 financial backers in twenty-six countries. The idea of the fixed link has a long history, the earliest recorded proposal, by a French engineer named Nicolas Desmaret, dating from 1751. About fifty years later Albert Mathieu Favier suggested a horse-drawn railroad under the Channel his scheme included an artificial island that would serve as a staging post. Another French engineer, Aime Thome de Gamond, worked on several plans for almost forty years from 1830, making careful geological surveys of the seabed. In 1856 he proposed a railroad tunnel between Folkestone in the southern English county of Kent and Cap Gris-Nez on the French coast. A modified version was supported by the British engineers William Low and Sir John Clarke Hawkshaw in 1867, and a report was published the following year. For several reasons, largely political, the project went no further. In the meantime the development of a pneumatic boring machine revolutionized tunneling techniques. In the mid-1870s Channel Tunnel companies were formed in England and France. In 1881 the South Eastern Railway acquired land near Folkestone, and the Submarine Railway Company bored 2,100 yards 2,000 meters of pilot tunnel under the English Channel at Shakespeare Cliff. In France, 1,800 yards 1,600 meters were drilled at Sangatte, southwest of Calais. Work stopped in May 1882 when the security-conscious British Parliament, afraid of undersea invasion, opposed the project. It remained in abeyance until after the Great War. Work on a trial bore at Folkestone Warren in 1922 was aborted after only 140 yards 128 meters, again because of political antagonism in England. Despite support from eminent politicians, the Channel Tunnel was shelved until the Great Depression and another World War had passed. In 1948 the South Eastern Railway by then Southern Railways assigned its plans on to the nationalized British Railways, but it was not until 1956 that the French/British Channel Tunnel Study Group was formed to investigate the economic and engineering aspects of a fixed link. Four years later, it recommended a tunnelin fact, two single-track railway tunnels and a service tunnelbetween Folkestone and Sangatte. The two governments agreed to proceed with the project. Years of surveys and research yielded a scheme the cost of which would be divided equally between Britain and France, and work began on both sides of the Channel in 1974. Only a year later Britain withdrew from the project when the estimated cost was increased by 200 percent. A pilot tunnel at Shakespeare Cliff was abandoned, and the project again lapsed. In 1984 it was once more agreed to in principle at an Anglo-French summit, and applications were invited from the private sector to build the tunnel. The successful tenderer for the design, planning, and construction, announced in January 1986, was Transmanche Link TML, a consortium of British and French corporations. The British Channel Tunnel Group Balfour Beatty Construction, Costain UK, George Wimpey International, Taylor Woodrow Construction, Tarmac Construction, Midland Bank, and National Westminster Bank was to build the English terminal and 14 miles 22.3 kilometers of tunnels from Shakespeare Cliff. France-Manche, the French group Bouygues, Dumez, Societe Auxiliaire dEnterprises, Societe Generale dEnterprises Sainrapt et Brice, Spie Batignolles, Banque Nationale de Paris, Credit Lyonnais, and Banque Indosuez was responsible for the French terminal and the remainder of the tunnels from Sangatte. In order to finance the work, a private Anglo-French organization, Eurotunnel, was established and given a fifty-five year concession agreement to build and operate the link. Construction was under way, with three tunnel-boring machines at Shakespeare Cliff and three more at Sangatte by November 1987. The excavators met on 1 December 1990. The 31-mile-long 50-kilometer Channel Tunnel connects the terminals at Folkestone, England, and Coquelles, near Calais, France. The submarine section is nearly 24 miles 38 kilometers long. The two concrete-lined, single-track railroad tunnels, 25 feet 7.6 meters in diameter, are spaced 98 feet 30 meters apart, and a 16-foot-diameter 4.8-meter tunnel between them is used for maintenance and ventilation. Two huge crossover chambers allow trains to switch tunnels. Maintenance-access cross passages every 1,230 feet 375 meters link the central service tunnel and the rail tunnels. At 820-foot 250-meter intervals, piston ducts arch above the service tunnel to link the others and relieve the pressure created by speeding trains. The tunnels are drilled through the rock at an average of 150 feet 45 meters beneath the seabed. Electrical power for drainage pumps, lighting, and trains is fed from the national supply grids in England and France. The Chunnel was officially opened on 10 December 1993, and Eurotunnel commenced its commercial operations six months later. At the time of completion, the project had cost U.S.$13.5 billion. Four different services pass through the tunnel: Le Shuttle carries tourist vehicles: Le Shuttle Freight handles commercial vehicles such as vans, trucks, and semitrailers Eurostar transports pedestrian passengers and other freight trains travel between Britain and mainland Europe. The journey between Paris and London takes just three and a half hours the actual Channel crossing only thirty-five minutes. The Channel Tunnel is only one element of the European Communitys plan for a 12,500-mile 20,000-kilometer high-speed rail network linking cities across the continent.
The English Channel, known, to the French as la Manche the Sleeve, is a narrow strip of the Atlantic Ocean that separates England from the rest of Europe. It is at its narrowest at the hazardous Dover Strait, notorious for its strong tides, dense fogs, and frequent gale-force winds. The Channel Tunnel popularly calledthe Chunnelprovides a railroad connection between Britain and France under the Dover Strait and is one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever undertaken in Europe, among the great engineering feats of the twentieth century. The complicated, visionary project was dogged by financial, logistical, and safety problems, exacerbated by two languages, two governments, two sets of legal requirements, ten contractors, and 220 financial backers in twenty-six countries. The idea of the fixed link has a long history, the earliest recorded proposal, by a French engineer named Nicolas Desmaret, dating from 1751. About fifty years later Albert Mathieu Favier suggested a horse-drawn railroad under the Channel his scheme included an artificial island that would serve as a staging post. Another French engineer, Aime Thome de Gamond, worked on several plans for almost forty years from 1830, making careful geological surveys of the seabed. In 1856 he proposed a railroad tunnel between Folkestone in the southern English county of Kent and Cap Gris-Nez on the French coast. A modified version was supported by the British engineers William Low and Sir John Clarke Hawkshaw in 1867, and a report was published the following year. For several reasons, largely political, the project went no further. In the meantime the development of a pneumatic boring machine revolutionized tunneling techniques. In the mid-1870s Channel Tunnel companies were formed in England and France. In 1881 the South Eastern Railway acquired land near Folkestone, and the Submarine Railway Company bored 2,100 yards 2,000 meters of pilot tunnel under the English Channel at Shakespeare Cliff. In France, 1,800 yards 1,600 meters were drilled at Sangatte, southwest of Calais. Work stopped in May 1882 when the security-conscious British Parliament, afraid of undersea invasion, opposed the project. It remained in abeyance until after the Great War. Work on a trial bore at Folkestone Warren in 1922 was aborted after only 140 yards 128 meters, again because of political antagonism in England. Despite support from eminent politicians, the Channel Tunnel was shelved until the Great Depression and another World War had passed. In 1948 the South Eastern Railway by then Southern Railways assigned its plans on to the nationalized British Railways, but it was not until 1956 that the French/British Channel Tunnel Study Group was formed to investigate the economic and engineering aspects of a fixed link. Four years later, it recommended a tunnelin fact, two single-track railway tunnels and a service tunnelbetween Folkestone and Sangatte. The two governments agreed to proceed with the project. Years of surveys and research yielded a scheme the cost of which would be divided equally between Britain and France, and work began on both sides of the Channel in 1974. Only a year later Britain withdrew from the project when the estimated cost was increased by 200 percent. A pilot tunnel at Shakespeare Cliff was abandoned, and the project again lapsed. In 1984 it was once more agreed to in principle at an Anglo-French summit, and applications were invited from the private sector to build the tunnel. The successful tenderer for the design, planning, and construction, announced in January 1986, was Transmanche Link TML, a consortium of British and French corporations. The British Channel Tunnel Group Balfour Beatty Construction, Costain UK, George Wimpey International, Taylor Woodrow Construction, Tarmac Construction, Midland Bank, and National Westminster Bank was to build the English terminal and 14 miles 22.3 kilometers of tunnels from Shakespeare Cliff. France-Manche, the French group Bouygues, Dumez, Societe Auxiliaire dEnterprises, Societe Generale dEnterprises Sainrapt et Brice, Spie Batignolles, Banque Nationale de Paris, Credit Lyonnais, and Banque Indosuez was responsible for the French terminal and the remainder of the tunnels from Sangatte. In order to finance the work, a private Anglo-French organization, Eurotunnel, was established and given a fifty-five year concession agreement to build and operate the link. Construction was under way, with three tunnel-boring machines at Shakespeare Cliff and three more at Sangatte by November 1987. The excavators met on 1 December 1990. The 31-mile-long 50-kilometer Channel Tunnel connects the terminals at Folkestone, England, and Coquelles, near Calais, France. The submarine section is nearly 24 miles 38 kilometers long. The two concrete-lined, single-track railroad tunnels, 25 feet 7.6 meters in diameter, are spaced 98 feet 30 meters apart, and a 16-foot-diameter 4.8-meter tunnel between them is used for maintenance and ventilation. Two huge crossover chambers allow trains to switch tunnels. Maintenance-access cross passages every 1,230 feet 375 meters link the central service tunnel and the rail tunnels. At 820-foot 250-meter intervals, piston ducts arch above the service tunnel to link the others and relieve the pressure created by speeding trains. The tunnels are drilled through the rock at an average of 150 feet 45 meters beneath the seabed. Electrical power for drainage pumps, lighting, and trains is fed from the national supply grids in England and France. The Chunnel was officially opened on 10 December 1993, and Eurotunnel commenced its commercial operations six months later. At the time of completion, the project had cost U.S.$13.5 billion. Four different services pass through the tunnel: Le Shuttle carries tourist vehicles: Le Shuttle Freight handles commercial vehicles such as vans, trucks, and semitrailers Eurostar transports pedestrian passengers and other freight trains travel between Britain and mainland Europe. The journey between Paris and London takes just three and a half hours the actual Channel crossing only thirty-five minutes. The Channel Tunnel is only one element of the European Communitys plan for a 12,500-mile 20,000-kilometer high-speed rail network linking cities across the continent.
