Main entry:

Kostof, Spiro, author.

Title & Author:

A history of architecture : settings and rituals / Spiro Kostof ; original drawings by Richard Tobias.

Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 1985.

Description:

788 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 29 cm

Notes:
Includes index.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
[Table of Contents] -- PART ONE. -- A Place on Earth -- CHAPTER 1. -- The Study of What We Built -- The History of Architecture -- The Total Context of Architecture -- CHAPTER 2. -- The Cave and the Sky: Stone Age Europe -- The Beginning -- Old Stone Age Architecture -- The Cave at Lascaux -- New Stone Age Architecture -- The Temples of Malta -- Stonehenge -- CHAPTER 3. -- The Rise of the City: Architecture In Western Asia -- The Urban Revolution -- Stirrings of Urban Consciousness-- The Cities of Mesopotamia -- CHAPTER 4. -- The Architecture of Ancient Egypt -- The Land of Egypt -- The Burial of Kings -- The Time of the Gods -- Survival of the Egyptian Temple -- CHAPTER 5. -- Bronze Age Cities: The Aegean and Asia Minor -- Asia Minor - Mycenaeans and Minoans -- The Closing of the Bronze Age -- CHAPTER 6. -- The Greek Temple and "Barbarian Alternatives -- The Passing of the Bronze Age -- The Emergence of Greece -- The Greek Temple -- CHAPTER 7. -- Polis and Akropolis -- Athens and Her Empire -- The Shape of the Polis -- Athens - "The Eye of Greece" -- CHAPTER 8. -- The Hellenistic Realm -- The New Order -- The Hellenistic Temple -- Religious Settings -- The Noble Metropolis -- CHAPTER 9. -- Rome: Caput Mundi -- Early Roman Architecture -- Components of a Roman Town: Pompeii -- The Look of Empire: Rome at the Millennium -- CHAPTER 10. -- The World At Large: Roman Concurrences -- The Roman Cosmos -- Beyond the Empire -- The Other Ancient World -- A Continent Alone -- PART TWO. -- Measuring Up -- CHAPTER 11. -- The Triumph of Christ -- The Turning Point: Third-Century Rome -- Housing the Kingdom of Heaven -- The Primacy of Constantinople -- CHAPTER 12. -- The Mediterranean In The Early Middle Ages -- The Decline of the West -- Carolingian Restoration -- The Empire of Muhammed -- CHAPTER 13. -- The Birth Of Nations: Europe After Charles -- Europe from Charles to Otto -- The Eleventh Century -- The Romanesque Church -- Italian Counterpoint -- CHAPTER 14. -- The French Manner -- The Romanesque and Opus Modernum -- Chartres -- Gothic Abroad -- CHAPTER 15. -- The Urbanization of Europe, 1100-1300 -- The City Returns -- Bourgeois Architecture, Public and Private -- An Urban Contrast: Cairo and Florence -- CHAPTER 16. -- Edges of Medievalism -- Florence at the Crossroads -- The City Center -- Europe in the Fourteenth Century -- Aging Traditions Abroad -- CHAPTER 17. -- The Renaissance: Ideal and Fad -- The First Advance -- The Prince and the People: Patronage in Northern Italy -- The Italianate Craze -- CHAPTER 18. -- Spain and the New World -- The American Scene -- The Spanish Scene -- CHAPTER 19. -- Istanbul and Venice -- A Turkish Renaissance -- The Consummation of Venice -- CHAPTER 20. -- The Popes As Planners: Rome, 1450-1650 -- Making the City Whole -- "A Pasture for the Bodily Senses" -- CHAPTER 21. -- Absolutism and Bourgeoisie: European Architecture, 1600-1750 -- The Roman Baroque -- France: The Grand Siècle -- The Face of Protestantism -- PART THREE -- The Search for Self -- CHAPTER 22. -- Architecture For A New World -- Europe in Ferment -- A World to Choose From -- Form and Reform -- CHAPTER 23. -- Architectural Art and the Landscape of Industry, 1800-1850 -- A Matter of Styles -- The Iron Age -- CHAPTER 24. -- The American Experience -- Colonial Dependence -- Architecture for a Nation -- Greece for All Seasons -- CHAPTER 25. -- Victorian Environments -- The Gilded Age -- Victorian America -- CHAPTER 26. -- The Trials of Modernism -- Urban Choices -- Toward a Twentieth-Century Architecture -- CHAPTER 27. -- Architecture and the State: Interwar Years -- The Twenties -- The Other Side -- The Language of Power -- CHAPTER 28. -- At Peace With the Past: The Last Decades -- The International Style -- The "Return" of History.

Summary:

Ten years in the making, A History of Architecture ranges from the first prehistoric environments on record to the most recent examples of urban design. A landmark work of impressive scope, the book is enhanced by 700 halftone illustrations and 150 drawings especially prepared by architect Richard Tobias. Kostof's range of study includes not only the monumental religious, governmental and upper-class structures around which architectural history has usually been written but also the diversity of ordinary domestic, rural, and urban buildings, and landscapes which surround them. Moreover, Kostof evaluates Western achievement in the context of contemporary cultures elsewhere. Thus he discusses the high points of imperial Rome along with Buddhist stupas and Han palaces, compares medieval Florence with medieval Cairo, and introduces Inca and Aztec cities as the Spanish conquistadores would have seen them. The author's premise is that buldings are conditioned by the social, economic, and political frame of their time; in this sense, Kostof concludes, the history of architecture can be considered an aspect of the history of human institutions. "Architecture, in the end," he writes, "is nothing less than the gift of making places for some human purpose."

Resources:
Table of contents
Publisher description

ISBN:

0195034724
9780195034721
0195034732 (pbk.)
9780195034738 (pbk.)

Subject:

Architecture History.
Architecture - Histoire.
Architecture Histoire.
Architecture
Architektur
Geschichte
Bouwkunst.
Architecture, to 1986

Form/genre:

History
Books.

Added entries:

Tobias, Richard, illustrator.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 64765
Call No.: ID:85-B8839
Status: Available