A Multidisciplinary Approach to Modern Architecture”
Saba NazFaculty of Architecture
Baluchistan University of Information Technology Engineering and Life sciences Quetta, Takatu Campus
Sabanaz414588@gmail.com
Abstract: Archeology is the study of ancient civilizations, their physical remains, and the analysis of human cultures –Astronomy is the study of everything in the universe beyond Earth's atmosphere. That includes objects we can see with our bare eyes, like the Sun, the Moon, the planets, and the stars. It also includes objects we can only see with telescopes or other instruments, like faraway galaxies and tiny particles. Archeoastronomy is the relation between celestial objects, archeological ruins, and historic monuments – While Architectural forms and spaces were built according to specific geometrical relationships associated with astronomical observation. This paper will draw a relationship between archeoastronomy and architecture and how modern-day architecture is fabricated in harmony with celestial objects and using the practices of ancient architects.
Key words: archeoastronomy, astronomy, faraway, celestial objects, architecture
1- Problem Statement:
Although there is a lot of discussion about the arrangement of Archeological sites with respect to astronomy and there is a deep study of archeoastronomy and history of architecture, but they are not explained under one umbrella and how modern architects are practicing and involving archeoastronomy in their designs.
2- Introduction:
Virtually the great civilizations of the past build spectacular monuments, which testify their skills, knowledge, and religious beliefs. All their monuments are silent, there is no written evidence of how and when they were constructed. There is one chore that connects these monuments, Astronomy. These projects are connected to the sky due to their astronomical alignment, which is the core of archeoastronomy: The stars and stones.
Its gives us information about the mind of our ancestors’ gives us the emotion of experiencing today, glorious events, which were planned thousands of year ago.
Archeoastronomy is an interdisciplinary science lying somewhere between archeologyastronomy and has a link with architecture. Archeology is the study of human activities through the recovery and analysis of material culture, efforts made for getting evidence of architecture in previous time, while astronomy is a study of celestial objects (moon, stars, planets, and galaxy). Archeoastronomy is the study of the connection of people in past with the sky, their astronomical practices, celestial objects, mythologies, religions, and world perspectives about ancient cultures. Material evidence from the past might be representational or physical. Establishing alignment is often a focus of Archeoastronomy but as with the interpretation of the past, seeing, and drawing a conclusion. Archeoastronomy, therefore, focuses on the material elements present in the archeological record. For instance, it can recognize whether a structure was intentionally built in such a way as to capture sunlight on particularly important days of the year. For example, the Passage tomb of New grange Ireland whose entrance and roof-box captures sunrise on the winter solstice, and among one of the bronze age sites in Europe, Stonehenge is prominent. The site is paramount as it is relatively belonging to an advanced Bronze age structure. Stonehenge is isolated in the topography that makes it difficult to envision the site that was once a highly settled area. Stonehenge's first version some dated back to 3000BCE was made at that time, but the difference is that it was spread 100 meters and would have two or three open spaces for approaching the circle. Archeological remains claimed that there was a centered timber building that was 30m. The large area of scattered stones is spread up to the trench and a heel stone with a pointed head with a height 4.9m high is just outside of the circle. Two astronomical alignments were erected into it, one of which faces towards the northeast, entrance towards the northern alignment of the moon while the other is orientated towards the cardinal point to the south. In 2500BCE this structure was reconstructed by the Beaker people, they changed the earthwork structure, its associated landscape from lunar to the solar monument. According to the beliefs of beaker people, their cosmology was connected between smelting of ore and sun, that is why they reshaped Stonehenge and transformed its orientation. To do this they rotated the axis to unnoticeable 3 degrees eastwards that harmonized with the rising midsummer sun.