33. Charlemagnes Palatine Chapel
Aachen, Germany
The city of Aachen stands 40 miles 64 kilometers southwest of Cologne on the River Wurm, a tributary of the Roer, in the German stare of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Romans knew the place as Aquisgranum, famous for its health spas since the first century a.d. The Merovingian kings, who ruled the Franks from a.d. 481 to 751, held court there, but the town enjoyed great eminence during the Carolingian dynasty, especially under Charlemagne reigned 768 814. His Palatine Chapel, now the central element of Aachen Cathedral, is the finest surviving example of Carolingian architecture. This architectural jewel copied the centrally planned Byzantine church of San Vitale at Ravenna, Italy 525 548, clearly demonstrating one way in which building ideas are transmitted between cultures. The ability of its northern builders to assimilate a southern European style was in itself a considerable achievement. Charlemagne succeeded his father, Pepin the Short, as king of the Franks in 768. The first strong secular ruler in Europe since the ancient Roman Empire, he was in theorybut only in theorysubordinate to the pope, a relationship symbolized by his coronation by Pope Leo III as Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day 800. Six years earlier he had established his residence and Court at Aachen, the town where he was born. In 792, he commissioned Bishop Odo of Metz to design and build the royal complex, 50 acres 20 hectares in area: the palace, law court, and, of course, the Palatine Chapel. Einhard who was also Charlemagnes biographer was appointed as works supervisor. Wanting to imitate the grandeur of the imperial Roman rulers, the king had looked for precedents. Historians have suggested that his palace was based on several models, Constantines palatine court ca. 310 in Trier, Germany, among them. Charlemagne also had been to Ravenna on Italys northern Adriatic coast, where he had been dazzled by the glorious Byzantine buildings. Kenneth Clark opines that, when the Frankish king saw the scintillating mosaics in San Vitale, herealized how magnificent an emperor could be. Returning to Aachen, Charlemagne gave instructions for a replica to be built as his private chapel. Constructed at the southern end of the palace complex on the site of an earlier church, the domed octagonal Palatine Chapel was built between 796 and 804. It was consecrated by Pope Leo III in 805 to serve as Charlemagnes chapel, a reliquarium for his collection, and a church for members of the royal court. It is 54 feet 16.5 meters in diameter and 124 feet 38 meters highat the time the largest dome north of the Alps. Of course, beautiful as it is, in the circumstances Odos building could never have been a perfect replica. Architectural ideas are transmitted by several means: traveling architects, craftsmen, or patrons images of buildings and published theories. None is ideal. Images cannot convey the spatial aspects of buildings, and a visit to a building, no matter how perceptive and prolonged, leaves the visitor with mere impressions only. For those reasons, San Vitale lost a good deal in the translation, so to speak, even if Charlemagne imported columns and marbles from Ravenna and Rome and Byzantine craftsmen to assist with the work. Moreover, the refinement of the Italian church had been achieved after years of experiment with indigenous structural and decorative systems. Nevertheless, the Palatine Chapel at Aachen is an extraordinary advance upon preceding Carolingian buildings. It is much sturdier than San Vitale, having an unmistakably Roman structure. Like early Roman churches, it was approached from the west through a huge symmetrical atrium said to have held 7,000 people, the well-defined entrance to the octagon flanked by towers with turret staircases leading to an upper level. Above the entrance was a place from which the emperor could appear to his people. None of the atrium survives. The octagonal central space of the original chapel is crowned with a lofty mosaic-faced dome constructed as a series of groin vaults: opposite the entrance, on both levels, was the sanctuary. The octagon is surrounded at the lower level by an ambulatory with a groin-vaulted dark sandstone ceiling. Those vaults, remarkable for the absence of transverse archesOdos own innovationare supported at the angles of the octagon on large piers that also carry a semicircular dividing arcade. The upper level of the ambulatory is roofed with an annular barrel vault and separated from the octagon by a screen of two pairs of superimposed marble, porphyry, and granite columns within wide arched openings. At right angles to the main axis of the chapel, and reached at both levels through the sanctuary, were once mirrored north and south annexes. On the decision of the members of the court, although he wished to be buried at St. Denis, Charlemagnes remains were interred in the Palatine Chapel in 814. Thereafter, until 1531, it became the imperial coronation church. From 1355, to accommodate the enormous traffic of pilgrims, the choir was rebuilt in the Gothic style, several chapels and a narthex were added, and the building became Aachen Cathedral. It was dedicated in 1414. The original mosaic on the interior of the dome was replaced by one Salviati, a Venetian, between 1870 and 1873. The cathedral was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978. A restoration program began in 1995.
