Architecture / Design / Style

aboriginal American architecture: The architectural constructions of the aborigines of America were, and are, exceedingly varied in form, location, material, and method. Almost every kind of position where a house or village might be established, according to expedience or necessity, was adopted, from the immediate shores of the sea to almost inaccessible ledges in mighty cliffs of the far interior…
Absolute architecture: The antithesis of Functionalism, it was proposed (1960s) as a purposeless architecture by Walter Pichler and Hans Hollein, the opposite of objectivity (Schlichkeit). Its forms were to be created by imagination without consideration of need. It was also used to describe Goff’s investigations of structure and space.
Abyssinia architecture: This ancient kingdom has not been explored by those who could make architecture their study. No continued civilization has flourished there. Evidences of Greek and, perhaps, of Egyptian culture have been found, but these seem to be the only remains of monuments erected by conquering chiefs…
Accadian architecture: The architecture of the Accads, a people inhabiting the country east of Syria in primitive times.
Achaemenid architecture: An architecture developed under the Achaemenid rules of Persia (6th to 4th century BC) by a synthesis and eclectic adaptation of architectural elements which included those of surrounding countries. In the hypostyle hall it achieved a highly original new building type.
Action architecture: Architecture evolved from sketches without precise working-drawings and using materials ready to hand. 2. Creation of form through constant repetition and evolution of one concept. An example of Action architecture is Boston City Hall, MA, by Kallmann, McKinnell, & Knowles.
alternative architecture: Dwellings constructed with parts of motor-vehicles or other recycled material, sometimes based on geodesic principles, in the 1960s, especially in the USA. Some doubt if it is architecture.
Amerind architecture: Also see Amer-Indian architecture.
Amer-Indian architecture: Also see Amer-Indian architecture.
Analogical architecture: Aldo Rossi’s term for his 1970s work in which he saw analogies with historic buildings, vernacular architecture, etc.
Anglo-Saxon architecture: Also see Saxon architecture.
Art Nouveau architecture: Decorative design movement centered on Europe, led by Victor Horta (1861-1947) in Belgium, Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926) in Spain and Hector Guimard (1867-1942) in France.
Assyrian architecture: Architecture of the Assyrian empire (centered between the Tigris and the Upper and Lower Zab rivers in southwest Asia) was expressive of its might, as conquerors of Mesopotamia and much of the adjacent countries between the 9th and 7th century B.C. Mud brick was used as the building material, although stone was available; stone was used only for carved revetments and monumental decorative sculptures. Vaulting played a much greater role than in southern Mesopotamia. Excavations have uncovered large palaces and temple complexes with their ziggurats in Assyrian cities such as Assur, Calah (Nimrud), Nineveh, and Dur Sharrukin (Korsabad), as well as extensive fortifications.
Aztec architecture: Work of the warlike Aztecs, who for a century before the coming of the Spanish conquerors in 1519 had flourished by capturing and sacrificing the neighboring peoples.
Babylonian architecturee: In ancient Babylon, architecture characterized by: mud-brick construction; walls articulated by pilasters and recesses (for aesthetic and structural reasons), sometimes faced with burnt and glazed brick; narrow rooms, mostly covered with flat timber and mud roofs; and extensive use of bitumen in drain and pavement construction and as mortar…
Barca architecture: That of Northern Africa, west of and near Egypt, including the Pantapolis of Cyrene…
Barocco architecture: That which is assumed to have the characteristics included in the term “barocco.” It is a mistaken use of the term to treat it as synonymous with rococo, or to apply it with any accuracy to a period or style…
Baroque architecture: In Italy: mostly religious building design, exemplified by the Roman designs of Bernini (1598-1680) and his rival, Francesco Borromini (1599-1667).
Beaux Arts architecture: Historical and eclectic design on a monumental scale, as taught at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in the 19th century.
Beaux-Arts architecture: Combination of Neo-Baroque and Neo-Renaissance architecture that symbolized the Belle Epoque. The leading American exponents were Richard Morris Hunt (1827-95) and Cass Gilbert (1859-1934).
Belgium architecture: That of the modern kingdom, established in 1831 and including the ancient countships, bishoprics, etc., of Hainault, Namur, Brabant, Limburg, Hennegau, with the northern half of Flanders and the western half of Luxemborg…
boomtown architecture: Architecture characteristic of frontier towns that were built quickly. A typical feature is the false front which conceals a more modest structure.
Bourbon architecture: The architecture of the reigns of the Bourbon kings of France, 1590-1789.
Bulgarian architecture: See Byzantine architecture.
Byzantine architecture: Architecture of a style chiefly developed in the domains and during the existence of the Byzantine Empire, from which it spread westward into Italy, whence its influence radiated into France and Germany; and northward into Russia…
Cairene architecture: The architecture of Cairo in Egypt, especially the architecture of Saracenic or, more properly speaking, Moslem style. The mosques of Cairo contain the richest ornamentation of the unaltered style invented for the Arabian conquerors by the Byzantine Greeks who worked under their direction, which style was much corrupted in North Africa and in Spain. This Cirene architecture has, then, the peculiar value of having preserved for us the best examples of this curious school of design, and the richest and most tasteful pieces of its ornamentation.
Canada architecture: That of the British possessions to the north and northeast of the United States. The work of the aboriginal tribes included architectural features of great interest…
cardboard architecture: Design-process using models to show formal and spatial relationships without taking into account the materials or functions of the final buildings. 2. Models with flat surfaces pierced by plain black holes resembling a series of cardboard boxes…
Carolingian architecture: The pre-Romanesque architecture of the late 8th and 9th century in France and Germany. So called after the emperor Charlemagne (768-814). The cathedral of Aachen is the best-known example.
Central America architecture: That of the five states: Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, San Salvador, and Costa Rica, and the colony of British Honduras…
Chimu architecture: Architecture of a culture which was dominant in northern Peru from the 13th to 15th century. The houses were built in rows, along symmetrically laid-out streets, within high city walls; the buildings were constructed of adobe with wood lintels; the walls, ramps, and chambers were decorated with wide carved moldings having geometric designs (typically birds and fish). Chan Chan, the capital of the Chimus, is famed for its adobe arabesques.
China architecture: Most ancient of nations, center of Asiatic civilization at different epochs…
Chinese architecture: A highly homogenous traditional architecture which repeated throughout the centuries established types of simple, rectangular, low-silhouetted buildings constructed according to canons of proportions and construction methods which varied with each dynasty and period and varied from one region to another…
Christian architecture: That of any style assumed to be especially under the influence of Christian religious belief. In this sense the English Gothic and other medieval styles were called Christian by the Gothic revivalists of 1850 and thereafter, as a term of approval intended to excite the admiration and enthusiasm of students…
Churrigueresque architecture: A type of Baroque, characterized by very elaborate ornament, peculiar to Spain and Spanish America.
Cinquecento architecture: Renaissance architecture of the 16th century in Italy.
Cistercian architecture: Severe Romanesque architectural style used by the Cistercian order of monks founded at Cieaux (France) in 1098 and which rapidly spread throughout Europe.
Classic Greek architecture: Apogee of Greek architectural design, much imitated in later architecture.
Classical architecture: The architecture of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, and architecture using forms derived from Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman architecture.
Cluniac architecture: That of the style developed by the Cluniac monks, and especially that of the great abbey of Cluny in the French department of Asone-et-Loire…
collegiate architecture: Architecture having the characteristics of a college; particularly used of the style employed in mediaeval and Elizabethan colleges of the great British universities, with their quiet courtyards or quadrangles, mullioned windows, battlemented parapets, picturesque chimneys, bays, and oriels.
Colonial architecture : Architecture transplanted from the motherlands to overseas colonies, such as Portuguese Colonial architecture in Brazil, Dutch Colonial architecture in New York, and above all English Georgian architecture of the 18th century in North American colonies.
Columnar architecture: One in which free columns form an important part of the structure and design…
community architecture: English housing-movement involving participation in design of users of buildings…
conceptual architecture: Architectural designs that have not been realized are conceptual…
contextual architecture: Also called Contextualism, the term suggests an architecture that responds to its surroundings by respecting what is already there, unlike Constructivism and Deconstructivism which deliberately work against established geometries and fabric.
conventual architecture: Same as monastic architecture.
Coptic architecture: Of the Copts, an ancient Egyptian race.
Creole architecture: That of peoples of European descent in tropical and subtropical America – French, Spanish, English, etc., in the West Indies; French and Spanish in New Orleans, and the like. The term Creole differs in its special application, but means always, born in the new country of pure European stock; and this applies to cattle, poultry, etc., as well as to mankind.
Cretan architecture: Large palace complexes, designed in the second millennium BC and later replaced with even grander structures planned on asymmetrical lines, with vast corridors, many chambers, courts, and columned halls…
Decorated architecture: The second of the three phases of English Gothic architecture, from ca. 1280 to after 1350, preceded by Early English and followed by the Perpendicular; characterized by rich decoration and tracery, multiple ribs and liernes, and often ogee arches. Its early development is called Geometric; its later, Curvilinear.
defensive architecture: Military architecture, e.g. castles, city walls, and fortifications. 2. Architecture that looks inwards, giving protection from hostile urban environments…
digital architecture: Derives from computer modelling, simulation, and imaging to arrive at virtual forms…
domestic architecture: That having to do with the house.
Dravidian architecture: That of southern India in ancient times; it consisted largely of temples.
Dutch Colonial architecture: The houses built by Dutch settlers and others in New Netherlands, particularly along the Hudson River, in northern New Jersey, and in eastern Long Island during the Colonial era. 2. Today a vague house style usually having a gambrel roof, possibly with extended eaves in imitation of an actual Colonial house popular in New Jersey and Long Island after 1750.
Early Christian architecture: The final phase of Roman architecture from the 4th to the 6th century, primarily in church building. Coeval with and related to the rise of Byzantine architecture.
Early English architecture: A period of English ecclesiastical architecture extending from 1200 to 1300 A.D.
Early-Christian architecture: The final phase of Roman architecture from the 4th to the 6th century, primarily in church building. Coeval with and related to the rise of Byzantine architecture.
earth-work architecture: There are long traditions of buildings made of earth or mud. In the 1960s proposals were mooted to create buildings by pouring concrete on to mounds of earth which would be excavated once the concrete had set, thus creating cave-like forms called earth-work architecture.
ecclesiastical architecture: That of the church in general.
eclectic architecture: That based on, or imitative of styles selected by personal preference.
ecological architecture: Aims to respond to declining energy resources, e.g. using energy conservation, efficient insulation, rainwater, solar radiation, wind power, and recycling as much as possible. The term was coined in the 1970s.
Edwardian architecture: Architecture of the British Empire in the reign of King Edward VII, often characterized by an opulent Baroque revival or Wrenaissance…
Egyptian architecture: The architecture of Egypt from the 3rd millennium B.C. to the Roman period. Its most outstanding achievements are its massive funerary monuments and temples built of stone for permanence, featuring only post-and-lintel construction, corbel vaults without arches and vaulting, and pyramids.
electrographic architecture: Term coined by the American writer Tom Wolfe in c.1969 to describe structures supporting electric advertising signs or sky-signs.
