The Age of Discovery: Seeing the advantages of sponsoring Navigators to discover new lands, the various kingdoms of Europe

began sending their sailors, ships & explorers in quest of new colonies - the prize target being India. This was made even more necessary as the rising power of the Ottoman Empire at Constantinople had closed off all land routes. Thus began this European race for gaining Global hegemony. As was bound to happen geographical knowledge of the World not only increased with discovery of new lands and expansion of known boundaries, but also brought huge land masses under the control of the Europeans both to get rid of their unwanted population and to exploit and ravage the resources of these colonies, making them immensely rich and powerful. The Age of Discovery never actually ended, but began overlapping other Ages. It continues till date with Space and Deep sea Exploration missions. The Age of Reformation; As the Renaissance reached it's peak, the Holy Roman church began undertaking huge construction projects, specially St.Peter's at Rome. The Popes began to use their authority in a most indifferent and commercial manor. To recoup expenses the Church began a most loathsome practice - interference in the daily lives of people, of selling simony and indulgences; a practice that eventually split it into two factions - Catholics against Protestants. John Wycliffe (1320-1384) in England; Jan Huss (1369-1415) in Czechoslovakia; Martin Luther King (1483-1546) in Germany; John Calvin (1509-1564) in France and Cornelius Jansen (1585-1638) in Holland spoke out against these evils and started, what we call today, The Age of Reformation. To make matters worse Henry VIII of England severed all connections with Rome and was responsible for establishing The Anglican Church. And while the Holy See was undergoing these cataclysmic changes, a new Age was dawning all over Europe; more people were becoming literate with the advancement of printing techniques and with the discovery of a New World by Columbus in 1492 - The Age of Exploration and Discovery. The Age of Reason or enlightenment It was a cultural movement of intellectuals to reform society using reason and logic; challenge the "existing order" grounded in tradition and faith and advance knowledge through scientific methods. It acted as a catalyst for many new scientific and engineering ideas, overturning many traditional concepts and introducing a fresh perspective on nature and mankind's place within it. It was a period of emancipation of human consciousness from an immature state of ignorance and was a general period of rationalisation and secularisation. Copernicus, Poland (1473-1543); Astronomy Galelio, Italy (1564-1642); Astronomy Isaac Newton, England (1642-1727); Physics Charles Darwin, England (1809-1882); Anthropology Spinoza, Switzerland (1632-1677); Theology Emmanuel Kant, Germany; Theology, Voltaire / Rousseau, France, Political philosophy

Benjamin Franklin / Thomas Jefferson, USA. Political philosophy, John Adams, England; Economics,

The age of Romanticism or counter reformation An artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th C and characterised by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, and rebellion against social rules and conventions. It embodied a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change William Wordsworth, P B Shelley John Keats, Samuel Coleridge Emmanuel Kant The Great Revolutions: * The American Revolution; 1776 * The French Revolution; 1789 * The Industrial Revolution; 1845 * The Russian Revolution; 1919 A new social awareness about human rights, ownership of property, division of labour, distribution of wealth, rapid uncontrolled urbanisation and growth of cities system of representation in Government, Neo Classicism; Avant Garde; Vanguard or advance guard Art noveau; Art Deco; Cubism: Was an artistic movement in France beginning in 1907 that featured surfaces of geometrical planes. It inspired related movements in music, literature & architecture. Primary influence was the representation of 3D form . In Cubist artwork, objects are analysed, broken up & reassembled in an abstracted form. Instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts it from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the object in greater context. George Braque, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, La Maison Cubiste Impressionism:

A school of late 19th Century French painters who pictured appearances by strokes of unmixed colours to give the impression of reflected light. Futurism: Artistic movement in Italy around 1910 that tried to express the energy and values of the Machine Age. It was an off-shoot of Cubism. Imagism: A movement by American & European poets early in the 20th Century in reaction to Victorian sentimentality, used common speech in free verse with clear concrete imagery. Modernism / Structuralism / Minimalism: "Less is More". Arose from wide scale and far reaching changes within European society in the late 19th & early 20th centuries. In particular the development of modern Industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed by the horrors of WWI, were among the factors that brought about Modernism. Modernism was like an architectural revolution. It liberated architectural vocabulary from stylistic exercises through the consistent elimination of excess ornamentation and redundant form, allowing pure concepts and spaces to emerge. This revolutionary movement gradually degenerated as the liberating mantra and became a starvation of the imagination, turning the freedom from style into a stylistic straightjacket itself. The result was a relentless repitition of identical anonymous boxes dominating vast areas of contemporary cities and also making all of them look alike. It explicitly rejects the idea of Realism & encompasses the works and outputs of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, music, architecture etc., were becoming outdated in the new social, political and economic order of an emerging fully industrialised world. A salient characteristic of Modernism is self consciousness, that often led to experiments with form and work that draws attention to the processes of materials used, leading to Abstraction. Ezra Pound, writer Theodor Adorns, composer Georgeii Krutikov, architect Constructivism / Neo Modernism in art and architecture Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that began in Russia during 1919, being a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. It had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th Century, influencing major trends such as Bauhaus and De Stijl movement. It influenced architecture, graphic and industrial design, theatre, film, dance, fashion and music. It advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction of the essentials of form and colour, simplifying visual compositions to vertical and horizontal directions, sometimes also referred to as Neo Plasticism. De Stijl influence on architecture remained long after 1931. Mies Van der Rohe was among the most important proponent of it's ideas. (Refer RIETVELD SCHRODER HOUSE 1923/24). Industrial materials were used to construct non- representational objects. Scientific observation has established that education is not what the teacher gives; It is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the individual & acquired not by listening to words but by