The city of Aachen stands 40 miles 64 kilometers southwest of Cologne on the River Wurm, a tributary of the Roer, in the German stare of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Romans knew the place as Aquisgranum, famous for its health spas since the first century a.d. The Merovingian kings, who ruled the Franks from a.d. 481 to 751, held court there, but the town enjoyed great eminence during the Carolingian dynasty, especially under Charlemagne reigned 768 814. His Palatine Chapel, now the central element of Aachen Cathedral, is the finest surviving example of Carolingian architecture. This architectural jewel copied the centrally planned Byzantine church of San Vitale at Ravenna, Italy 525 548, clearly demonstrating one way in which building ideas are transmitted between cultures. The ability of its northern builders to assimilate a southern European style was in itself a considerable achievement. Charlemagne succeeded his father, Pepin the Short, as king of the Franks in 768. The first strong secular ruler in Europe since the ancient Roman Empire, he was in theorybut only in theorysubordinate to the pope, a relationship symbolized by his coronation by Pope Leo III as Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day 800. Six years earlier he had established his residence and Court at Aachen, the town where he was born. In 792, he commissioned Bishop Odo of Metz to design and build the royal complex, 50 acres 20 hectares in area: the palace, law court, and, of course, the Palatine Chapel. Einhard who was also Charlemagnes biographer was appointed as works supervisor. Wanting to imitate the grandeur of the imperial Roman rulers, the king had looked for precedents. Historians have suggested that his palace was based on several models, Constantines palatine court ca. 310 in Trier, Germany, among them. Charlemagne also had been to Ravenna on Italys northern Adriatic coast, where he had been dazzled by the glorious Byzantine buildings. Kenneth Clark opines that, when the Frankish king saw the scintillating mosaics in San Vitale, herealized how magnificent an emperor could be. Returning to Aachen, Charlemagne gave instructions for a replica to be built as his private chapel. Constructed at the southern end of the palace complex on the site of an earlier church, the domed octagonal Palatine Chapel was built between 796 and 804. It was consecrated by Pope Leo III in 805 to serve as Charlemagnes chapel, a reliquarium for his collection, and a church for members of the royal court. It is 54 feet 16.5 meters in diameter and 124 feet 38 meters highat the time the largest dome north of the Alps. Of course, beautiful as it is, in the circumstances Odos building could never have been a perfect replica. Architectural ideas are transmitted by several means: traveling architects, craftsmen, or patrons images of buildings and published theories. None is ideal. Images cannot convey the spatial aspects of buildings, and a visit to a building, no matter how perceptive and prolonged, leaves the visitor with mere impressions only. For those reasons, San Vitale lost a good deal in the translation, so to speak, even if Charlemagne imported columns and marbles from Ravenna and Rome and Byzantine craftsmen to assist with the work. Moreover, the refinement of the Italian church had been achieved after years of experiment with indigenous structural and decorative systems. Nevertheless, the Palatine Chapel at Aachen is an extraordinary advance upon preceding Carolingian buildings. It is much sturdier than San Vitale, having an unmistakably Roman structure. Like early Roman churches, it was approached from the west through a huge symmetrical atrium said to have held 7,000 people, the well-defined entrance to the octagon flanked by towers with turret staircases leading to an upper level. Above the entrance was a place from which the emperor could appear to his people. None of the atrium survives. The octagonal central space of the original chapel is crowned with a lofty mosaic-faced dome constructed as a series of groin vaults: opposite the entrance, on both levels, was the sanctuary. The octagon is surrounded at the lower level by an ambulatory with a groin-vaulted dark sandstone ceiling. Those vaults, remarkable for the absence of transverse archesOdos own innovationare supported at the angles of the octagon on large piers that also carry a semicircular dividing arcade. The upper level of the ambulatory is roofed with an annular barrel vault and separated from the octagon by a screen of two pairs of superimposed marble, porphyry, and granite columns within wide arched openings. At right angles to the main axis of the chapel, and reached at both levels through the sanctuary, were once mirrored north and south annexes. On the decision of the members of the court, although he wished to be buried at St. Denis, Charlemagnes remains were interred in the Palatine Chapel in 814. Thereafter, until 1531, it became the imperial coronation church. From 1355, to accommodate the enormous traffic of pilgrims, the choir was rebuilt in the Gothic style, several chapels and a narthex were added, and the building became Aachen Cathedral. It was dedicated in 1414. The original mosaic on the interior of the dome was replaced by one Salviati, a Venetian, between 1870 and 1873. The cathedral was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1978. A restoration program began in 1995.
34. Chartres Cathedral Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady
France
Chartres, capital of Frances Department of Eure-et-Loir, stands on the Eure River, about 60 miles 100 kilometers southwest of Paris. An important center in pre-Roman Gaul, it was one of the sacred places of the Druids. Overrun by the Normans, the region later settled down, and late in the thirteenth century it became the appanage of Charles de Valois, who was briefly 1284 1290 king of Aragon and Sicily. Fran
Chartres, capital of Frances Department of Eure-et-Loir, stands on the Eure River, about 60 miles 100 kilometers southwest of Paris. An important center in pre-Roman Gaul, it was one of the sacred places of the Druids. Overrun by the Normans, the region later settled down, and late in the thirteenth century it became the appanage of Charles de Valois, who was briefly 1284 1290 king of Aragon and Sicily. Fran
35. Chek Lap Kok International Airport
Hong Kong
Hong Kongs new international airport at Chek Lap Kok is the product of what was at the time the worlds largest engineering and architectural projecta logistical marvel that developed designs in only twentyone months and managed a workforce of up to 21,000 to build the airport facilities as well as the island on which they stand and the extensive ground transport links, in only five years. In 1999, a convention of U.S. construction executives and editors named it one of the top ten architectural and engineering achievements of the twentieth century. Anyone who flew into Hong Kong before mid-1998 will always remember the unnerving experience of looking directly into apartment buildings that seemed almost to touch the wingtips as the plane descended to Kai Tak Airporta dubious thrill that is no longer part of a visit to the crowded island. Kai Tak airfield commenced operations around 1924, becoming a Royal Air Force base three years later. In 1935 it was upgraded to suit growing commercial traffic, and two more runways were added over the next twenty-five years. It was renamed Hong Kong International Airport in 1958 and underwent continual extensions and improvements as the number of flights increased at a dizzying rate. Shortly before it closed in 1998, Kai Tak was processing nearly 30 million international passengers and over 1.5 million tons 1.36 million tonnes of international cargo every year. There had been discussions about an out-of-town airport since the 1960s, within an international transport strategy that also included shipping a plan to construct a new airport was announced in October 1988. Although well down the governments list of preferred sites after Nim Wan, Lamma Island, and Clearwater Bay, Chek Lap Kok was chosen, but not unanimously. When it opened on 6 July 1998 the new airport had an annual capacity of 2.76 million tons 2.50 million tonnes of cargo and 35 million passengers, planned to rise to 87 million by the year 2040. The Provisional Airport Authority, charged with planning and realizing the facility, was established in April 1990. The contract, estimated at almost HK$50 billion then equivalent to U.S.$6.4 billion, was awarded to the Mott Consortium, comprising Mott. Connell, Ove Arup and Partners Fisher Marantz, Renfro Stone, OBrien Kreitzberg and Associates Wilbur Smith Associates and the architectural firm of Norman Foster and Partners, which undertook the design of the terminal building. The first construction stage project was the recreation of the site. In 1992 Chek Lap Kok was a 330-foot 100-meter hilltop rising from the sea by June 1995 dredging and reclamation had reshaped it into a 3.7-by-2.2-mile 6-by-3.5-kilometer flat platformabout four times its original area23 feet 7 meters above sea level. For the first year the airport operated with a single runway. Now known as the South Runway, it is used mostly for landings the North Runway, put into service late in August 1999, is used principally for departures. Handling an average of 450 flights a day, Chek Lap Kok has forty-eight frontal aircraft gates at the terminal, twenty-seven on the apron, and thirteen cargo gates. The 1,400-yard-long 1.27-kilometer, nine-level terminal building, under 45 acres 18 hectares of 120-foot-wide 36-meter steel barrel vaults, is the largest enclosed public space ever built. An indicator of the logistical achievement of the entire project, the superstructure of the vast Y-shaped building was completed in only three years. Its design was constrained by off-site fabrication of components that could be site-assembled, in much the same way as Joseph Paxtons Crystal Palace 150 years earlier. The air-cooled central terminal space, over 1,000 feet 300 meters wide, houses the usual airport functions. More than 1 mile 1.6 kilometers of moving walkways carry incoming passengers along the 2,400-foot 720-meter concourse, through the baggage hall, to 124 immigration desks and seventy-six custom positions. Departing passengers are served by 288 check-in desks. Dimensions are difficult to convey suffice it to say that the baggage hall alone is as big as New Yorks Yankee Stadium, and the fully automatic baggage-handling system can process 19,000 items an hour. There is also the inevitable shopping areatheHong Kong Sky Mallin five zones and comprising 154 specialist retail, food, and drink outlets. Nearby, the twelve-story Regal Airport Hotel, with 1,100 rooms and connected to the passenger terminal by a covered walkway, completes the facility. Internal shuttle trains run through a 20-foot-high 6-meter tunnel, 106 feet 32 meters wide, beneath the building. The design of Chek Lap Kok allows for expansion that will include an additional concourse and passenger terminal, as well as additional air cargo, catering, and maintenance facilities. Chek Lap Kok was complemented by a complex Airport Core Project involving several elements and costing HK$ 155.3 billion about U.S.$20 billion. The high-speed Airport Express Railway, part of Hong Kongs mass-transit rail link, and 21 miles 34 kilometers of 3-lane highway across the Tsing Ma Bridge the worlds longest road-rail suspension bridge provide alternative routes between the airport and Kowloon and further through the new Western Tunnel to Hong Kong Island and the central business district. The scheme also includes a new town for 150,000 people, because height restrictions, so necessary for Kai Tak Airport, have now been lifted. And, of course, the 2,350-acre 940-hectare Kai Tak site became free for redevelopment. Plans are in hand for mixed commercial and recreational uses among residential towers accommodating 300,000 people. Work should be completed by 2003.
