ACROPOLIS—Building in High PlacesPhotography and text by James Stanton-Abbott

Cover Illustration — (Book contents 420 photographs and 380 pages)

The photographs in this book have been taken over a span of fifty years, with Leica and Hasselblad cameras and untold rolls of film. I travelled to Greece in the 1960’s, Western Tibet in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Asia, Europe, and the United States in the previous and subsequent decades. All this in the service of architectural enlightenment, to go beyond my rather narrow architectural education focused, in the 1960’s, on the Modern Movement.

The result of these travels and documentation is this book. It is a photographic book, which does stand or fall on the qual-ity and expressiveness of its images. However it is not just a collection of photographs, however beautiful and compelling. I am interested in telling a story and suggesting answers to the following the questions:

• Why have humans undertaken building in high and often extremely difficult places? What propels us tomake such an investment in time, energy, and resources to inhabit the highest reaches of the land?• How do we now make use of this topographical feature —the hilltop—that no longer has the same compelling

reasons for humankind to inhabit as in previous centuries?• What is our contemporary viewpoint when we travel to early settlements that have survived the depredations of

time—the still vibrant hill towns of Europe, or the mountain top monasteries of the Himalayas? Is it a purely a romanticvision or a nostalgic viewpoint that misconstrues the very basis of this built form?

The text is meant to support the visual presentation of the book, as it develops a narrative and psychological insight into the human response to one’s environment and one’s survival in it. The twin themes of the book are how the quest for spiri-

tual enlightenment has created a very specific built expression and how the centuries old urge for survival and the strategic need for defense have created their responses to the environment. The final section also investigates the contemporary expression of building on high ground and the still compelling reasons to build on the slope. The main arc of the book goes from the Acropolis of Athens to the modern acropolis of the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1—INTRODUCTION: (64 photographs and 60 pages)

Sunrise at the Acropolis in 1963

ABOVE: Early settlement—the Citadel of Mycenae

ABOVE: Topography—Hawaiian valley ABOVE: The setting for ritual—Stonehenge, England

This first section presents the Athenian Acropolis and acknowledges it as one of the most recognized and revered group of temples built on high ground. The introductory overview also describes, from the earliest of times, aspects of topology, early settlements, the creation of the citadel antecedent to the Athenian Acropolis, the use of the land itself for the pur-poses of defense, and the integration of land and building in vernacular architecture. Finally there is a brief look at different works of art that takes as their theme building in high places.

Above: Chedi at Ayuthaya, Thailand Above: Stupas at Ayuthaya, Thailand

2—THE CONNECTION TO THE SACRED:

THE SACRED MOUNTAIN (34 photographs and 30 pages)

The HimalayasIndia—Kajaraho, the Hindu Temple as Sacred Mountain Thailand—Ayutthaya Sacred StupasGuatemala—Tikal, the Pyramid as TemplePeru—Machu Picchu

Since prehistoric times human beings have sought to establish a meaningful foothold in this physical world, and up until the very recently, this has meant dwelling within a sacred relationship to the earth. As our consciousness reveals and creates the world around us, and the world gives us the material to form our creations, the sacred site can provide us with spiritual energy and inspiration, be it hilltop or valley. In this case I am interested in the image of the sacred mountain whether it is the hilltop site itself or the material symbol that represents it—the Stupa, Pagoda, Chedi, and Chorten in Asia, the Hindu Temples in India and the Aztec and the Mayan Pyramids in Central America.

ABOVE: Spituk monastery in Ladakh. India.

THE SACRED LANDSCAPE— Buddhist monasteries of the Western Himalayas. (117 photographs and 92 pages)

Buddhism in its expansive history has travelled well. It has been a friendly visitor, relative to other religions, and has settled into the culture, adapting to their existing belief systems with remarkable skill. It has never taken on a holy war to propa-gate its doctrine or sought to subdue a culture or religion because its concept of God did not exactly fit the conquerors notions of theological correctness. After all if your belief system has no concept of a god to uphold, defend, or proselytize what is the point? This is not to say that within Buddhist history there has been no militancy or internecine strife, as we will see in Tibetan Buddhism, and in Japan as Buddhism was embraced as a form of spiritual discipline by the Samurai warrior class. But the reason that Buddhism has travelled so well is the depth of its teachings and the practical example of its practitioners.

ABOVE: The Alhambra in Granada, Spain

3—THE NEED FOR DEFENSE—The Hilltop as Survival. (99 photographs and 108 pages.)

I am interested in looking at this question: why has humankind in it’s stages of evolution continually needed to defend itself? What and who are we defending? This section looks at the way that humans have developed the hill top for their survival needs and also examines the causes of conflict giving rise to aggression and war. The anatomy of the hill town and its vernacular architecture is examined. The hill towns covered in this section include:

• Spain—The Alhambra, Cuenca, Casares, Gaucin, Zahara, Setenil, Ronda, (67 photographs) • Italy—Assisi, Cinque Terra, Volterra (13 photographs)• Greece—Santorini, Ios (14 photographs) • France—Saorge, St. Paul de Vence, Mont St. Michel (7 photographs)• Iberia—Streets and Plazas (7 photographs)

The Alhambra, court of the myrtles, north gallery Court of the myrtles, south gallery computer reconstruction

ABOVE: The town of Olvera, Spain

THE HILLTOP AS SURVIVAL

ABOVE: Cliff houses in Ronda, Spain ABOVE: View of Casares, Spain

4—THE CONTEMPORARY HIGH PLACE—The view from the Top (106 photographs and 90 pages.)

