Architecture History: Early Greek Architecture (Minoan & Troy / Troia) [University Online Lecture]

And this is very inspiring because as I brought here in the title already, you have two, I call it stylistic principles that are antagonistic, that means they stand against each other. So antagonistic means like black and white, or like bright and dark, or cold and warm. So they are just the opposite, that means antagonistic. And in the south of the area we developed something called the labyrinth. It's really the word labyrinth, like the maze comes from that. And the other one is called the Megaron. And actually what happens then in that, do you see slide two now? What happens then to that area politically will have a big decision on the whole architecture of Europe. So this map you have seen already, today I talk about the dark green circle, so the one kind of in the middle of the map. And it's also the bar in the middle of the timeline, so it starts roughly between 2600 BC and again it doesn't go continuously, so it's interrupted and this and that. And then actually the culture on the island, on Crete, it extincted around 1150 BC. So this is the dark green bar and also the circle, the one in the middle, so kind of that marks the island, the island is called Crete. And to zoom in again, so we have this kind of three high cultures parallel, about the left one I spoke last time, Mesopotamia. The Egyptian one will be the blue bar, will be the second lecture today, that's more continuous. And the Egypt, sorry, the Aegean culture is actually not a continuous big empire like the Egyptian was, the Egyptian was kind of an empire. And the Aegean is more like blue cities, cities that actually develop interesting architecture. And I wrote additionally in English mostly what you see. So let's look on the left hand of the paper first, you see a map, right? And this is where I zoom into the dark green circle, and this is where today Greece is, so the country Greece. So these are the two principles that I will talk about in my first lecture, and I will focus on that because it's so important for how we can design architecture. So on the right side, we see actually what became then the standard also nowadays. That's why your task today will go back to these two principles. You have to design or sketch a small house for, let's say, two times two people, like the right principle and one time on the left principle to put that against each other. More impression, a bit romantic. The 19th century loved to do everything romantic, so that's why they probably rebuilt it to, so tourists can go, and also beautiful. So that's why they rebuilt it there. So the blue circle I just completed, Creta, now we go to the top side of the map, red and green, and look like, for example, on the right. So they developed the Megaron, and as I said, Creta, the island on the south eventually died. So probably a volcano erupted next to the island in the ocean, so not on the island, but it make the island be, how you say, the dust, how you call that again? I forgot, when you burn fire, the ashes. So the ashes in the earth, in the sky, probably made that there's not enough sunlight on the earth, and actually the harvest was dying, so they couldn't grow corn, and they didn't have to eat, and they basically starved. So the culture died by starving of the population, and some of them maybe moved away, they didn't want to starve. So that's why the culture around 1150 before Christ, the Minoan culture really kind of died, and it extincted. The second theory is because we haven't found on Creta any walls to, say, for example, the palace. The palace is open, as you could see on these drawings. It doesn't have a wall surrounding, which is very untypical for a king palace, so everyone could go there and invade it, and it's the main political center, right? So still no one knows why there's no wall, not just this palace, also the other palaces had no walls to protect them, and we don't know why, we really don't know why, because everyone could go there and invade the political core of the city. But all the other cultures know about it, so they had trainings, they went there every day, not every day, but they know how it looked like, so it was not secret. So the second theory is that actually finally someone invaded Creta, maybe the Mekinian, and destroyed and defeated them. But that's just plan B. So the most common theory, plan A, I call it version 1, version A, is that it was died by a volcano eruption, which made the harvest die, so no more food. So on the north side they survived, and as you see on the right plan, that's Troy, or Troia, how the Americans say, Troy, and Greeks say Troia. Yeah, I find this version a bit naive, so I'm more in favor of the Minoan version, how they built space, so this fluid space, this continuous space. It's more intelligent, you can actually add more rooms, and as you see in the 20th century we do that again, this kind of continuous space, for example Mies van der Rohe, but also other examples in the modern times followed Mies van der Rohe. But still, most of the periods of architecture after that period followed the right principle that you see on Troy, which is the Megaron, which is the house as a box. You see when you look on the floor plan of the center of Troy on the right, you see different rectangles just placed next to each other, one, two, three, four, five, six. So there are two red ones, right, and then three blue, and they're just like