The Americas

There was little knowledge/contact with the Americas and its inhabitants. Asia had the first contact with the Americas via the Bering Strait (A land bridge connecting Alaska and Asia). "Pre-Columbian" civilizations were just any/ all indigenous groups that were already living in the Americas before the European explorers came to the Americas.

There were a lot of really important architectural buildings from this time period. One of them was the Teotihuacan in Mexico. Teotihuacan was the "most imposing ancient building in North America". It was a ritual center/ agricultural center/ trade and marketplace. It was one of the largest cities in the world. Teotihuacan consisted of two pyramids; Pyramid of the Sun (the largest pyramid in the Americas) and the Pyramid of the Moon.  Both these pyramids had a specific building elements; the talud, which was the sloped base and physically and visually supported the raised panels, and the tablero, which were the raised panels.

Also, they had these apartment-like complexes, which were also known as "palaces". These buildings reflected the "horizontality of the landscape" and were focused around a central courtyard. 

Below are  some current applications of this design period...

For the Americas period I reviewed Rose's blog. From her blog, I learned that there was a huge gap between the social classes. The elite would live in lavish homes that were highly ornamented, but the commoners would live in tiny houses made of sticks and mud.

I also reviewed Sam's blog. I think she did a really good job of quickly summarizing all of the different civilizations that we learned about in this design period. I learned that majority of these civilizations had the temple in the center of the community which I think so the importance of religion in these cultures.