Colonial Architecture
Introduction
Colonial architecture is an architectural style typical of a world Power that has been incorporated into the constructions of settlements or colonies. Colonists frequently built settlements that synthesized the architecture of their home countries with the design features of their new lands, creating hybrid designs.[1]+.
During the various colonial periods—unlike the European cities of the time, which were an amalgamation of different and often opposing styles, paradigms, and ideals—cities responded to homogenizing and ordering precepts that expressed canons and principles that sought to establish a way of life and ordering mechanisms of public and private space.
The founding of colonial cities was in itself a ceremony that mixed religious rites, military protocols, political acts and urban planning practices. The founder, almost always invested with military rank and royal authority, claimed in the name of God and the King the right to give life to a new town, consecrated to a saint "Consecration (ceremony)") or to an invocation, which could depend on the place of his birth, to pay tribute to the king or a higher authority or that was related to the date and the saints.
In the Spanish and Portuguese empires, the founder and the rank-and-file soldiers who were part of the expedition were given the task of drawing up the "Layout (construction)") and distributing the properties: An empty central block, which was constituted as the main square and on its four sides, properties were assigned to the representative institutions of the colonial order and hierarchy.
In America, architecture was also a vehicle for evangelization. The first convents and the first churches, in Renaissance style, will have the appearance of a fortress "Fortress (architecture)"), due to the frontier character of the Indies, such as the convent of Acolmán "Temple and ex-convent of San Agustín (Acolman)") or the convent of Actopan, in Mexico.
The regional organization generated transportation networks between the various commercial, political or administrative centers. On the one hand, new trade routes were designed that would open the way to new paths and, on the other, paths from ancient cultures were recovered.
Spanish Empire
Contenido
Gracias al descubrimiento de América las ideas urbanísticas de herencia renacentista, sumadas a los ideales vitruvianos, comienzan a materializarse con la colonización española. La estructura urbana aplicaba las formas de disposición urbana de finales de la reconquista española, que a su vez volvía a los ideales helenísticos.