Elizabethan architecture: In the United States, the term often refers to late-19th- and early-20th-century English Revival architecture that used “black-and-white” half-timbering. Based vaguely on late medieval, rambling English cottages, it is often used interchangeably with Tudor.
entertainment architecture: Any building or structure that is designed to stimulate the imagination and encourage fantasy.
Environmentally Responsible Architecture: Also green or sustainable architecture, it developed from the 1960s in response to mounting ecological and environmental worries…
Ersatz architecture: Indiscriminately eclectic architecture with diverse motifs not copied with exactitude, understanding, or scholarship, verging on Kitsch…
Ethiopian architecture: Fifth and 4th c. BC stone-built temples in the Melazo region and in Yeha…
Etruscan architecture: The architecture of the Etruscan people in western central Italy from the 8th century B.C. until their conquest by the Romans in 281 B.C. Apart from some underground tombs and city walls, it is largely lost, but remains important for the influence of its construction methods on Roman architecture, e.g., the stone arch.
Experimental architecture: Architecture that questions concepts/limitations, committed to experimentation with form, materials, technology, constructional methodology, and even social structure…
Fantastic architecture: Eccentric, imaginative architecture, such as the later work of Gaudi, Bruno Taut, or Hans Poelzig; futuristic high-technology megastructures; follies of an outlandish sort; or irrational structures, defying logic or considerations of use.
Figurative architecture: Term apparently coined by Portoghesi to describe architectural design from the 1970s, influenced by Graves, Rossi, and others, in which attempts were made to restore the obscured meaning of types found in traditional architecture, as in walls, columns, door-cases, pediments, etc., after the jettisoning of so much by the Modern Movement.
French Baroque architecture: A form of Baroque architecture that evolved in France during the reigns of Louis XIII (1610-43), Louis XIV (1643-1714), and Louis XV (1714-74). French Baroque architecture melded traditional French architectural forms (such as steep roofs and irregular rooflines) with classical Italian elements (such as columns, porticos, and segmental pediments), and greatly influenced the non-religious architecture of 18th-century Europe.
garden architecture: The design and arrangement of buildings used in gardens; all architectural structures forming parts of gardens, such as terraces, perrons, parapets, fountains, orangeries, greenhouses, and the garden fronts of large and principal buildings, such as chateaux and other country houses.
Georgian architecture: The prevailing style of the 18th century in Great Britain and the North American colonies, so named after George I, George II, and George III (1714-1820), but commonly not including George IV. Derived from classical, Renaissance, and Baroque forms.
Georgian Colonial architecture: The architecture of the British colonies in North America from 1714 to 1776.
Gothic architecture: The architectural style of the High Middle Ages in Western Europe, which emerged from Romanesque and Byzantine forms in France during the later 12th century. Its great works are cathedrals, characterized by the pointed arch, the rib vault, the development of the exterior flying buttress, and the gradual reduction of the walls to a system of richly decorated fenestration. Gothic architecture last until the 16th century, when it was succeeded by the classical forms of the Renaissance. In France and Germany one speaks of the Early, High, and Late Gothic; The French middle phase is referred to as Rayonnant, the late phase as Flamboyant. In English architecture the usual divisions are Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular.
Greek architecture: For the three centuries after the sixth century B.C., the Greeks created monumental buildings with columns, pediments, entablatures, capitals, bases, and all the elements of architecture that are now referred to as “Classical”.
Green architecture: Formal, Picturesque gardens that are closely related to buildings, or where landscape and architecture coalesce. 2. Buildings designed according to energy-saving criteria and the reduction of pollution. See also environmentally responsible architecture.
Hard architecture: Tough, impersonal, windowless buildings with graffiti-resistant walls, usually associated with prisons, mental-hospitals, and other secure structures.
Harvard architecture: Work of architects (e.g. E.L. Barnes, Philip Johnson, and Paul Rudolph) trained in Bauhaus principles by Gropius and Breuer at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (1940s and 1950s).
Henri Deux architecture: The second phase of the early French Renaissance, named after Henri II (1547-1559) who succeeded Francis I. Italian classic motifs began to supplant the Gothic elements, both in architecture and in decoration. The West Side of the Court of the Louvre (1546-59) is an outstanding example.
Hindu architecture: Exemplified by the 11th century Kandariya Mahadeva Hindu Temple (1017-29) in Madhya Pradesh, India.
Hispano-Moresque architecture: The Moorish architecture of the regions of Spain under Islamic domination from the 8th to the 15th century. The Alhambra is the most famous example.
Hittite architecture: The distinctive rugged architecture created in central Anatolia at the time of the Hittite Empire (14th to 13th century B.C.), preeminent for its fortifications, citadels, and temples.
Inca architecture: The architecture of the Inca Empire in Peru from the 12th century until the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, particularly fortified towns with massive stonework.
Indian architecture: An architecture extending from 250 B.C. to 1750 A.D., characterized by its Buddhist, Jaina, and Hindu temples, built of massive granite and lavishly embellished by sculptured ornament inspired by religion and mythology. 2. The primitive structures of the American Indian.
Indo-Aryan architecture: A style of northern India developed previous to that of the Jains in the 10th and 11th centuries.
Indo-Saracenic architecture: Mohammadean architecture.
industrial architecture: Architecture to house manufactures, e.g. mills, engineering works, potteries, etc.
inflatable architecture: See pneumatic architecture.
Irish architecture: See architectural monuments of Ireland.
Isabelline architecture: See Plateresque architecture.
Islamic architecture: The architecture of the peoples of Islamic faith, also called Mohammedan, which from the 7th century onward expanded throughout the Mediterranean world as far as India and China, producing a variety of great regional works and local decorative styles. It is characterized by domes, horseshoe and round arches, tunnel vaults and rich ornaments, geometric because of the ban on human and animal representation.
Italian Renaissance architecture: The group of architectural styles that originated in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an emphasis on symmetry, exact mathematical relationships between parts, and an overall effect of simplicity and repose.
Jacobean architecture: English architectural and decorative style of the early 17th century, adapting the Elizabethan style to continental Renaissance influences; named after James I (1603-1625), but continuing beyond his death.
Jain architecture: A style developed in India during the 10th and 11th centuries by the Jains, who were followers of a contemporary of Buddha.
Jaina architecture: A style developed in India during the 10th and 11th centuries by the Jains, who were followers of a contemporary of Buddha.
Japanese architecture: One derived mainly from China, but of smaller scale and extreme fineness of decoration. The module of the 3′ X 6′ floor mat governs the planning, with interior partitions largely of sliding paper-cover screens. It is an architecture mainly of wood, in the joinery and carving of which is show great skill. Its history has been written only since 712 A.D., but extends back at least six or seven centuries before Christ. Japan began to show the influences of Western civilization as recently as 1875.
Jesuit architecture: A distinct architectural style may be detected in Jesuit churches from the end of the 16th c. The Society of Jesus played an important role in the evolution of Baroque architecture…
Khmer architecture: Exemplified by the extraordinary 12th century Angkor Wat Khmer Temple (1115-45) in Cambodia.
Kinetic architecture: Architecture evolved in the belief that static, permanent forms of architecture were no longer suitable for use in times of change. It was supposed to be dynamic, adaptable, capable of being added to or reduced, and even disposable…
lancet architecture: An old term for the Early English phase of Gothic architecture.
Late-Modern architecture: Architecture in which images, ideas, and motifs of the Modern Movement were taken to extremes, structure, technology, and services being grossly overstated at a time when Modernism was being questioned…
Lombard architecture: North Italian pre-Romanesque architecture in the 7th and 8th century, during the rule of the Lombards, based on Early Christian and Roman forms.
Louis Quatorze Architecture: The style of the high Classical period in France under the rule of Louis XIV (1643-1715) in architecture, decoration, and furniture, culminating in the building of Versailles.
Louis Quinze Architecture: The Classical and Rococo style in France under the rule of Louis XV (1715-1774) in architecture, decoration, and furniture.
Louis Seize Architecture: The later Rococo and classicist phase of the 18th century in France under the rule of Louis XVI (1774-1792), terminated by the French Revolution.
Maya architecture: The work of a people or peoples of Yucatan, appearing in history about 600 B.C., who built magnificent cities of stone in the early years of the Christian era.
Mayan architecture: The work of a people or peoples of Yucatan, appearing in history about 600 B.C., who built magnificent cities of stone in the early years of the Christian era.
medieval architecture: The summary term for the architecture of the European Middle Ages from the 5th to the 15th century, in particular the Byzantine, pre-Romanesque, Romanesque, and Gothic.
Merovingian architecture: Architecture of the first dynasty of Frankish Kings in Gaul (c.500-751/2), derived from Early Christian Roman prototypes, and usually taken to mean buildings of 5th to the end of 8th c…
Meso-American architecture: Architecture of the Aztec, Mayan, and other Central-American civilizations of the first millennium BC until the Spanish Conquest of the 16th c. Most surviving structures had a ritualistic function, and included flat-topped pyramidal platforms with ramps and/or steps leading to the summit. Many buildings had sculpted friezes, borders, and panels, and the simple rectilinear blocky forms of the temples bore a resemblance to European stripped Classical buildings of 18th c. and later, while the formal symmetrical geometry of layouts and complexes had ceremonial roads and a gridiron plan. Meso-American architecture had a considerable influence on aspects of Art Deco.
Mesopotamian architecture: Architecture developed by the Euphrates and Tigris Valley civilizations, from the 3rd millennium to the 6th century B.C. Primarily a massive architecture of mud bricks set in clay mortar or bitumen. The heavy walls were articulated by pilasters and recesses; important public buildings were faced with baked or glazed brick. Rooms were narrow and long and generally covered by timber and mud roofs, but in certain cases also by tunnel vaults; columns were seldom sued; openings usually were small.
Mexican architecture: A term too broad to be useful, for it includes the most primitive forms of shelter; the stone architecture of the Mayas, built at the beginning of the Christian era; the ceremonial grandeur of the Toltecs; the carved mosaic stonework of the Zapotecs; the luxurious terraced cities of the warlike Aztecs; and the varied splendors of the Spanish conquistadors who arrived in 1519.
military architecture: See fortification.
Minoan architecture: The architecture of Bronze Age Crete, which reached its apogee between the 19th and 14th century B.C.
Mission architecture: An architectural style characterized by stucco walls, round arches supported by piers, continuous wall surface forming parapets, hip roof with red tile roof covering, decorative stringcourse outlining the arches, and overhanging eaves with exposed rafters. (Towers, curvilinear gables, and gablets found in larger examples of this style).
Mixtec architecture: In the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, a type of Mesoamerican architecture, ca. 1000 A.D., characterized by great mass, use of interior stone columns, and emphasis on horizontal lines…
Mobile architecture: Concept which held that users of buildings and settlements should have a say in plans and changes to them. Architecture would consist of structural frameworks, infrastructures, and services raised above the ground that would be infinitely adaptable. Such views influenced thinking in the 1960s and 1970s, notably Archigram and Metabolism.
Moghul architecture: See Mogul architecture.
Mogul architecture: The later phase of Indian Islamic architecture, named after the Mogul dynasty (1526-1707), typified by monumental palaces and mosques and detailed decorative work. The Taj Mahal is the most famous example.
Mohammadean architecture: Mohammadean architecture.
