Classical Civilization - Greece

Origin of Classical Greece, Ancient Greece breaks down to two location. Minoan and Mycenaean. 

Mycenaean inhabited in mainland Greece.  Minoan was centered on the island of Crete. While Mycenaean chose to locate on the mountain, Minoan chose to keep the distance from it.




-Minoan ( 2000 - 1400 B.C.E)

Their most important structure was the palace, not a temple.  Civilization was named after king Minos, the monarch and builder of the largest palace, Knossos.  The palace is considered to be very significant, in scale, symmetry, and decorated walls. I was astonished by their invention of structures and how they created this design without any precedent.  The biggest take away from this building is that structure of column, weight of the structures above is distributed to the wider top of column and down to the skinnier bottom. Famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright also took idea from this design to minimize the amount of ground space.



-Mycenaean (1600 - 1100 B.C.E.)

It was located in main island of Greece, on top of mountain. Rather than palace, the most fantastic type of architecture is considered to be beehive tombs. The structures were consists of post-and-lintel, with triangle shape was left above the lintel, to reduce the weight on top of the lintel and allowed weights to be distributed.



Classical Greece's temple development was very interesting.  The reason for why series of columns were left in the middle of temple was simply because they could not figure out how to reduce them without supporting the building structures.







-Artifacts

Sadly material that they mainly used for furnitures, such as; wood and straw, they were not preserved as it did in Egypt.  Climates were not as dry due to the location near by the ocean.  It was hard for us to figure out what their lifestyle were like, until they discovered many potteries that were survived.  They were painted in the side, which usually their lifestyle.  I found very interesting how all the human figure in the pictures are drawn in the side. Faces are all facing in the side.  I was surprised how accurate those details that were made.


-Current application

Many people still appreciate Greek designs.




Architect like Frank Lloyd Wright appreciated Greek column that has great function, as well as aesthetics.

Johnson wax building in Racine, Wisconsin. (1951)