Ancient Origins of the Mexican Plaza

Ancient Origins of the Mexican Plaza PDF

Author: Logan Wagner

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2013-04-04

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 029274983X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The plaza has been a defining feature of Mexican urban architecture and culture for at least 4,000 years. Ancient Mesoamericans conducted most of their communal life in outdoor public spaces, and today the plaza is still the public living room in every Mexican neighborhood, town, and city—the place where friends meet, news is shared, and personal and communal rituals and celebrations happen. The site of a community’s most important architecture—church, government buildings, and marketplace—the plaza is both sacred and secular space and thus the very heart of the community. This extensively illustrated book traces the evolution of the Mexican plaza from Mesoamerican sacred space to modern public gathering place. The authors led teams of volunteers who measured and documented nearly one hundred traditional Mexican town centers. The resulting plans reveal the layers of Mesoamerican and European history that underlie the contemporary plaza. The authors describe how Mesoamericans designed their ceremonial centers as embodiments of creation myths—the plaza as the primordial sea from which the earth emerged. They discuss how Europeans, even though they sought to eradicate native culture, actually preserved it as they overlaid the Mesoamerican sacred plaza with the Renaissance urban concept of an orthogonal grid with a central open space. The authors also show how the plaza’s historic, architectural, social, and economic qualities can contribute to mainstream urban design and architecture today.

Ancient Origins of the Mexican Plaza

Ancient Origins of the Mexican Plaza PDF

Author: Logan Wagner

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2013-01-16

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0292719167

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Extensively illustrated with detailed site plans and photographs, this architectural history of the Mexican plaza reveals why this central public space has been the heart of the community from ancient Mesoamerican times until the present.

Urbanization and Religion in Ancient Central Mexico

Urbanization and Religion in Ancient Central Mexico PDF

Author: David M. Carballo

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-11-02

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0190493496

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Urbanization and Religion in Ancient Central Mexico examines the ways in which urbanization and religion intersected in pre-Columbian central Mexico, with a primary focus on the later Formative period and the transition to the Classic period. The major societal transformations of this interval occurred approximately two-thousand years ago and over a millennium before Mexico's best known early civilization, the Aztecs. David M. Carballo presents a synthesis of data from regional archaeological projects and key sites such as Teotihuacan and Cuicuilco, while relying on his own excavations at the site of La Laguna as the central case study. A principal argument is that cities and states developed hand in hand with elements of a religious tradition of remarkable endurance and that these processes were fundamentally entangled. Prevalent religious beliefs and ritual practices created a cultural logic for urbanism, and as populations urbanized they became socially integrated and differentiated following this logic. Nevertheless, religion was used differently over time and by groups and individuals across the spectra of urbanity and social status. The book provides a materially informed history of religion, with the temporal depth that archaeology can provide, and an archaeology of cities that considers religion seriously as a generative force in societal change.

The Essential History of Mexico

The Essential History of Mexico PDF

Author: Philip Russell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-08-20

Total Pages: 706

ISBN-13: 1135017212

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The full text of The History of Mexico: From Pre-Conquest to Present traces the last 500 years of Mexican history, from the indigenous empires devastated by the Spanish conquest through the 21st-century, including the election of 2012. Written in a clear and accessible manner, the book offers a straightforward chronological survey of Mexican history from pre-colonial times to the present, and includes a glossary as well as numerous images and tables for comprehensive study. This version, The Essential History of Mexico, streamlines and updates the text of the full first edition to make it easier for classroom use. Helpful pedagogy has been added for contextualization and support, including: Side-by-side world and Mexican timelines at the beginning of each chapter that place the national events from each chapter in broader global context Bolded keywords that draw attention to important terms Cultural and biography boxes in each chapter that help highlight aspects of social history Primary documents in each chapter that allow historical actors to speak directly to students Annotated suggestions for further reading In addition, the companion website provides many valuable tools for students and instructors, including links to online resources and videos, discussion questions, and images and figures from the book.

