Questions tagged [architecture]

Process and effect of planning and designing buildings, both in scientific (as a method of creating constructions) or art (as styles throughout ages) ways.

Filter by
Sorted by
Tagged with
31 votes
4 answers
14k views

Why does the Great Wall of China follow such a bendy route?

Why does the path of the Great Wall of China bend back and forth so much? Naïvely, it would have taken less material and guards to defend if it had taken a straighter path, so there must have been ...
BenRW's user avatar
  • 533
15 votes
1 answer
776 views

What words were obliterated from the Great Colonnade at Palmyra?

One of the columns at the Great Colonnade at Palmyra features a dedicatory inscription to Zenobia and Odaenathus. It is bilingual, recording the same text in Greek and Palmyrenean: (Image credit: ...
Psychonaut's user avatar
  • 2,810
12 votes
4 answers
2k views

How did the Egyptian engineers of the Third and Fourth Dynasty construct the Pyramids and Sphinx without modern science and mathematics? [closed]

How did the Egyptian engineers of the Third and Fourth Dynasty construct the Pyramids and Sphinx without modern science and mathematics? What was the "state of the art" in engineering, science, and ...
curious's user avatar
  • 4,546
10 votes
1 answer
956 views

Why are the buildings built in classical style in the first half of the 19th century in Russia so frequently yellow-and-white - coloured?

So many buildings built in neo-classical style in cr. 1800-1850 in Russian empire are yellow (always the same shade of yellow) with white columns. There are some exceptions, e.g. grey or blue of beige ...
Yulia V's user avatar
  • 1,581
10 votes
2 answers
1k views

Was there anything like an African-American architectural style or symbolism at the beginning of the 20th century?

At the beginning of 20th century, large masses of black people were migrating to northern states or between districts of the same towns (like in New York from Tenderloin or San Juan Hill to Harlem, ...
Darek Wędrychowski's user avatar
8 votes
1 answer
662 views

What did they call Gothic and Baroque architecture before the modern terms came into use?

In the modern sense, I mean. All the reference sites explain the origin of the word Baroque and mention that up until the late 19th Century it was a derogatory term: It was only with Heinrich ...
Ricky's user avatar
  • 3,435
7 votes
1 answer
705 views

Formation of underground layers of Rome

I have recently came across several news articles (for example) from various decades, talking about existing underground structures in the city of Rome, which used to be above ground at some point of ...
user avatar
5 votes
2 answers
2k views

Were Greek columns hollow?

I remember learning in elementary school that at some point in their history, the Greeks were building hollow columns to support their building, because they thought that hollow columns would provide ...
Ovi's user avatar
  • 2,094
3 votes
1 answer
2k views

Building a house in the middle age in europe (specifically germany) [closed]

How was is to build a house in the middle age in europe? Where did people get the materials from? How long did it take? What were the differences between building outside the city and in the city? How ...
Bitte Wenden's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
105 views

Who was the architect of Uraniborg and Stjerneborg?

Who was the architect of Uraniborg and Stjerneborg? Those were two observatories used by Tycho Brahe on the island Hven in the 16th century. Thank you.
Jane B.'s user avatar
  • 131
1 vote
3 answers
706 views

Was there a German re-urbanization plan for after WWII?

Was there a Germany-wide re-urbanization plan for after the WWII? I don't mean a hypothetical Nazi re-building plan, but a real implemented plan. All these things would get intense resistance in ...
Quora Feans's user avatar
-4 votes
1 answer
1k views

How many stones high are the pyramids of Giza? [closed]

How many stones high are the pyramids of Giza, on the outside? There are three pyramids, did they have a pre-determined number of stones in height? in that case was it representative of something? ...
bandybabboon's user avatar