2.1- Nabta Playa:- Located in modern-day southern Egypt, some 80km west of Abu Simbel. This was not a common Stonehenge site, as it contains a circle of modest upright stones, while the main stones are being in pair of four sets close together. With contrast to Stonehenge, built 4,500 years later, the circle is small, roughly 4 meters in diameters, but its intention was similar: to organize time according to the seasons. Two of which stones are aligned towards true northeast- southwest. They are assisted towards observation of motion of the sun and the constellation orion. Nabta Playa is unique not only for its age but also the ancient astronomy coded into its alignments. It could be evidence of the first Egyptian civilization to use astronomy. Of the many stone structures found at Nabta
Playa, the stone circle is notorious. The circle is made up of four gateways, two aligned North-South, and two pointing East-West. These alignments were likely used to track the summer and winter solstices, as well as spring and autumnal equinoxes. This would have been of extreme importance to the inhabitants of Nabta Playa at the time. The agricultural year would be based on when the wet season was approaching. There was, however, more purpose for the site. In the middle of the stone circle is six irregular stones that do not align to any of the four cardinal points. Nabta playa could be one of the earliest astronomical observatories found in Egypt. Each stone seems to represent a star in the sky. Studies reveal the stone circle acts as a map for accurate angles and distances to relative stars. Most curiously, Nabta Playa shows knowledge of precession of the equinox. It is the much larger cycle of the star constellations in the sky comparative to the sunrise on the spring solstice. Immediately before the sun rose on the summer solstice around 5000BC, three of the stones in the center of the stone circle would have lined up perfectly with the belt stars of the constellation of Orion. This time marks when the precession cycle is at one extreme. 12,000 years earlier, the opposite extreme of the precession cycle occurs. Again, the other three stones line up precisely with the shoulder stars of Orion. The stone circle is an accurate astronomical map tracking time back to around 16,500BC. Ancient Egyptians at Nabta Playa were recording the movements of the constellation of Orion’s Belt to mark the precession of the equinox.
2.2- Niuheliang Ritual Center: In hongshan culture of inner Mongolia located along the Laoha, Yingjin and Daling rivers that empty into Bohai bay that was surrendering over a large area over but had a single, common ritual center that consisted of at least fourteen burial mounds and alters over several hill tops. It dates from around 3500BCE, but it could find even earlier. Whereas no evidence of village settlement could be found in its vicinity, its size is much larger than a clan or village could support. As a religious scared landscape, the core might also have northsouth axis attracts the ritual center with the center of zhushan, or the pig mountain to the south. A key building is resting on 40 by 60-meter loam platform on which rested a structure that is speculated to have been goddess temple. Its base footing contains detailed geometric designs made with clay in high relief and painted yellow, red, and white. On its northern end is a single detached room clay body parts were excavated. The platform also contains eight interconnected sub-Terrance tracks constructed in asymmetrical node shaped 25m wide from south to north. Archeologist main site of
- Orion is a prominent constellation located on the celestial equator and visible throughout the world. It is one of the most conspicuous and recognizable constellations in the night sky. It is named after Orion, a hunter in Greek mythology. Its brightest stars are blue-white Rigel and red Betelgeuse.
- An equinox is the instant of time when the plane of Earth's equator passes through the geometric center of the Sun's disk. This occurs twice each year, around 20 March and 23 September. In other words, it is the moment at which the center of the visible Sun is directly above the equator.-A
solstice is an event that occurs when the Sun appears to reach its most northerly or southerly excursion relative to the celestial equator on the celestial sphere. Two solstices occur annually, around June 21 and December 21
interest was an artificial hill at the entrance of valley. The mound is encircled by ring of squared white stones at ground level. There burials at hill side were oriented north-south, at extremes of the moonrise in the east.
2.3- Avebury’s stone circle in England on the southern coast of Brittany at the base of peninsula. Leading this stone circle is an impressive ritual road, some 100 meters wide and 1,165 meters long, oriented southwest to northeast and makes up almost 1,100 standing stones or menhirs, with eleven rows. These stones were meant to follow the movement of celestial cycle (stars and moon) land not the sun. among numerous other sites is Serpent Mound in Ohio, once there Hopewell culture was settled that was later occupied by what archeologists known as the Fort Ancient Culture (1000-1650). The settlement was composed of circular and rectangular homes made of twinges and thatch. In there religious believes snake was dormient force. Even its astronomical alignment is indeed aligned a way where the snakes head is aligned to the summer solstice and the various curves to other celestial events. Astronomy was extremely important for ancient Egyptians. For instance, the movements of stars and the appearance of constellations represented an invaluable guide for agricultural purposes, yearly signaling the beginning of the flood of Nile. Pharaohs themselves were thought to mount to stars after death. The positioning of the great pyramids of Giza, its sides are oriented cardinally with entrance precision, pointing to specific points in the celestial meridian.
