Rhythm


 * How is rhythm expressed in different architectural styles /urban spaces?

Preferences in rhythm type have varied greatly in different architectural periods. **Greek** ornament, for example, indicates an intense love of small, regular, and perfectly studied rhythms. It is essentially linear: the relief is regular throughout and shadows count almost as purely linear elements.


 * The Romans**, on the other hand, love rhythms of a much freer and more plastic type.

In Roman ornaments, some elements project boldly and some die away into the background; the shadows are no longer linear but instead form varied areas of changing value. The basic composition is further distinguished by great rhythmical freedom; strong progression from big to little, from high relief to low relief, and from free swinging curves to tight spirals.


 * Gothic** is extraordinarily varied in its rhythmical content. [[image:http://id2126.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/gothicarchitecture.jpg align="left" caption="gothicarchitecture.jpg"]] Architects liked to establish many clearly defined and persistent rhythms in their ornaments such as repeated vertical lines of wall panels which develop rhythmical power and the exaggerated staccatos on the edge of spires and gables which emphasize their rhythmical richness. In developed Baroque architecture, the designers achieved a kind of ordered and dramatic rhythmical complexity of line, of mass, and of shape which have never been surpassed.

Rhythmical relationships arise simply and naturally from constructive and functional necessities: controlled and orchestrated by the creative imagination, they become one of the chief elements in architectural beauty. **Modern architecture,** like modern music, varies in its rhythmical ideals from the most clear-cut and regular rhythms to those in which there is a search from such free and so-called natural rhythms that the rhythmical basis is almost entirely lost and the result appears, to many people, amorphous and without meaning.




 * Greek Architecture, in the picture we can see how the columns, are all of the same size and aligned, this creates a rhythm. There is also the ornaments that creates rhythm, and it indicates an intense love of small, regular, and perfectly studied rhythms. It is essentially linear: the relief is regular throughout and shadows count almost as purely linear. **

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