Mohammedan architecture: Also see Muslim architecture, Islamic architecture.
monastic architecture: That of religious organizations having permanent rules of conduct and life, and divided into considerable bodies of men or women who devote themselves in common to a life of worship and labor…
Moorish architecture: Islamic architecture of North Africa and regions of the Iberian peninsula where the Moors were dominant (711-1492). The most perfect examples were the exquisite Alhambra, Granada…
Moslem architecture: Also see Muslim architecture.
Mudejar architecture: Descriptive of early Spanish Renaissance architecture showing Moorish influence.
Mudéjar architecture: A style of Spanish architecture produced from the 13th to 16th centuries by Mudéjars and Christians working within the Muslim tradition, characterized by a fusion of Romanesque and Gothic with Islamic elements.
Mughal architecture: See Mogul architecture.
Muhammadan architecture: Also see Muhammadan architecture, Saracenic architecture.
Muslim architecture: Also see Muhammadan architecture, Saracenic architecture.
Mycenaean architecture: That of a civilization recorded principally in Greece, Asia Minor, and Sicily before the Hellenes, probably about fourteen centuries B.C.
Nazi architecture: Architecture of the Hitlerian Third Reich in Germany (1933-45), basically of three types: a stripped Neo-Classicism, as in works by Kreis and Speer; a vernacular style drawing on rural and especially Alpine types; and a simple, utilitarian, industrialized type for factories…
Neo-Babylonian architecture: The Mesopotamian architecture that developed after the decline of the Assyrian Empire, deriving much from Assyrian architecture and enhanced by figured designs of heraldic animals in glazed brickwork.
Neoclassic architecture: That of modern times beginning with the Italian Renaissance of the 15th century; and especially that which is carefully studied from Greco-Roman examples…
Neoclassical architecture: The late 18th-century European style, lasting from c.1770 to 1830, which reacted against the worst excesses of the Baroque and Rococo, reviving the Antique. It implies a return to classical sources which imposed restraint and simplicity on painting and architecture.
Neo-Classical architecture: Architecture from the mid-18th century and 19th century, simpler than Baroque architecture which preceded it, and making reference to the “eternal” architecture of the Classical world.
New Animal architecture: Late-20th/early-21st c. architecture characterized by wavy and flowing lines, loose, amorphous blob-like shapes, and sometimes, with exteriors resembling carapaces… See Zoömorphic architecture.
New-Essentialist architecture: Dutch equivalent of Bauhaus-inspired Functionalism or the International style, 1920-40.
Norman architecture: The Romanesque architecture of England from the Norman conquest (1066) until the rise of the Gothic around 1180.
Old Colonial architecture: See Colonial architecture.
Olmec architecture: Architecture of the most ancient civilization of Mesoamerica (1500-400 B.C.), which influenced subsequent Mesoamerican architecture…
Organic architecture: A term Frank Lloyd Wright used to describe his approach to architectural design that strives to integrate space into a unified whole.
Ottoman architecture: Islamic architecture, mainly in Asia Minor, developed from 14th c., characterized by domes, thin minarets, tile-work, and decorations in relief cut in stone…
Ottonian architecture: The early Romanesque architecture of the German dynasty that ruled as emperors of the Holy Roman Empire from A.D. 962-1002, characterized by the development of forms derived from Carolingian and Byzantine concepts.
Parthian architecture: An architectural style developed under Parthian domination (3rd century B.C. to 3rd century A.D.) in western Iran and Mesopotamia, combining classical with autochthonous features. Its major achievement is the monumental iwan covered by a barrel vault in stone or brick.
Pelasgic architecture: Also see Pelasgic building.
Perpendicular architecture: The English style which is characterized by perpendicular lines in the common use of that term, more strictly, of vertical lines…
Persian architecture: The architecture developed under the Achaemenid dynasty of kings who ruled ancient Persia from 550 B.C. until its conquest by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C., characterized by a synthesis of architectural elements of surrounding countries, as Assyria, Egypt, and Ionian Greece.
Plateresque architecture: A Spanish (and Mexican) type of Renaissance architecture characterized by ornament resembling silverwork (plateria).
Pointed architecture: Old term for Gothic architecture.
Pop architecture: Architecture popular with the public. 2. Buildings the forms of which suggest their function, such as a shoe-shaped shoe-shop; also called ‘bizarre’, ‘illegitimate’, ‘programmatic’, or ‘roadside’ architecture… 3. Work influenced by popular architecture or responding to High-Tech and Archigram-promoted images.
Post-Renaissance architecture: The architecture, if classical in character, of any period succeeding that of the Renaissance proper…
Pre-Columbian architecture: Architecture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas prior to contact with European civilization.
prehistoric architecture: That of epochs which on account of their relative antiquity cannot be determined; that is to say, whose apparent date goes back of all certain records of the country or district in which they exist.
pre-Romanesque architecture: The several regional and transitional styles between the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Romanesque architecture in the 11th century, including Lombard, Carolingian, and Ottonian.
pseudoclassic architecture: That phase of neoclassic architecture which marked the most stilted period of post Renaissance art, when, under the influence of Vitruvius’ writings and those of his later disciples, the most formal imitation of Roman architecture prevailed, and it was the aim to revive the whole art of Rome.
pseudoclassical architecture: That phase of neoclassic architecture which marked the most stilted period of post Renaissance art, when, under the influence of Vitruvius’ writings and those of his modern disciples, the most formal imitation of Roman architecture prevailed, and it was the aim to revive the whole art of Rome.
Pueblo architecture: That of those American Indians who are called Pueblo Indians, Pueblows, or Puebloans.
Quattrocento architecture: Renaissance architecture of the 15th century in Italy.
Queen Anne architecture: The architecture existing in England during the short reign of Anne, 1702 to 1714. The more important structures of the reign were generally the completion of designs fixed in all of their parts before her accession, and but little that was monumental begun in her time… The buildings which are especially associated with the style are the minor country houses and many houses in the suburbs of London, built frequently of red brick, and characterized by sculpture in relief, molded or carved in the same material…
Radical architecture: Term used (1960s, 1970s) to suggest extremes of shape, structure, or (more usually) the Leftist political position of its creators, propounded largely by the journal Casabella. In reality Radical architecture was often drawn or collage presentation of projects by certain groups (e.g. Archizoom), usually involving assaults on architecture conceived as a formal language.
Rational architecture: Late-20th c. movement that proposed reasonable and buildable responses to design-problems drawing on order in urban fabric and on architectural typology…
Rayonnant Gothic architecture: Style of Gothic architecture of the late 13th and 14th centuries, usually referring to the tracery of windows, e.g. Rose windows. It preceded the Flamboyant Style.
Renaissance architecture: An architecture resulting from a rebirth of interest in, and knowledge of, earlier classic forms and from a revolt against medieval forms and habits. Starting in Italy in the 15th century, it spread throughout Europe, strongly affected by regional influences. Characterized by the re-use of the classic orders and emphasis on pictorial impact, Renaissance architecture is a generic term for widely differing design in Italy, England, France, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and the Americas, up to the end of the 19th century.
Restoration Architecture: Most popular in the 19th century. One of the top architects involved in restorations was Viollet-le-Duc, who specialized in restoring Gothic and Romanesque buildings.
Revival architecture: The use of older styles in new architectural movements, most often referring to the Gothic Revival and the Classic Revival, but also applicable to the Romanesque, Egyptian, Etruscan, Colonial, and other revivals of the late 18th and 19th century.
Rococo architecture: The architecture of the century beginning about 1660 AD in so far as it is marked by a certain excess of curvature and a lack of firm lines and formal distribution…
Rogue architecture: Term (properly Rogue Elephant) used by Goodhart-Rendel to describe works by those Gothic-Revival architects, addicted to Go, whose works were not marked by scholarship, serenity, or tact…
Roman architecture: From the 5th century B.C. to the fall of their empire in the 4th century A.D., the Romans perfected concrete, arches, vaults and domes that have been copied ever since. They invented little, but took the Greek construction techniques to levels far surpassing their originators.
Romanesque architecture: Various phases of European architecture that were based on Roman forms, usually more specifically labeled as Italian Romanesque, French Romanesque, and German Romanesque. The growing use of the pointed arch and the Gothic conception of balanced thrusts, in the 12th century, marked the end of what was not one style but rather a group of transitional local styles.
rural architecture: Buildings associated with the countryside, but especially 18th c. and 19th c. cottages ornés and fermes ornées or other buildings designed to suggest the rural ideal, as in a Picturesque landscape, using free compositions, asymmetry, vernacular detail, and materials such as roughcast, thatch, rubble, etc. See also rustic.
Russo-Byzantine architecture: The first phase of Russian architecture (11th to 16th century) derived from the Byzantine architecture of Greece; mainly stone churches characterized by cruciform plans and multiple bulbous domes.
Saracenic architecture: Term given to an exotic style that evolved in Western Europe in 18th c., derived from Moorish and Islamic sources: until recently, it was applied to Islamic architecture.
Sassanian architecture: A period in Persian architecture about the 5th and 6th centuries.
Saxon architecture: Also see Anglo-Saxon architecture.
school of architecture: In modern times, an institution for the professional training of architects…
Second Empire architecture: An architectural style characterized by: two or three stories, mansard (double-pitched) roof with multicolored slate shingles or metal shingles and dormer windows, pedimented and bracketed slender windows, ornate moldings and brackets (especially under the eaves), arched double doors, and, oftentimes, porches or projecting pavilions.
Seljuk architecture: The earlier phase of Turkish Muslim architecture (11th to 13th century), much influenced by Persian architecture, predominantly mosques and minarets.
Shaker architecture: The Shakers (or United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing) were founded by the English-born Ann Lee (1736-84), who emigrated to America (1774) and gathered around her sufficient followers to establish a religious sect. Believing that odd or fanciful styles of architecture, with moldings, cornices, etc., should be eschewed, the Shakers created plain meeting-houses in which they could perform their ’round dances’ that were part of their ritual, so large areas of floor-space were essential. Believing also that light and cleanliness were the antithesis of evil, buildings had numerous windows…
Social architecture: Architecture intended for use by the mass of people as social beings as a reaction against architecture concerned with form and style supposedly for the dominant members of society. 2. Schools and other buildings erected after the 1939-45 war in Britain incorporating scientific method, prefabrication, and industrialized building as part of the Modern Movement.
Soft architecture: Living-spaces with few fixed items or partitions. They would be instantly controlled by computers as required. 2. Low-energy self-build dwellings.
Spanish architecture: Comprising chiefly the adaptation and development of Renaissance architecture originating in Italy.
street architecture: That prepared to face the street, and, in a more general sense, city architecture generally…
Stuart architecture: Architecture of the English Late Renaissance (1603-88).
suabian architecture: That carried on or inspired by the house of Suabia, especially in other lands than in the German kingdom immediately under its control…
Sumerian architecture: A monumental architecture developed by the Sumerians, who dominated southern Mesopotamia from the end of the 4th to the end of the 3rd millennium B.C.
Sustainable architecture: Architecture that does not guzzle energy, require expensive maintenance, or is subject to massive heat-loss or -gain through poor insulation or too much glazing: also called Environmentally Responsible or green architecture.
Symbolic architecture: Term coined (1980s) by Charles Alexander Jencks (1939-) to describe architecture with a strong degree of personification or with allusions to cultural ideas, historical references, and other pre-Modernist themes, or in which there were visual jokes, puns, and mnemonic motifs.
