How do people build in your world?
In my post about building materials, I started by bringing up the links between architecture and environment/setting. In this post I'm going to talk about the links between architecture and history. The buildings you choose to put in your world will tell readers (and the people of your world) about the history of these people and their civilization.
When we were in Europe we went to the city of Aosta in Italy. This city, we learned, was once called Augusta Praetoria, and was the place where Roman troops stopped for the winter before invading Gaul. It's been the center of its region since then. You wouldn't necessarily know this just by glancing at it from the highway, but if you walk into the town, it's hard to miss. Augustus' Arch, the Praetorian Gate, the Roman Theater... all are easy to access. The theater was great because it had a modern theater built right beside the ancient, crumbling one. Very cool - but that wasn't the most impressive part.
Aosta has a cathedral, built in the 11th century and remodeled a bit in the 15th and 16th centuries. It rises majestically above the roofs of the town - and that's all you see if you just walk by. If you go in, however, you can find the entrance of the church that was built before it, in the 3rd century. The cathedral was built right over the top of the old church, but the arches are still there, the columns and the carved capitals that were made in the years 200. If you then walk out of the cathedral and around the corner, you'll find the entrance to the Roman forum. Yes, the Roman forum is underneath the 3rd century church - and it's huge. It's this gigantic corridor of stone arches, now lit by electric light, and seeming way too huge to exist underneath two other buildings this far underground. I wish I could show you a photograph - but really you should go and see it with your own eyes. This gives the town the sense of permanence that I described in my post about building materials. It is set in stones more than two thousand years old.
How many fantasy or science fiction worlds do you know which have this kind of history reflected in their architecture? My answer would be, not as many as I'd like.
Just in case you're concerned that I'm suggesting everyone create modern Italy in their fictional worlds, that's not it at all. Paris is full of the architecture of other times, even down to the crypts underneath the city. Kyoto, Japan is similar, ranging from the ultra-modern to the ancient.
Kyoto is an interesting example because of the fact that their primary building material is wood, not stone. You can walk through the streets and see modern vending machines just ten feet away from the entrance to a small city shrine or temple. You can park your car (not that I ever had one) in the lot and walk in to see the temple of Sanjusangendo, originally built in the 12th century and containing more than a thousand statues carved in the 12th and 13th centuries. You can go visit the Kiyomizu temple, and then read about it in The Tale of Genji and realize that it wasn't new even in the year 1000, but was built back in the 8th century.
Ok, so at this point I'd like to ask another question. What kind of place doesn't have old buildings? There are several possibilities.
1. A place where people build structures that could potentially be permanent, but where some historical event has destroyed all structures over a certain age.
Tokyo is rather like this. It suffered the Great Kanto Earthquake, and then the carpet-bombings of World War II... and as a result, all of the oldest buildings date from a particular (more modern) era. In a case like this, it's important to consider what kind of impact a very destructive event will have on culture, and what less tangible evidence will be available in the mental states of the population.
2. A place where building materials are quickly broken down by the elements.
Jungle dwellings might well be like this. In this case, other evidence of human history might be available, like tools or artifacts of various types.
3. A place where the population is nomadic.
If the population is nomadic, then habitations have to be light enough to be carried. They may or may not be made from durable enough materials to be recognized as human tools/structures long after they have been abandoned.
4. A place where the cultural paradigm calls for constant renewal.
This is certainly a possibility. However, I can't see that it would make much sense for extremely durable architecture (stone, for example) to coexist with such a cultural paradigm. It would be much more likely to be present in a place where building materials broke down relatively quickly.
5. A place that has only recently become inhabited by humans.
Architecture in a place like this would probably be either made with local materials or with imported materials, but all more or less in the same architectural style, since everything would be built at the same time. Still, this lack of history is in itself a sort of history - indicating that the people are recent arrivals.
I'm sure there are other reasons why older architecture might not endure, but at this point I think it's worth pointing something out: the presence of architecture means something - and the absence of architecture also means something. So if you're creating a society and they don't have any old architecture, no problem - but make sure there's a good societal reason why it's not there. Think about where history is preserved in your society - in behaviors, in stories or written records, in artifacts or in buildings. What kinds of historical events might have influenced this world? In what kind of contexts might evidence of that history be available for discovery?