experiences upon the environment. The task of the teacher becomes that of preparing a series of motives of cultural activities spread over a specially prepared environment and then refraining from obtrusive interference. Doing so they will witness the rising of a New Soul who will not be a victim of events. Like Futurism, this was also an off shoot of Cubism. Constructivism began as a derisive term in 1917, but received a positive connotation in Naum Gabo's 'Realistic Manifesto' in 1920. Constructivism was a combination of faktura - the particular material properties of an object and tektorrika, it's spatial presence. (Faktura is visual demonstration of properties inherent to materials. The surface of the object had to demonstrate how it had been made, exhibiting it's own distinct property. Expressionism: Was an art movement in early 20th Century; the artist's subjective expression of inner experiences was emphasised; an inner feeling was expressed through a distorted rendition of reality. Fauvism: Was an art movement launched in 1905 in which the works were characterised by bright and non natural colours and simple forms; it had a great influence on the Expressionists. Dadaism: Was a nihilist art movement, especially in painting, that flourished in Europe early in the 20th Century; It was based on irrationality and negation of the accepted laws of beauty. Existentialism: Was a 20th Century philosophical movement chiefly in Europe; It assumes that people are entirely free and thus responsible for what they make of themselves. Jean Paul Sartre - 'I think, therefore I am'. High style Vernacular Post or Neo Modernism / Post Structuralism / Post Constructivism: "Less is a bore". This was a variant of constructivist thinking that claims that there is no neutral viewpoint from which to assess the validity of analytical & ethical knowledge claims. It was a transitional architectural style that existed in the USSR in the 1930s (typical early Stalinist architecture before WW2). Term coined to describe product of avant Garde artists. (began at 3.00 PM on 16 March 1972). As a counter revolution against the limited choice of vocabulary for the orthodox modern architect, Robert Venturi and Denis Scott Brown started looking at the contemporary city outside the realm of modern architecture. They reintroduced symbolism and signs in the architectural palette, offering "complexity and contradiction" in place of simplicity and consistency. The counter revolution against the monotony of strictly functional modern architecture, in turn led to it's own epidemic of indistinguishable Post Modern towers no more varied nor interesting than their Modern siblings. Bohemianism:

Practice of non conventional life style; often in company of like minded people, with few permanent ties; like vagabonds. Philistinism: Is an anti intellectual who undervalues and despises art, beauty, spirituality and intellect. A person who is singularly narrow minded & of conventional morality and whose taste indicate an indifference towards culture and aesthetic values. Deconstructivism: More and more It began in the late 1980s, influenced by the theory of Deconstructivism, which is a form of semiotic analysis. It is characterised by fragmentation, an interest in manipulating a structure's surface or skin, non rectilinear shapes which appear to distort and dislocate elements of architecture, such as it's structure and envelope. The finished visual appearance of buildings that exhibit deconstructvist 'styles' is characterised by unpredictability and controlled chaos. Deconstructivism in contemporary architecture is opposed to the ordered rationality of Modernism and Post Modernism. It took a confrontational stance to architectural history, wanting to 'dissemble' architecture, while Post Modernism returned to embrace the historical references that Modernism had shunned, possibly ironically. Deconstructivism rejected the Post Modern acceptance of such references, as well as the idea of ornament as an after thought or decoration. It argues against the purity, clarity and simplicity of Modernism, overturning functionalism and rationalism. Functional aspects of buildings were called into question. Geometry was to deconstructvist what ornament was to Post Modernists, the subject of complication and this complication of geometry was in turn applied to the functional, structural and spatial aspects of deconstructvist buildings. One example of deconstructvist complexity is Frank Gehry's Vitra Design Museum, which takes the typical unadorned White cube of Modernist art galleries and reconstructs it, using geometries reminiscent of Cubism and abstract Expressionism.