On this, the most traveled holiday, one of the sibs came by on her way to the Grove Park Inn http://www.groveparkinn.com/Leisure/ ) to see the house. She commented that we had mentioned years ago building a Roman style house with a barrier to the world and a courtyard in the middle.
I've been reading the Emperor series of books by Conn Iggulden (co-author of The Dangerous Book for Boys). In it, a group of country folk walk into Rome for the first time and comment on the architecture of the greatest city in the greatest Empire of the day. The visitors note that unlike Egypt, where the most impressive buildings are the tombs for the dead, Rome was a city built for the living, commerce and conquest.
I do think architecture reflects the place of its origin. New York has limited space, hence the skyscrapers. The prairie is low and flat, therefore the Prairie Houses hug the ground, emphasizing the horizontal which to Frank Lloyd Wright represented "home."
On our trip south, the most interesting group of buildings was on the strip of I-85 between Spartanburg and Greenville, South Carolina. These innovative buildings anticipate the boom years to come for those forward looking people of the state to the south.
And, as far as our "courtyard" home - if we'd lived in Roman Times, we couldn't have afforded one of those. They were out of our tax bracket. We'd have had to live in an upper apartment, which had no running water or any of the modern conveniences the Romans had to offer, like sewers. There were also very tiny windows to block out the hot Italian sun and consequently they were firetraps for dwellers. Should one of these tenements catch fire, you couldn't even jump to safety, you were just stuck there, skin crackling, like the Thanksgiving turkeys we all ate last week.
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