The Eternal Present, Volume II

An original account of ancient Egyptian and Sumerian building from the acclaimed architectural historian

In The Beginnings of Architecture, Sigfried Giedion examines the architecture of ancient Egypt and Sumer and the way their builders expressed an attitude of immense force when they confronted their ziggurats, pyramids, and other monumental structures with the open sky. Giedion argues that these periods saw the emergence of the first conception of architectural space, which encompassed the high civilization of Greece as well as those of Egypt and Sumer and was characterized by a shared attitude toward the placing of volumes in limitless space. But one of the greatest changes from prehistory was the advent of the vertical as the dominant organizing principle of architecture, one which asserted a link with the cosmos. From the first Sumerian temples to the pyramids of Gaza and the Acropolis in Athens, The Beginnings of Architecture is an important study of fundamental impulses in building and their realization.