Hong Kongs new international airport at Chek Lap Kok is the product of what was at the time the worlds largest engineering and architectural projecta logistical marvel that developed designs in only twentyone months and managed a workforce of up to 21,000 to build the airport facilities as well as the island on which they stand and the extensive ground transport links, in only five years. In 1999, a convention of U.S. construction executives and editors named it one of the top ten architectural and engineering achievements of the twentieth century. Anyone who flew into Hong Kong before mid-1998 will always remember the unnerving experience of looking directly into apartment buildings that seemed almost to touch the wingtips as the plane descended to Kai Tak Airporta dubious thrill that is no longer part of a visit to the crowded island. Kai Tak airfield commenced operations around 1924, becoming a Royal Air Force base three years later. In 1935 it was upgraded to suit growing commercial traffic, and two more runways were added over the next twenty-five years. It was renamed Hong Kong International Airport in 1958 and underwent continual extensions and improvements as the number of flights increased at a dizzying rate. Shortly before it closed in 1998, Kai Tak was processing nearly 30 million international passengers and over 1.5 million tons 1.36 million tonnes of international cargo every year. There had been discussions about an out-of-town airport since the 1960s, within an international transport strategy that also included shipping a plan to construct a new airport was announced in October 1988. Although well down the governments list of preferred sites after Nim Wan, Lamma Island, and Clearwater Bay, Chek Lap Kok was chosen, but not unanimously. When it opened on 6 July 1998 the new airport had an annual capacity of 2.76 million tons 2.50 million tonnes of cargo and 35 million passengers, planned to rise to 87 million by the year 2040. The Provisional Airport Authority, charged with planning and realizing the facility, was established in April 1990. The contract, estimated at almost HK$50 billion then equivalent to U.S.$6.4 billion, was awarded to the Mott Consortium, comprising Mott. Connell, Ove Arup and Partners Fisher Marantz, Renfro Stone, OBrien Kreitzberg and Associates Wilbur Smith Associates and the architectural firm of Norman Foster and Partners, which undertook the design of the terminal building. The first construction stage project was the recreation of the site. In 1992 Chek Lap Kok was a 330-foot 100-meter hilltop rising from the sea by June 1995 dredging and reclamation had reshaped it into a 3.7-by-2.2-mile 6-by-3.5-kilometer flat platformabout four times its original area23 feet 7 meters above sea level. For the first year the airport operated with a single runway. Now known as the South Runway, it is used mostly for landings the North Runway, put into service late in August 1999, is used principally for departures. Handling an average of 450 flights a day, Chek Lap Kok has forty-eight frontal aircraft gates at the terminal, twenty-seven on the apron, and thirteen cargo gates. The 1,400-yard-long 1.27-kilometer, nine-level terminal building, under 45 acres 18 hectares of 120-foot-wide 36-meter steel barrel vaults, is the largest enclosed public space ever built. An indicator of the logistical achievement of the entire project, the superstructure of the vast Y-shaped building was completed in only three years. Its design was constrained by off-site fabrication of components that could be site-assembled, in much the same way as Joseph Paxtons Crystal Palace 150 years earlier. The air-cooled central terminal space, over 1,000 feet 300 meters wide, houses the usual airport functions. More than 1 mile 1.6 kilometers of moving walkways carry incoming passengers along the 2,400-foot 720-meter concourse, through the baggage hall, to 124 immigration desks and seventy-six custom positions. Departing passengers are served by 288 check-in desks. Dimensions are difficult to convey suffice it to say that the baggage hall alone is as big as New Yorks Yankee Stadium, and the fully automatic baggage-handling system can process 19,000 items an hour. There is also the inevitable shopping areatheHong Kong Sky Mallin five zones and comprising 154 specialist retail, food, and drink outlets. Nearby, the twelve-story Regal Airport Hotel, with 1,100 rooms and connected to the passenger terminal by a covered walkway, completes the facility. Internal shuttle trains run through a 20-foot-high 6-meter tunnel, 106 feet 32 meters wide, beneath the building. The design of Chek Lap Kok allows for expansion that will include an additional concourse and passenger terminal, as well as additional air cargo, catering, and maintenance facilities. Chek Lap Kok was complemented by a complex Airport Core Project involving several elements and costing HK$ 155.3 billion about U.S.$20 billion. The high-speed Airport Express Railway, part of Hong Kongs mass-transit rail link, and 21 miles 34 kilometers of 3-lane highway across the Tsing Ma Bridge the worlds longest road-rail suspension bridge provide alternative routes between the airport and Kowloon and further through the new Western Tunnel to Hong Kong Island and the central business district. The scheme also includes a new town for 150,000 people, because height restrictions, so necessary for Kai Tak Airport, have now been lifted. And, of course, the 2,350-acre 940-hectare Kai Tak site became free for redevelopment. Plans are in hand for mixed commercial and recreational uses among residential towers accommodating 300,000 people. Work should be completed by 2003.