It's worth thinking about - and on that note, I think I'll include this link to some photos by Sergey Larenkov, which overlay images from World War II on images of the very same buildings from 2010.
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Monday, September 6, 2010
Architecture: how it reflects history and culture
How do people build in your world?
In my post about building materials, I started by bringing up the links between architecture and environment/setting. In this post I'm going to talk about the links between architecture and history. The buildings you choose to put in your world will tell readers (and the people of your world) about the history of these people and their civilization.
When we were in Europe we went to the city of Aosta in Italy. This city, we learned, was once called Augusta Praetoria, and was the place where Roman troops stopped for the winter before invading Gaul. It's been the center of its region since then. You wouldn't necessarily know this just by glancing at it from the highway, but if you walk into the town, it's hard to miss. Augustus' Arch, the Praetorian Gate, the Roman Theater... all are easy to access. The theater was great because it had a modern theater built right beside the ancient, crumbling one. Very cool - but that wasn't the most impressive part.
Aosta has a cathedral, built in the 11th century and remodeled a bit in the 15th and 16th centuries. It rises majestically above the roofs of the town - and that's all you see if you just walk by. If you go in, however, you can find the entrance of the church that was built before it, in the 3rd century. The cathedral was built right over the top of the old church, but the arches are still there, the columns and the carved capitals that were made in the years 200. If you then walk out of the cathedral and around the corner, you'll find the entrance to the Roman forum. Yes, the Roman forum is underneath the 3rd century church - and it's huge. It's this gigantic corridor of stone arches, now lit by electric light, and seeming way too huge to exist underneath two other buildings this far underground. I wish I could show you a photograph - but really you should go and see it with your own eyes. This gives the town the sense of permanence that I described in my post about building materials. It is set in stones more than two thousand years old.
How many fantasy or science fiction worlds do you know which have this kind of history reflected in their architecture? My answer would be, not as many as I'd like.
Just in case you're concerned that I'm suggesting everyone create modern Italy in their fictional worlds, that's not it at all. Paris is full of the architecture of other times, even down to the crypts underneath the city. Kyoto, Japan is similar, ranging from the ultra-modern to the ancient.
Kyoto is an interesting example because of the fact that their primary building material is wood, not stone. You can walk through the streets and see modern vending machines just ten feet away from the entrance to a small city shrine or temple. You can park your car (not that I ever had one) in the lot and walk in to see the temple of Sanjusangendo, originally built in the 12th century and containing more than a thousand statues carved in the 12th and 13th centuries. You can go visit the Kiyomizu temple, and then read about it in The Tale of Genji and realize that it wasn't new even in the year 1000, but was built back in the 8th century.
Ok, so at this point I'd like to ask another question. What kind of place doesn't have old buildings? There are several possibilities.
1. A place where people build structures that could potentially be permanent, but where some historical event has destroyed all structures over a certain age.
Tokyo is rather like this. It suffered the Great Kanto Earthquake, and then the carpet-bombings of World War II... and as a result, all of the oldest buildings date from a particular (more modern) era. In a case like this, it's important to consider what kind of impact a very destructive event will have on culture, and what less tangible evidence will be available in the mental states of the population.
2. A place where building materials are quickly broken down by the elements.
Jungle dwellings might well be like this. In this case, other evidence of human history might be available, like tools or artifacts of various types.
3. A place where the population is nomadic.
If the population is nomadic, then habitations have to be light enough to be carried. They may or may not be made from durable enough materials to be recognized as human tools/structures long after they have been abandoned.
4. A place where the cultural paradigm calls for constant renewal.
This is certainly a possibility. However, I can't see that it would make much sense for extremely durable architecture (stone, for example) to coexist with such a cultural paradigm. It would be much more likely to be present in a place where building materials broke down relatively quickly.
5. A place that has only recently become inhabited by humans.
Architecture in a place like this would probably be either made with local materials or with imported materials, but all more or less in the same architectural style, since everything would be built at the same time. Still, this lack of history is in itself a sort of history - indicating that the people are recent arrivals.
