[CNH1] Project 1A: WIKI TIMEs On-line Forum

Our first project for Culture and History is related throughout the whole first semester and me and my group will be doing the same research on the same building as well. So, this online forum is a group project and I'll will be doing with 4 other friends of mine, a total of 5 person per group. Unfortunately, we had a member who quitted the course and it was down to the 4 of us. The assessment for this project would be 80% individual and 20% group. 

The members are:

1. Heng Rui Ying (myself)

2. Heng Sy Hua

3. Ho Zi Yan 

4. Hoh Jean Ming

Objectives

In developing students' historical and architectural criticism skills the objectives of the project are:

1. 1. To introduce basic architectural theory through a consideration of intentions, concepts, patterns, disciplines, architectural language and contextual relationships. 
2. To creatively and innovatively develop and expand the design concept derived from the precedent study analysis. 

Learning outcome:

1. To produce building analysis which document intentions, concepts, patterns, disciplines, architectural language and contextual relationships. 
2. To produce graphical development, expansion and elaboration of intentions, concepts, patterns, disciplines, architectural language and contextual relationships in developing architectural critics' skills. 

Hagia Irene, Istanbul, Turkey.

The building we were given was Hagia Irene, located in Constantinople (currently known as Istanbul). For Project 1A, each of us were supposed to do one question each and post it on TIMEs (our online discussion forum platform). There were a total of 5 questions but with the 1 lacking member, one of us had to do 2 questions. 

Here are the list of questions:

Question 1 

i.  Who was the architect or founder of the building?

ii. What was the concept or philosophy of the architect or founder that makes the building historically significant/ meaningful?

Question 2

i.  Where and when was the building built?

ii. How the context, building period and evolution makes the building historically significant and meaningful?

Question 3

i.  What is the form, or shape of the building?

ii. How the form or shape of the building contributes in making the building historically significant and meaningul?

Question 4

i.  What is the function or purpose of the building?

ii. How the function or purpose of the building makes the building historically significant and meaningful?

Question 5

i.  What were the materials and construction technology or method used?

ii. How the materials and construction technology or method help making the building historically significant and meaningful?

I chose question 2 for this project. 

Reflection
From this project, we get to know lots of informations from our building. My building is a Byzantine Architecture and we also get to see it's unique characteristics and features compared to other architectural styles such as Romanesque, Baroque, Romans, Greeks and many more. Besides, we also get to know the development of building techniques and also materials that were used back then and how they start to develop new technologies or even construction skills. For example, my building during the Byzantine Period, the use of pendentives were widely used to support domes on the buildings. I have actually learnt a lot from this first project and there are many more else to learn about as well.