36. Chin Shi Huangdis tomb
Xian, China
In 1974, peasants digging a well in a field about 25 miles 40 kilometers east of Xian unearthed pits containing thousands of life-size, carefully detailed terra-cotta warriors, horses, and chariots. The soldiers were poised to defend the tomb of Chin Shi Huangdi 259 210 b.c.. Among the greatest archeological finds of the twentieth century, the ceramic army is but a small part of the great funerary monumenta necropolis with huge underground rooms around a gigantic burial moundthat the despotic ruler commissioned for himself many years before his death. The imperial tomb itself has not yet been uncovered. In 246 b.c., when he was thirteen years old, Ying Zheng ascended the throne of Chin, the strongest of Chinas seven surviving territories. Unifying the divided states into a single nation, in 221 b.c., he took the title Chin Shi Huangdi literallyChin, the First Emperor. Great changes ensued in his short, tyrannical reign. The feudal system was abolished, and China was divided into about forty provinces, all controlled by a centralized bureaucracy. To ensure its efficiency over such a vast area, Chin Shi Huangdi commissioned the construction of over 6,000 miles 10,000 kilometers of roads and more than 1,000 miles 1,600 kilometers of canals, which also served for irrigation and flood mitigation. Southward, his empire extended to Vietnams Red River Delta, encompassing most of what are now Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan Provinces to the north, it reached as far as Lanzhou in Gansu Province and into parts of modern Korea. To defend his domain against nomad incursions, the first emperor commissioned the building of the Great Wall of China. He also initiated census taking, as well as the compulsory standardization of currency, weights and measures, writing, and even axle widths. As another means of control, in 213 b.c. he decreed that history and philosophy books, especially those contradicting Chin theories, should be burned. His despotism was resented by the common people. The foreign wars, the construction of the Wall, and other extravagant, self-indulgent public works including his tomb, supported by policies of military conscription, heavy taxation, and forced labor, had imposed a terrible financial and social cost. Toward the end of his life, fearing assassination, Chin Shi Huangdi became reclusive. He died in 210 b.c., and his empire collapsed. After eight years of widespread rebellions, Liu Pang founded the Han dynasty. The first-century-b.c. historian Sima Qian described Chin Shi Huangdis tomb as a microcosm of the universe. Ironically, the first emperors obsessive quest for an elixir of life had probably caused his madness and death he had ingested mercury as a means to immortality. Because it was intended to serve as Chin Shi Huangdis capital in the afterlife, the necropolis has many of the elements of a living city: encircling walls, parks and gardens, buildings for officials and the army, cemetery walls, and, of course, a palace. It was built mainly underground by according to historical records a labor force of 700,000 conscripts from all over China, over a period of thirty-six years. The 7,500-strong terra-cotta army stood guard in three vaults, about 0.75 mile 1.2 kilometers to the east. Their weapons were looted, possibly during the uprising after Chin Shi Huangdis death. The tomb complex proper, oriented perfectly to the cardinal points of the compass, was surrounded by a 65-foot-high 20-meter wall that enclosed the rectangular imperial tomb gardens, covering an area of about 1.3 by 0.6 miles 2.17 by 0.97 kilometers, In the center of the precinct stood the building in which funerary rituals were performed. Close to it on one side were three blocks housing the Residence of the Garden and Temple Officials on the other side were twenty-seven graves of Chin Shi Huangdis high-ranking counselors and bureaucrats, buried with him so they could continue to serve him. Nearly 100 other pits now containing the skeletons of horses and terra-cotta grooms were the emperors eternal stables. It is thought that other pits containing clay models of plants and birds were evocations of his parks and gardens The building known as the Main House, a sort of servery for Chin Shi Huangdis food, stood near the 164-foot 50-meter pyramidal grave mound, axially located at the southern end of the complex, within a second walled enclosure, measuring 749 by 632 yards 685 by 578 meters. There was a wide gate on each side. The burial chamber was lined with a waterproofing layer of bronze sheets. The tomb is believed to have been an opulent palace that accommodated all the emperors needs, based on his accustomed extravagant lifestyle. According to reports, it was rich withfine utensils, precious stones and rarities. There were scale models of palaces, towers, and official buildings, and a mechanically circulated system in which rivers of mercury represented the rivers of China and the Pacific Ocean, under a ceiling studded with pearls describing the constellations. Lamps burned whale oil to illuminate the space, and crossbow booby traps were installed to kill grave-robbers. An official account reads,Once the First Emperor was placed in the burial chamber and the treasures were sealed up, the middle and outer gates were shut to imprison all those who had worked on the tomb. No one came out. Trees and grass were then planted over the mausoleum to make if look like a hill cited in Cotterell 1981, 17. Archeological excavations continue at the site. Yuan Zhongyi, leader of the team of archeologists working on the grave site, believes that the burial ground extends over an area of about 20 square miles 50 square kilometers only a fifth of it has been uncovered. Work is funded by proceeds from the museum at the terra-cotta warriors site most of the money is used to maintain that site, but in 1997, Yuan Zhongyis annual budget was only U.S.$25,000, about a tenth of what is needed. Consequently, the dig at the tomb was temporarily suspended. The team also lacked the special conservation skills needed to handle the 2,000-year-old artifacts of silk and wood. Work resumed in 1999, and new discoveries continue.
In 1974, peasants digging a well in a field about 25 miles 40 kilometers east of Xian unearthed pits containing thousands of life-size, carefully detailed terra-cotta warriors, horses, and chariots. The soldiers were poised to defend the tomb of Chin Shi Huangdi 259 210 b.c.. Among the greatest archeological finds of the twentieth century, the ceramic army is but a small part of the great funerary monumenta necropolis with huge underground rooms around a gigantic burial moundthat the despotic ruler commissioned for himself many years before his death. The imperial tomb itself has not yet been uncovered. In 246 b.c., when he was thirteen years old, Ying Zheng ascended the throne of Chin, the strongest of Chinas seven surviving territories. Unifying the divided states into a single nation, in 221 b.c., he took the title Chin Shi Huangdi literallyChin, the First Emperor. Great changes ensued in his short, tyrannical reign. The feudal system was abolished, and China was divided into about forty provinces, all controlled by a centralized bureaucracy. To ensure its efficiency over such a vast area, Chin Shi Huangdi commissioned the construction of over 6,000 miles 10,000 kilometers of roads and more than 1,000 miles 1,600 kilometers of canals, which also served for irrigation and flood mitigation. Southward, his empire extended to Vietnams Red River Delta, encompassing most of what are now Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan Provinces to the north, it reached as far as Lanzhou in Gansu Province and into parts of modern Korea. To defend his domain against nomad incursions, the first emperor commissioned the building of the Great Wall of China. He also initiated census taking, as well as the compulsory standardization of currency, weights and measures, writing, and even axle widths. As another means of control, in 213 b.c. he decreed that history and philosophy books, especially those contradicting Chin theories, should be burned. His despotism was resented by the common people. The foreign wars, the construction of the Wall, and other extravagant, self-indulgent public works including his tomb, supported by policies of military conscription, heavy taxation, and forced labor, had imposed a terrible financial and social cost. Toward the end of his life, fearing assassination, Chin Shi Huangdi became reclusive. He died in 210 b.c., and his empire collapsed. After eight years of widespread rebellions, Liu Pang founded the Han dynasty. The first-century-b.c. historian Sima Qian described Chin Shi Huangdis tomb as a microcosm of the universe. Ironically, the first emperors obsessive quest for an elixir of life had probably caused his madness and death he had ingested mercury as a means to immortality. Because it was intended to serve as Chin Shi Huangdis capital in the afterlife, the necropolis has many of the elements of a living city: encircling walls, parks and gardens, buildings for officials and the army, cemetery walls, and, of course, a palace. It was built mainly underground by according to historical records a labor force of 700,000 conscripts from all over China, over a period of thirty-six years. The 7,500-strong terra-cotta army stood guard in three vaults, about 0.75 mile 1.2 kilometers to the east. Their weapons were looted, possibly during the uprising after Chin Shi Huangdis death. The tomb complex proper, oriented perfectly to the cardinal points of the compass, was surrounded by a 65-foot-high 20-meter wall that enclosed the rectangular imperial tomb gardens, covering an area of about 1.3 by 0.6 miles 2.17 by 0.97 kilometers, In the center of the precinct stood the building in which funerary rituals were performed. Close to it on one side were three blocks housing the Residence of the Garden and Temple Officials on the other side were twenty-seven graves of Chin Shi Huangdis high-ranking counselors and bureaucrats, buried with him so they could continue to serve him. Nearly 100 other pits now containing the skeletons of horses and terra-cotta grooms were the emperors eternal stables. It is thought that other pits containing clay models of plants and birds were evocations of his parks and gardens The building known as the Main House, a sort of servery for Chin Shi Huangdis food, stood near the 164-foot 50-meter pyramidal grave mound, axially located at the southern end of the complex, within a second walled enclosure, measuring 749 by 632 yards 685 by 578 meters. There was a wide gate on each side. The burial chamber was lined with a waterproofing layer of bronze sheets. The tomb is believed to have been an opulent palace that accommodated all the emperors needs, based on his accustomed extravagant lifestyle. According to reports, it was rich withfine utensils, precious stones and rarities. There were scale models of palaces, towers, and official buildings, and a mechanically circulated system in which rivers of mercury represented the rivers of China and the Pacific Ocean, under a ceiling studded with pearls describing the constellations. Lamps burned whale oil to illuminate the space, and crossbow booby traps were installed to kill grave-robbers. An official account reads,Once the First Emperor was placed in the burial chamber and the treasures were sealed up, the middle and outer gates were shut to imprison all those who had worked on the tomb. No one came out. Trees and grass were then planted over the mausoleum to make if look like a hill cited in Cotterell 1981, 17. Archeological excavations continue at the site. Yuan Zhongyi, leader of the team of archeologists working on the grave site, believes that the burial ground extends over an area of about 20 square miles 50 square kilometers only a fifth of it has been uncovered. Work is funded by proceeds from the museum at the terra-cotta warriors site most of the money is used to maintain that site, but in 1997, Yuan Zhongyis annual budget was only U.S.$25,000, about a tenth of what is needed. Consequently, the dig at the tomb was temporarily suspended. The team also lacked the special conservation skills needed to handle the 2,000-year-old artifacts of silk and wood. Work resumed in 1999, and new discoveries continue.