I'm sure there are other reasons why older architecture might not endure, but at this point I think it's worth pointing something out: the presence of architecture means something - and the absence of architecture also means something. So if you're creating a society and they don't have any old architecture, no problem - but make sure there's a good societal reason why it's not there. Think about where history is preserved in your society - in behaviors, in stories or written records, in artifacts or in buildings. What kinds of historical events might have influenced this world? In what kind of contexts might evidence of that history be available for discovery?
It's worth thinking about - and on that note, I think I'll include this link to some photos by Sergey Larenkov, which overlay images from World War II on images of the very same buildings from 2010.
In my post about building materials, I started by bringing up the links between architecture and environment/setting. In this post I'm going to talk about the links between architecture and history. The buildings you choose to put in your world will tell readers (and the people of your world) about the history of these people and their civilization.
When we were in Europe we went to the city of Aosta in Italy. This city, we learned, was once called Augusta Praetoria, and was the place where Roman troops stopped for the winter before invading Gaul. It's been the center of its region since then. You wouldn't necessarily know this just by glancing at it from the highway, but if you walk into the town, it's hard to miss. Augustus' Arch, the Praetorian Gate, the Roman Theater... all are easy to access. The theater was great because it had a modern theater built right beside the ancient, crumbling one. Very cool - but that wasn't the most impressive part.
Aosta has a cathedral, built in the 11th century and remodeled a bit in the 15th and 16th centuries. It rises majestically above the roofs of the town - and that's all you see if you just walk by. If you go in, however, you can find the entrance of the church that was built before it, in the 3rd century. The cathedral was built right over the top of the old church, but the arches are still there, the columns and the carved capitals that were made in the years 200. If you then walk out of the cathedral and around the corner, you'll find the entrance to the Roman forum. Yes, the Roman forum is underneath the 3rd century church - and it's huge. It's this gigantic corridor of stone arches, now lit by electric light, and seeming way too huge to exist underneath two other buildings this far underground. I wish I could show you a photograph - but really you should go and see it with your own eyes. This gives the town the sense of permanence that I described in my post about building materials. It is set in stones more than two thousand years old.
How many fantasy or science fiction worlds do you know which have this kind of history reflected in their architecture? My answer would be, not as many as I'd like.
Just in case you're concerned that I'm suggesting everyone create modern Italy in their fictional worlds, that's not it at all. Paris is full of the architecture of other times, even down to the crypts underneath the city. Kyoto, Japan is similar, ranging from the ultra-modern to the ancient.
Kyoto is an interesting example because of the fact that their primary building material is wood, not stone. You can walk through the streets and see modern vending machines just ten feet away from the entrance to a small city shrine or temple. You can park your car (not that I ever had one) in the lot and walk in to see the temple of Sanjusangendo, originally built in the 12th century and containing more than a thousand statues carved in the 12th and 13th centuries. You can go visit the Kiyomizu temple, and then read about it in The Tale of Genji and realize that it wasn't new even in the year 1000, but was built back in the 8th century.
Ok, so at this point I'd like to ask another question. What kind of place doesn't have old buildings? There are several possibilities.
1. A place where people build structures that could potentially be permanent, but where some historical event has destroyed all structures over a certain age.
Tokyo is rather like this. It suffered the Great Kanto Earthquake, and then the carpet-bombings of World War II... and as a result, all of the oldest buildings date from a particular (more modern) era. In a case like this, it's important to consider what kind of impact a very destructive event will have on culture, and what less tangible evidence will be available in the mental states of the population.
2. A place where building materials are quickly broken down by the elements.
Jungle dwellings might well be like this. In this case, other evidence of human history might be available, like tools or artifacts of various types.
3. A place where the population is nomadic.
If the population is nomadic, then habitations have to be light enough to be carried. They may or may not be made from durable enough materials to be recognized as human tools/structures long after they have been abandoned.
4. A place where the cultural paradigm calls for constant renewal.
This is certainly a possibility. However, I can't see that it would make much sense for extremely durable architecture (stone, for example) to coexist with such a cultural paradigm. It would be much more likely to be present in a place where building materials broke down relatively quickly.
