Mesopotamian Architecture

Today we learned some about Mesopotamian  architecture. What I found most interesting  was the courtyard houses. In the courtyard houses there is a courtyard in the middle of the structure and the necessary  rooms around the courtyard. These houses were used to most likely hold multiple families considering that had quit a few rooms unlike a regular house that doesn't have that many rooms.

Below we can see a basic floor plan of a  Mesopotamian courtyard house. Though this one does not have as many rooms as the example my teacher Rafael showed us, this is still a good example. Something I would like to point out is how it is not a direct entrance into the building. Unlike houses that we are used to where you walk directly into the house and we immediately in the whole of the house,  Mesopotamian courtyard houses is not like that. AS you can see where the room labeled 1 that is the lobby. That means this is not a direct walk into the house. You need to continue past the lobby into the courtyard to get into the center whole of the house. Also what i noticed is that all the rooms are really connected by the courtyard. While seems okay I seem some issue. An example would be if you are in one room and you need to get to another, but it is raining outside. You would get all wet just to get something simple like eggs or milk.

Today we also learned about the ancient city of Babylon. With concept pictures of what this great city looked like it seemed quite large. Due to its size houses and buildings we put very lose to each other and it seemed very cramped and busy. 

Below is a rendering of the ancient city of Babylon. All the small brown almost speckled buildings are mainly houses. The larger area are for more higher class rulers. This is a very common aspect with higher classes in ancient times. This is because they were higher class they were considered better than everyone else so they get better items and land. That is what is happening here in Babylon. The large plot with the two rectangles at the bottom is where the temple is. This was mainly meant for the king because he is the highest rank in the city so he will have the largest plot and the grandest housing which is the temple.