Before I get into fantasy architecture, let’s take a look at what defines a culture. When writing a fantasy novel, one of the best ways to set yourself apart from the run of the mill story is to create a setting with a unique culture. There are two main aspects of culture, the culture of ideas and material culture.
A culture spreads ideas through literature and the arts. The culture of ideas includes such things as language, which we already covered in articles on how language sounds and creating words. I’ll write about other aspects of the culture of ideas in later articles, including the perennial favorites of politics and religion, philosophy.
Material culture is made up of the artifacts of daily life and artifacts that persist beyond. These artifacts also carry culture not just to new geographical areas, but through time as well. The culture of daily life includes things such as technology, tools, and in a fantasy world, magic. Other important aspects of daily life include clothing and food.
The realm of “high culture” includes architecture and art, both as painting, sculpture, and other visual arts. In this article, I want to focus on fantasy architecture.
Architecture Defined
Architecture is buildings. Buildings are enclosed constructions with roofs, both public and private. That is to say, architecture isn’t just fancy decorations or styles of buildings, it’s how buildings are built.
It also implies that there is a way of thinking about how to construct a building. A building is typically built for a specific need, whether as shelter, security, worship, or some other function. How it is built is constrained by available materials and the skills of those building it.
For example, I can build a small shed because I have some carpentry skills and a ready supply of lumber from my local building supply store. I can’t build a castle or gothic cathedral because I don’t have anything but the most basic masonry skills and because I don’t have a ready supply of stone to build with.
Theory of Architecture
There have been many treatises on architecture throughout history. One of the first was by Vitruvius, a Roman architect most famous for being the inspiration for Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.
This drawing relates to the last of the three attributes Vitruvius said that all buildings should have: strength, utility, and beauty.
Durability in Architecture
Rather than focus on the strength of a building, I’d rather think about its durability and structural integrity. That is, a building should be solid and remain in good condition.
Stone and wooden beams make for sturdy buildings. Cultures without those materials readily available used technology to create bundled reeds, such as in Egypt, or mud and straw bricks, such as in Mesopotamia.
A building also has to be resilient. That is, it needs to withstand the environment and wear and tear over time. Available materials determine and constrain how a building weathers its environment. The environment also determines those resources. Therefore, your fantasy architecture should take its biome and climate into consideration.
Rain and wind weather a building differently from sun, sand, and wind. Different materials will resist weathering in different ways as well. For example, the wood-based cultures of the Pacific Northwest leave few artifacts after a few generations. The wooden buildings and totem poles either rot in the wet environment or burn down when a fire gets out of control.
By contrast, in dry areas where stone building is more common, such as Greece, Rome, or the Middle East, buildings might endure for thousands of years, having a ripple effect on culture over the entire time.
Architectural Styles in Early History
Some examples of how different earthly cultures adapted their architecture to their environment include Neolithic builders using dolmens and megaliths to create trilithons. These structures evoke the later post and lintel structure of classical architecture.
Egyptian columns resembled bundled reeds. The style is thought to resemble vernacular reed-built shrines. Due to the scarcity of wood, the two other main materials ancient Egyptians used were sun-baked mud brick and stone, including limestone, sandstone, and granite.
Minoans used wood in their vernacular style, so their stone columns resembled tree trunks. Greek, Roman, and Persians adopted the column from the Minoans and Egyptians. Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans decorated the capitals of their columns with floral and plant shapes. The Persians decorated theirs with horses.
Fantasy Architecture Depends on your Fantasy World’s Environment
Back in my early posts on worldbuilding, I wrote about plate tectonics, climate, biomes, and erosion creating sedimentary rocks. This is where these topics become important in determining culture. Plate tectonics and erosion determine available stone, types of stone, mud, sand, and lime. The biomes you choose for your fantasy world will determine available plant-based materials such as wood, reeds, or paper.
If you have a certain culture and architecture in mind for a story, you have two choices. You can look at the environment you created and place your story where it fits best. If you want a culture with stone buildings dating back thousands of years, you would want to place it in a dry location with lots of available stone.
On the other hand, you don’t have to be constrained by decisions you made in step one of mapping out your continents. You can reverse engineer your world so it makes sense. If you want a dry environment culture mixing with a moist forest environment culture, you can put them next to each other. If you do so, you should go back to step one of mapping your world to take into account how those very different environments came together on the same map.
Utility in Architecture
Utility is a basic principle of architecture. That is, a building should be suitable for the purpose for which it is used. Louis Sullivan interpreted the concept of usefulness in architecture with his famous statement, “Form follows function.”
In my post on designing cities, I wrote about how cities grow up around major features such as the palace or citadel; market or bazaar; or temple, cathedral, or church. Each of these features has its own utility, so needs to be designed to meet its unique needs.
You wouldn’t want to celebrate a religious ritual in an office cubicle farm. You could do it if necessary, but it is not the best space for it, nor is it the best use of the space. The best place to celebrate a religious ritual is a larger space. The congregants need to be able to see the celebrant or celebrants or the entire congregation needs to be able to participate.