5. A place that has only recently become inhabited by humans.
Architecture in a place like this would probably be either made with local materials or with imported materials, but all more or less in the same architectural style, since everything would be built at the same time. Still, this lack of history is in itself a sort of history - indicating that the people are recent arrivals.
I'm sure there are other reasons why older architecture might not endure, but at this point I think it's worth pointing something out: the presence of architecture means something - and the absence of architecture also means something. So if you're creating a society and they don't have any old architecture, no problem - but make sure there's a good societal reason why it's not there. Think about where history is preserved in your society - in behaviors, in stories or written records, in artifacts or in buildings. What kinds of historical events might have influenced this world? In what kind of contexts might evidence of that history be available for discovery?
It's worth thinking about - and on that note, I think I'll include this link to some photos by Sergey Larenkov, which overlay images from World War II on images of the very same buildings from 2010.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Building materials
Since I accidentally posted my stub draft of this yesterday, I've decided to make it my official re-opening post!
One thing I was struck by when in France and the Alps (France, Italy, Switzerland) was that most buildings were not made of wood, but stone. Of course, if you look around when you're there, it's easy to see why. There are rocks. Lots of them, available everywhere. Reason number two, a rock wall makes very good insulation, and when it's cold and snowy, that's a really serious advantage. We stopped in a restaurant in the Italian city of Chatillon, and the lower floor had walls of rock that came up into low arches, while the upper floor had higher walls of rock topped with wooden beams and ceiling. Then on top of the roof, the tiles were made of - you guessed it - rock. Most of the roofs in town looked like snake backs because of the overlay pattern of diamond-shaped tiles.
This has consequences. Buildings made of rock stick around for a very, very long time. People become accustomed to the sense of permanence around them. It infuses itself into the culture and into people's self-awareness. My friend Dario says he feels like something's missing when he can't see the evidence of permance, of history, around him.
Of course, any people will build with the available materials to suit local conditions. If there's a lot of good mud available, you can make brick walls - but if there's no stable soil, then there's no point in trying to build a heavy wall on it. Or if there are constant earthquakes (or even occasional ones!) there are distinct hazards involved in building with brick.
When you're creating a society, think about what the environment offers for building. A place built with locally available materials will have a sense of rightness, and that sense of rightness will be evident in the attitudes of its people. A place built with imported materials will be somewhat different. If properly planned, it can really stand out. If done badly, it can be laughable, or a disaster. If done with materials imported by humans across space (for example) it can look entirely out of place - another way to "stand out."
The architecture of the place you're building has a lot more to say about your setting, and about its people, than you might realize. Think through it, because it will be worth the trouble.
I'll have more thoughts on this soon!
It's good to be back.
One thing I was struck by when in France and the Alps (France, Italy, Switzerland) was that most buildings were not made of wood, but stone. Of course, if you look around when you're there, it's easy to see why. There are rocks. Lots of them, available everywhere. Reason number two, a rock wall makes very good insulation, and when it's cold and snowy, that's a really serious advantage. We stopped in a restaurant in the Italian city of Chatillon, and the lower floor had walls of rock that came up into low arches, while the upper floor had higher walls of rock topped with wooden beams and ceiling. Then on top of the roof, the tiles were made of - you guessed it - rock. Most of the roofs in town looked like snake backs because of the overlay pattern of diamond-shaped tiles.
This has consequences. Buildings made of rock stick around for a very, very long time. People become accustomed to the sense of permanence around them. It infuses itself into the culture and into people's self-awareness. My friend Dario says he feels like something's missing when he can't see the evidence of permance, of history, around him.
Of course, any people will build with the available materials to suit local conditions. If there's a lot of good mud available, you can make brick walls - but if there's no stable soil, then there's no point in trying to build a heavy wall on it. Or if there are constant earthquakes (or even occasional ones!) there are distinct hazards involved in building with brick.
When you're creating a society, think about what the environment offers for building. A place built with locally available materials will have a sense of rightness, and that sense of rightness will be evident in the attitudes of its people. A place built with imported materials will be somewhat different. If properly planned, it can really stand out. If done badly, it can be laughable, or a disaster. If done with materials imported by humans across space (for example) it can look entirely out of place - another way to "stand out."
