Overview

An original account of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian architecture from the acclaimed architectural historian In The Beginnings of Architecture, Sigfried Giedion examines the architecture of ancient Egypt and Sumer. These early builders expressed an attitude of immense force when they confronted their structures with open sky. Giedion argues that it was during these periods that the problem of constancy and change flared up with an intensity unknown in any other period of history, and resolved eventually into the first architectural space conception, the automatic, psychic recording of the visual environment.

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[Giedion] relates the great monuments that greet us at the outset with the great spaces of the Aurignacian caves and with the ancient cult of the animal treated as a sacred object. One of his most original intuitions is that 'the religious structure of the first high civilizations was founded upon the discovery of the human form and the human face' and the appreciation of the naked body. ---Lewis Mumford, The New Yorker [Giedion's] long preoccupation with what it feels like to frequent spaces controlled by the buildings of men permits him to illuminate data long familiar. We have stared for years at drawings of Greek temples without realizing the meaning of the fact that they were not buildings to go into. These windowless cells surrounded by stone columns were the focal points of ceremonious processions, for if the gods no longer wandered the people did, on ritual visits to majestic images. ---Hugh Kenner, National Review Giedion's vision dominates the entire book: it is so absolute and conclusive that the book emerges as a general philosophy rather than mere architectural history. ---Paul Zucker, Progressive Architecture Eloquent. ---John Canaday, New York Times Book Review

"""[Giedion] relates the great monuments that greet us at the outset with the great spaces of the Aurignacian caves and with the ancient cult of the animal treated as a sacred object. One of his most original intuitions is that ‘the religious structure of the first high civilizations was founded upon the discovery of the human form and the human face’ and the appreciation of the naked body.""---Lewis Mumford, The New Yorker ""[Giedion’s] long preoccupation with what it feels like to frequent spaces controlled by the buildings of men permits him to illuminate data long familiar. We have stared for years at drawings of Greek temples without realizing the meaning of the fact that they were not buildings to go into. These windowless cells surrounded by stone columns were the focal points of ceremonious processions, for if the gods no longer wandered the people did, on ritual visits to majestic images.""---Hugh Kenner, National Review ""Giedion’s vision dominates the entire book: it is so absolute and conclusive that the book emerges as a general philosophy rather than mere architectural history.""---Paul Zucker, Progressive Architecture ""Eloquent.""---John Canaday, New York Times Book Review"

Author Information

Sigfried Giedion (18881968) was an eminent critic and historian of architecture and art who had a major influence on architectural modernism. His books include Space, Time, and Architecture and Mechanization Takes Command. He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and ETH Zurich.

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