Phallic architecture consciously or unconsciously creates a symbolic representation of the human penis. Buildings intentionally or unintentionally resembling the human penis are a source of amusement to locals and tourists in various places around the world. Deliberate phallic imagery is found in ancient cultures and in the links to ancient cultures found in traditional artifacts.
The ancient Greeks and Romans celebrated phallic festivals and built a shrine with an erect phallus to honor Hermes, messenger of the gods. Those figures may be related to the ancient Egyptian deity Min who was depicted holding his erect phallus. Figures of women with a phallus for a head have been found across Greece and Yugoslavia. Phallic symbolism was prevalent in the architectural tradition of ancient Babylon. The Romans, who were deeply superstitious, also often used phallic imagery in their architecture and domestic items. The ancient cultures of many parts of the Far East, including Indonesia, India, Korea and Japan, used the phallus as a symbol of fertility in motifs on their temples and in other areas of everyday life.
Scholars of anthropology, sociology, and feminism have alleged a symbolic nature of phallic architecture, especially large skyscrapers which dominate the landscape, supposedly as symbols of male domination, power and political authority. Towers and other vertical structures may unintentionally or perhaps subconsciously have those connotations. There are many examples of modern architecture that can be interpreted as phallic, but very few for which the architect has specifically cited or admitted that meaning as an intentional aspect of the design.
History and background Antiquity
Phallic architecture became prominent in ancient Egypt and Greece, where genitalia and human sexuality received a high degree of attention. The ancient Greeks honored the phallus and celebrated phallic festivals. The Greco-Roman deity Priapus was worshiped as a god of fertility, depicted with a giant phallus in numerous public architectural pieces.
The Greeks regularly built a shrine which they called a "herm" at the entrance of homes and public buildings, as well as along roads, to honor Hermes, messenger of the gods. The shrines typically "took the form of a vertical pillar topped by the bearded head of a man and from the surface of the pillar below the head, an erect phallus protruded". It is believed that they sought their inspiration from the ancient Egyptians and their phallic image of Min, the valley god, who was similarly "depicted as a standing bearded king with simplified body, one arm raised, the other hand holding his erect phallus."
Herodotus, the ancient Greek historian, documented women carrying large phallic-shaped monuments and ornaments the size of a human body in villages in ancient Dionysia. On the island of Delos a pillar supports a colossal phallus, the symbol of Dionysus. Phallus reliefs on buildings on such sites are also believed to have been apotropaic devices to ward off evil. The elaborate use of phallic architecture and sculpture in ancient Greek society can also be seen in sites such as Nea Nikomedeia in northern Greece. Archaeologists excavating the ancient town discovered clay sculptures of plump women with phallic heads and folded arms.
Similar figurines of women with phallus heads from the Neolithic period have been found across Greece, Macedonia and parts of old Yugoslavia. The vast majority of the figurines of the Hamangia culture have cylindrical phallus-shaped heads without facial features, although some, particularly of the Aegean culture, had phallic sculptural pieces with phallic heads with a pinched nose and slitty eyes. In these parts of the ancient world, obelisk like structures resembling the human penis were built, often with phallic symbols, representing human fertility and asserting male sexuality and orgasm. Phallic symbolism was prevalent in the architecture of ancient Babylonia, and in Khametian iconography, the obelisk was considered to be symbolic of the phallus of the masculine earth.
Although phallic architecture as individual pieces was not prevalent in ancient Rome as it was in ancient Greece or Egypt, the Romans were deeply superstitious and often introduced phallus-related components as architectural pieces and domestic items. Archaeologists unearthing a site in Pompei discovered many vases, ornaments and sculptures unearthed revealing the preoccupation with the phallus, also unearthing an 18-inch terracotta phallus protruding from what was believed to have been a bakery with the inscription, "Hic habitat felicitas" (here dwells happiness), and many Romans wore phallus amulets to ward off the evil-eye. Roman boys wore a phallic bulla until they came of age.
Priapic worship amongst the women of Sicily continued into the 18th century; worshiping phallic votive objects and kissing such offerings before placing them upon the altar in the churches. Fetishism with the phallus architecturally and in smaller implements was also exhibited by certain gnostic sects in medieval times, such as the Manichaeans, and was connected with masochism and sadism, a form of religious flagellantism. Smaller phallic shaped monuments in the form of idols, even vases, rings, drinking vessels and jewellery have been well-documented and could be found within medieval churches of Ireland.