Office spaces usually have individual spaces for private work as well as one or a few meeting rooms. Even those meeting rooms don’t work well for religious rituals. The large table in the middle is better for working with paper or computers. It is not an altar.
Architecture and Technology
The usefulness of a building often depends on available technology. Does the society have the technology to create large spaces such as basilicas, cathedrals, or castles? Building such large edifices requires a certain level of technology as well as the skill to use it. Greek culture didn’t have the technology to create arches, vaults, or domes until Roman architects and engineers invented them.
The utility of a space also depends on more mundane features such as light, air, water, and sewage. A religious space or library needs more light than a prison or castle. A living space needs water and sewage whereas a public space might not if it is not regularly occupied. In ancient Rome, baths and latrines were public facilities. Individual homes didn’t have their own bathrooms.
Think also about ingress and egress. Palaces and temples have different needs than a castle or fortress. A temple might need as much access as possible whereas a castle must limit access to an easily defended point. Modern architects think about access in terms of easy evacuation in case of fire or other disaster.
Utility in Fantasy Architecture
For the most part, fantasy architecture follows real life architecture. I’ve mentioned palaces, temples, and castles, all of which are standard in most fantasy literature. On the othe rhand, what other settings might your story require? There are the mundane aspects of living spaces, shops, bazaars, and offices. What about a magician’s study or a stable for dragon mounts?
Do you have non-human beings in your story? How would the architecture of your world reflect their needs? Would dwarves or hobbits build a city neighborhood at a smaller scale than the human neighborhoods? In The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, hobbits live in holes in the ground. Would rich hobbits live in holes above the ground?
Magic in Fantasy Architecture
Does magic play a part in the technology of architecture in your world? A society that has readily available magic might use it to build architecture beyond the ability of a society without. Why use cranes or scaffolding when a builder could use magic to move materials? In fact, why depend on the durability of the materials if magic could hold a building together. Think of the shapes an architect could design if unconstrained by gravity or material strength. Remember, before you break the rules of architecture, be sure you understand them.
Other principles of architecture might affect how your story is written. How does ingress and egress constrain a character’s choices? If a character can’t get into a building, they might make different choices, ones that cause them more difficulty than they expected. On the other hand, if they can’t get out, that might lead to different choices.
Even mundane aspects such as light, air, water, and sewage might have an effect on character choices. If a character is in a space with no light, how do they know what is there? If they have no air, the urgency of a situation increases. The same goes for no water, though the need is over a much longer timeline.
Beauty in Architecture
I saved the topic of beauty for last, though it is the attribute that most people think of when they think of architecture. Its impact on your writing will be mainly in the setting. How does your world feel?
The principle of beauty in architecture is that it should be aesthetically pleasing. Architecture is considered to be a form of art. This does not mean that all architecture is beautiful. Often, a particular building might be very controversial because of this very topic.
Le Corbusier wrote: “You employ stone, wood, and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces: that is construction. Ingenuity is at work. But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good. I am happy and I say: This is beautiful. That is Architecture”.
A good architect takes into account scale and proportion when designing a building. The scale of a design must be appropriate in size to its intended use. The proportion of a design must relate the separate parts to each other and the whole of the building to create a harmonious composition.
Classical architecture focused on symmetry. Much post-modern and contemporary architecture does not, though it still must maintain the principle of balance.
Decoration is a fundamental aspect of architectural design, often in its absence, such as the modern architecture of the 20th century. The opposite of the modern sensibility might be the late Baroque Rococo design of 18th century Europe.
Decoration often depends on the materials available. For example, stone can be not only structural, but also decorative. Think of the marble facings or floors on the inside and outside of Italian churches. Minoans used blue–greenschist to pave floors of streets and courtyards. Woodcarvers can create a variety of shapes from their chosen material.
Fantasy Architecture Design
If you design a fantasy architecture for your fantasy world, you probably don’t need to go into great detail or description. Occasional references to design and decoration might be all you need to give a feeling for it.
If you have an artistic bent, go ahead and sketch out some design parameters for the various cultures of your world. If not, you are free to borrow from real world analogies. Just be aware that using real world designs will locate your fantasy culture in those real-world cultures. You might want to mix and match designs from different cultures if you don’t want people to think your fantasy culture is medieval European or ancient Greek, for example.
It might be late in this article to think about the need for a well-designed fantasy architecture. The beauty of the architecture can only be reflected in your characters’ reaction to it. It might be a necessary story element or it might not.
In any case, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the old saying goes. By beholder, I don’t mean the D&D monster, but your characters.
What this means for the writer is that you can choose to describe the architecture of your world or not, depending on how your characters interact with it. If the character has an eye for it, it can create a richer experience for your reader. If not, they probably wouldn’t miss it, but it leaves your world a little poorer.
