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become great buildings. They cross a threshold and become unassailable, as any attempt to denigrate them simply undermines the credibility of the critic. If one is not impressed with the pyramids, then one had better learn to be impressed by them. Naïve wonder still has a place in our experience, and buildings that make us feel it are certainly to be valued. Gehry’s building at Bilbao might do that. The building is striking and fascinating, and does not initially prompt a feeling of recognition, but of incomprehension, which is the root of wonder and exploration. It is however an emotion that we must experience in small doses in our everyday lives, partly because even the strangest buildings rapidly become familiar if they are part of the daily round, and partly because if we wondered too much then we would never get anything done.

Buildings and culture produce architecture

We like to think that the canonic buildings have timeless value, that sails serenely across the vagaries of human histories, but on closer examination this view cannot be sustained. There is no doubt that some buildings have always been valued, but they are valued in different ways at different times. It would be idiotic to argue that the Parthenon, for example, had no great value, but it has been valued at different times because it seemed to express different things, such as the triumph of Athens over her adversaries, or as a symbol of the roots of democracy. The value remains high, but it is volatile. Buildings are solid things, and the properties that they have are inherent in them. Architecture is produced when a building and a culture come into contact, and connect in such a way that something valuable happens. We might be thrilled by it, or calmed, feel challenged or charmed, but if we do not pay attention to those responses and cultivate them, then architecture dies in us, and the built world is an arid place. But once one knows something about architecture then buildings come alive, and it is possible to see unconscious expressions of skill and intelligence at work wherever one goes, possibly set alongside expressions of vanity, greed, and incompetence. We like to see the great buildings around the world as the clearest expressions of one lofty ideal or another. We see them as something imperishable that embodies a fleeting glimpse of eternity, and we will travel across the world to encounter them. But there are also pleasures closer to home, which may be no less intense, involving a feeling of rapport with a place, which may involve a surprising range of the contradictory emotions involved in any long-term relationship.

Timeline

First pyramid: the Step Pyramid of Zoser at Saqqara, Egypt (2773 BC); architect: Imhotep

Great Pyramid of Khufu, Giza, near Cairo, Egypt (2723–2563 BC); architect: unknown (Figure 4)

First wheels with spokes (c.2000 BC)

First use of iron around the Mediterranean (c.1500 BC).

The Parthenon, Athens, Greece (447–436 BC); architects: Ictinus and Callicrates working with the sculptor Phidias (Figure 7)

Temple of Juno Sospita, Lanuvium, Etruscan temple (5th century BC) (Figure 17)

Invention of the compound pulley, attributed to Archimedes (born c.287 BC)

First wheeled vehicles steered by turning front axle (c.50 BC)

Maison Carrée, Nîmes, France (AD 1–10); architect: unknown (Figure 13)

The Pantheon, Rome, Italy (AD 118–25); architect: anonymous, but worked under the direction of the Emperor Hadrian (Figure 14)

Romanesque: first post-Roman stone-vaulted church, Tournus, Burgundy, France (c.950–1120); architect: unknown

First Gothic: rebuilding of the abbey church of Saint-Denis, Paris (begun 1137); under the direction of the Abbot Suger (1081–1151)

High Gothic: cathedral of St Etienne, Bourges, France (begun 1190) (Figure 8)

First production of crown glass in Rouen (1330)

Renaissance: dome of the cathedral at Florence, Italy (1420–34); architect: Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446)

First post-Roman façade using superimposed classical orders: