NonA Weekly: COLUMNS IN ARCHITECTURE 🏛️
Image by @hateplow
Dear readers and friends,
Columns have been an integral component of architectural design since ancient times 🏛️, symbolizing not just structural support but also aesthetic appeal 💎 and cultural significance 🎭. Originating from early civilizations like the Egyptians 🐫 and Greeks 🏺, columns were not only functional elements but also conveyed power ⚡, stability, and grandeur 🌟.
Columns are more than mere structural appendages; they play a pivotal role 🔄 in the composition and balance of spaces. By dictating rhythms 🎵 and framing views 🖼️, they modulate the experience of architectural spaces, guiding inhabitants and viewers both physically 👣 and visually 👀. Additionally, in various cultures, columns often carry symbolic meaning, representing concepts such as upholding truth ⚖️, justice, or the heavens ☁️.
In contemporary architecture, while the traditional role of columns as load-bearing elements has diminished due to advances in structural engineering 🔧, their aesthetic and symbolic relevance persists. Modern designers 👩🎨 often reimagine columns in innovative ways, integrating them seamlessly into building facades, interiors, or public spaces 🌳, underscoring their timeless relevance in architectural discourse. 📐🖋️
1. WHAT IS A COLUMN?
In architecture, a column is an upright pillar or post. COLUMNS may support a roof or a beam, or they can be purely decorative.
2. 10 TIMES ARCHITECTS REIMAGINED THE COLUMN
Over the last century the COLUMN has undergone dramatic changes in both structural and aesthetic interpretation, emerging as an architectural element whose connection to the over four-thousand-year-old concept often seems barely detectable.
3. CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE AND COLUMNS
COLUMNS are functional, modern and sophisticated, enabling new constructions with extraordinary architecture to be devised.
4. A HISTORY OF COLUMNS
Through the ages, COLUMNS have played a significant role in architecture. HERE’s a short tour of the design of the columns.
5. THE WORLD’S MOST COMPLEX ARCHITECTURAL COLUMNS
Architect and programmer Michael Hansmeyer has undertaken a most ambitious project, designing an incredibly ornate and complex COLUMN with over 16 million individual facets!
6. COLUMNS
This project is a continuation of EBBA’s fascination in the ideas and use of rudimentary architectural ELEMENTS and their interest in creating simple yet elegant interventions that explore proportion, form and construction techniques.
Stay creative and see you all next week! 👋
Daniela
