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Architecture
/ a brief structural history

From the megalith to the megacity. Thirteen sheets tracing how humans have shaped, stacked, vaulted, and printed space — and what each era carried forward into the next.

4500 BC — 2026 AD
13 sheets
Drawn @ 1:200
Title Block
Project
Architecture / History
Sheet
A-01 / 13
Scale
1 : 200
Date
2026-05-02
c. 4500 BC  ·  Megalithic

Stones standing up — the post and lintel.

Notes

  • The first deliberate architecture: heavy stones balanced into trilithons.
  • Stonehenge, Carnac, the dolmens of western Europe — ritual, alignment, astronomy.
  • Two posts + one lintel = the base grammar of every doorway since.
  • Limit of the system: stone is strong in compression, weak in bending. Span stays short.
SPAN ~ 4.0 M H 4.5 M TRILITHON / STONEHENGE POST LINTEL
Title Block
Project
Megalithic Order
Sheet
A-02 / 13
Scale
1 : 100
Date
2026-05-02
c. 2700 BC  ·  Egyptian

Mass, geometry, and a stone mountain for a king.

Notes

  • Pyramids at Giza: pure geometric form scaled to landscape.
  • Bearing-wall masonry — nothing spans, everything stacks.
  • Tombs, temples, hypostyle halls — columns as forests of stone.
  • Architecture as proclamation: permanence, hierarchy, eternity.
BASE 230 M H 147 M GREAT PYRAMID / GIZA
Title Block
Project
Pyramid Complex
Sheet
A-03 / 13
Scale
1 : 2000
Date
2026-05-02
c. 500 BC  ·  Greek

The orders — rules of how a column meets a roof.

Notes

  • Doric: stout, fluted, no base. Ionic: scrolled volutes. Corinthian: acanthus leaves.
  • Each order is a complete grammar — proportion from base to entablature.
  • The Parthenon (447–432 BC): subtle optical corrections, entasis, no straight lines.
  • Architecture as music: ratio, rhythm, modular intercolumniation.
IONIC ORDER — ELEVATION 9 D / 9 DIAMETERS D = 1.0 CAPITAL SHAFT BASE
Title Block
Project
Classical Orders
Sheet
A-04 / 13
Scale
1 : 50
Date
2026-05-02
100 BC — 300 AD  ·  Roman

Concrete, the arch, and the dome.

Notes

  • The Roman arch redirects load sideways — spans grow, walls thin, openings widen.
  • Opus caementicium: volcanic-ash concrete poured into formwork. Architecture becomes plastic.
  • The Pantheon (118–128 AD): an unreinforced concrete dome 43 m across, oculus open to the sky.
  • Aqueducts, baths, basilicas — civic infrastructure as an architectural type.
PANTHEON / SECTION Ø 43.3 M OCULUS Ø 8.2
Title Block
Project
Pantheon, Rome
Sheet
A-05 / 13
Scale
1 : 500
Date
2026-05-02
1100 — 1500  ·  Gothic

Walls become bones — pointed arch + flying buttress.

Notes

  • Pointed arch directs thrust more vertically — vaults rise, bays vary in width.
  • Flying buttresses transfer outward thrust to detached piers, freeing the wall.
  • Glass replaces stone: rose windows, lancets, the cathedral as luminous cage.
  • Chartres, Notre-Dame de Paris, Reims — engineering and theology in one structure.
GOTHIC SECTION — ARCH + BUTTRESS THRUST PIER AISLE NAVE FLYER
Title Block
Project
Gothic Cathedral
Sheet
A-06 / 13
Scale
1 : 200
Date
2026-05-02
1400 — 1600  ·  Renaissance

The dome, reborn on geometry.

Notes

  • Vitruvius rediscovered. Architecture becomes a humanist discipline of ratio and harmony.
  • Brunelleschi, Florence (1420–36): a double-shell dome over an octagonal drum, no centring.
  • Alberti and Palladio codify the villa, the facade, the proportional plan.
  • St Peter's, Tempietto, Villa Rotonda — the building as cosmological diagram.
FLORENCE DUOMO / SECTION Ø 45.5 M (OCTAGONAL) DOUBLE SHELL
Title Block
Project
S. Maria del Fiore
Sheet
A-07 / 13
Scale
1 : 500
Date
2026-05-02
1600 — 1750  ·  Baroque

Drama, motion, the curved facade.