In Hinduism, the Hindu trimurthi represents Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver and Shiva, the destroyer. Shiva, the main deity in India, is both destroyer and is stated to also include his role of creation; this creation role is represented by the phallic symbol, known as lingam in which form he is worshiped or in the form of male trinity of penis and two testicles. The linga, or phallus, is a common feature of Hindu temples across India, engrained as reliefs or other forms. The Brihadeeswarar Temple of Tanjore in Tamil Nadu, built during the Chola Dynasty, is dedicated to Shiva, and features lingam between the cells; it is especially renowned for its "Hall of One Thousand Lingas".
In Indonesia, the phallic lingga and feminine yoni, remain common symbols of harmony. The Sultan's Palace of Kasepuhan, in West Java, has a number of lingga-yoni carvings along its walls. According to the Indonesian chronicles of the Babad Tanah Jawi, Prince Puger gained the kingly power from God, by ingesting sperm from the phallus of the already-dead Sultan Amangkurat II of Mataram.
Candi Sukuh temple of Ngancar, East Java, was built in the 10th century and is dedicated to Shiva. The temple has numerous reliefs graphically depicting sexuality and fertility including several stone depictions of a copulating penis and vulva. It consists of a pyramid with reliefs and statues at the front. Among them is a male statue clutching his penis, with three tortoises with flattened shells. The temple once had a striking 1.82 metre (5'11.5 ft) representation of lingga with four testicles; this is now housed in the National Museum of Indonesia. Phallic references were also made in Khmer architecture in Cambodia, and several Khmer temples depict the phallus in reliefs.
In Africa, Ancient Malians, particularly the royals of Djenne, decorated their palaces with phallus like piers and columns at the entrance of their palaces and decorated the walls with phallus motifs. Similar features can be seen on the pillars of many temples across Africa, often interpreted by western scholars to be phallic symbols, but may often be more subtle and subject to varying interpretations. Like the ancient Egyptian pharaohs, Aksumite kings built temples with phallic pillars in ancient Ethiopian cities such as Konsu, and monolithic pillars with phallic representation have also been discovered in Madagascar. In ancient Maya, phallic architecture was rare but Uxmal in particular has a considerable number of phallus-like architectural pieces. It contains a temple known as the Temple of the Phallis and phallic sculptures and motifs.
Modern
Claude Nicholas Ledoux was a major exponent of architectural development in the 17th century which "articulated across the tensions of form and ornament, symbol, and allegory, dogma, and fantasy", at a time when western society was oppressive and particularly sensitive to public displays of sexuality; blatant and graphic phallic architecture would have been considered an embarrassment and a shameful act. In his initial draft for the House of Pleasure in Chaux (a proposed ideal city, near the Forest of Chaux), Ledoux drew upon allegorical ideas in his design with the union of man and woman, a physiological interpretation of intercourse and penetration. Private bedrooms were designed to "thrust out from the circular ring of the building, metaphorically representing penetration, the circular ring representing the vaginal passage and womb of the female.
The second revised design is said to "subliminate both elevated site and female gender" with a "lonely phallus", without the original planned animated circular ring representing the female reproductive organs. Ledoux drew upon phallic and sexually charged inspiration in other buildings which he designed. His design of Besançon Theatre for instance was fueled by the exigencies of prostitution and ancient sexual ritual. However, in comparison to the likes of Jean-Jacques Lequeu, who gained notoriety for his pornographic architectural concoctions, Ledoux's architectural inspiration was relatively mild, and he is said to have omitted towers from his designs on occasion as he was aware that they would be frowned upon shamefully by general society as a too obvious representation of the phallus; Ledoux's "missing erection" is explained to this effect in Jacques Lacan's The Significance of the Phallus.
According to Oscar Reutersvärd, the interest in neoclassical architecture in the 18th century was synonymous with and motivated by a similar interest in masculine virility. Works such as Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1467) and Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Campo Marzio (1762) show profoundly the ancient influence of phallic architecture in design and worship, and contain numerous illustrations of Priapic temples and architecture. Piranesi in particular is said to have offered a "prototype for the mysterious architecture of phallic worship that more closely resembles the houses of pleasure" in his etchings.
He located two designs for the Bustum Caesaris Augusti, concluding that they were based upon sexual ritual, with "two phallic plans penetrating the semicircular cubicula". Piranesi believed that the purpose of the phallic designs were to celebrate virility and male regenerative power. Other commentators such as Carl August Ehrensvärd also provided illustrations and analysis of Priapic temples and the meaning of phallic architecture. A work of note to this effect is Neoclassical Temple of Virility and the Buildings with a Phallic Shaped Plan (1977) of the Institute for Art History of the University of Lund, Sweden.