Architecture in Middle-earth

The architecture in Middle-earth, J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world, is as varied as the Hobbit-holes of the Shire, the tree-houses of Lothlórien, the wooden halls of Rohan, and the stone dwellings and fortifications of Minas Tirith, capital of Gondor.

The King of Rohan's hall, Meduseld, indicates the Rohirrim's affinity with Anglo-Saxon culture, while Gondor's tall and beautiful stone architecture was described by Tolkien as "Byzantine".

[T 1]She writes that Tolkien is here describing the city from a great distance, "zoom[ing] the reader out, suggesting the wide scope and large scale that are key pleasures of the genre."

[1] Tolkien made his Hobbits live in holes, though these quickly turn out to be comfortable, and in the case of Bag End actually highly desirable.

[4] He makes Bag End in particular a place where, in the Tolkien scholar Thomas Honegger's words, "most readers feel severely tempted to put on their imaginary slippers and settle down to a piece of cake and some tea.

[3] She showed her vision of its comfortable layout with its cellars and pantries, complete with multiple fireplaces and chimneys, based on but going beyond the clues given by Tolkien in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

In The Hobbit, Bilbo and the Dwarves lead their ponies down the steep path to the fast-flowing river and cross "a narrow bridge of stone without a parapet ... And so at last they all came to the Last Homely House, and found its doors flung wide.

The sound of running and falling water was loud, and the evening was filled with a faint scent of trees and flowers, as if summer still lingered in Elrond's gardens.

"[T 2] Matthew T. Dickerson writes that Elrond's house in the valley of Rivendell consistently represents a sanctuary, a place that felt like home, throughout Tolkien's legendarium.

[2] In Unfinished Tales, Tolkien speaks of the mallorn grove "carpeted and roofed with gold";[T 6] Brooke writes that this mixes the lexical fields of architecture and nature description, revealing the intertwining of the two in the Elvish realm.

He devoted considerable effort to depicting the Doors of Durin, Moria's western gate, creating both a large coloured pencil drawing of the gate's setting at the foot of blocky vertical cliffs beside the lake guarded by the Watcher in the Water, and a detailed finished ink illustration of the round-arched doors themselves, complete with Tengwar script and Dwarvish emblems.

[T 7] Tolkien hints at the hall's heroic connotations by having Legolas describe Meduseld in a sentence that directly translates a line of Beowulf, "The light of it shines far over the land", representing líxte se léoma ofer landa fela.

[13] Brooke comments that Meduseld represents "a more historical reworking of architecture", given its evident Anglo-Saxon roots, while Gondor's Minas Tirith suggests a "more classical legacy" from European history.

The parallels do not imply identity: unlike the Anglo-Saxons, the society of Rohan is strongly centred on the horse, and the Rohirrim choose to fight on horseback.

[14] Brooke remarks that where Rohan had a long low hall, Gondor has a tall tower, suggesting defence as well as signalling architectural skill, while "its whiteness reflects the enlightened Gondorian society".

[2] As for the interiors, the nature-loving Hobbit Pippin sees the palace's "tall pillars" as being like "monoliths ...[rising] to great capitals carved in many strange figures of beasts and leaves".

[T 10] The tower of Orthanc was built towards the end of the Second Age by men of Gondor from four many-sided columns of rock joined by an unknown process and then hardened.

[17] Peter Jackson used elaborate sets, some constructed in New Zealand landscapes, others using "bigatures" and computer animation,[18] to create a visual interpretation of Middle-earth that was widely admired by scholars and critics,[19][20] even those otherwise hostile to his adaptation.

[21][22] The scholars Steven Woodward and Kostis Kourelis write that Jackson made "aggressive use of architectural form to tell a story"[4] in his The Lord of the Rings film series.

Much of the architecture was based on Alan Lee's drawings from the Centenary edition of The Lord of the Rings, supplemented by illustrations of scenes of action by John Howe.

Woodward and Kourelis describe Jackson as "entirely conservative" in his architectural sets, implementing Lee's drawings as closely as possible, in striking contrast to the adventurous journeys of the characters through his wide landscapes.

Thus,[4] the hobbit houses of the Shire are molded under the contours of gently rolling hills; ... the human city of Minas Tirith takes the logic of its form and defences from the rocky pinnacle it encircles.

Bag End has comfortable British vernacular wooden panelling, whereas the Elves's dwellings are designed with the intricately curving naturalism of Art Nouveau.

[23] Lee's sketches of Rivendell give more detail than Tolkien's, the interior vistas structured by light and delicate curving timbers and furniture in Art Nouveau style.

[24] The evil realms have in Woodward and Kourelis's view "the dark, metallic forms of an ultra-Gothic grotesque, invoking caves, dark pools, vaulted arches lit by firelight", suggesting torture, contrasting with Gondor's heroic "archaeological signature of medieval monuments: vast reaches of white marble, ashlar courses, draftsman’s elevations.

"[4] Finally, Rohan's Golden Hall of Meduseld has "lavishly decorated stables befit[ting a] horse-based culture", made grand with "Celtic gold ornamentation" and horse motifs; Lee based his drawings on the mead-hall Heorot in Beowulf.

[4] Woodward and Kourelis end by quoting Tolkien's description in his 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" of the "historical space" in Beowulf, stating that it could unreservedly be applied to the extraordinary spatial vision of Jackson's films:[4] The whole must have succeeded admirably in creating in the minds of the poet's contemporaries the illusion of surveying a past, pagan but noble and fraught with deep significance—a past that itself had depth and reached backward into a dark antiquity of sorrow.