all parallel, and another, number five is the entrance, another Megaron, connect to the wall, so this is the inner circle of the city. And there are the temples and the king buildings and administration buildings, so just the most important ones there, and they're usually on top of hills, as you see on the lower graphic, and then the city actually developed around it. So the city developed around it and sometimes got another wall, like you see on Troy, there's another second wall, which is white. So if enemies invaded the first wall, they could destroy where the normal people live, but then they actually could flee into the main one, so this was like a refugee fortress, like a castle, like a fort. So you could close the main one and all people are then, for a short time, in the first one, until the enemy is beaten, or maybe not beaten, so it's like a refuge for safety, like to flee there into case of war. So in the Acropolis, that's why it's not so big, so that's what Acropolis means, it's kind of a fortress on the peak of a hill, which is usually the center of administration for the cities that then developed around that fortress. And Troy is very famous. Why is Troy famous? That's on the right, on the green circle, by the way, but as I said, the design principles are the same. So here you can see it better, so this is another city, this is Turin, the fortress on a hill, and it's a bit random, I find. So on the left side you see how random it is, but on the right side you see the principles of the Megaron here are a bit combined with the courtyard principles from the Minoan, but number 5 is the main one. And the 7s are other Megarons, as you can see, 5 is the big one, and then 7, 7, 7 is just parallel to the others, same like here in Troy. So I find it a bit silly, but that's how they thought of space, as boxes, box, box, box. And this is kind of the king apartment there on the right side. And this is a reconstruction, so this is how these kind of Megarons looked like. They were higher, they had a roof, which has an orientation, so it's axial, so it looks a bit like a Greek temple, right? Especially on the right, when they assume already it might have this kind of beam decoration, the architrave, how it developed later. But they placed the Minoan inverted columns, because they didn't have their own decoration. As I said, they steal the style from the Minoans, probably also the inverted column, but it's like a house, as I said, you see how it looks like a house, right? And connected with walls, same as the courtyard principle from the Minoan, so they copied it a bit, but the main element is the Megaron, the house, the box. So why is Troy famous? Going to Troy, on the right side, on the top you see the spelling, so Troia is the Greek spelling, and Troy is how the Americans call it. And you see on the right side, Troy had many periods, Troy 1 until 8, so it lived long, and then actually, people, interesting enough, they forgot where it is. So until 19th century, we didn't know if Troy actually really exists, or if it's just a tale. Why is it a tale? You see on the left side the big horse, right? Do you know about that story? They have some Hollywood movies about it. Have you seen one, maybe? The movie is about this horse, right? Do you know about that? Yes. Yeah, okay. And this story comes from, maybe it's on my next slide. No, it's on the slide after. Okay, it comes from, how did I show that slide first? So it comes from Homer, on the left side you see his picture, his sculpture, Homer, or maybe, how do you say it in English? They call it Homer, that's why Homer Simpson, actually, the main character from The Simpsons, the name goes back to that guy that you see there. But it's a bit like parody, because Homer Simpson is not so smart, right? And Homer, actually, the one on the left side, is known to be the first writer or poet. So he wrote the first texts that are non-religious, so the first fictional texts, I mean, the first texts we have preserved are religious, like from India and part of the Bible. But these are the first fiction tales, and there are basically two books, one is called The Odyssey, this is the travel of Odysseus in the sea, in the Aegean Sea, actually, that you could see on the map. And the other one is the story about Troy. So, and the book is called Ilias, and Ilias, how the Greeks say, Ilias, and it's about the fights of the, the defend of the city Troy. So when we go back to that slide, the movie, the famous part of the book, the book describes the part where the city is actually invaded by the wooden horse. So the enemies put an army inside the wooden horse and gave it a gift, they opened the door, left it there overnight, and then in the night the soldiers came out of the wooden horse and opened the door. So that's the story, and they made movies about it, and still, to be honest, it's not sure that the city on the right side is actually really Troy. Because it was the historical city, as we found there had many phases and episodes, as you can see on the right side, and then it was really forgotten where it is, we didn't know where it was. But that time he had to talk with the Turkish government already, so it was a bit more developed, like on Crete, and get the permission to dig in, and he did, and he found walls, and he found something, he said, I found Troy, I found Troja. So the modern architecture had its ancestor there, and I find it very inspiring to see these two principles next to each other.