The architecture of the place you're building has a lot more to say about your setting, and about its people, than you might realize. Think through it, because it will be worth the trouble.
I'll have more thoughts on this soon!
It's good to be back.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
History and Societal Homogeneity
I'm guessing the election is at the top of everyone's mind today, but I'm afraid I couldn't come up with a topic that was election-related yet not political. So I'm going in another direction...
I'm thinking about the history of worlds. The reason it's valuable to consider a world's history is essentially that it's impossible to create a world without history. Every artifact or object you place in the world is a product of and a clue to its history. Every bit of architecture or infrastructure. It's there, begging to be considered and deepened.
I think as a basic example about the architecture I've seen in California versus Boston, or in the US versus in Europe. The longer the people have been in the area, the more you'll find remnants of the past, buildings that were put up and never taken down. Monuments and ruins don't appear out of thin air. Look at Greece or the Middle East, where cities have been built, rebuilt, rebuilt again layer upon layer over thousands of years. If your world has a long history, that will show in its present.
If the past doesn't show in the present, that is, if the society is extremely homogeneous, then that's usually a different kind of clue as to its history. Look at the city of Tokyo, which was essentially completely destroyed by the Kanto Earthquake, and then by the firebombings of World War II. A lack of visible history will point to great destruction such as this, or it will point to a vigorous standard of reform and modernism - possibly something born of a culture where renewal is highly valued, or where a past history is being suppressed. It can also result from new arrival, i.e. the fact that people haven't been on a planet very long. One example of this would be Wave Without a Shore by C.J. Cherryh.
However, even when the past doesn't show in obvious ways, it can still show. A new colony on a planet will have artifacts from its arrival that suggest the deeper history of the colonizers. Peripheral cultural groups, or oppressed ones, or geographically isolated groups, can preserve elements of a history that are lost to the population at large. I think here of Ursula LeGuin's The Telling, in which the human Sutty goes about discovering a suppressed and overwritten culture.
There's something of a trope in SF/F about the old nursery rhyme, or the long-lost book of science or prophecy, that has greater meaning than anyone suspects. While I'm not suggesting that every world has to have something like this, that goes from seeming unimportance to deciding the fate of the world, it's still good to consider how the past of a society is carried forward in its details, both physical and cultural.
I'm thinking about the history of worlds. The reason it's valuable to consider a world's history is essentially that it's impossible to create a world without history. Every artifact or object you place in the world is a product of and a clue to its history. Every bit of architecture or infrastructure. It's there, begging to be considered and deepened.
I think as a basic example about the architecture I've seen in California versus Boston, or in the US versus in Europe. The longer the people have been in the area, the more you'll find remnants of the past, buildings that were put up and never taken down. Monuments and ruins don't appear out of thin air. Look at Greece or the Middle East, where cities have been built, rebuilt, rebuilt again layer upon layer over thousands of years. If your world has a long history, that will show in its present.
If the past doesn't show in the present, that is, if the society is extremely homogeneous, then that's usually a different kind of clue as to its history. Look at the city of Tokyo, which was essentially completely destroyed by the Kanto Earthquake, and then by the firebombings of World War II. A lack of visible history will point to great destruction such as this, or it will point to a vigorous standard of reform and modernism - possibly something born of a culture where renewal is highly valued, or where a past history is being suppressed. It can also result from new arrival, i.e. the fact that people haven't been on a planet very long. One example of this would be Wave Without a Shore by C.J. Cherryh.
However, even when the past doesn't show in obvious ways, it can still show. A new colony on a planet will have artifacts from its arrival that suggest the deeper history of the colonizers. Peripheral cultural groups, or oppressed ones, or geographically isolated groups, can preserve elements of a history that are lost to the population at large. I think here of Ursula LeGuin's The Telling, in which the human Sutty goes about discovering a suppressed and overwritten culture.
There's something of a trope in SF/F about the old nursery rhyme, or the long-lost book of science or prophecy, that has greater meaning than anyone suspects. While I'm not suggesting that every world has to have something like this, that goes from seeming unimportance to deciding the fate of the world, it's still good to consider how the past of a society is carried forward in its details, both physical and cultural.
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