What are the main characteristics of ancient Greek architecture?

Question

What are the main characteristics of Greek architecture?

At least 8 please :)

Thanks!

Answer 1

Doric Order - the oldest, studiest, and most severe of the orders. It developed on the mainland of Greece. The most distinguishing characteristic is probably its capital, but note the absence of a column base and the introduction of triglyphs and metopes in the frieze course.

Ionic Order - is more slender and lighter than the Doric. The Ionic developed in the lands east of the Aegean and was more subject to the influence of older Asiatic styles. It is quickly distinguished by the volutes of its capitals. Note the presence of a column base and the absence of the triglyphs and metopes.

Corinthian Order - developed later than the Doric or Ionic. It is distinguished from the Ionic by its capital formed of a circular belle of rows of acanthus leaves.

Answer 2

The Greek style is noted for the repose, harmony, and proportion of its effect.

Greek art is characterized by the representation of living beings. It is concerned both with formal proportion and with the dynamics of action and emotion. Its primary subject matter is the human figure, which is also the form of the divine; monsters, animals, and plants are secondary. The chief themes are from myth, literature, and daily life.

Aware of Egyptian temples in stone, Greeks in the 7th century began to build their own stone temples in a distinctive style. They used limestone in Italy and Sicily, marble in the Greek islands and Asia Minor, and limestone covered with marble on the Greek mainland. Later they built chiefly in marble. The temples were rectangular and stood on a low, stepped terrace in an enclosure where rituals were performed. Small temples had a two-columned front porch, sometimes with a portico before it. Larger temples, with front and back porches, might have a six-columned portico before each porch or be entirely surrounded by a colonnade. The colonnade supported an entablature, or lintel, under the gabled, tiled roof.

Architects developed two orders, or styles of columns, the Doric and the Ionic (see COLUMN,). Doric columns, which had no bases and whose capitals consisted of a square slab over a round cushion shape, were heavy and closely spaced to support the weight of the masonry. Their heaviness was relieved by the tapered and fluted shaft. On the entablature, vertical triglyphs were carved over every column, leaving between them oblong—later square—metopes, which were at first painted and later filled with painted reliefs. The Doric style originated on the mainland and became widespread. The Doric temples at Syracuse, Paestum, Selinus, Akragus, Pompeii, Tarentum (Taranto), Metapontum, and Corcyra (Kérkira) still exist. Especially notable is the Temple of Poseidon at Paestum (450 bc).

Columns in the Ionic style, which began in Ionia (Asia Minor) and the Greek islands, are more slender, more narrowly fluted, and spaced farther apart than Doric columns. Each rests on a horizontally fluted round base and terminates in a capital shaped like a flat cushion rolled into volutes at the sides. The entablature, lighter than in the Doric style, might have a frieze. Examples of Ionic temples are in Ephesus near modern Ä°zmir, Turkey, in Athens (the Erechtheum), and (some traces) in Naucratis, Egypt.