The study of architecture and the arts in Greece and South Italy from the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic times from both an historical and a mathematical perspective. The architectural theory draws upon Vitruvius and discuses its various redescriptions from Alberti onwards till contemporary interpretations. The formal theory draws upon Euclidean geometry, Pythagorean arithmetic, and theory of proportion and symmetry. The examples are culled from the early bronze-age to works of the Hellenistic and Roman period and include the architecture of the Greek temples, houses, courtyards, stoas, theaters, stadia to the early instances of libraries and basilicas.

This course is part of a three-course sequence on the interrelated subjects of town-planning, architecture, and the arts from the Bronze Age to the eighteenth century in Greece and Italy. This course is distinguished from the second and third in the sequence by its emphasis on the archaic, classical and Hellenistic Greek period. The core of the class is a two-and-a-half-week intensive, on-site, study of cities, buildings, sculpture, and painting of the ancient Greek world in Greece and South Italy. The course includes visits and lectures on some of the most important sites and museums of the ancient Greek world, including Mycenae, Tiryns, Akrotiri, Athens, Delphi, Olympia, Epidauros, and Delos in Greece; and Taras, Metaponto and Paestum in South Italy.

The course may be taken well as a prequel or sequel to the ARCH 6210: Architectonics, with a shifted emphasis in examples drawn from on-site visits during the study abroad program.


Syllabus