37. CIAM International Congresses of Modern Architecture
Founded in 1928, the International Congresses of Modern Architecture in French, Congres Internationaux dArchitecture ModerneCIAM was the chief propagandist of avant-garde notions of architecture and urbanismthe voice of the Modern Movementfrom 1930 to 1934 and again from 1950 to 1955. CIAM contended that architecture was inextricably linked with politics and economics and encouraged architects to turn from purely artistic endeavors to engage in social-engineering experiments with new urban and architectural formsespecially in housing. It was a principal milestone in the evolution of Western architectural thought.
The Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier unsuccessfully took part in a 1927 design competition for a new League of Nations center in Geneva and submitted a design that was not in a historical revivalist style. Rather, it responded to function and zeitgeistthe spirit of the age. Although his entry was rejected, ostensibly because it was not drawn in ink, it is most probable that conservative jury members conspired against the modernist proposal. The consequent scandal propelled Le Corbusier into the limelight, identifying him with avant-garde architecture. Some historians believe that an immediate outcome of the incident was the birth of CIAM. More positive impetus was given by the international acclaim for the Deutscher Werkbunds Weissenhofsiedlung 1927 in Stuttgart, Germany.
In Europe, the second half of the 1920s witnessed an interchange of the radical notions of contemporary architecture, largely effected by the modernist control of journals. Through publications and conferences and by their contributions to Weissenhof, many German, Russian, Dutch, and French architects showed themselves eager to meet thedemands of industrialization as great changes occurred in social structure. Acting together, architects could apply unified pressure to bring about the urbanistic and housing reforms they all believed to be urgently necessary.
In 1928 F. T. Gubler, secretary of the Swiss chapter of the Deutscher Werkbund, suggested to Madame Helene de Mandrot that she offer her chateau at La Sarraz, Switzerland, for a meeting of twenty-five of Europes leading architects. Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland were represented. At a three-day gathering in June, facilitated by Le Corbusier and the Swiss critic Siegfried Giedion, CIAM was formed. The group was unanimous that rationalization and standardization must be priorities if the urbanistic and housing problems that each faced at home were to be humanely solved. The creation of CIAM, in an attempt to impose an international order on the varying aspects of thenew architecture, established Modernism as a unified movement, complete with a manifesto and statutes. It even had a committee and an official address in Zurichthat of Giedion, who was elected as the founding secretary. Another Swiss, the architect Karl Moser, was CIAMs first president.
The La Sarraz meeting, really a clearinghouse for ideas, was dominated by Le Corbusier. But the Dutchman Mart Stam and the Swiss Hannes Meyer composed the closing declaration, simply restating thebest aspirations andfashionable fetishes of the day and railing against academic conservatism. The second congress at Frankfurt 1929 dealt with more substantial issues, and discussion centered around Giedions notion of existenzenminimumlow-cost residential units. As its deliberations were focused on urbanism and housing policies, CIAM was obliged to enter the political lists. Giedion argued that, in the same way that the individual living unit leads to the organization of construction methods, those methods lead to the organization of the entire citya materialistic doctrine that ignored the complex social interactions, especially of the industrial city. City planning was therefore simplyarchitecture writ large. CIAM formed the Committee for Resolving the Problems of Contemporary Architecture French acronym CIRPAC.
At the Brussels congress of November 1930, the Dutch architect-planner Cornelis van Eesteren was elected president, an office he held until 1947. The appointment flagged CIAMs shift toward rationalist urban planning policies, and the theme for the 1933 congressthe first of a planned serieswasThe Functional City. After a conference planned for Moscow was canceled, members took aworking
cruise between Marseilles and Athens aboard Patris II. The outcome was the provocative Athens Charter, published anonymously in 1943, which reviewed earlier discussions, restated the capitalistic barriers to acceptable urban renewal or design, and identified the new problems of regional planning and urban contextuality. The charter was the closest CIAM ever came to a definitive credo. But it offered no specific solutions except the familiar generic one: modern technology. It called for balance between individual and community requirements for dominance of the landscape over buildings, including generous urban green areas for due consideration of physical environmental factors for the conservation of historic buildings and for separation of the main urban functions living, working, recreation, and a carefully designed transport infrastructure. Moreover, housing should take priority among the urban planning. Legislation should ensure the provision of all these qualities. In it can be seen a legacy that persists in present land-use planning and zoning. The Italian historians Manfredo Tafuri and Francesco Dal Co offer the following criticism:
To it probably belongs the credit for having founded a large measure of the predominant ideology of modern architecture, endowing architects with a model of action as flexible as it was already out of dale
38. Circus Maximus
Rome, Italy
The Circus Maximus stood in the Murcia Valley, between the Palatine and the Aventine Hills, the largest and oldest of the four chariot-racing tracks in ancient Rome. It was extended under various administrations until the time of Julius Caesar 100 44 b.c.. His alterations, and those ordered by his nephew, the emperor Augustus reigned 27 b.c. a.d. 14, created a building about 2,035 feet long by 460 wide 620 by 140 meters, with an arena measuring 1,850 by 280 feet 564 by 85 meters. On each side concrete vaults supported tiers of seats that accommodated at least 150,000 spectators: some sources put the number above 200,000, and others even more. For the purposes of comparison, the Houston Astrodome has a capacity of around 62,000, and Australias Melbourne Cricket Ground holds only 100,000 spectators. Like many Roman public edifices, the circus, while not entirely a new building type it was based on the Greek hippodrome, was built on a scale that the world had not seen before. Founded when the city was part of the Etruscan kingdom ca. 600 b.c., the Circus Maximus remained the major site of diversions for the Roman populace for over a thousand years. The brook that ran through the Murcia Valley was diverted to a culvert, over which the central barrier spina of the hairpin track was constructed. The original circus was built of wood, but it was rebuilt and enlarged several times. In 196 b.c., Lucius Stertinius built an arch facing the starting gate, and a year or so later the censors for the games ordered the seating changed so that senators were separated from the plebeians. About thirty years later a vast stage was built for musicians and dancers, and the starting gate was altered. Julius Caesar commissioned a major reconstruction and extension in the first century b.c., and Augustus constructed a shrine that also served as an imperial box from which he could watch the races. In 10 b.c. he erected an obelisk on the spina to commemorate his conquest of Egypt, bringing the Circus Maximus to its greatest glory. Dionysius of Halicarnassus described the Augustan arena asone of the most beautiful and admirable structures in Rome. Following disastrous fires in the wooden parts of the structure in a.d. 103, Trajan again restored the Circus. Each of the three stories of seats was divided by aisles. Marble seats in the first tier were reserved for senatorsand for the equestrian class behind them. Senators were also allowed to sit along the podium that defined the track. The plebeians occupied the rows above the select seats. Unlike in other places of public entertainment, the sexes were allowed to sit togethera degree of permissiveness that some Romans considered scandalous. Events other than chariot racinganimal hunts, gladiatorial games, athletic competitions, and processionswere held in the Circus Maximus. In order to display wild beasts, Julius Caesar had a water-filled moat 10 feet wide and 10 feet deep 3 by 3 meters made around the arena. About a century later it was filled in to gain more seating space for safety reasons animal fights were discontinued and eventually staged at the Colosseum. Although all kinds of entertainment were popular, chariot races remained the Romans favorite spectator sport, probably for the excitement and the vicarious danger of the reckless races. The crowds fanatically supported the various professional racing factions, named for the colors worn by the charioteers: the red, green, blue, and white. The chariotsusually drawn by four horses started from twelve gates leading from the Forum Boarium, near the starters position. At the far end, where the track entered its sharp 180-degree turn, stood the triumphal arch built in a.d. 80 through which processions entered the arena. The spina was adorned with gilded shrines, including one to Consus, a god of the harvest, and another to Murcia at either end were the turning posts. Run under very strict rules, races comprised thirteen turns around those posts, a distance of approximately 4 miles 6.4 kilometers. During the reign of Augustus, Rome gave no fewer than seventy-seven days a year to public spectacles seventeen of those were for chariot races. Usually, twelve races were run each day, although the infamous emperor Gaius Caligula had the number doubled. It is reported that Domitian once had 100 races in a day but was forced, simply for the sake of time, to reduce the thirteen laps to five. By the fourth century a.d. the annual number of race days had risen to sixty-six. Convinced, possibly with good reason, that the circus was the devils playground, the church fathers later condemned it. Nevertheless, events continued to be organized well into the Christian era, and the last race was recorded in a.d. 549, seventy-five years after Rome had fallen to the barbarians. Now, the only visible remains of the Circus Maximus are at the semicircular end. The vaulted brick-and-concrete substructures of the seats on the Palatine side were uncovered by archeologists in the 1930s, and those excavations were extended in 1976. A few years later, work began on the Aventine side of the same end. Every spring, and sometimes in the fall, the Roseto Comunale, Romes municipal rose garden on the lower slopes of the Aventine, is opened to the public. Located about halfway along the southwestern side of the Circus Maximus, it presents a spectacle of a less exciting kind.
