Buildings for the specific purposes of public welfare were seldom considered necessary in antiquity, in most of Eastern architecture, or in the early Middle Ages. But in ancient Greece health facilities were included in precincts of Asclepius, the god of healing, and in the East within Buddhist precincts. The Romans produced a highly developed system of water supply and sewerage, of which their monumental aqueducts are an impressive survival.
In the later Middle Ages consistent forms began to emerge. With the separation of the university from a purely religious context, a concept of planning developed (particularly at Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris) that still influences educational architecture. Hospitals designed as large halls were established as adjuncts to churches, convents, and monasteries (Hôtel-Dieu, Beaune, France) and gained architectural independence in the Renaissance (Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence). Ancient and medieval prisons and guardhouses were occasionally isolated from military architecture (e.g., Tower of London; Bargello in Florence), but the prison did not become an important architectural type until the late 18th and 19th centuries (e.g., George Dance’s Newgate Prison, London; Henry Hobson Richardson’s Allegheny County Jail, Pittsburgh).
hospital of Saint-EspritCourtyard of the medieval hospital of Saint-Esprit (now the Hôtel-Dieu), Beaune, France.© Jenifoto/Fotolia
The expansion of education and health facilities beginning in the 19th century created a widespread and consistently growing need for specialized architectural solutions. Schools, from the nursery to the university, now demand not only particular solutions at all levels but structures for a variety of purposes within each level; advanced education demands buildings for scientific research, training for trades and professions, recreation, health, housing, religious institutions, and other purposes. Most of the countries of the Western world have produced educational architecture of the highest quality; this architectural type is more important than in any past age. Commercial and industrial architecture
Buildings for exchange, transportation, communication, manufacturing, and power production meet the principal needs of commerce and industry. In the past these needs were mostly unspecialized. They were met either within domestic architecture or in buildings distinguished from domestic types chiefly by their size. Stores, banks, hostelries, guildhalls, and factories required only space for more persons and things than houses could accommodate. Bridges, warehouses, and other structures not used for sheltering people were, of course, specialized from the beginning and survived the Industrial Revolution without basic changes. The Industrial Revolution profoundly affected the typology as well as the techniques of architecture. Through the introduction of the machine and mass production, economic life moved out of the domestic environment into an area dominated by devices and processes rather than by individuals, creating the need for buildings more specialized and more numerous than the total accumulation of types throughout history. All the types cannot be discussed here, but a categorical listing into which they can be fitted will illustrate their importance for architecture: exchange (office buildings, stores, markets, banks, exchanges, warehouses, exhibition halls); transportation (roads, bridges, tunnels; stations for rail, sea, and air transport and the dispensing of fuel; garages, hangars, and other storage facilities; hotels); communication (structures for the transmission and reception of telephone, telegraph, radio, television, and radar communication; for the printing and distribution of newspapers, magazines, books, and other reading matter; for motion-picture production; and for advertising functions); production (mines, factories, laboratories, food-processing plants); power (dams, generating plants; fuel storage, processing, and distribution installations).
Battersea Power StationBattersea Power Station, London.Tagishsimon
Each of these functions demands its own architectural solution, but in general they may be divided into two classes according to whether the plan must give greater attention to the size and movement of machinery or of persons. Wherever human activity is the chief concern, there has been less departure from traditional expression; banks in the form of Roman temples are an obvious example. The demands of machines have no tradition and have encouraged a search for greater, simpler, and more flexible spaces, but frequently the practical function has entirely eliminated the expressive, so that, with some distinguished exceptions (e.g., Frank Lloyd Wright’s S.C. Johnson & Sons, Inc., building, Racine, Wisconsin; Eero Saarinen’s General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan), most modern factories are not architecture. Where both human beings and machines had to be given equal attention, as in railroad stations, architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries vacillated between creating new forms and grasping for irrelevant traditions. Architectural planning
The architect usually begins to work when the site and the type and cost of a building have been determined.
The site involves the varying behaviour of the natural environment that must be adjusted to the unvarying physical needs of human beings; the type is the generalized form established by society that must be adjusted to the special use for which the building is required; the cost implies the economics of land, labour, and materials that must be adjusted to suit a particular sum.
Thus, planning is the process of particularizing and, ultimately, of harmonizing the demands of environment, use, and economy. This process has a cultural as well as a utilitarian value, for in creating a plan for any social activity the architect inevitably influences the way in which that activity is performed. Planning the environment
The natural environment is at once a hindrance and a help, and the architect seeks both to invite its aid and to repel its attacks. To make buildings habitable and comfortable, the architect must control the effects of heat, cold, light, air, moisture, and dryness and foresee destructive potentialities such as fire, earthquake, flood, and disease.
The methods of controlling the environment considered here are only the practical aspects of planning. They are treated by the architect within the context of the expressive aspects. The placement and form of buildings in relation to their sites, the distribution of spaces within buildings, and other planning devices discussed below are fundamental elements in the aesthetics of architecture. Orientation
The arrangement of the axes of buildings and their parts is a device for controlling the effects of sun, wind, and rainfall. The sun is regular in its course; it favours the southern and neglects the northern exposures of buildings in the Northern Hemisphere, so that it may be captured for heat or evaded for coolness by turning the axis of a plan toward or away from it. Within buildings, the axis and placement of each space determines the amount of sun it receives. Orientation may control air for circulation and reduce the disadvantages of wind, rain, and snow, since in most climates the prevailing currents can be foreseen. The characteristics of the immediate environment also influence orientation: trees, land formations, and other buildings create shade and reduce or intensify wind, while bodies of water produce moisture and reflect the sun. Architectural forms
Planning may control the environment by the design of architectural forms that may modify the effects of natural forces. For example, overhanging eaves, moldings, projections, courts, and porches give shade and protection from rain. Roofs are designed to shed snow and to drain or preserve water. Walls control the amount of heat lost to the exterior or retained in the interior by their thickness and by the structural and insulating materials used in making them. Walls, when properly sealed and protected, are the chief defense against wind and moisture. Windows are the principal means of controlling natural light; its amount, distribution, intensity, direction, and quality are conditioned by their number, size, shape, and placement and by the characteristics of translucent materials (e.g., thickness, transparency, texture, colour). But the planning of fenestration is influenced by other factors, such as ventilation and heating. Since most translucent materials conduct heat more readily than the average wall, windows are used sparingly in extreme climates. Finally, since transparent windows are the medium of visual contact between the interior and exterior, their design is conditioned by aesthetic and practical demands. Colour