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The location of new public
buildings over time shows the increasing importance of sight lines,
visual interrelationships, and dramatic effect as criteria in site
selection. The scale at which these factors were considered also
increased over time. Lastly, the relationship of sight lines and
building orientations to solar and lunar motion suggests that Chacoans
were designing their public architecture in the context of sacred time
and space as well. For further reading on sightlines and axial
relationships see Windes (1978) and Fritz (1978); for celestial
alignments see Sofaer, Marshall and Sofaer, and Sinclair and Sofaer. For
earthworks and roads see Powers et al (1983), Marshall and Stein (1979).
The Chaco culture could never mobilize sufficient amounts of material
and labor to create buildings on a scale comparable to the canyon, nor
did they need to. The landscape itself was architectural space, and the
Chacoans designed and redesigned the canyon by defining the way that
residents and visitors would perceive and interpret that landscape. This
definition was achieved, firstly, by the visual relationship of nodes
and landmarks of the site; secondly, by the framework of movement within
the canyon; and most likely by a third means as well: the timing of
movement around the canyon. |