Notes

  • Renaissance order is bent into theatre. Walls undulate, light is staged.
  • Bernini: piazzas, colonnades, sculpture and architecture as one gesture.
  • Borromini: oval plans, geometric tessellation, San Carlino at the Quattro Fontane.
  • Versailles, the Wieskirche, St Peter's Square — architecture as choreography of power.
BAROQUE FACADE / PLAN CURVE CONVEX CONCAVE CONVEX
Title Block
Project
Baroque Facade
Sheet
A-08 / 13
Scale
1 : 100
Date
2026-05-02
19th c.  ·  The Industrial Frame

Iron, steel, and the building that wants to be a machine.

Notes

  • Cast iron and wrought iron span what stone could not. The frame becomes the structure.
  • Joseph Paxton, Crystal Palace (1851): prefabricated glass and iron, built in 9 months.
  • Eiffel Tower (1889): a wrought-iron lattice 300 m tall, lit at night.
  • Train sheds, arcades, department stores — the public interior is invented.
EIFFEL TOWER / ELEVATION 300 M PLATFORM 1 PLATFORM 2
Title Block
Project
Iron + Glass Era
Sheet
A-09 / 13
Scale
1 : 2000
Date
2026-05-02
1920s — 1970s  ·  Modern

"Form follows function." Ornament leaves the building.

Notes

  • Bauhaus (1919): art + craft + industry. Walter Gropius, Mies, Breuer.
  • Le Corbusier's Five Points: pilotis, free plan, free facade, ribbon window, roof garden.
  • Mies van der Rohe: "less is more" — the steel-and-glass curtain wall.
  • The skyscraper matures: structural core, mechanical floors, the elevator as a precondition.
MODERN SKYSCRAPER / SECTION MECH. CORE CURTAIN PILOTIS FLOORS x 30
Title Block
Project
Curtain-Wall Tower
Sheet
A-10 / 13
Scale
1 : 500
Date
2026-05-02
1970s — today  ·  Postmodern + Contemporary

The grid relaxes. The building learns to bend.

Notes

  • Robert Venturi: "Less is a bore." Reference, irony, the decorated shed return.
  • Frank Gehry, Bilbao (1997): titanium curves drawn with aerospace software.
  • Zaha Hadid: parametric continuity — floors, walls, ground flow into one another.
  • Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, SANAA — programme as form-generator.
CONTEMPORARY / FREE FORM DOUBLE-CURVED SHELL NURBS SURFACE BILBAO TYPE
Title Block
Project
Parametric Era
Sheet
A-11 / 13
Scale
N.T.S.
Date
2026-05-02
2000s — ahead  ·  Sustainability + Future

The building as a climate device.

Notes

  • Passive design: orientation, mass, shading, cross-ventilation — old ideas, recovered.
  • Mass timber (CLT, glulam) makes wood structurally competitive with concrete and steel.
  • Operational + embodied carbon become a design constraint, not an afterthought.
  • Generative tools, BIM, robotic fabrication, 3D-printed concrete — design as data.
PASSIVE / MASS-TIMBER SECTION SOUTH SUN CROSS VENTILATION PV ARRAY CLT PANEL
Title Block
Project
Passive / Mass Timber
Sheet
A-12 / 13
Scale
1 : 100
Date
2026-05-02
Sheet 13 / 13  ·  Closing

Further reading — and references.

Books

  • Vitruvius — De Architectura (c. 25 BC)
  • Banister Fletcher — A History of Architecture
  • Spiro Kostof — A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals
  • Robert Venturi — Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
  • Le Corbusier — Towards a New Architecture
  • Reyner Banham — Theory and Design in the First Machine Age

YouTube searches

Themes that recur

  • Every era inherits a span limit — and a way to cheat it.
  • Material, tool, and idea move together. None leads alone.
  • Buildings outlast the reasons they were built. We keep re-reading them.
Title Block
Project
References
Sheet
A-13 / 13
Scale
N.T.S.
Date
2026-05-02