What are the pressures and reasons to build on higher ground today? Never before in human history has the built environ-ment been so vulnerable to the predations of humankind, be they territorial, the desire for resources, or religious aggres-sion born of hatred and delusion. We no longer need to build our towns and cities as defensive bastions, but we do build them higher and denser to take advantage of real estate value, view, and increasingly as environmentally sound places.

Building on a slope has been a consistent way of dwelling for centuries as we have seen in the hill towns of Europe, and today there is still much that recommends it. The advantages now to building on the slope are still compelling although for very different reasons than defense.

The Hill Town without the Hill—Habitat 67 + Habitat of the Future (45 photographs)

On the contemporary high buildings so far I am including the work of I M Pei, Frank Lloyd Wright, Moshe Safdie, and Rich-ard Meier, as well as some interesting contemporary vernacular building. (This list is by no means finished). The examples include both new buildings built in high places and buildings that themselves create the environment of the sloping hillside as in the work of Moshe Safdie in his Habitat building in Montreal. As Moshe Safdie has continued to explore the Habitat housing type his office has investigated several high density prototypes that also try to solve the problem of housing for an ever increasing population density.

Habitat 67, built for Expo ‘67 in Montreal, Canada

ABOVE: The Getty Center as seen from the north west in the Brentwood neighborhood.

MUSEUM AS ACROPOLIS—the Paul J. Getty Center (38 photographs)

The prime example of the modern Acropolis is of course The Getty Center designed by architect Richard Meier in the Los Angeles area. This final section looks in detail at the following issues: • The reasons for the choice of the Getty hilltop site and the difficulties that this location encountered. • The building of the Getty Center—what it takes to get such a building complex into being. • The players involved in the project, the architect, client, speciality consultants, and garden designer. This group of

people with differing views and agendas gave rise to the inevitable creative conflict when, as in many cases, strong egos clashed in the process.

This moving from creative difference with its potential for the stimulation of better ideas to all out conflict is a subject that I find to be a fascinating one. After all conflict and the subsequent need for defense, both somatic and psychic, is one major theme of the book.

THE AUTHOR My education and profession has been as an architect, with a specific interest in building in the landscape. This back-ground coupled with a very early use of photography to document the built landscape have brought me to the point of putting this work into book form to bring it to a wide audience.

As mentioned earlier I have travelled for over fifty years with Leica and Hasselblad cameras to document the images in the book, using film to capture them. Now I am translating film into digital form which opens up new ways of transforming and transmitting the image. Most of the photographs included are direct records of the world as it was captured by the camera. The light recorded is always a patient search for the right time of day and the resulting color is carefully calibrated. However the colors in some of the images are transmuted to create a more timeless and in some cases a more dramatic image. I want the essence of the book to be an artistic work rather than a purely documentary photographic book. The

section that includes the hilltop in art also contributes to this preference. In fact I would like the reader to be totally drawn in by the images and I would hope that this would be due both to the power and the beauty of the photographs. Besides architecture my other professional work has been the use of computer imaging and rendering both in the realistic repre-sentation of new architectural work and the restoration and reconstruction of ancient buildings and frescoes. This archae-ological work has been for major museums such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and for many university archaeologists. All this is to say that all the post production work on the photographs has been done in a totally professional way. The first layout of the book is finished and is available for editing and I would look forward at this stage to work with an editor to refine the work and bring it to the highest artistic state.

All of the photographs in the book are my own with the exception of the images of the paintings, architectural drawings, the section on Machu Picchu (for which I have permission), and the Habitat of the Future renderings (also with permission).

THE COMPETITIONThere are many books out there that have as their specific subject matter some of the areas that I am covering in my book: • Books that cover the Hill Towns of Europe—The Most beautiful Towns and Villages of Tuscany, Provence, Spain, Greece etc. etc. by Thames and Hudson, published as a series amongst others. • Books about sacred landscapes and centers, others about the sacred mountain, and yet others on the monasteries of Europe and other parts of the world. • Countless books on Contemporary Architecture from both a descriptive and critical viewpoint.However what I am interested in a more integrative idea, developing a theme that encompasses many of these subjects and lays out a coherent narrative that shows and describes the reasons for building on high ground. I believe that there is nothing on the market that is similar to this and with the quality with which I would like to see it realized. I think that the quality of the photographs and the depth of the material deserve the highest possible printing and a large format to do justice to the work.

THE MARKETAs indicated this is a photographic book within a certain narrative framework. It is not intended to be a scholarly or purely academic work as such, my aim is to create a work whose images and text are informative, interesting, intelligent, and inspirational. • The audience that I see for the book, is first of all, people that would wish to own superb images that do more than exist for their own sake but also tell a story. It would stand out in the photographic book market on the strength of its images but also for its subject interest. • Also there would be a market for people interested in architecture, in this case with a broad interest in building as it relates to the landscape. This would not necessarily be a critical text on architecture but would have a wide appeal to a general audience as well as a professional. • A third possible market is for people interested in travel. The book is not specifically geared to the travel guide market but it does provide a wide range of buildings and locations that I hope would inspire some people to make them destinations for themselves.

AVAILABLE MATERIALFull size spreads as hi-res and low-res PDF files on a DVD of all the visual material and text in the four sections. (The sug-gested book dimensions are 10.25” width x 12.25” high).High quality printed spreads (at 90% full size) of the sections for quality assessment.

CONTACT: email—jsarch1@verizon.net Telephone—617 437-1420