The Circus Maximus stood in the Murcia Valley, between the Palatine and the Aventine Hills, the largest and oldest of the four chariot-racing tracks in ancient Rome. It was extended under various administrations until the time of Julius Caesar 100 44 b.c.. His alterations, and those ordered by his nephew, the emperor Augustus reigned 27 b.c. a.d. 14, created a building about 2,035 feet long by 460 wide 620 by 140 meters, with an arena measuring 1,850 by 280 feet 564 by 85 meters. On each side concrete vaults supported tiers of seats that accommodated at least 150,000 spectators: some sources put the number above 200,000, and others even more. For the purposes of comparison, the Houston Astrodome has a capacity of around 62,000, and Australias Melbourne Cricket Ground holds only 100,000 spectators. Like many Roman public edifices, the circus, while not entirely a new building type it was based on the Greek hippodrome, was built on a scale that the world had not seen before. Founded when the city was part of the Etruscan kingdom ca. 600 b.c., the Circus Maximus remained the major site of diversions for the Roman populace for over a thousand years. The brook that ran through the Murcia Valley was diverted to a culvert, over which the central barrier spina of the hairpin track was constructed. The original circus was built of wood, but it was rebuilt and enlarged several times. In 196 b.c., Lucius Stertinius built an arch facing the starting gate, and a year or so later the censors for the games ordered the seating changed so that senators were separated from the plebeians. About thirty years later a vast stage was built for musicians and dancers, and the starting gate was altered. Julius Caesar commissioned a major reconstruction and extension in the first century b.c., and Augustus constructed a shrine that also served as an imperial box from which he could watch the races. In 10 b.c. he erected an obelisk on the spina to commemorate his conquest of Egypt, bringing the Circus Maximus to its greatest glory. Dionysius of Halicarnassus described the Augustan arena asone of the most beautiful and admirable structures in Rome. Following disastrous fires in the wooden parts of the structure in a.d. 103, Trajan again restored the Circus. Each of the three stories of seats was divided by aisles. Marble seats in the first tier were reserved for senatorsand for the equestrian class behind them. Senators were also allowed to sit along the podium that defined the track. The plebeians occupied the rows above the select seats. Unlike in other places of public entertainment, the sexes were allowed to sit togethera degree of permissiveness that some Romans considered scandalous. Events other than chariot racinganimal hunts, gladiatorial games, athletic competitions, and processionswere held in the Circus Maximus. In order to display wild beasts, Julius Caesar had a water-filled moat 10 feet wide and 10 feet deep 3 by 3 meters made around the arena. About a century later it was filled in to gain more seating space for safety reasons animal fights were discontinued and eventually staged at the Colosseum. Although all kinds of entertainment were popular, chariot races remained the Romans favorite spectator sport, probably for the excitement and the vicarious danger of the reckless races. The crowds fanatically supported the various professional racing factions, named for the colors worn by the charioteers: the red, green, blue, and white. The chariotsusually drawn by four horses started from twelve gates leading from the Forum Boarium, near the starters position. At the far end, where the track entered its sharp 180-degree turn, stood the triumphal arch built in a.d. 80 through which processions entered the arena. The spina was adorned with gilded shrines, including one to Consus, a god of the harvest, and another to Murcia at either end were the turning posts. Run under very strict rules, races comprised thirteen turns around those posts, a distance of approximately 4 miles 6.4 kilometers. During the reign of Augustus, Rome gave no fewer than seventy-seven days a year to public spectacles seventeen of those were for chariot races. Usually, twelve races were run each day, although the infamous emperor Gaius Caligula had the number doubled. It is reported that Domitian once had 100 races in a day but was forced, simply for the sake of time, to reduce the thirteen laps to five. By the fourth century a.d. the annual number of race days had risen to sixty-six. Convinced, possibly with good reason, that the circus was the devils playground, the church fathers later condemned it. Nevertheless, events continued to be organized well into the Christian era, and the last race was recorded in a.d. 549, seventy-five years after Rome had fallen to the barbarians. Now, the only visible remains of the Circus Maximus are at the semicircular end. The vaulted brick-and-concrete substructures of the seats on the Palatine side were uncovered by archeologists in the 1930s, and those excavations were extended in 1976. A few years later, work began on the Aventine side of the same end. Every spring, and sometimes in the fall, the Roseto Comunale, Romes municipal rose garden on the lower slopes of the Aventine, is opened to the public. Located about halfway along the southwestern side of the Circus Maximus, it presents a spectacle of a less exciting kind.
