The 50 Greatest Architects: The People Whose Buildings Have Shaped Our World

HEMIUNU

ONLY ONE OF THE SEVEN WONDERS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD STILL EXISTS, AND IT IS THE OLDEST OF THEM ALL.

Hemiunu

EGYPT b. 2570 BCE

HIGHLIGHTS:

The Great Pyramid of Giza

PRINCIPAL STYLE:

Fourth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest and most famous of Egypt’s approximately 130 ancient pyramids, and it has helped make the pyramid one of the most recognizable architectural objects in the world, featuring even on the American dollar bill.

Despite the huge role the Ancient Egyptian pyramids have played in our culture, civilization and iconography, their creators are shrouded in secrecy. But the architect behind Giza’s Great Pyramid led a life of power and prestige that almost mirrored that of the great pharaohs whom the pyramids were built to entomb.

Hemiunu was born into the Egyptian royal family. His parents were a prince and princess, and his uncle was Khufu, second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, who commissioned the building of the Great Pyramid and, Egyptologists believe, was entombed in it when he died. But the familial relation who arguably had the biggest impact on Hemiunu’s life and career was his grandfather Pharaoh Sneferu.

Since the beginning of the ancient dynastic period in Egypt, around 3100 BCE, kings and rulers had been buried in mastabas: squat, trapezoidal, flat-roofed structures crudely constructed from mud bricks. It was the great architect Imhotep, later deified as a healing god, who first thought of stacking smaller and smaller mastabas on top of each other, and thus the pyramid tomb was born. Early pyramids were stepped in profile; it wasn’t until Sneferu’s rule that the smooth outline we recognize today was introduced. Sneferu also established innovations to pyramids’ internal structure.

Hemiunu would have been well aware of these changes when he succeeded his father as vizier, the most senior position in the royal court – roughly equivalent to prime minister today. Crucially, he was also the royal architect, which meant he oversaw all royal construction projects. In this capacity Hemiunu built the Great Pyramid at Giza. Comprising almost 2.8 million cubic metres (100 million cubic feet) and weighing an estimated 5.5 million tonnes (almost 945 million stone), the structure took around two decades to construct and was built on a scale never previously seen in Egypt. Originally almost 147 m (482 ft) high, for almost 4,000 years it was the tallest building in the world, only surpassed by Lincoln Cathedral in the 14th century.

All pyramids conformed to largely the same geometric and decorative precepts, and Hemiunu had little opportunity to place his architectural stamp on his creation. But he managed it in three ways. The most obvious is Giza’s gigantic scale. This has political as well as architectural significance. Like Europe’s baroque palaces, the scale of pyramids was directly proportional to the level of absolutism practised by their sovereigns; when authoritarianism and centralization declined under future dynasties, pyramids became smaller and pharaohs built more logistically feasible temples instead.

Hemiunu’s most powerful legacy, The Great Pyramid at Giza.

An example of a mastaba, the tomb style that predated pyramids in Ancient Egypt.

Hemiunu’s second stamp is the gleaming white limestone blocks in which the pyramid was originally encased. These were later eroded or deliberately dismantled. Symbolically, the form of the ancient pyramids was said to be derived from the descending rays of the sun, and in order to convey the impression of glistening luminescence, most pyramids were clad with this limestone skin. Giza’s surface aimed to be the most polished and reflective of them all and was said to shine like a star in the desert – so much so that Ancient Egyptians referred to it as Ikhet, which means ‘Glorious Light’.

A drawing of a cross section of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Stella octangula, an engraving by Leonardo da Vinci showing the golden ratio as used in the form of the Great Pyramid, from De Divina Proportione by Luca Pacioli, published 1509, Venice.

Hemiunu’s most powerful legacy comes in Giza’s proportions. The Great Pyramid’s dimensions closely match the golden ratio, a mathematical principle from which beauty and perfection in art and nature are said to derive. Long after the demise of Ancient Egypt, the ratio fascinated the Ancient Greeks; even in the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci based the composition of his Mona Lisa on its strictures. If Hemiunu did the same, then he was perhaps the first architect to formalize humankind’s enduring pursuit of beauty, order and perfection through architecture, an obsession that would become a defining feature of civilization for centuries to come.

MARCUS

VITRUVIUS POLLIO

VERY FEW BOOKS HAVE TRANSFORMED THE WORLD. THE BIBLE – PARTICULARLY THE KING JAMES VERSION – IS ONE. ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO AND A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARE OTHERS.

Vitruvius

ITALY 80–70 BCE – 15 CE

HIGHLIGHTS

Basilica di Fano

PRINCIPAL STYLE

Roman Classicism

Also on this list is a lesser-known title, a seminal polemical treatise completed fifteen years before Christ and dedicated to Emperor Caesar Augustus. It would establish the founding principles to which architecture has adhered ever since.

De Architectura libri decem, now more commonly known as Ten Books on Architecture, is the most influential book on architecture ever written. Its author was a Roman architect and military engineer who sought to codify for the first time the rules and principles on which architecture should be based. Marcus Vitruvius Pollio served in the Roman army as an engineer, initially designing combat artillery. The contrast would not have seemed strange then: architecture in the Roman Empire was a broad term that included a variety of technical disciplines, including construction management, urban planning, civil engineering and mechanical design.

But it was buildings to which Vitruvius chiefly turned his attention, and in De Architectura he provides a guide for how buildings should be designed. Books 1 to VI deal directly with architecture and town planning, and the remaining four books explore more prosaic disciplines such as irrigation, machinery and plasterwork. Throughout, Vitruvius attempts to define how architecture can achieve aesthetic beauty through an understanding of elements such as order, arrangement, symmetry, balance and proportion, and he does so with an almost scientific sense of theoretical precision.

The Pantheon in Rome was inspired by the principles of architecture first laid down by Vitruvius.

The plans by Vitruvius for the Basilica di Fano.

In the most famous passage, in Book 1, Vitruvius states that all buildings should have three core characteristics: strength, utility and beauty (updated by later scholars to firmness, commodity and delight). Two millennia later, this extract is familiar to architecture students across the world and indicates the clarity and pragmatism with which Vitruvius distilled complex ideas for a wide audience.

It is impossible to overstate De Architectura’s influence on architecture, Western civilization and global culture. After Vitruvius’s death, scores of iconic Roman buildings, such as the Pantheon, the Roman Forum and the Baths of Diocletian, were designed according to his book’s principles. His work influenced great figures of Renaissance and classical architecture, including Filippo Brunelleschi (p.20), Andrea Palladio (p.32) and Inigo Jones (p.36).

Leonardo da Vinci was captivated by him. In his Vitruvian Man of 1490, da Vinci mathematically applied Vitruvian principles of symmetry and proportion to the greatest work of art of all, the human body.

These principles also inspired the neoclassical stylistic movements of the 15th to 19th centuries and helped drive the postmodern and new classical ideologies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. One of the most famous books of British architecture, Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus (1715–25), was directly inspired by its Roman forebear and sought to purge what it saw as the emotional excesses of Baroque with Vitruvian-inspired ideals of Palladian purity. A Danish version was published soon after, and both were intellectually anchored to the Age of Enlightenment, itself Vitruvian in its search for rationality and order.

Vitruvian ideals came to be principally associated with classical architecture, but in De Architectura’s forensic focus on spatial and aesthetic generalities, such as light and movement, Vitruvius established an idealized framework that could be applied to any number of styles. The book was also a groundbreaking work of engineering, with early designs for hoists, cranes, building services, acoustics, pipework, aqueducts, steam engines, surveying tools and even central heating, many of which informed the development of our modern equivalents.

Vitruvius may not have designed many buildings, and next to nothing is known about his sole major architectural commission, a long-vanished basilica in Fano, Italy. Nor did he necessarily invent all the ideas in De Architectura: in its reliance on established theories relating to themes like classical orders and mechanical engineering, he is more classifier than creator. But there can be no doubt that in attempting to intellectually codify architecture for the first time, Vitruvius established many of the aesthetic principles on which two millennia of human civilization would be built.

Leonardo da Vinci was inspired by the work of Vitruvius to apply his principles of symmetry to the human body.

HENRY

YEVELE

HENRY YEVELE WAS NOT ONLY THE MOST PROLIFIC AND SUCCESSFUL MASTER MASON OF THE ENGLISH MIDDLE AGES, HE ALSO HELPED ESTABLISH THE IDEA OF GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AS A UNIQUE EXPRESSION OF ENGLISH CULTURAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATIONAL IDENTITY, IDEAS THAT WOULD RESONATE POWERFULLY DURING THE 19TH-CENTURY GOTHIC REVIVAL.

A boss believed to depict Henry Yevele

ENGLAND 1320–1400

HIGHLIGHTS

Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral

PRINCIPAL STYLE

Gothic

The Gothic style originated in France in the early 12th century, developing from Romanesque as an artistic movement designed to project the dynastic ambitions of the French monarchy. It was associated mostly with religious architecture and flourished across Europe.

The nave of Westminster Abbey.

The Jewel Tower, one of only two surviving sections of the medieval Palace of Westminster, believed to have been designed by Henry Yevele.

Where Romanesque featured round arches, small windows, thick walls and sober decoration, Gothic found its signature motif in the pointed arch and embraced larger windows, lighter walls and ostentatious ornamentation. Two elements especially defined the style: God and structure. The pointed arch was a symbolic arrow pointing towards the heavens, and Gothic churches and cathedrals rapturously embraced height to elevate humankind towards the celestial firmament. To achieve this, Gothic became an exercise in extreme structural dexterity, with elaborate vaulting to support lofty ceilings, and flying buttresses to stabilize thinner walls punctuated by gigantic stained-glass windows.

By the time Yevele, a successful Derbyshire mason, was appointed by the Black Prince to reconstruct his great hall at Kennington Manor in 1357, he would have been intimately familiar with the Gothic movement, which was firmly established in England. But it was not until the Prince’s father, Edward III, appointed Yevele his deviser (designer) of masonry – essentially responsible for all Crown works – three years later that his career took flight.

Cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral

Yevele remodelled works to various royal properties, including the Tower of London, Westminster Hall and the Palace of Westminster; supervised repairs and additions to Durham Cathedral, Southampton Carisbrooke and Winchester Castles; and designed tombs for royalty and aristocracy.

During his long career there were two areas where he would have long-lasting influence. The first was in establishing what became the Office of the King’s Works in 1378, which he ran in its capacity as successor to the deviser of masonry role. This institution would produce some of the greatest works of English royal and public architecture for the next 400 years.

The second was in his pioneering supervision of a large workshop responsible not just for the construction of buildings but also for their conceptualization and design. Yevele redefined the role of a traditional medieval master mason. In turning the architect from an artisan to an artist, he helped bridge the gap between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

For Yevele’s cultural legacy, we return to the style he made his own. His architectural career is still defined by his work on the two pre-eminent buildings in the global Anglican Communion and two of the most important Gothic structures in medieval Christendom: Westminster Abbey (1376–87) and Canterbury Cathedral (1377–1400). At Westminster he completed the nave that was unfinished since the death of Henry III, and at Canterbury he rebuilt the old Romanesque nave that for decades had been in ruins.

English cathedrals were known for