Minoan Civilization - Architecture

Architecture

The Minoan cities were connected with stone-paved roads, formed from blocks cut with bronze saws. Streets were drained and water and sewer facilities were available to the upper class, through clay pipes.

Minoan buildings often had flat tiled roofs; plaster, wood, or flagstone floors, and stood two to three stories high. Typically the lower walls were constructed of stone and rubble, and the upper walls of mudbrick. Ceiling timbers held up the roofs.

The materials used in constructing the villas and palaces varied, and could include sandstone, gypsum, or limestone. Equally, building techniques could also vary between different constructions; some palaces used ashlar masonry while others used roughly hewn megalithic blocks.

Minoan architecture could have been influenced by the frequent earthquakes on Crete. J. M. Driessen argues that the defining characteristics of Minoan architecture, such as the large buildings with low numbers of stories, small rooms, and numerous internal divisions and partitions, indicate anti-seismic techniques. Buildings were often constructed together in blocks, and second storey walls were built directly above those on the ground floor. Moreover, the ground floors of Minoan houses nearly always lacked windows as they would weaken the overall structure.

As an earthquake moves the ground in many directions, a wall parallel to the direction of the movement will resist the shock much better than a wall perpendicular to the movement. This may be the reason that Minoan building façades incorporated wall elements with different orientations. Such techniques strengthened the building structure by increasing lateral resistance to earthquakes, reducing the structural weight of the construction, and increasing the chance that the structure would survive if an earthquake occurred.