3- Modern Case Studies on how Archeoastronomy influenced modern Architecture:
3.1-
Jantar Mantar: A collection of architectural astronomical instruments build by king of at new Jaipur in 1727-1734. He has constructed total of five such structures at different locations including Jaipur and Delhi. The largest sundial of the world Samrat, its function is to indicate solar time of the place. On a clear day, due to sun’s orientation, Samrat cast shadow on quadrant scale at on point and travels to another with movement of sun. Shadow on quadrant scale identifies the local time. For finding altitudes and azimuth angle of celestial objects instruments like Kapali Yantra and Ram Yantra are used.
Roden charter is in deserted region of northern Arizona. Late in 1970s, turrell spend a night in inactive volcano bowl in Arizona. Since than he started buying and turning the site into celestial observatory site linked with series of spaces and installations. After receiving the dormant cinder cone in 1977, Turrell converted Roden Crater into a different site, containing tunnels and apertures that open onto the sky, capturing light directly from the sun in daylight hours, and the planets and stars at night. Roden
Jaipur’s
3.2- James Turrell’s Roden Crater:
Crater belongs to a tradition of monumental structures that have been built by artists, rulers, and priests, ancient and modern. In the sixteenth century, the great astronomer Tycho Brahe pioneered ‘naked eye observatories,’ of which the eighteenth-century Jantar Mantar in Jaipur is perhaps the best example. Turrell studied and adapted essential features of the naked-eye observatory in his designs for Roden Crater, where the natural formation recalled these man-made models. During planning and construction phase of Roden Crater, Turrell consulted with astronomers including E.C. Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, and the late Richard Walker, an astronomer with the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, to calculate the excavation and alignment of the Crater’s tunnels and apertures. When completed the structures within the Crater will form a vast naked eye observatory for celestial objects and events ranging from undetermined and abstracted to the more familiar summer and winter solstice. The East Portal, the Alpha (East) Tunnel and the Sun | Moon Chamber act as a monumental Camera unclear, or pinhole camera. Transmitting light from the East Portal aperture, the Alpha (East) Tunnel focuses images on the west side of the monumental image stone in the Sun | Moon Chamber annually for the southernmost sunset and every 18.61 years to mark the Major Lunar Standstill. Annually, ten days before and ten days after the Winter Solstice (Dec 11th and Dec 31st with additional imaging on three days before and after those dates), the annual southernmost sunset, offset by the dates above, is pictured on the west side of the image stone. The Alpha Tunnel also serves as a naked eye telescope to view the setting moon. Every 18.61 years (the most recent was 2006) the moon reaches its northernmost and southernmost maximums known as a Major Lunar. Viewed through the tunnel, the southernmost moonset will form a reverse image on the west side of the image stone. The next Major Lunar Standstill is calculated to be at zenith in 2025. The South Space is aligned to the North Star that draws the viewer’s attention on the night sky. The center feature’s structure that forms an astronomical instrument like the Jai Prakash Yantra in the celestial observatory at Jaipur, India. With this instrument, one can track celestial bodies and events (such as lunar and solar eclipses) as they occur within the timeframe of the 18-year, 11-day Saros Cycle. A single seat provides a view focused on the North Star. The South Space is, in effect, both a space with its own characteristics and a calendar for the celestial movements and events that are at the heart of the varied spaces of the Roden Crater project.
A design concept for Sharaan is there will be a hidden resort in the rock dwelling of Alula, an oasis in north-west Arabia Asia. This design will exhibit modernity giving a style of living in an old Millennium way, a modern curved monumental design in rocks while preserving and respecting mother nature’s landscape. The concept is to bring landscape with history. The resort will be part of a fully integrated destination for visitors with 40 keys, including 25 suites, 10 pavilions, and five resort residential estates. Preserving nature while introducing modern way of living, the project will have minimal impact on nature and on urban landscape. Alula development will have a balance of heritage with economic potentials.
3.3- Jean Nouvel Sharaan Resort in AlUla, Saudi Arabia:
Archaeological traces discovered dated back to the Bronze Age and several ancient treasures and cities that existed, with evidence of thriving civilizations such as the Dadan/Lihyan and the Nabataean kingdoms. AlUla’s most significant landmark is the Nabatean city of Hegra, Saudi Arabia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Sitepopular for its well-preserved tombs and structures. Also known as Mada’in Salih, Hegra was once a thriving metropolis for the Nabatean people, setting the scene for the Silk Road and a vast trading empire.
