Hello, everyone.
Thanks to everyone for watching this video.
My name is Qi Dang.
I am an architect and engineer.
Today's video is titled antient Greece
and it is going to introduce the Greek columns and Greek temples.
I am going to give you an overview of what I am covering today's video.
First at all, it is an introduction of ancient Greece.
And then focus on the Greek columns and temples before wrapping up with conclusions.
Ancient Greece was born on the shores of the Aegean Sea about four thousand years ago.
In over a millennium, it expanded to lands as far as Spain and as far east as India.
Of all aspects of ancient Greek civilization, their cultural contributions left a considerable mark on the western world.
You don't have to dig in ruins to find Greek architecture.
It is all around you. Visit a civic structure, such as a theater, a bank, a museum, a Parliament building.
What do you see? Columns, columns, columns, columns.
If you want a westerner to think something is important, put columns on it, and not just any columns, Greek columns.
Greek columns come in three orders, Doric, Ionic and Corinthian.
All three share the same fluted shaft, where they differ is at the top what is called the capital of the column.
These are columns of the Doric order, the simplest of the Greek columns with a square top.
See those little curly at the top, that tells us that these are columns of the Ionic order.
Let us end our tour at the capitol. See that fancy ornament at the top of the columns. 
Sort of looks like a very symmetrical plant tried to grow at the top.
These are columns of the Corinthian order. Corinthian columns come in many forms.
Each more ornate than the last, but they all share the same leafy quality.
Now you know the three orders of Greek columns.
There was more to Greek architecture than just columns. The Greeks built breathtaking temples.
Our basic Greek temple is a roofed rectangle surrounded by columns.
What sort of columns are those? They are Doric or Ionic.
These temples had a long angles roof, peaking on the short ends to form a triangle, called the pediment.
These shallow shelters were filled with life-size sculptures.
The roof rested upon an even plane called an entablature, which spanned the gaps between columns to provide a solid surface.
As temple building developed, architects added decorations to the entablature, called the metopes.
Separated from each other by three lines, called the triglyph.
Inside the temple was a smaller enclosure, called the naos, lined with its own columns.
This was the holiest place of the temple, and usually housed an idol of the deity for whom the temple was built.
Perhaps the most famous Greek temple is the Parthenon. 
The Athenians began building this temple to Athena in 447 BC, and didn't complete it until 15 years later.
Like all Greek city-states, the Athenians built their most impressive temples atop the highest point in town, called the Acropolis, literally High City.
The Parthenon had all the elements of a Greek temple, the columns and entablature, the pediment full of sculptures.
It even had the extra features metopes depicting a battle, and the second row of columns with their accompanying frieze
depicting a civic procession of Athenians in exquisite detail and within the naos, big idol of Athena on the inside.
Yet these images can't convey the overall effect of this building, you simply have to be there standing among the columns.
You see the clever tricks of the eye. Greek architects used to make the Parthenon fabulous.
You can see how they tapered the columns at the top to make the building seem taller. A trick they called the entasis.
As you examine more closely, you notice that there is not a single right angle or straight line in the entire Parthenon.
It expects straight lines by taking advantage of the expectations.
The Greek architects could make the Parthenon appear even larger than it.
The overall effect is one of airy grandeur.
If you are thinking this Greece seems great, you are not alone because the early modernists had a love affair with Greece.
One of the early modernists who just couldn't get enough of the Greeks, was a lot sly about his admiration,
and that is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
This building designed by Mies, is the Barcelona pavilion in Spain.
Of course, the top figure of plan is the Barcelona pavilion, and the bottom figure of plane is the Parthenon.
I'm showing you these two things because they have uncanny similarities.
In the Parthenon, it has a bunch of columns, has a cellar, has a cult figure. It's got all the stuff you need to be a temple.
Does the Barcelona pavilion have that stuff? You might say no.
Of course, it doesn't have that stuff. It's the Barcelona pavilion.
It's the sleek intersection of simple planes and pure materials. This is modern.
But if you begin to look at the Barcelona pavilion, you notice somethings like columns or colonnade on a platform or stylobate.
And you might say "where is the cellar?"
If you look at the way, these lines are disposed and the two platforms.
The platform and the reflecting pond are all related to each other.
There could be some arguments about the cellar sliding apart, breaking open and becoming open the world, rather than closed.
We know that the cellar in ancient Greece is closed only to the priest cast.
In the Barcelona pavilion, there is a democratization of the system, which makes a lot of sense.
If you consider that a building constructed while Spain is under the rule of dictators,
and Germany was experiencing this great Avant Garde flourishing of culture, and the arts are during the Weimar Republic.
So, in a sense, the building is deliberately anti hierarchical,
and the building is deliberately demonstrating a kind of Democratic impulse in the face of the host nation which had very different aspirations.
These are just some fabulously done drawings that begin to show you
that there is lots of stuff that kind of locks together between the Parthenon and the Barcelona pavilion.
For example, the proportions are similar and even if you look at the division of the nails and the cellar,
and some of these different elements that in a subdivision of these sliding partitions in the Barcelona pavilion.
In this slide, we see that is dark is a reflecting pool on this reflecting as a statue visible obliquely throughout the building.
It could even be thought that the statue cast into the reflecting pond into the outdoors at the Barcelona pavilion.
In some way, nods toward the notion of the cult statue which was interior and hidden in buildings like the Parthenon.
So, I think was Mies has done is find a way to take a precedent from history.
Read it really critically, and transform it into something very different.
From conclusions what we learned, an order in architecture is a certain assemblage of parts subject to uniform established proportions.
The three orders of architecture, Doric, Ionic and Corinthian, originated in Greece.
The Parthenon is a former Greek temple. The classical temple inspired Ludwig Mises van der Rohe to design the Barcelona pavilion.
The architect imitates the Parthenon to make the building feel timeless and eternal.
Okay, thanks to everyone for watching my video today
and I do hope you found the video informative
and that you learned somethings from it.
If you do have any questions, then you can write comments and messages.
I am happy to answer any questions.
Thanks for your watching!