The Inevitable Bandstand

The Inevitable Bandstand PDF

Author: Charles V. Heath

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2015-08

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0803284225

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In the hands of the state, music is a political tool. The Banda de Música del Estado de Oaxaca (State Band of Oaxaca, BME), a civil organization nearly as old as the modern state of Oaxaca itself, offers unique insights into the history of a modern political state. In The Inevitable Bandstand, Charles V. Heath examines the BME’s role as a part of popular political culture that the state of Oaxaca has deployed in an attempt to bring unity and order to its domain. The BME has always served multiple functions: it arose from musical groups that accompanied military forces as they trained and fought; today it performs at village patron saint days and at Mexico’s patriotic celebrations, propagating religions both sacred and civic; it offers education in the ways of liberal democracy to its population, once largely illiterate; and finally, it provides respite from the burdens of life by performing at strictly diversionary functions such as serenades and Sunday matinees. In each of these government-sanctioned roles, the BME serves to unify, educate, and entertain the diverse and fragmented elements within the state of Oaxaca, thereby mirroring the historical trajectory of the state of Oaxaca and the nation of Mexico from the pre-Hispanic and Spanish colonial eras to the nascent Mexican republic, from a militarized and fractured young nation to a consolidated postrevolutionary socialist state, and from a predominantly Catholic entity to an ostensibly secular one.

Architecture and Urbanism in Viceregal Mexico

Architecture and Urbanism in Viceregal Mexico PDF

Author: Juan Luis Burke

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-30

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1000383547

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Architecture and Urbanism in Viceregal Mexico presents a fascinating survey of urban history between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. It chronicles the creation and development of Puebla de los Ángeles, a city located in central-south Mexico, during its viceregal period. Founded in 1531, the city was established as a Spanish settlement surrounded by important Indigenous towns. This situation prompted a colonial city that developed along Spanish colonial guidelines but became influenced by the native communities that settled in it, creating one of the most architecturally rich cities in colonial Spanish America, from the Renaissance to the Baroque periods. This book covers the city's historical background, investigating its civic and religious institutions as represented in selected architectural landmarks. Throughout the narrative, Burke weaves together sociological, anthropological, and historical analysis to discuss the city’s architectural and urban development. Written for academics, students, and researchers interested in architectural history, Latin American studies, and the Spanish American viceregal period, it will make an important contribution to the field.

Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan PDF

Author: Matthew Robb

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2017-09-26

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 0520296559

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Founded in the first century BCE near a set of natural springs in an otherwise dry northeastern corner of the Valley of Mexico, the ancient metropolis of Teotihuacan was on a symbolic level a city of elements. With a multiethnic population of perhaps one hundred thousand, at its peak in 400 CE, it was the cultural, political, economic, and religious center of ancient Mesoamerica. A devastating fire in the city center led to a rapid decline after the middle of the sixth century, but Teotihuacan was never completely abandoned or forgotten; the Aztecs revered the city and its monuments, giving many of them the names we still use today. Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire examines new discoveries from the three main pyramids at the site—the Sun Pyramid, the Moon Pyramid, and, at the center of the Ciudadela complex, the Feathered Serpent Pyramid—which have fundamentally changed our understanding of the city’s history. With illustrations of the major objects from Mexico City’s Museo Nacional de Antropología and from the museums and storage facilities of the Zona de Monumentos Arqueológicos de Teotihuacan, along with selected works from US and European collections, the catalogue examines these cultural artifacts to understand the roles that offerings of objects and programs of monumental sculpture and murals throughout the city played in the lives of Teotihuacan’s citizens. Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Exhibition dates: de Young, San Francisco, September 30, 2017–February 11, 2018 Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), March–June 2018

Think Like an Architect

Think Like an Architect PDF

Author: Hal Box

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 0292783205

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An award-winning architect and educator demystifies the process of making architecture and explains why good architectural design matters. The design of cities and buildings affects the quality of our lives. Making the built environments in which we live, work, and play useful, safe, comfortable, efficient, and as beautiful as possible is a universal quest. What many don’t realize is that professional architects design only about five percent of the built environment. While much of what non-architects build is beautiful and useful, the ugliness and inconveniences that blight many urban areas demonstrate that an understanding of good architectural design is vital for creating livable buildings and public spaces. To help promote this understanding among non-architects and those considering architecture as a profession, award-winning architect and professor Hal Box explains the process from concept to completed building, using real-life examples to illustrate the principles involved. To cause what we build to become architecture, we have three choices: hire an architect, become an architect, or learn to think like an architect. In this book, organized as a series of letters to students and friends, Box covers: what architecture should be and do how to look at and appreciate good buildings how to understand the design process, work with an architect, or become an architect an overview of architectural history, with lists of books to read and buildings to see practical guidance about what goes into constructing a building an architect’s typical training and career path how architecture relates to the city where the art of architecture is headed why good architecture matters

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes