The history of architecture is concerned more with religious buildings than with any other type, because in most past cultures the universal and exalted appeal of religion made the church or temple the most expressive, the most permanent, and the most influential building in any community.

The typology of religious architecture is complex, because no basic requirements such as those that characterize domestic architecture are common to all religions and because the functions of any one religion involve many different kinds of activity, all of which change with the evolution of cultural patterns.

Places of worship

Temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues serve as places of worship and as shelters for the images, relics, and holy areas of the cult. In the older religions, the temple was not always designed for communal use. In ancient Egypt and India it was considered the residence of the deity, and entrance into the sanctum was prohibited or reserved for priests; in ancient Greece it contained an accessible cult image, but services were held outside the main facade; and in the ancient Near East and in the Mayan and Aztec architecture of ancient Mexico, where the temple was erected at the summit of pyramidal mounds, only privileged members of the community were allowed to approach.

Few existing religions are so exclusive. Beliefs as dissimilar as Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam are based on communal participation in rites held inside each religion’s place of worship. The buildings have even evolved into similar plans, because of a common requirement that the maximum number of worshippers be able to face the focal point of the service (the mosque’s focal point is the qibla, indicated by the mihrab, a niche in the mosque’s interior wall facing the direction of Mecca, the city of Muhammad’s birth and therefore the most sacred of all Islamic religious sites). Consequently, the Muslims were able to adopt the Byzantine church tradition, modern synagogues are often scarcely distinguishable from churches, and early Protestantism absorbed Catholic architecture with only minor revision (elimination of subsidiary chapels and altars, repositories of relics, and some symbolic decoration).

Shelter is not always required for worship. Some rites are often practiced outdoors with a monument as a focus, while the altar of Pergamum and the Ara Pacis (Augustan Altar of Peace) in Rome are evidences of the open-air religious observances of the classical world. The atrium of early Christian architecture and the cloister were isolated areas for prayer.

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The complex programs of later religions made the place of worship the focus for varied activities demanding architectural solutions—for example, the baptistery, bell towers, and chapter houses of Christian architecture, the minarets of Islamic architecture, and the holy gates of Buddhist architecture. Most modern sects demand space for religious education adjoining the community church or temple. Catholicism and the religions of Asia have produced madrasahs, monasteries, convents, and abbeys—connected to places of worship—that accommodate the organized practice of religion, adding domestic and often industrial, agricultural, and scholarly functions to the religious.

Shrines and memoria

Shrines consecrate a holy place for its miraculous character or for its association with the life of the founder, gods, or saints of a cult. The major commemorative buildings of Christianity are those connected with the life of Jesus Christ (Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem) and the Apostles or early Church Fathers (St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome) or with the medieval cult of relics (Santiago de Compostela in Spain). No single formal design characterizes this type, but the theme of the domed or central-plan structure (round, square, polygon, Greek cross, etc.) connects the memoria of Asia (the Indian stupa, Chinese pagoda), pagan antiquity (the Pantheon in Rome), and Christianity (the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem). The significance of the form is discussed below under Content.

Funerary art

Expressing relationship to the afterlife, funerary art is not always architectural, since it may be purely symbolic and therefore suitable to sculptural treatment, as in the classic Greek, medieval, and modern tomb. Funerary architecture is produced by societies whose belief in the afterlife is materialistic and by individuals who want to perpetuate and symbolize their temporal importance. Monumental tombs have been produced in ancient Egypt (pyramids), Hellenistic Greece (tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus, which is the source of the word mausoleum), ancient Rome (tomb of Hadrian), Renaissance Europe (Michelangelo’s Medici Chapel, Florence), and Asia (Taj Mahal, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India). Modern tomb design has lost vitality, though it remains as elaborate (Monument to Victor Emmanuel II, Rome) or as meaningful in terms of power (Lenin Mausoleum, Moscow) as before. The exceptional examples are partly sculptural in character (e.g., Louis Sullivan’s Wainwright Tomb, St. Louis, Missouri; Walter Gropius’s war memorial, Weimar, Germany).

Since the 18th century much of religious architecture has lost individuality and importance through the weakening of liturgical traditions. But today, as in the past, outstanding architects have met new demands of use and expression with superior solutions.

Governmental architecture

The basic functions of government, to an even greater extent than those of religion, are similar in all societies: administration, legislation, and the dispensing of justice. But the architectural needs differ according to the nature of the relationship between the governing and the governed. Where governmental functions are centralized in the hands of a single individual, they are simple and may be exercised in the ruler’s residence; where the functions are shared by many and established as specialized activities, they become complex and demand distinct structures. There are, however, no basic formal solutions for governmental architecture, since the practical needs of government may be met in any sheltered area that has convenient space for deliberation and administration. A distinct type is created rather by expressive functions arising from the ideology of the different systems of political organization (monarchy, theocracy, democracy, etc.) and from the traditions of the various offices of government (law courts, assembly houses, city halls, etc.). Governments that exercise power by force rather than by consent tend to employ the expressive functions of architecture to emphasize their power; they tend to produce buildings of a monumentality disproportionate to their service to the community. Those in which the ruler is given divine attributes bring religious symbolism into architecture. Democratic governments have the responsibility of expressing in their architecture the aims of the community itself, a difficult task in the modern world, when the community may be neither small enough to express itself easily nor homogeneous enough to agree on how to do so.

The simple democratic processes of the Greek city-states and the medieval free towns produced governmental architecture on a domestic scale, while the Roman Empire and later monarchies seldom made important distinctions between the palace and the seat of state functions. The widespread growth of representative government and the increase in the size and functions of the state in the 19th century created a great variety of buildings, some for entirely new uses. Some examples are: first, capitols, courthouses, parliament buildings, printing offices, and mints and, later, post offices, embassies, archives, secretariats, and even laboratories, when the work, the increased personnel, and the complexity of mechanical aids demanded specialized architectural solutions. Bureaucracy, for better or for worse, has made governmental architecture more important than at any time in history.

In the first rapid expansion from about 1780 to 1840, Neoclassical architects found impressive solutions to the new problems, but afterward governmental architecture lapsed into a century of conservatism, following at a safe distance behind private building. After World War II, governmental architecture showed new vitality. Outstanding are Le Corbusier’s work at Chandigarh, Punjab, India, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization headquarters in Paris, and the program of the U.S. Department of State for building American embassies.

Military architecture is closer to the governmental type than to others, but its expressive function is so much subordinated to the practical that it is usually regarded as a class of engineering (see fortification).

Recreational architecture

Few recreations require architecture until they become institutionalized and must provide for both active and passive participation (athletic events, dramatic, musical performances, etc.) or for communal participation in essentially private luxuries (baths, museums, libraries). Throughout history, recreational architecture has been the most consistent in form of any type. Diversions may change, but, as in domestic architecture, the physical makeup of human beings provides consistency. If their participation is passive, they must be able to hear and to see in comfort. If their participation is active, they must be given spaces suited to the chosen activities. In most cultures, recreational institutions have their origins in religious rites, but they easily gain independence, and religious expression is reduced or eliminated in their architecture.