Twentieth-century archaeology has placed the development of Stonehenge firmly in the prehistoric era – long before the Druid culture – placing the structure as contemporary with Bronze-Age Greece (maybe 2000 bc) in the 1950s, and then in the 1970s with new carbon dating techniques, a much earlier date of about 3500 bc was proposed, suggesting […]
Category: Architecture as Experience Radical change in spatial practice
Art in situ: a short case study
The sculptural programme of the south fagade, comprising a Last Judgement portal flanked by portals dedicated to Martyrs and Confessors, appears to have been designed with address to this urban setting in mind (Figure 4.9).25 Of all the High Gothic portals at Chartres, the Last Judgement portal is the most broadly relevant to potential viewers […]
The city as a stage set
7.1 The Senegalese float in the bicentennial parade, 1989 The state organized the 1989 commemoration at a time when the socialists of President Frangois Mitterrand were sharing power with the conservatives. Not surprisingly, this led to tensions about how to represent the revolutionarypast. A bicentennial commission, known as the ‘Mission’, was established to organize the […]
Sultanahmet prison and its environs: a brief background
During the final decades of Ottoman sovereignty, Sultanahmet Square and its environs underwent considerable change. In 1863 the Ottoman royal family moved from Topkapi Palace, which had, for four centuries, served as the imperial residence and the administrative seat of the Empire, to Dolmabahge Palace, located further north, along the Bosphorus shore. The historic peninsula […]
Nomad architectures
Each ‘misprision’ of Stonehenge mentioned above, is a way of understanding the stones, which remain the same object throughout. In each understanding they are refracted through a different set of cultural knowledge and memories, so that each produces a different experience of Stonehenge. Geoffrey of Monmouth had a different experience of Stonehenge from Inigo Jones, […]