A Global History of Architecture 3rd Edition

Book Name: A Global History of Architecture 3rd Edition
Author: Francis D. K. Ching, Mark M. Jarzombek, Vikramaditya Prakash
Publisher: Wiley
ISBN-10, 13: 1118981332,9781118981337
Year: 2017
Pages: 864 / 866 Pages
Language: English
File size: 153 MB
File format: PDF,EPUB

A Global History of Architecture 3rd Edition Pdf Book Description:

What is a global history of architecture? There is, of course, no single answer, just as there is no single way to define words like global, history, and architecture. Nonetheless, these words are not completely open ended, and they serve here as the vectors that have helped us construct the narratives of this volume. With this book, we hope to provoke discussion about these terms and at the same time furnish a framework students can use to begin discussion in the classroom. This book transcends the necessary restrictions of the classroom, where in a semester or even two, the teacher has to limit what is taught based on any number of factors. The reader should understand that there is always something over the horizon. Whereas any such book must inevitably be selective about what it can include, we have attempted to represent a wide swath of the globe, in all its diversity. At the same time,however, the book does not aspire to be an encyclopedia of everything that has been built; nor does it assume a universal principle that governs everything architectural.

The buildings included are for us more than just monuments of achievement; we see them as set pieces allowing us to better appreciate the complex intertwining of social, political, religious, and economic contexts in which they are positioned. As much as possible, we emphasize urban contexts as well as materials and surfaces. We have also tried to emphasize quality as much as quantity. From that point of view, the word global in the title is not so much a geographic construct as an eruditional horizon. In that sense, this book is not about the sum of all local histories. Its mission is bound to the discipline of architecture, which requires us to see connections, tensions, and associations that transcend so-called local perspectives. In that respect, ours is only one of many possible narratives. Synchrony has served as a powerful frame for our discussion. For instance, as much as Seoul’s Gyeongbok Palace is today heralded in Korea as an example of traditional Korean architecture, we note that it also belongs to a Eurasian building campaign that stretched from Japan (the Katsura Imperial Villa), through China (Beijing and the Ming Tombs), to Persia (Isfahan), India (the Taj Mahal), Turkey (the Suleymaniye Complex), Italy (St. Peter’s Basilica and the Villa Rotonda), France (Chambord), and Russia (Cathedral of the Assumption). In some cases, one can assume that information flowed from place to place, but such movement is not itself a requirement for the architecture to qualify as “global.” It is enough for us to know, first, that these structures are contemporaneous and that each has a specific history. If there are additional connections that come as a result of trade, war, or other forms of contact, these are for us subsidiary to contemporaneity.