Blogpost 3

In class we discussed 10 different ideas and how they relate to the Acropolis is Greece and the Xianyang Palace in China. These ideas include space, power, experience, principles, precedent, size, order, scale, technology and surface. The question now is how do these principles relate to present day architecture. More specifically, UNCG campus. To begin with, space or location has been important from the very beginning. The Acropolis is place upon a hilltop and Xianyang is located in the middle of the city.  These are both very important spaces in their cultures. UNCG goes along with this precedent that was set thousands of years ago. It is located in the heart of Greensboro. In comparison to the surrounding area, the size of the land that campus takes up is much larger. Next we have scale which coincides with the size. Each of the locations were spread out which allowed them to appear much more grand. The size along with the scale of them both help to contribute to their aspect of power. Xianyang does this as well. The buildings surrounding is are not very large, so the palace stands out amongst them which gives it a more powerful appearance. Another thing that adds to the power of UNCG are the various emergency poles that are located around campus. That shows people that it would not be difficult to get an alert to the police that protect the campus.

Another idea to be thought on is experience. In both Xianyang and Acropolis, the materials that were used in building were materials that could be found in the area. Therefore, they were materials that the people had experience working with. They were the surface materials that existed on the land. Today it is much easier to get your hands on different materials because of our means of transportation, and this allowed the people that built UNCG to have a much wider range of materials at hand. This also meant that they had more experience with these materials and that made it easier to select what should be used. For example, dorms are made with brick instead of wood. This is because if they were to be made of wood they would not be as durable and would also be much more susceptible to fires. This is something that was learned through experience with using the different technologies. This kind of experimentation was also used on determining the size and shape of the columns on the Acropolis. It took many trials and errors to come up with a design that would emphasize the beauty of the building.

All three of these places were established on a certain set of principles. The all have their own purpose. Be it a place of worship of gods or an emperor when referring to the past, or a place of learning when talking about the present. These principles also help to relate to the order of the places. In the Xianyang palace the person with the most power is the emperor, and it becomes less and less as you go down the chain of power. This occurs in UNCG as well starting with the Dean and going down from there.