MESOPOTAMIAN CIVILIZATION

ASPECTS ARCHITECTURE INTERIORS

ARCHITECTURE  TOWN PLANING  PUBLIC PLACES & GARDANS  INSTITUTIONS  LAYOUTS & HOUSING

HOUSES The materials used to build a Mesopotamian house were the same as those used today: mud brick, mud plaster and wooden doors, which were all naturally available around the city, although wood could not be naturally made very well during the particular time period described. HOUSES FACED INWARD TOWARD OPEN COURTYARD WHICH PROVIDES A COOLING EFFECT BY CREATING CONVECTION CURRents.this courtyard called “tarbasu”,was the primary organizing feature of the house,all rooms opened into it.the external walla had only one single opening connecting the houses to the strret. The sumerians had a strict division of public and private spaces. The typical size for a sumerian house was 90 sq. m.

LAYOUTS The Sumerians were the first society to create the city itself as a built form. They were proud of this achievement as attested in the Epic of Gilgamesh.Epic of Gilgamesh The typical city divided space into residential, mixed use, commercial, and civic spaces. The residential areas were grouped by profession. At the core of the city was a high temple complex always sited slightly off of the geographical center. This high temple usually predated the founding of the city and was the nucleus around which the urban form grew.

The city always included a belt of irrigated agricultural land including small hamlets. A network of roads and canals connected the city to this land. The transportation network was organized in three tiers: wide processional streets (Akkadian:sūqu ilāni u šarri), public through streets (Akkadian:sūqu nišī), and private blind alleys (Akkadian:mū ṣ û). The public streets that defined a block varied little over time while the blind-alleys were much more fluid. The current estimate is 10% of the city area was streets and 90% buildings. [5] The canals; however, were more important than roads for transportation. [5]

PUBLIC PLACES TEMPLES: Temples often predated the creation of the urban settlement and grew from small one room structures to elaborate multiacre complexes across the 2,500 years of Sumerian history. Sumerian temples, fortifications, and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques, such as buttresses, recesses, and half columns.buttressesrecesseshalf columns

ZIGGURATS ZigguratsZiggurats were huge pyramidal temple towers built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels. There are 32 ziggurats known at, or near, Mesopotamia—28 in Iraq and 4 in IranThe top of the ziggurat was flat, unlike many pyramids. The step pyramid style began near the end of the Early Dynastic Period.Mesopotamian valleyIranian plateaustep pyramidIraqIran

GARDENS Text sources indicate open space planning was a part of the city from the earliest times. The description of Uruk in the Epic of Gilgamesh tells of one third of that city set aside for orchards. Similar planned open space is found at the one fifth enclosure of Nippur. Another important landscape element was the vacant lot (Akkadian: kišubbû) which was used alternatively for agriculture and waste disposal.UrukEpic of GilgameshNippur

INTERIOR The mud-brick houses of the Sumerian and Old Babylolyan Tigris-Euphrates Valley resembled their modern counterparts.

In most houses decoration probably was confined to a Wide black or Dark colored stone.

THANK YOU………. GROUP 19 JUHI ROMI KETAN NISARG RAVI