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Greek architects

by Egenia Salza Prina Ricotti

GREEK ARCHITECTS
Not in all the ancient countries architects were allowed to pass their names to the posterity. They were paid of course, and in some cases also very well paid, but with the passing of time nobody would recall their names. Instead in Greece this right was acknowledged. The paternity of their projects was always recognized to the Greek architects, and also if the person who ordered the monument and paid for its erection was highly praised and exhalted, it was the planner’s name that was immortalized.
Certainly they were not worthless persons. To be considered an architect in Greece was not easy, and not even were enough all the qualities that, to explain who can be considered one, Vitruvius specified and listed in his book. Of course for the Greeks the architect must be all this but he must also be endowed with that certain “je ne sais quoi” that from a good technician makes an artist, and admiring and studying their splendid projects there is no doubt that artists they were. They created their temples and their building as if their art was pure poetry and accurately studying the interplay of the volumes, the balance of lights and shades, and that of the solid spaces and voids they created perfect forms and splendid proportions. They corrected the unpleasant optic illusions, played with the perspective effects and transformed the simple trilithic architecture in a sublime art.
Nobody exalted them to the rank of deities as once the Egyptians did for Imhotep, and nobody considered them as sons of some god, but we still know their names and what they did and we still admire them. All of them beginning by Daedalus who, for the king, built the Labyrinth that really was the Royal palace with its most intricate plan, and in which it would be easy to get lost. Besides Daedalus we remember Ichtynos who created both the magic of the Parthenon and the majesty of Bassae’s temple, and with him we recall Mnesikles who with his Propylaea gave to his posterity the example of the monumental entrance. We also know the names of the ones who were famous for their highly technical engineering works, as the Samian Mandrokles who, to allow the Persian army to cross the Bosporos, created for them a floating bridge, or as the studies of the Syracusan Archimedes and we know the great Hydraulic works of Ktesibios, his famous organ, the Hydraulis, and also his hydraulic clock and his force pump.
Of course all of them corresponded to Vitruvius’ ideal architect, but also knowing all the science listed in the “De architectura” no one could never transform a very good and cultured of his architect in an Iktinos, a Phidia or an Archimedes: unfortunately this kind of men are not born everyday.

Bibliography
Scientific popularization
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Dossier Gli architetti e progettazione di architettura nell'antichità in Archeo (Anno XI, nº 12 (142) December 1996, pp. 58 - 85.

Academic works
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI - Villa Adriana. Un singolare solaio piano in opus caementicium, in Palladio, Nuova serie, Anno I, N. 1, Giugno 1988. pp. 1-12.
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Adriano: architettura del verde e dell’acqua in Horti Romani, Rome , 1995, pp. 363-399.
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI – Hadrien, architecte, ingénieur et urbaniste, in Hadrien. Trésors d’une villa impériale, Italia 1999, pp. 37-46
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI – Adriano, architetto, ingegnere e urbanista, in Adriano architettura e progetto, Italia 2000, pp. 41-45 e schede