3.4- Planetarium in Shanghai:
Some of the ancient civilization had left few studies of skies and stars. To preserve its culture and history, China is planning to make a new planetarium and astronomical museum in Shanghai, one of the crowded hubs of China, Asia. Consisting of three “celestial bodies,” the entire building is assembled of the oculus, the inverted dome, and the sphere. Each major element acts as an astronomical instrument, tracking the sun, moon and stars reminding visitors conception of time originates in distant astronomical objects and enriching the museum exhibit experience with actual encounters of celestial movement. The building will broadcast on astronomy and planetary science and will characterize a solar telescope,18mdiameter optical planetarium, an IMAX cinema, a 21m-diameter digital sky theatre, an education and research Centre, a youth observation camp and observatory and a range of galleries a 38,000 squaremeter planetarium set for construction on the coast of East China Sea. The curved, futuristic planetarium is built on three key architectural features the oculus, the inverted dome, and the sphere, each of which acts as an astronomical instrument, tracking the sun, moon, and stars. Each element speaks its own story, the Oculus, an ancient architectural element first made famous when first made in the Rome Pantheon turns the building itself into an astronomical instrument, visualizing the passage of time with a circle of light that moves slowly across the gallery floor. While the Oculus has scientific significance in this context, its experiential qualities may cut down towards the instinctive. By using reflecting pools and the external environment of the museum creates a scenery of Japanese modernists. The Inverted Dome forms a focal point at the museum’s heart, presenting a description of architects as “sublime spatial experience” at the height of the visitors’ journey through the museum interior. The dome’s inverted form makes the sky itself a focus, and the uninterrupted glazing creates a light and airy atmosphere in the atrium housing most the museum’s permanent exhibits. The Sphere houses the Planetarium theater inside a geodesic dome, a classic form reminiscent of many astronomically oriented buildings around the world. The Sphere appears as the positive complement to the inverted dome, nestled within a curved pedestal like a pearl in the heart of a concrete oyster shell. Landscaped pathways spiral outward from pedestal, around the exterior of the planetarium, resonating the elliptical orbits of the planets around the sun. The sweeping green space creates an embracing addition in a city
crowded at the seams with new development, provides further external exhibitory to supplement the museum program, including a 24-meter-high solar telescope.
4- Literature review:
My research paper aims to highlight the relation between Archeoastronomy and architecture as an interdisciplinary field and how architecture was shaped by Archeoastronomy. And modern architects incorporating cosmic to create new forms. Through case studies I have tried to explain the importance of astronomy in architecture and how archeoastronomy works hand by hand with architecture. A lot more study is required in this field for better understanding of our present and future.
5- Conclusion:
Astronomy is the important element used by ancient people in every aspect of life, including their architecture. Like Stonehenge, its study and science had inspired other cultures to modify ancient practices according to there needs and this process continued and gave others an idea to create something better and more useful for their time according to their needs. From bronze age to Niuheliang complexity has increased but they all have a single mainstay, Astronomy that always binds them together. Moreover, prehistorians had used their tools to study the sky for which they constructed instruments like Jantar Mantar. Archeoastronomy has its own significance in the field of architecture and the modern-day designers are more concerned for making use of prehistoric elements in their design as a dominant feature by adding complexity according to their time and needs. Having a thorough research on archeoastronomy and presented case studies of modern architecture it is understood that both Architecture and Archeoastronomy are interrelated, and each has an impact on other as both are dependent on each other, Although there is no impact on Astronomy without both as it is naturally occurred but archeoastronomy and architecture are dependent on astronomy as sky is the major priority of man at every age. Moreover, an extensive study is required to understand celestial objects, movement of sun and stars and how these celestial objects have an intensive impact on architecture of prehistoric and today. Certain case studies are presented in this paper for understanding the relationship of archeoastronomy, with architecture and astronomy, but there is a lot more study required for understand the complex relation between these fields and more work is required in the field of architecture for better understanding of our future having a concern of present.
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6- Reference