39. Clifton Suspension Bridge
Bristol, England
The River Avon rises in the Cotswolds and falls about 500 feet 150 meters in its 75-mile 120-kilometer course to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth. Near Bristol it passes through a channel that was cut in the nineteenth century to give access to oceangoing vessels, and then through the steep Clifton Gorge, where it is daringly crossed by the Clifton Suspension Bridge, 245 feet 75 meters above the water. The iron structure, with a main span of 702 feet 214 meters, challenged conventional wisdom and pushed the new material and contemporary technology beyond the theoretical limits. Bristols port of Avonmouth was a well-established center for coastwise and international shipping. As the nineteenth century saw accelerating growth in trade and economic prosperity, Bristols wealthier citizens wished to secure a market share for their city, and the renown that went with it, in the face of intense competition from such rivals as Liverpool. Perhaps they envied the prestigious bridge at Conwy, Wales, and the Menai Suspension Bridge, both designed by the Scots engineer Thomas Telford. Funds were in hand to start the project: the Bristol wine merchant William Vick, who died in 1754, had bequeathed
The River Avon rises in the Cotswolds and falls about 500 feet 150 meters in its 75-mile 120-kilometer course to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth. Near Bristol it passes through a channel that was cut in the nineteenth century to give access to oceangoing vessels, and then through the steep Clifton Gorge, where it is daringly crossed by the Clifton Suspension Bridge, 245 feet 75 meters above the water. The iron structure, with a main span of 702 feet 214 meters, challenged conventional wisdom and pushed the new material and contemporary technology beyond the theoretical limits. Bristols port of Avonmouth was a well-established center for coastwise and international shipping. As the nineteenth century saw accelerating growth in trade and economic prosperity, Bristols wealthier citizens wished to secure a market share for their city, and the renown that went with it, in the face of intense competition from such rivals as Liverpool. Perhaps they envied the prestigious bridge at Conwy, Wales, and the Menai Suspension Bridge, both designed by the Scots engineer Thomas Telford. Funds were in hand to start the project: the Bristol wine merchant William Vick, who died in 1754, had bequeathed
40. Cluny Abbey Church III
France
The town of Cluny in eastern Frances Burgundy region was important because of the Benedictine abbey jointly founded in 910 by Abbot St. Berno of Burgundy and William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine. The third convent on the site, the great Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul known as Cluny III mainly 1088 1130, was the largest church, monastic or otherwise, in the world until St. Peters, Rome, was completed in the seventeenth century. Cluny III was the high point of Romanesque architecture in France, and, heralding the Gothic, it emphasized the continuity of architecture. Its form and detail repudiate the idea of a succession of discrete styles, each somehow frozen in time. The reformist Benedictine community that originally occupied a Gallo-Roman villa in Cluny eventually developed an innovative system of centralized ecclesiastical government: by the fourteenth century the abbey controlled over 1,450 Cluniac foundations or priories from England to Poland to Palestine, which together could boast a complement of over 10,000 monks. After the pope himself, Clunys abbots were the most powerful clerics in the Roman Catholic Church and were at the epicenter of religious influence in Europe. Two earlier abbey churchesthe first, dedicated in 927, was succeeded by a larger building in 955 981were replaced at the end of the eleventh century by Cluny III, which commenced soon after the other monastery buildings had been rebuilt 1077 1085. The new church was over 440 feet 136 meters long the narthex and towers added in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries brought the total length to 600 feet 180 meters. The barrel-vaulted ceiling, especially acoustically suited to the Cluniac uninterrupted sung liturgy, soared 98 feet 30 meters above the floor. There were double transepts and double aisles to both the nave and choir the chevet end had five chapels. The ceiling of the crossing under a central tower was 119 feet 36 meters high. Yet Cluny III was remarkable not just for its size. Its form, emerging over more than a century, demonstrated the perpetual development of Western religious architecture. Since about 1000, the itinerant mason-architects of Europe had addressed their ecclesiastical clients demands for stone-ceiling churches perhaps prompted by fear of fire, dealing with the major structural problems that entailed. The need to manage the huge loads and thrusts involved had led although not all at once to a number of architectural and engineering innovations. Cluny III, a mature expression of the new form, incorporated them all, masterfully blending liturgical and structural necessitiesthe two towers at the west end to provide longitudinal stiffening vaulted aisles to brace the walls of the nave against the thrust of the stone vaults massive side walls reinforced with even thicker buttresses, employed for a similar reason small windows, creating the appearance of what someone calledthe fortresses of God and a complex east end, where apsidal chapels with hemidomes completed the lucidly articulated building, which showed exactly how the vast weight of the superstructure was gently coaxed down to the supporting earth. At the same time, Cluny III had many features that foreshadowed what would be commonplace just a few decades later: piers disguised as clusters of narrow columns, elegantly tall proportions, pointed arches a lesson from Islam, and sophisticated vault construction. It also had beautifully carved decorations, giving a glimpse of the reemergence of naturalism. Some sources claim that here were to be found some of the first medieval sculptural allegories dating from 1095 and the prototype for many carved and painted west portals dating from 1109 to 1115. Cluny III influenced a few great buildings for example, Paray-le-Monial, La Charite-sur-Loire, and Autun Cathedral. But clergymen are notoriously conservative, and the impact of its avant-garde architecture was therefore limited. Indeed, the design was attacked in a Cistercian polemic even before the work was completed. Pope Urban II, who had been a novice and later prior at Cluny, consecrated the high altar of the unfinished church on 25 October 1095. He announced that its community had reachedso high a stage of honor and religion that without doubt Cluny surpassed all other monasteries, even the most ancient. The abbey and the town both suffered in the religious wars of the sixteenth century. Early in the French Revolution the abbey was suppressed and then closed in 1790. Most of the basilica was demolished a few years later, and only ruins of the main southern transept and bell tower hint at what was once the greatest church in Christendom.
The town of Cluny in eastern Frances Burgundy region was important because of the Benedictine abbey jointly founded in 910 by Abbot St. Berno of Burgundy and William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine. The third convent on the site, the great Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul known as Cluny III mainly 1088 1130, was the largest church, monastic or otherwise, in the world until St. Peters, Rome, was completed in the seventeenth century. Cluny III was the high point of Romanesque architecture in France, and, heralding the Gothic, it emphasized the continuity of architecture. Its form and detail repudiate the idea of a succession of discrete styles, each somehow frozen in time. The reformist Benedictine community that originally occupied a Gallo-Roman villa in Cluny eventually developed an innovative system of centralized ecclesiastical government: by the fourteenth century the abbey controlled over 1,450 Cluniac foundations or priories from England to Poland to Palestine, which together could boast a complement of over 10,000 monks. After the pope himself, Clunys abbots were the most powerful clerics in the Roman Catholic Church and were at the epicenter of religious influence in Europe. Two earlier abbey churchesthe first, dedicated in 927, was succeeded by a larger building in 955 981were replaced at the end of the eleventh century by Cluny III, which commenced soon after the other monastery buildings had been rebuilt 1077 1085. The new church was over 440 feet 136 meters long the narthex and towers added in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries brought the total length to 600 feet 180 meters. The barrel-vaulted ceiling, especially acoustically suited to the Cluniac uninterrupted sung liturgy, soared 98 feet 30 meters above the floor. There were double transepts and double aisles to both the nave and choir the chevet end had five chapels. The ceiling of the crossing under a central tower was 119 feet 36 meters high. Yet Cluny III was remarkable not just for its size. Its form, emerging over more than a century, demonstrated the perpetual development of Western religious architecture. Since about 1000, the itinerant mason-architects of Europe had addressed their ecclesiastical clients demands for stone-ceiling churches perhaps prompted by fear of fire, dealing with the major structural problems that entailed. The need to manage the huge loads and thrusts involved had led although not all at once to a number of architectural and engineering innovations. Cluny III, a mature expression of the new form, incorporated them all, masterfully blending liturgical and structural necessitiesthe two towers at the west end to provide longitudinal stiffening vaulted aisles to brace the walls of the nave against the thrust of the stone vaults massive side walls reinforced with even thicker buttresses, employed for a similar reason small windows, creating the appearance of what someone calledthe fortresses of God and a complex east end, where apsidal chapels with hemidomes completed the lucidly articulated building, which showed exactly how the vast weight of the superstructure was gently coaxed down to the supporting earth. At the same time, Cluny III had many features that foreshadowed what would be commonplace just a few decades later: piers disguised as clusters of narrow columns, elegantly tall proportions, pointed arches a lesson from Islam, and sophisticated vault construction. It also had beautifully carved decorations, giving a glimpse of the reemergence of naturalism. Some sources claim that here were to be found some of the first medieval sculptural allegories dating from 1095 and the prototype for many carved and painted west portals dating from 1109 to 1115. Cluny III influenced a few great buildings for example, Paray-le-Monial, La Charite-sur-Loire, and Autun Cathedral. But clergymen are notoriously conservative, and the impact of its avant-garde architecture was therefore limited. Indeed, the design was attacked in a Cistercian polemic even before the work was completed. Pope Urban II, who had been a novice and later prior at Cluny, consecrated the high altar of the unfinished church on 25 October 1095. He announced that its community had reachedso high a stage of honor and religion that without doubt Cluny surpassed all other monasteries, even the most ancient. The abbey and the town both suffered in the religious wars of the sixteenth century. Early in the French Revolution the abbey was suppressed and then closed in 1790. Most of the basilica was demolished a few years later, and only ruins of the main southern transept and bell tower hint at what was once the greatest church in Christendom.
