World Views 5th-c. B.C.E. Athens Summer Assignment

Write an interpretive essay on a historical building in your community

In the World Views first-year program on 5th c. B.C.E. Athens we will be reading a series of 'texts' that reflect, and as a result enable us to reflect upon, aspects of the world views of ancient Athenians. Alongside a dramatic tragic trilogy (by Aeschylus), a history (by Thucydides), three comedies (by Aristophanes), and four philosophical dialogues (by Plato), one of these texts, and in fact our first text, is the hilltop architectural complex at the heart of ancient Athens, the Acropolis. We will read and discuss the architecture of the Acropolis, including the Parthenon in particular, as a monumental expression of the ancient Athenian mentality, its values and preoccupations, its hopes and fears. The book we will send you to read over the summer, Architecture and Meaning in the Athenian Acropolis by Robin Rhodes, will form the basis for our discussions in the first few classes. It is also a model of sorts for your first assignment on how to read and interpret architecture.

What does it mean to treat a building as if it were a text?
How does one read and interpret a building as if it were a book?

There are several important formal features to a text. Usually there is a clearly identifiable author or set of authors responsible for conceiving, designing, and preparing the text. The author usually works in a relationship with a producer or publisher who solicited, commissioned, and perhaps even paid for the text. Typically, the author has at least one sort of generic audience in mind but s/he may actually have several more specific ones too. Accordingly, in reading one often seeks out the intended meaning for the audience while noticing that there may be not only an overall meaning or significance to the text but also multiple secondary subtexts intended for specific audiences. Most literary works can be placed within distinctive aesthetic genres or styles that have rules and hence generate expectations in the reader. Finally, the author conveys meaning by manipulating the physical attributes of the textual format.

Buildings, like books, also have authors, producers, audiences, intended meanings, and styles. The main difference between books and buildings is that in the case of books the author works with words, punctuation, sentences, phrasing, allusions, and symbolism, whereas in the case of buildings the manipulable physical attributes are architectural dimensions (such as materials, textures, colors, shape, and size), specific features (such as windows, entries, and exits), ornamental decoration (such as sculptures, frescoes, and inscriptions), and ritualized uses (such as memorials, celebrations, and processions).

Your assignment:

• Pick a prominent public building or some other major architectural structure in your hometown (ideally, or wherever you happen to be over the summer). The building you select should be intended to 'monumentalize', i.e., physically represent important aspects of the local or regional community (such as its founding, history, heritage, values, economy, goals, etc.). It might do this in various ways: as a result of how the building is used (e.g., a city hall, a state capitol building), or by virtue of its location (e.g., in a town square, in a historic district), or symbolically (e.g., as a memorial). Regardless, the point is to identify a building that embodies important qualities about the community.

• Take photographs or obtain pictures of the building.

• Locate your building on a local map in relation to compass orientation, geographic landmarks, and other important public spaces, sites, and functions.

• In a 3 or 4-page, double-spaced essay interpret the meaning of your building by giving some consideration to the following questions:

  Who conceived, designed, and erected the building?

  Who solicited, commissioned, and paid for the building?

  When was the building completed?

  Has it been renovated? enlarged?

  What architectural genre or style does the building follow?

  Why this genre?
  Was this the current genre at the time? If not, why not?

  Who and what was the building originally intended for?

  Who uses it regularly today?
  Who uses it on special occasions, and what are those occasions?

  What is the official name of the building?
  

  How do locals refer to it?

  How does the building look?
  

  What are its materials, textures, colors, size, dimensions?
  What are its height and shape in relation to the buildings and spaces around it?
  How does one enter and exit, look in and look out?
  What are its most prominent architectural features?

  What does the building 'say' to passers-by and/or occupants?
  

  Is it inviting or forbidding?
  Does it recall specific collective history or tradition or mythology
  perhaps through statues, plaques, or symbols?

  Does the building 'say' the same things to everyone?

  Is it more important or meaningful to some than others?
  How might different members of your community read the building differently?
  How might community outsiders read the building?

  Ultimately, and crucially, what does the building say about your community?

Complete this assignment - pictures, map location, and interpretive essay - before arriving at Willamette so that you are prepared to present your findings during the first class sessions of World Views and to submit the essay to your professor for evaluation at that time. Although it will be challenging to condense all that you might say, plan on a five-minute presentation.

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