Systems architecture: Architecture based on prefabricated systems and components variously arranged. 2. Architecture derived from supposedly logical, rational, analytical procedures related to computerized design (from which unmeasurable aspects of architecture are perforce excluded). 3. Architecture designed as part of greater (e.g. cultural, social, and urban) systems. In this sense it has been related to performance-design based on an analysis of function as well as on the aesthetic, physical, and psychological needs of the users. Fashionable in the 1960s, it has not proved to be the all-purpose solution hoped for by its protagonists.
Tensile architecture: Structure formed mostly of components acting in tension rather than compression: it might include tents, suspension-bridges, and suspended roofs (all types where weight can determine the form of the structure and its very stability); prestressed membranes and cable-roofs (where form and stability derive from forces in tension created by stressing); and pneumatic structures…
Toltec architecture: An austere, geometric, Mesoamerican architecture, ca. 1000 A.D.; which formed the basis for Aztec architecture and other architecture in Mesoamerica; characterized by the use of colonnades several ranks deep, atlantes, square-carved roof supports, monumental serpent columns, balustrades, coatepantli, and narrative relief panels set in plain wall surfaces. Important examples of Toltec architecture are at Tula and Chichen Itza.
Total architecture: Advocated (1920s) by Walter Gropius and Bruno Taut, it pretentiously suggested syntheses of all arts and crafts in a new architecture (based on the composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner’s (1813-83) idea of Gesamtkunstwerk), but did the opposite by sundering arts and crafts from architecture. In spite of this manifest failure, Gropius published (1955) The Scope of Total Architecture (revised edition 1962).
Totalitarian architecture: Supposedly the officially approved architecture of dictatorships, over-centralized governments, or political groups intolerant of opposition, especially that of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union, Communist China, etc. As an international style, it often drew on simplified Neo-Classicism, and sculpture based on 19th c. realism and Classicism for massive over-sized State monuments.
traditional architecture: Contemporary architecture that holds closely to forms established in an earlier period.
Transitional architecture: Term used to denote the merging of one style with another, especially the 12th c. transition from Romanesque to Gothic, but sometimes applied to other styles.
Tudor architecture: The final development of English Perpendicular Gothic architecture, during the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII (1485-1547), preceding Elizabethan architecture and characterized by four-centered arches.
Tuscan architecture: That of the ancient Etruscans. 2. That of modern Tuscany at any epoch, especially any style taking shape in this region and not extending much beyond it. The most important of such styles is the round-arched Gothic, exemplified by the Loggia dei Lanzi and the Bargello, or Palace of the Podesta, both in Florence, and the Cathedral of Lucca, and other buildings; a style which was mainly Gothic in structure with its system of building received from the north, but which protested against the northern style as a decorative system.
Twentieth century architecture: Period which featured the following architectural styles: Art Nouveau (1900-1920), Early Modernism (1900-1925), Continental Avant-Garde (De Stijl, Neue Sachlichkeit) (1900-1925), Steel-frame Skyscraper architecture (1900-2000), Bauhaus (1919-1933), Art Deco (1925-1940), Totalitarian architecture (Germany, USSR) (1928-1940), Late Modernism (1945-1970), High Tech Corporate Design architecture (1945-2000), Postmodernism (1960-2000), Minimalism (1970-2000), Deconstructivism (1980-2000), Blobitecture (1990-2000).
Utopian architecture: Designs for buildings and cities providing ideal, or supposedly ideal, environments for their users, usually implying development where none previously existed, or where wholesale destruction of built fabric is envisaged. It is associated with social engineering, not usually benign.
vernacular architecture: A style of architecture exemplifying the commonest building techniques based on the forms and materials of a particular historical period, region, or group of people.
Victorian architecture: A building style popular in England during the reign of Queen Victoria (1840-1901), it is characterized by picturesque forms inspired by medieval buildings.
visionary architecture: The work of certain Neo-Classical architects, notably Boullee, Ledoux, and Lequeu. Boulee’s gigantic schemes for cenotaphs and monuments were noted for their scale and stereometrical purity, while Ledoux’s proposals for an ideal city, Chaux, contained many buildings that were expressive of their purpose (architecture parlante). 2. Any imaginary scheme featuring fantastic futuristic structures, of which there were many in 20th c.
Zapotec architecture: An eclectic architecture of Mesoamerica, in Oaxaca, Mexico…
Zoömorphic architecture: Late-20th/early-21st c. architecture characterized by wavy and flowing lines, loose, amorphous blob-like shapes, and sometimes, with exteriors resembling carapaces…
Zunian architecture: That of the Zuni Indians of western New Mexico. The Zunis are Pueblos, and their architecture is the same as that of other tribes of this class.
Lancet style: That style of Gothic architecture which is distinguished by the use of the lancet arch, as the Early English.
Academic Movement: The dominant influence in American architecture from the 1890s through tile 1920s, emphasizing order and unity in design, expression appropriate to size and use, and adaptation of precedents drawn from a wide range of historical examples.
Aesthetic Movement : The Aesthetic Movement is a loosely defined movement in literature, fine art, furniture, metalwork, ceramics, stained glass, textiles, and wallpapers in later 19th-century Britain. The Aesthetic Movement argued that art was not supposed to be utilitarian or useful in any practical sense. Instead, aesthetic experience is a fully autonomous and independent aspect of a human life. Thus, art should exist solely for its own sake.
Arts and Crafts Movement: A philosophy of design stressing handicrafts and a return to preindustrial design. Popular in England in the late 19th century, it had some influence on the American Prairie and Craftsman styles.
City Beautiful movement: The Beaux Arts style was popularized during the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. One outgrowth of the Expo was the reform movement advocated by Daniel Burnham: the City Beautiful Movement.
Liturgical Movement: A 20th century Movement the object of which was an increasing involvement of the laity in worship. It brought the altar nearer the congregation, physically and visually, and involved considerable ‘reordering’ of church interiors, often (but not always) to the detriment of the architecture.
Modern Movement: A term referring to the new European architectural style of the early 20th century. It was characterized by undecorated cubic forms, white render and large windows providing a horizontal emphasis.
abstract expressionism: A movement in experimental, nonrepresentational painting originating in the U.S. in the 1940s, embracing many individual styles marked in common by freedom of technique, a preference for dramatically large canvases, and a desire to give spontaneous expression to the unconscious.
Abstract Representation: Synthesis of Late-Modernism and Post-Modernism in which analogies, associations, ornament, and symbolism were suggested rather than clearly quoted.
Accadian: Also see Accadian.
Achaemenian: Period in Persian architecture from the time of Cyrus the Great (d. 529 BC) until the death of Darius III (330 BC). Its most elaborate buildings include the vast palace complex at Persepolis which included large relief decorations, while the apadana (or Hall of the Hundred Columns) had elaborate capitals with vertical volutes and animal-heads. Reliefs of green, yellow, and blue glazed bricks were employed at the palaces of Susa, and the rock-cut tombs at Naksh-i-Rustam have similar capitals to those of Persepolis, with door-surrounds derived from Egyptian precedents.
Achaemenid: Period in Persian architecture from the time of Cyrus the Great (d. 529 BC) until the death of Darius III (330 BC). Its most elaborate buildings include the vast palace complex at Persepolis which included large relief decorations, while the apadana (or Hall of the Hundred Columns) had elaborate capitals with vertical volutes and animal-heads. Reliefs of green, yellow, and blue glazed bricks were employed at the palaces of Susa, and the rock-cut tombs at Naksh-i-Rustam have similar capitals to those of Persepolis, with door-surrounds derived from Egyptian precedents.
Adam: The first “American” style of architecture, based on English Georgian.
Adam style: An architectural style based on the work of Robert Adam and his brothers, predominant in England in the late 18th cent. And strongly influential in the U.S.A., Russia, and elsewhere. It is characterized by clarity of form, use of color, subtle detailing, and unified schemes of interior design. Basically Neoclassical, it also adapted Neo-Gothic, Egyptian, and Etruscan motifs.
Adamesque: A refined architectural style named for the English architects Robert Adam (1728-92) and his three brothers. It is noted for its delicate Neoclassical ornament, particularly for interiors. A major influence on the American Federal style.
Adhocism: Architectural design resembling a collage, where many components made of different materials and methods of construction are employed in deliberately untidy ways, and every part of a building or each element of a building complex, is designed with scant regard for the whole, often involving disparate artefacts taken from catalogues. The Belgian architect, Lucien Kroll, who believed Functionalism no longer functions and that Modernism is essentially totalitarian barbarism, developed an architecture of ‘controlled anarchy’, as in the Medical Faculty Housing, Universite Catholique, Woluve-St-Lambert, Brussels.
Adirondack style: Sprawling complexes intended as summer retreats in wilderness areas, with a rustic look, achieved through the use of stone, logs, and twigs used in their natural state.
Akkadian: Also see Accadian.
Alexandrine: Concerning Alexander the Great and his successors, their dominions and their cities and buildings. 2. Concerning the city of Alexandria in Egypt.
alhambresque: Of the style followed in the decoration of the Alhambra; Moresque of this particular type.
American Directory: Directorie provided the inspiration for American Directory (c. 1805-30) – a variant of the USA Federal style (1776-c.1830) in general terms, except that the favored motifs in the USA were those of Freemasonry.
American Renaissance: The Beaux-Arts style, also called the American Renaissance, is about as formal as architecture can get. Based on classical European precedents primarily French and Italian palaces and palazzos of the 16th to the 18th century – this grandly formal style transformed America’s major cities between the 1880s and the 1920s after being introduced at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago to an eager nation that had begun to tire of Victorian excesses.
American Style: Italianate.
Analytical Decomposition: Term used by Argentine-born American architects, Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, possibly suggested by the work of the Russian film-maker, Sergei Eisenstein, in which the spectator moves through a series of carefully disposed scenes…
Angevin: The medieval style developed in Anjoy, France.
Anglo-Saxon: The pre-Romanesque architecture of England before the Norman Conquest (1066), which survived for a short time thereafter, characterized by massive walls and round arches.
antebellum: Before the Civil War.
Antique: Pertaining to the Classical civilizations of Graeco-Roman Antiquity.
antiquity: The ancient Greek or Roman periods.
Appoline: Type of decoration drawing on the attributes of the Greek sun-god Apollo, found in Classical Antiquity and revived during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, especially during the reign of Louis Quatorze. Common motifs were the head of Apollo surrounded by sun-rays (the sunburst), the chariot, the lyre, and the sun.
Arabian: Vague term suggesting Moorish or other architecture of Islamic origin.
Arabo-Byzantine: Saracenic, or early Mohammedan, in style.
Arabotedesco: A modification of Byzantine architectural forms by Arabian or Saracenic motifs.
archaic: Of or like a period before that of highest development.
archaism: A lapsing into the style of a long-past age or period, whether intention or involuntary. 2. The product of such a reversion to an extinct style or practice.
architectural styles: Note that there are no universally accepted classifications or dates.
Architecture Machine: Title of book by the Greek-American Nicholas Negroponte in which artificial intelligence in architectural design was proposed, involving computers that would eventually function like colleagues.
architecture parlante: Architecture expressive of its purpose by means of its form, a term first used in print by L. Vaudoyer in respect of the French 18th c. Neo-Classicists, notably Ledoux.
Art Deco: An architectural style characterized by: an overall linear, angular, vertical appearance; stepped façade; extensive use of zig-zags, chevrons, lozenges, and volutes as decorative elements; and vertical projections above the roof line.
Art Moderne: A modern style: streamlined stucco and chromium, as if buildings traveled at the speed of automobiles. Inspired by the Paris International Exposition of 1937.
Art Moderne style: Architectural style found principally in buildings constructed in the 1930s following the earlier Art Deco.
Art Nouveau: A style of decoration and architectural detail popular in the 1890s featuring sinuous, floral motifs.
Art Nouveau style: An international style of decoration and architecture of the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, characterized particularly by the depiction of leaves and flowers in flowing, sinuous lines. The name derives from the Maison de l’Art Nouveau, an interior design gallery opened in Paris in 1896.
Art Noveau: A style of decoration and architectural detail popular in the 1890s featuring sinuous, floral motifs.
Artisan Mannerism: English architecture created by mans (rather than architects) in the period c. 1615-75, based on Mannerist pattern-books. Such craftsmen were not trained in the theory and vocabulary of the Classical language of architecture, so their creations often have a curious scale, are strangely proportioned, and frequently display an ignorance of how elements are put together (which some commentators have found refreshing and others distressing).
Arts and Crafts: A philosophy of design stressing handicrafts and a return to preindustrial design. Popular in England in the late 19th century, it had some influence on the American Prairie and Craftsman styles.
Arts and Crafts style: The Arts and Crafts (Craftsman) Style.
Arts-and-Crafts: Influential late 19th century English movement that attempted to re-establish craftsmanship threatened by mass-production…
arula: Diminutive of ara.
Assur: See Assyrian architecture.
Athenian: Adjective, characteristic of the center of Greek art, Athens.
Attic: Characteristic of Attica of ancient Greece.
Backsteingotik: Simplified medieval Gothic architecture constructed of brick, e.g. the town-halls of Lubeck or Torun, or the vast churches of Northern Germany and Poland.
Baroque: A style that flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries, characterized by exuberant decoration, curvaceous forms, and a grand scale generating a sense of movement; later developments show greater restraint.
Baroque Revival Style: A European style of architecture and decoration which developed in the 17th cent. in Italy from late Renaissance and Mannerist forms, and culminated in the churches, monasteries, and palaces of southern Germany and Austria in the early 18th century.
Bauhaus: An influential German design school established by Walter Gropius in 1919 that sought to combine art, industrial technology, and crafts into a theory of functional design, particularly in architecture.
bce: Before the current, common, or Christian era (period).
Beaux Arts: French for “fine arts,” also the name of the influential Parisian architectural school (Ecole des Beaux-Arts) that influenced American architects and architectural education.
Beaux Arts style: French for “fine arts,” also the name of the influential Parisian architectural school (Ecole des Beaux-Arts) that influenced American architects and architectural education.
Beaux-Arts: French for “fine arts,” also the name of the influential Parisian architectural school (Ecole des Beaux-Arts) that influenced American architects and architectural education.
Beaux-Arts Classicism: French for “fine arts,” also the name of the influential Parisian architectural school (Ecole des Beaux-Arts) that influenced American architects and architectural education.
Biedermeir: Central European style of architecture, decorative arts, painting, and interior design, especially in Berlin, Vienna, and Munich…
Blobitecture: A form of postmodernist 20th-Century architecture, marked by bulging curves.
both-and: Term coined by Robert Venturi to describe pluralism and heterogeneity against what he saw as the “either-or” of simplistic modernism.
Bracketed Style: Another term for Italianate.
bric-à-brac: Pejorative term for Renaissance-Revival buildings based on French precedents and overloaded with busy ornaments.
Bronze Age: A period of human history that began c4000-3000 B.C., following the Stone Age and preceding the Iron Age, characterized by the use of bronze implements.
Brutalism: The bold concrete architecture inspired by Le Corbusier’s work and his followers. Also, New Brutalism.
Byzantine: A style dating from the 5th century, characterized by masonry construction around a central plan, with domes on pendentives, typically depicting the figure of Christ; foliage patterns on stone capitals; and interiors decorated with mosaics and frescos.
Byzantine Revival: The re-use of Byzantine forms in the second half of the 19th century, typically in churches, often characterized by multiple domes, round-arched windows, and ample decoration.
Byzantine Revival Style: Architecture developed from the 5th century A.D. in the Byzantine Empire, characterized especially by massive domes with square bases and rounded arches and spires and much use of glass mosaics.
calah: See Assyrian architecture.
California mission: Celebrating the architecture of Hispanic settlers, Mission style houses feature arched dormers and roof parapets. Some resemble old Spanish mission churches with twin bell towers and elaborate arches. By the 1920s, architects were combining Mission styling with features from the craftsman and Prairie movements.
Calvinist austerity: Sharp, hard-edged late 20th and early-21st century architecture, especially associated with The Netherlands…
Camp: Standing out from the background, or theatrical posturing. Camp taste is concerned with affectation, artificiality, and playfulness…
Carolingian: The pre-Romanesque architecture of the late 8th and 9th century in France and Germany. So called after the emperor Charlemagne (768-814). The cathedral of Aachen is the best-known example.
Carpenter Gothic: A highly ornate, mid-19th-century variant of Gothic Revival with richly applied wood scrollwork at porch railings, bargeboards, and brackets. An expression of the new availability of power woodworking tools such as the lathe and scroll saw.
Carpenter’s Gothic: Whimsical, unscholarly Gothick derived from pattern-books of e.g. Batty Langley. 2. 19th c. timber buildings in the USA with Gothicizing tendencies, e.g. in barge-boards.
Carptenters Gothic: A highly ornate, mid-19th-century variant of Gothic Revival with richly applied wood scrollwork at porch railings, bargeboards, and brackets. An expression of the new availability of power woodworking tools such as the lathe and scroll saw.
Cartilaginous: See Oleaginous style.
Castle style: Type of 18th c. architecture employing battlements, loop-holes (used decoratively), and turrets to create the impression of a fortified dwelling, even though the plan might be regular and Classical…
Cathedral style: Early 19th c. Gothic Revival, in which motifs were used in an unarchaeological, unscholarly way before the advent of Ecclesiology.
Celtic Revival: Was a 19th c. revival of Celtic art, mostly in Britain and Ireland, which sparked the Hiberno-Romanesque Revival in architecture, and influenced the Arts-and-Crafts movement as well as the development of Art Nouveau…
Chalukyan archicture: That of Chalukya, a province of India, typified in star-shaped temples with stepped roofs, dating from the 6th century.
Château Style: The Château Style is a grand adaptation of the 16th-century French châteaux of the Loire Valley. The combined efforts of François I, Catherine de Medici and Dianne de Poitiers produced an enchanting mixture of Renaissance Classicism and Gothic organic design.
Chateauesque: An architectural style characterized by: massiveness, a steeply pitched hip or gable roof with many vertical elements (e.g., hip knobs with finials, tall decoratively treated chimneys, turrets, spires, etc.), roof cresting, multiple dormer windows (including wall dormers), towers, balconies, balconettes, and masonry walls.
Chateauesque style: The Chateauesque style, c. 1860-1910, is characterized by massive and irregular forms, steeply pitched hip or gable roofs with dormers, towers, and tall elaborately decorated chimneys with corbeled caps.
Chavin style: The earliest of the architectural styles in northern Peru ca. 900 B.C.; characterized by grandiose terraced platforms, constructed of stone, which were grouped about large sunken plazas.
Chenes style: A variant of the Rio Bec style in Maya architecture; characterized by doorways representing the gaping mouth of a serpent or earth monster; radiating from Hochob in Campeche, this style appears at Chichen Itza (e.g. the Nunnery Annex) and at Uxmal (on the west temple entrance of the Pyramid of the Magician.)
Chicago School: The early modern style of Louis Sullivan, John Wellborn Root, William Le Baron Jenney, and company: birth-school of the skyscraper.
Chicago Style: A style of architecture that originated with architects in Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; it featured the use of steel and larger window openings.
Chinoiserie: Decorative design characteristic of the Chinese.
Churrigueresque: A type of Baroque, characterized by very elaborate ornament, peculiar to Spain and Spanish America.
CIAM: Congres Internationale d’Architecture Moderne, a body formed after a conference at La Sarraz, Switzerland, in 1928. It sought to define Modernist orthodoxy largely on the lines set out by Le Corbusier and its secretary, Sigfried Giedion, until it was challenged by Team X in the 1950s.
cinque cento: Italy’s 16th century, the Renaissance.
Cinquecento: Italy’s 16th century, the Renaissance.
Cistercian style: Severe Romanesque architectural style used by the Cistercian order of monks founded at Cieaux (France) in 1098 and which rapidly spread throughout Europe.
City Beautiful: A term somewhat scornfully applied to urban planning of an earlier day in which axial symmetry and architectural ostentation were favored at the expense of utilitarian and social considerations.
classic: Of or pertaining to Mesoamerican culture from A.D. 100 to 900. 2. Of a superior and/or eternal design.
Classic Revival: Utilizing the vocabulary of ancient Greek and Roman architecture.
Classical: Of or relating to the Classical period of architecture and civilization, i.e., Greek and Roman.
Classical Revival: The Italian Renaissance or neoclassical movements in England and the United States in the 19th century that looked to the traditions of Greek and Roman antiquity.
Classical revivals: The Italian Renaissance or neoclassical movements in England and the United States in the 19th century that looked to the traditions of Greek and Roman antiquity.
Classical style: A style of architecture and decoration broadly based on ancient Greece and Rome which recurs constantly throughout the history of Western European art, particularly since the Renaissance up to the 19th century.
Classicism: In architecture, principals that emphasize the correct use not only of Roman and Greek, but also of Italian Renaissance models.
classicismo: In Italian art, the formal style of the 16th century, resulting from the Risorgimento, Rinascimento, or Renaissance, and passing gradually into the Decadenza. The term denotes a supposed reference to all the principles and details of the art to purely Greco-Roman models.
Collegiate Gothic: A secular version of Gothic architecture, characteristic of the older colleges of Oxford and Cambridge.
Collegiate Gothic style: Collegiate Gothic, which followed Victorian Gothic, was much more precise. It emulated Oxford and Cambridge more directly.
Colonial: The architecture of, particularly, America when it was a colony.
Colonial Revival: A revival of the architecture of the Colonial and Federal periods at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century.
Colonial Revival style: A revival of the architecture of the Colonial and Federal periods at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century.
commercial style: The Commercial Style is a common term for the aesthetic that characterized much of early skyscraper design with steel and beam construction, large storefront windows, classical detailing, decorative cornices, and flat roofs.
commercial styles: A term used to refer to any party or organization involved in producing, transporting, or merchandising a commodity. Examples: Bank buildings, Factory buildings, Hotels, Mixed use buildings, Office buildings, Restaurants, Retail, Skyscrapers.
Concrete Regionalism: Concrete used in ways supposedly responding to local conditions et aspiring to meaning, monumentality, and symbolic architectural language.
Constructivism: A movement which originated in Moscow after 1917, primarily in sculpture, but with broad application to architecture. The expression of construction was to be the basis for all building design, with emphasis on functional machine parts. Vladimir Tatlin’s project of a monument to the Third International in Moscow (1920) is the most famous example.
Contempo: Also see Contempo Style, Contempo.
Contempo Style: Also see Contempo Style, Contempo.
contemporary: Any modern house that derives its character from the nature of its own materials and structure rather than from traditional or derivative stylistic expressions.
Contemporary style: Style of design prevalent in Britain. In architecture it included the type of light structures of the 1951 Festival of Britain, and many of that Exhibition’s design-motifs were adopted as clichés of the period. It evolved from late-1930s styling and the post-war technologies of laminates and alloys.
Coptic: Of the Copts, an ancient Egyptian race.
Corporate Modernism: International-Modern architecture adopted by large corporations…
Correalism: Term invented by Kiesler. He dismissed Functionalism as the mysticism of hygiene, and argued for an alternative visionary architecture related to spirals, infinity, and eternity…
Court style: Earliest phase of the Rayonnant style of French Gothic, closely associated with the reign of King Louis IX…
Craftman style: A housing style from the early 20th century referring to the Arts and Crafts period. This style featured an exterior made of easily obtained materials and a design easily constructed and was meant to blend in with the environment surrounded by it. Most were built of wood frame with timber and shingle sheathing…
Craftsman: A popular American style in the early 20th century exemplified by wide eaves, exposed rafter and beam ends, large porches, and the use of rustic materials.
Craftsman style: A popular American style in the early 20th century exemplified by wide eaves, exposed rafter and beam ends, large porches, and the use of rustic materials.
Cretan and Mycenaean: The earliest architectural type of the Ancient Greek world destroyed in the 12th century BC. Mainly known from the excavations at Knossos and Phaestos on Crete.
Critical Regionalism: Supposedly a strategy for achieving a more humane architecture as an antidote to widespread employment of international clichés and universally held abstractions by drawing on elements not necessarily from context, but used in unfamiliar ways…
Cubism: Movement in art originating with the work of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, mainly c.1905-14…
Curvilinear style: The later, richer period of the Decorated style of English Gothic architecture, in the second half of the 14th century.
Czech Renaissance style: Late 19th c. style of architecture associated with Czech nationalism, the hallmarks of which were the use of sgraffito and fresco, notably in the works of Wiehl and his contemporaries, influenced by 16th c. work in Prague, etc.
Dantesque: The 19th century revival of the austere Gothic styles prevalent in Italy during the lifetime of Dante Alighieri.
daylight factory style: Factory design developed between 1898 and 1917. Three stages include: preliminary (late 1890s to 1906), classic (1906 to 1913) and decadent (1914 to early 1920s).
De Stijl: A Dutch geometric abstract movement in the arts between 1917 and 1931 which had a lasting effect on the development of modern architecture and industrial design.
decadent: In a state of decline or deterioration in style or excellence. The term is used to characterize the closing period of the history of a style in architecture when marked by a notable falling off in purity, good taste, and refinement of detail; as, for instance, the Roman architecture of the 4th century A.D.
decadenza: In Italian, the decadence. The term is applied specifically to the decline of Classicismo, or formally classical style of the 17th century.
Deconstructivism: An approach to building design which attempts to view architecture in bits and pieces. The basic elements of architecture are dismantled.
Decorated: A term applied to the medieval architecture in England prevailing during the reigns of the first three Edwards. It followed the Early English period.
Decorated style: The second of the three phases of English Gothic architecture, from ca. 1280 to after 1350, preceded by Early English and followed by the Perpendicular; characterized by rich decoration and tracery, multiple ribs and liernes, and often ogee arches. Its early development is called Geometric; its later, Curvilinear.
Desoramentado: Austere style of Spanish-Renaissance architecture in the reign of King Philip II, of which Herrera’s Escorial near Madrid, is a good example.
Deutscher Werkbund: Architecture and applied art organization in Germany set up by Hermann Muthesius (1861-1927).
Directoire: A transitional classicist style preceding the Empire style, named after the Directoire rule in France (1795-1799).
Directoire style: A transitional classicist style preceding the Empire style, named after the Directoire rule in France (1795-1799).
Domestic Revival: Offshoot of the cult of the Picturesque and the Gothic Revival, it was essentially a style of domestic architecture that incorporated forms, details, and materials found in English vernacular buildings, including steeply-pitched tiled roofs, dormers, timber-framing and jettied construction, small-paned mullioned and transomed windows (often with leaded lights), tile-hung walls, tall chimneys (often of the Tudor type in carved and molded brick), and carefully contrived asymmetrical compositions.
Doric Revival: Until c.1570 the Greek Doric Order was virtually unknown, and, even when the Greek temples at Paestum began to be taken seriously by Winckelmann et al. in the 18th c. aroused controversy, as they were perceived to be deformed and ugly by eyes accustomed to Palladian refinements. Only when primitive, Antique themes began to be explored was Greek Doric appreciated, and became a powerful element in Neo-Classicism and the Greek Revival.
Dragon style: Style of decoration influenced by Scandinavian Viking art, a Norwegian revival of which took place in the second half of the 19th c. Certain motifs were incorporated within the Celtic Revival and Art Nouveau.
Dravidian: A style of Indian architecture in the Pallava period, named after the language spoken in southern India.
Dur Sharrukin: See Assyrian architecture.
Dutch Colonial: The houses built by Dutch settlers and others in New Netherlands, particularly along the Hudson River, in northern New Jersey, and in eastern Long Island during the Colonial era. 2. Today a vague house style usually having a gambrel roof, possibly with extended eaves in imitation of an actual Colonial house popular in New Jersey and Long Island after 1750.
Dutch Colonial Revival: Of the many forms of the Colonial Revival style, the Dutch cottage variant is among the most distinctive. Adapted from 18th century farmhouses erected by Dutch settlers, the defining characteristic of the style is a gambrel roof, which was introduced to America by the Dutch in the Mid-Atlantic colonies. The double-pitch of the gambrel roof created more space in the upper story, while allowing for the rapid run-off of rainfall, common to the eastern seaboard. Dutch Colonial Revival houses are typically a tall one-and-one-half story building with a large flank-gambrel roof containing the second floor and attic. The lower roof slopes at both front and rear are broken by large full-width shed dormers on the second story level; the dormers usually dominate the roof, and the gambrel form is sometimes evident only on the end walls.
Dutch style: Adapted from an influenced by French formal gardens, Dutch manifestations were flat, compact, enclosed, with emphases on canals, raised beds, hedges, topiary, lead statuary, flowering bulbs, and shrubs…
Dutch Wave Planting: Style of planting using hardy grasses, developed by Dutch landscape-gardeners from pioneering work by German plant-breeders…
Early Classical Revival: The Early Classical Revival style (1770-1830) can be considered a transitional style between the Federal and Greek Revival styles. In common with Georgian and Federal houses, an Early Classical Revival house usually has its long axis parallel with the street and a symmetrical facade; but the front facade usually features a portico or entrance porch supported by columns of Greek or Roman design, and the rooms are often arranged less symmetrically than in Georgian and Federal houses.
Early English: A period of English ecclesiastical architecture extending from 1200 to 1300 A.D.
Early English Colonial style: Establishing their first settlements in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, and Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, some half a million colonists had emigrated to America from England, Scotland, and Ireland by the end of the 17th century. With them came a thoroughly British pattern of social and cultural values that soon traversed the Atlantic seaboard. Building characteristics varied from colony to colony and town to town. However, a broad distinction can be drawn between the New England village, which comprised individual houses grouped around a town green, and the isolated southern plantation, a self-sufficient enterprise supported by slave labor and complete with a forge, carpentry shop, and perhaps a brickyard. New England settlers were primarily middle-class yeoman families. Most came from a single area of England (East Anglia), and they continued a well-entrenched tradition of heavy timber-framed buildings. Settlers of the Virginia tidewater region and farther south came from more diverse areas and included a significant number of bricklayers and masons. Lime, used for mortar, was also readily available in the South, so masonry construction was more typical. Until about 1700, all early English Colonial houses shared a distinct postmedieval character, most noticeable in steep pitched roofs (a holdover originally designed to support thatch), immense stacked chimneys, and small casement windows. The plan was typically a one-room, all-purpose “fireroom,” or “hall,” used for cooking, eating, and sleeping, or a two-room layout with a central chimney dividing the hall and parlor or kitchen. Additional sleeping chambers were located above.
Early English style: The first of the three phases of English Gothic architecture from the late 12th through the 13th centuries, characterized by the lancet window and plate tracery.
Early French style: The first of the three phases of French Gothic architecture, characterized by the pointed arch and geometric tracery.
Early Renaissance: A style of Italian Renaissance art and architecture developed during the 15th century, characterized by the development of linear perspective, chiaroscuro, and in building, by the free and inventive use of classical details.
Eastern Stick: An architectural style characterized by: asymmetry and angularity, stickwork (i.e. narrow boards nailed to the exterior walls so as to repeat and reinforce the structural skeleton), verandas with diagonal braces, steeply pitched intersecting gable roofs, wood siding (usually board and batten or clapboard), and gable trim.
Eastlake: A style of architectural decoration characterized by extravagantly turned spindle work, porch posts, brackets, and railings. Named for an English furniture designer and architect, Charles Lock Eastlake, the style is really a result of American power tools embellishing his peculiar angled and notched furniture designs. Eastlake was not pleased that his name was attached to such excesses.
Eastlake style: The first of three phases of Gothic architecture, characterized by the pointed arch and geometric tracery.
eclectic: A mixture of materials ; brick, stone, shingles, clapboard; a mixture of colors ; especially different colors in slate; a mixture of styles ; taken from a wide variety of styles
eclecticism: In the later 19th century, the free use and mixing of architectural elements from earlier European styles.
Edwardian: Also see Edwardian Classicism.
Edwardian Classicism: Also see Edwardian Classicism.
Edwardine: Of the time of King Edward VI.
Egyptian: Of or relating to Egypt from approximately 3000 B.C. to its conquest by Alexander the Great, 332 B.C.
Egyptian Revival: A minor 19th-century style with battered walls and massive “papyrus” columns. Rarely seen in housing, it was occasionally used for dark public buildings and cemeteries. There was a brief Neo-Egyptian revival in the 1930s.
Egyptian Revival style: A minor 19th-century style with battered walls and massive “papyrus” columns. Rarely seen in housing, it was occasionally used for dark public buildings and cemeteries. There was a brief Neo-Egyptian revival in the 1930s.
Egyptian style: A style characterized by pyramids, lotus columns, and pylons originated by the ancient Egyptians.
El Tajin style: A style of Mesoamerican architecture of the Totonacts, ca. 200-900 A.D.; characterized by chiaroscuro effects achieved by flying cornices, recessed niches, many planes of geometric ornamentation, and elaborately carved sculptural decorations…
Elizabethan: In the United States, the term often refers to late-19th- and early-20th-century English Revival architecture that used “black-and-white” half-timbering. Based vaguely on late medieval, rambling English cottages, it is often used interchangeably with Tudor.
Elizabethan Revival: During the 1830s Elizabethan architecture provided precedents for those in search of an English national style…
Empire: Design of the period of the first French Empire, largely initiated by the architects Charles Percier and Pierre F.L. Fontaine.
Empire style: Design of the period of the first French Empire, largely initiated by the architects Charles Percier and Pierre F.L. Fontaine.
English Regency style: A style similar to the Directoire and Empire styles. Its decoration involved many styles such as Chinese and Egyptian motifs.
English Renaissance: A period of architecture which Sir Banister Fletcher divides into two parts: Elizabethan (1558-1603) and Jacobean (1603-1625).
English style: Term coined to describe a type of English and North-American late-20th c. interior design in which antique and modern, the odd and the familiar, the permanent and the ephemeral, and above all, fine quality, were synthesized.
Enlightenment: An 18th century European and North American intellectual climate in which belief in reason as a means to ensure human progress was combined with a questioning of tradition and authority, the systematic collection and categorizing of facts, and the study of nature on a scientific basis…
Estilo Modernista: Spanish Art Nouveau.
Etruscan: The architecture of the Etruscan people in western central Italy from the 8th century B.C. until their conquest by the Romans in 281 B.C. Apart from some underground tombs and city walls, it is largely lost, but remains important for the influence of its construction methods on Roman architecture, e.g., the stone arch.
European classical: A detailed, ornamented style of architecture that developed in the Renaissance (1500-1700) and was used for prominent buildings.
exotic: Belonging to, or suggesting, another, distant, unfamiliar country, so introduced from abroad; not indigenous…
Exotic Revivals: Architectural styles borrowing elements from “exotic” cultures. The Egyptian Revival is probably the best known from this group. It is easily identified by massive columns that resemble a bundle of stalks tied together and bulging at the top. Moorish and Turkish architectural traditions also influenced design in America.
Expressionism: North European architectural style prevalent in the first quarter of the twentieth century that did not treat buildings as purely functional, but also as exciting sculptured objects in their own right, e.g. Gaudi in Spain, Klint in Denmark, Poelzig and Mendelsohn in Germany.
Expressionist style: Expressionist architecture was an architectural movement that developed in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century in parallel with the expressionist visual and performing arts that especially developed and dominated in Germany. The term “Expressionist architecture” initially described the activity of the German, Dutch, Austrian, Czech and Danish avant garde from 1910 until 1930. Subsequent redefinitions extended the term backwards to 1905 and also widened it to encompass the rest of Europe. Today the meaning has broadened even further to refer to architecture of any date or location that exhibits some of the qualities of the original movement such as: distortion, fragmentation or the communication of violent or overstressed emotion.
Façadism: Retention of the front or exterior of a building even though the interior is completely gutted: this may be because of the contribution the exterior or the façade makes to street or townscape…
Federal: The first “American” style of architecture, based on English Georgian.
Federal style: The first “American” style of architecture, based on English Georgian.
First Pointed: Earliest (late 12th to late 13th c.) of the Gothic styles, known in England as Early English…
Flamboyant: The term applied to a period of Medieval architecture in France, in which the mullions and tracery terminate in waved lines of contrary flexure in flamelike forms. It extended through the 15th and half of the 16th century.
Flamboyant style: The term applied to a period of Medieval architecture in France, in which the mullions and tracery terminate in waved lines of contrary flexure in flamelike forms. It extended through the 15th and half of the 16th century.
Flemish Mannerism: North-European mutation and mélange of Flamboyant Gothic, High-Renaissance Italian-Mannerist, and French-Renaissance Fontainebleau styles…
Flemish Revival: See Pont-street Dutch.
Floreale: Style of exuberant decorative architecture used partially for the dwellings of the prosperous Italian bourgeoisie, and essentially a branch of Art Nouveau, derived from America, Belgium, Britain, France, and especially Austria…
Florid style: Highly ornamented work of the late-14th c. and early-15th c., notably in France, England, Germany, and Spain.
Flowing style: An old term for the later phases of the English Decorated and the French Flamboyant styles of Gothic architecture. The term was derived from the flowing quality of the tracery.
Folk Victorian: An architectural style characterized by overall simplicity of form. Decorative treatment is usually confined to porch trim, gable trim, and brackets under the eaves.
Fontainebleau: Style of architectural decoration at the French Royal Château created 1528-58 by Italian Francesco Primaticcio, French, and Flemish artists for François Ier…
formalism: Emphasis on highly structured visual relationships rather than subject matter, symbolism, theme, or ornamentation.
Francis I style: The columniation of the early phase of French Renaissance architecture named after Francis I (1515-1547), merging Gothic elements with the full use of Italian decoration. Fontainebleau and the chateaux of the Loire, among them Chambord, are outstanding examples.
Free Classicism: Late 19th century style, not adhering strictly to historical precedents or rules, essentially a mixture of Classical, Mannerist, Renaissance, and Baroque motifs…
French Chateaux : There are many styles of chateaux all originating in France. The most renowned are those in the Loire valley built during the late medieval and Renaissance periods between 1300 and 1600. See also Palazzo.
French Colonial: An architectural style characterized by: narrow door and window openings, paired casement windows with exterior shutters, paired French doors, steeply pitched hipped or belcast gable roof, and half-timber framing with a stucco covering. In rural areas the main floor is often raised and has an extended porch (called a galerie).
French Provincial: The term usually associated with simplified furniture of the Louis XV or Rococo style. However, plain furniture was made in the provinces in all times and styles, usually of walnut, oak, or fruitwood.
French Renaissance Revival: The 19th century revival of 16th c. styles, exemplars of which are the enlargements to the Louvre, Paris.
French Renaissance Revival style: The Renaissance Revival styles of the 1860s and 1870s marked the first period in which fine designs were used for mass-produced furnishings.
French Revival style: The picturesque French Revival incorporated stylistic features from a broad period of French architecture spanning several centuries, but found its essence in the landed country estates of Brittany and Normandy. The most distinctive identifying features are the steeply pitched hipped pavilion roof, conical tower, and French doors. This popular style, lasting well into the 1940s, was used for high-style country estates and smaller suburban houses throughout America.
French Second Empire style: Eclectic mixture of Baroque, Empire, François Ier, Louis Quatorze, Louis Seize, Neo-Classical, and Renaissance styles prevalent in the France of Emperor Napoléon III.
Functionalism: The principle of establishing form and structure on the basis of the most economical satisfaction of physical needs.
Future Systems: See Kaplicky, Jan
Futurism: Italian architectural movement founded by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. It exploited images derived from industrial buildings, skyscrapers, multi-level highways, and factories with curved ends, and it glorified machines, speed, violence, and war…
Garrison: A neo-colonial revival of the Early New England Colonial clapboard house featuring the jetted or overhanging second floor and usually diamond paned windows.
Garrison Colonial: A neo-colonial revival of the Early New England Colonial clapboard house featuring the jetted or overhanging second floor and usually diamond paned windows.
gassho style: Also see gassho-zukuri.
gassho-zukuri: Also see gassho-zukuri.
General Grant: The good general was a passive participant in this mid-Victorian eclectic melange – usually ornate wood houses with mansard roofs.
Geometric style: The early development of the Decorated style of English Gothic architecture, in the first half of the 14th century, characterized by the geometrical forms of its window tracery.
Georgian: The architecture of the British colonies in North America from 1714 to 1776.
Georgian Colonial: The architecture of the British colonies in North America from 1714 to 1776.
Georgian Revival: A rediscovery of Georgian Colonial architecture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as part of the broader Colonial Revival, which Georgian Revival is sometimes called.
Georgian Revival style: Georgian Revival is sometimes referred to as Colonial Revival (1870-1920). The English Georgian style was the most prevalent type of Colonial buildings, but certainly not the only one. Two obvious exceptions are styles that were used by the Dutch and French.
German/Swiss Colonial style: Germanic housing in the colonies was typically well built and designed for efficiency. One of the earliest Germanic building types in Pennsylvania was the tripartite house, which reflected the Old World tradition of combining a house, a threshing area, and a stable under the same roof. For convenience, a springhouse was often incorporated directly into a dwelling, which might also include an attic meat-smoking room, or Rauchkammer, connected to the chimney stack. Particularly practical building types were the bank house and bank barn, built into a ground slope to provide cool lower-level storage rooms. The majority of early Germanic houses in America were simple, well-built log dwellings, although it is mostly the stone buildings that have survived. Stone, considered a status symbol, was favored primarily by the rural gentry. The typical Germanic plan was asymmetrical three-room layout, placing the kitchen (Kich, in Pennsylvania German) on the main level, usually to the right of the chimney. To the left was the stove room (Schtupp), with a sleeping chamber (Kammer) in the rear. By the mid-1700s, many Germanic settlers had adopted the Georgian center-hall plan.
Gingerbread style: A richly decorated American building fashion of the 19th century.
Go: Pejorative term used by some Victorian commentators to describe work of Rogue Goths that was restless, animated, acrobatic, and embarrassing…
Gothic: An architectural style prevalent in western Europe from the 12th through the 15th century and characterized by pointed arches, rib vaulting, and flying buttresses.
Gothic Revival: A housing style from 1840-1860 with deep gables, dormers, arched windows, and all forms of gingerbread…
Gothic Revival style: The romantic revival of largely Gothic detail in the 1840s.
Gothic style: Flying buttresses and walls full of stained glass – exemplified by Sainte Chapelle (1241-48), Paris.
Gothic Survival: Connotes the survival of Gothic forms, particularly in provincial traditional building, after the advent of the Renaissance and into the 17th century, as distinct from Gothic Revival.
Gothick: An English-style neo-Gothic building.
Grand Manner: Style of 17th c. academic history-painting, so applied to large-scale Baroque Continental gardens (e.g. those of Le Nôtre). In Britain formal gardens also tended to incorporate views of surrounding countryside.
Greek Revival: An architectural style characterized by: low-pitched gable (or sometimes hipped) roof, a frieze, a pedimented gable, a porch (or portico) with usually non-fluted columns, insignificant chimneys, elongated six-over-six double hung windows, a four panel door flanked by side lights with a transom window above, and bevel siding.
Greek Revival style: The final years of the 18th century brought an increasing interest in classical buildings to both the United States and Europe. This was first based on Roman models (Federal style), but archaeological investigation in the early 19th century emphasized Greece as the Mother of Rome which, in turn, shifted interest to Grecian models. The style is an adaptation of the classic Greek temple front employing details of Doric, Ionic or Corinthian order.
Hellenic: Pertaining to the classical Greek period, roughly from 480 B.C. to the death of Alexander in 323 B.C.
Hellenistic: Characteristic of the style of Greek art after the death of Alexander in 323 B.C.
Henri Deux: The second phase of the early French Renaissance, named after Henri II (1547-1559) who succeeded Francis I. Italian classic motifs began to supplant the Gothic elements, both in architecture and in decoration. The West Side of the Court of the Louvre (1546-59) is an outstanding example.
Henri IV style: The early phase of the Classical period of French architecture, named after Henry IV (1589-1610), preceding the architecture of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. It is particularly strong in domestic architecture and town-planning arrangements. The Place des Vosges in Paris is the outstanding example.
Henri Quatre: The early phase of the Classical period of French architecture, named after Henry IV (1589-1610), preceding the architecture of Louis XIII and Louis XIV. It is particularly strong in domestic architecture and town-planning arrangements. The Place des Vosges in Paris is the outstanding example.
Herculaneum and Pompeii: Ancient Roman cities buried by volcanic rock with the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Discovered by excavation in 1748, they provided much insight into the life, times, and architecture of the ancient Romans of the 1st century. The architecture, interior decoration and regal colors (“Pompeian red,” in particular) of these ancient cities influenced the Federal Style of the early 19th century.
Hiberno-Romanesque: Style of Irish ecclesiastical buildings (10th to 12th c.) characterized by simple rectangular structures, detached circular towers with conical roofs, semicircular-headed openings, and the usual array of Romanesque ornament, with such structures as Celtic crosses sumptuously carved…
High Gothic: Gothic architecture known in German as Hockgotik. 2. Supposedly ‘classic’ period of Gothic architecture, embracing Northern French Cathedrals erected c.1195-c.1230.
High Renaissance: A term referring primarily to the culmination of the Italian Renaissance style in the 16th century (cinquecento). St. Peter’s in Rome is the most famous example.
High Tech: Style expressive of structures, technologies, and services by exposing and emphasizing them, or appearing to do so…
High Victorian: A period of design in Great Britain and the United States that emerged in the mid-19th century and lasted for several decades, emphasizing picturesqueness, variety, ruggedness and vigorous modification of historic details.
high-tech: A style of design incorporating industrial, commercial, and institutional fixtures, equipment, materials, or other elements having the utilitarian appearance characteristic of industrial design.
Hindoo: Exotic orientalizing architectural style, part of the eclecticism associated with the 18th c. Picturesque…
Hirsau style: Type of German Romanesque architecture derived from the great Abbey of Cluny, France, and developed at Hirsau (from 1082). Hirsau-type churches had ante-churches, two west towers, nave-arcades with columnar piers rather than massive square structures, plain block-capitals, and slender towers over the eastern bays of the aisles.
Hispano-Moresque: The Moorish architecture of the regions of Spain under Islamic domination from the 8th to the 15th century. The Alhambra is the most famous example.
historicism: The reference to historic periods in the past; the use of architectural forms derived from the past. In contrast to eclecticism, which may result in the combination of elements of many historic periods in one building, historicism may be said to confine the references in a single building to a single time period.
Humane Modernism: Associated with New Empiricism, it suggests the style of Swedish architecture prevalent from the 1940s, which supposedly put the welfare of people first, rather than being derived from abstractions, styles, or dogmas… See new humanism.
Hungarian Activism: Movement associated with Constructivism, Cubism, Expressionism, and Bauhaus ideas, influenced also by Futurism and Leftist ideologies…
Incan: Descriptive of the architecture of the pre-Columbian inhabitants of Peru and its neighboring countries.
Indian style: Cultural/commercial links with India from 16th c. led to manifestations of Hindoo and Mughal architecture in the British Isles from 18th c…
indigenous: Originating in the region or country where found; native.
Industrial Aesthetic: Buildings in which the structure (or what appears to be that) is given dominance, emphasizing engineering (e.g. suspended structures, bridge-like buildings, etc.), or when not only the structure but the services are exposed.
industrial style: Inspired by the interior spaces of 19th and early 20th century manufacturing factories, the Industrial style combines a purely functional aesthetic with stylish refinements. During the height of the Industrial Revolution, these factories were a symbol of the lives of everyday working people. Inside these massive structures of commerce there was no need for fussy details or overt ornamentation. Instead, with their exposed brick walls, huge glass windows, massive machinery, well-worn wooden floors and tables and practical lighting, this distinctive style reminds one that factories were primarily about creating a functional environment. Edgy yet sophisticated, Industrial style celebrates the utilitarian aspect of the industrial era while giving it a touch of chic comfort. Industrial style furniture has strong, sleek lines and no-frills surfaces with the warm look of beautifully reclaimed or distressed woods. It has characteristic features like metal legs or hardware that is reminiscent of machinery. Common design elements of industrial decor are new or salvaged factory parts, wood accents with rich, lived-in patinas or even peeling paint, clear or ribbed glass lighting and just about anything metal.
International: A functional architecture devoid of regional characteristics, developed in the 1920s and 1930s in Western Europe and the U.S. and applied throughout the world: characterized by simple geometric forms, large untextured, often white surfaces, large areas of glass, and general use of steel or reinforced concrete construction.
International Modern: A 20th century architectural style which emerged just before the 1914-18 war…
International style: A functional architecture devoid of regional characteristics, developed in the 1920s and 1930s in Western Europe and the U.S. and applied throughout the world: characterized by simple geometric forms, large untextured, often white surfaces, large areas of glass, and general use of steel or reinforced concrete construction.
Ionic: Greek column type with scrolls on top. Pertaining to, or characteristic of, Ionia.
Isabelline style: Named after Queen Isabella of Castile, Spanish style of architecture noted for its extraordinary flair and Flamboyant Gothic elements; often called Hispano-Flemish as being more accurate and to avoid confusion with Spain’s Queen Isabella II.
Isabellino style: Named after Queen Isabella of Castile, Spanish style of architecture noted for its extraordinary flair and Flamboyant Gothic elements; often called Hispano-Flemish as being more accurate and to avoid confusion with Spain’s Queen Isabella II.
Islamic style: The architecture of the peoples of Islamic faith, also called Mohammedan, which from the 7th century onward expanded throughout the Mediterranean world and as far as India and China, producing a variety of great regional works and local decorative styles.
Italian Renaissance: An architectural style characterized by: stone construction, low-pitched hip (or sometimes flat) roof with widely overhanging eaves supported by decorative brackets, ceramic tiled roof, round arches incorporated into doors and first story windows, and the frequent use of porticos or columned recessed entryways.
Italian Renaissance Revival: Arriving in the late 19th century, this style was a much grander interpretation of northern Italian Renaissance villas and palaces than the earlier Italianate and Italian Villa styles, resulting in more luxurious mansions.
Italian Villa: Concurrent with the Italianate Style, the Italian Villa was also drawn from northern Renaissance Italy but had a more rural, asymmetrical character.
Italian Villa style: Concurrent with the Italianate Style, the Italian Villa was also drawn from northern Renaissance Italy but had a more rural, asymmetrical character.
Italianate: An architectural style characterized by: two or three stories, low-pitched hip (or sometimes gable) roof with widely overhanging eaves supported by large brackets, a cupola or tower, visually balanced façade, decorative bracketed crowns or lintels over windows and doors, and narrow single pane double hung windows and double doors.
Italianate style: An architectural style characterized by: two or three stories, low-pitched hip (or sometimes gable) roof with widely overhanging eaves supported by large brackets, a cupola or tower, visually balanced façade, decorative bracketed crowns or lintels over windows and doors, and narrow single pane double hung windows and double doors.
Jacobean: A style named for James I (1603-25), one of the English Revival styles popular with the gentry at the turn of the 20th century. Characterized by stone construction, steep roofs, and shaped parapet gables. The occasional result of combining its features with an Elizabethan motif has been slyly called Jacobethan.
Jacobean Revival: Sometimes, the architecture during King James’s reign (Jacobean), also, Renaissance, is included in Tudor style.
Jacobethan: Revivalist architecture of 19th c. and early 20th c., in which Elizabethan and Jacobean elements were freely mixed. William Burn specialized in the style for his country-houses.
Jacobethean style: Derived from a style of housing popular in 17th century England, using masonry and symmetry with interior courtyards, transom windows, and gabled dormers.
Japonaiserie: Late-19th c. term, counterpart of Chinoiserie, meaning design influenced by the arts of Japan…
Jeffersonian Classicism: A Neoclassical style based on Roman public buildings and strongly advocated by Thomas Jefferson.
Jugendstil: Called “Youth style”; the German version of Art Nouveau.
keltic: Belonging to the people who formerly inhabited, almost exclusively, the whole of Western Europe, and whose monuments are found especially in France and Great Britain…
Khorsabad: See Assyrian architecture.
Kitsch: German term meaning rubbishy pretentious trash; anything that is shoddy, tawdry, mawkishly sentimental, and in bad taste…
Liberty: Italian Art Nouveau, called Stile Liberty. 2. Allegorical female figure frequently depicted by French Revolutionary artists, complete with flaming torch and Phrygian cap.
Lombard: Italianate.
Lombard style: Essentially an amalgam of Early Christian and Romanesque, it flourished in Northern Italy. It was revived in 1th c. as part of the Rundbogenstil, and enjoyed a further American Revival, especially for churches.
Louis Quatorze: The style of the high Classical period in France under the rule of Louis XIV (1643-1715) in architecture, decoration, and furniture, culminating in the building of Versailles.
Louis Quinze: The Classical and Rococo style in France under the rule of Louis XV (1715-1774) in architecture, decoration, and furniture.
Louis Revivals: The 19th and 20th c. revivals of all four Louis styles.
Louis Seize: The later Rococo and classicist phase of the 18th century in France under the rule of Louis XVI (1774-1792), terminated by the French Revolution.
Louis Treize: Style of French-Renaissance architecture coinciding with the reign of King Louis XIII, but continuing until the 1660s, as Le style Louis Quatorze did not really evolve until then. The best-known buildings of the period are the Luxemborg Palace and the west front of St-Gervais, both in Paris.
Louis XIV: The style of the high Classical period in France under the rule of Louis XIV (1643-1715) in architecture, decoration, and furniture, culminating in the building of Versailles.
Louis XIV style: Same as Louis Quatorze.
Louis XV: The Classical and Rococo style in France under the rule of Louis XV (1715-1774) in architecture, decoration, and furniture.
Louis XV style: Same as Louis Quinze.
Louis XVI: The later Rococo and classicist phase of the 18th century in France under the rule of Louis XVI (1774-1792), terminated by the French Revolution.
Louis XVI style: Same as Louis Seize.
Low Tech: Antithesis of High Tech, it involves the recycling of materials and components and the use of traditional construction, insulation, and natural means of heating and ventilation. Low Tech recognizes the environmental damage done by High Tech through excessive use of resources, and has been applied to the circumstances of poverty-stricken areas, where it has been termed ‘alternative’, ‘intermediate’ and even ‘utopian’ technology…
Machine Aesthetic: Architecture suggesting something machine-made, acknowledging industrialization, mass-production, and engineering, or that copied elements of metal structures (ships, airplanes, motor-cars, etc.) in an eclectic fashion, more a matter of arriving at an appearance than of actually being what it seemed, a fact that contradicted demands for ‘honesty’ and ‘truth’ in architecture, and denied the logic of structural principles…
MADI: A modern art movement known for bright colors and bold geometric forms. In architecture, sculpture, and painting, MADI art uses abundant circles, waves, spheres, arches, spirals, and stripes.
Mannerism: Transitional style in architecture and the arts in the late 16th century, particularly in Italy, characterized in architecture by unconventional use of classical elements.
Mannerist style: The 16th and 17th century styles having grotesque human figures. This style was a revolt against rational styles.
Mansard style: See Second Empire style in the U.S.A.
Manueline: Portuguese late-Gothic style of the reign of King Manoel I (1495-1521): highly decorative, it included ropes, corals, twisted piers, and the Cross of the Military Order of Christ, best seen at the Cristo Monastery at Tomar (from 1510). There was a 19th c. revival.
Manueline style: The last phase of Gothic architecture in Portugal, so named after King Manuel I (1495-1521).
mediaeval: The term applied to architecture in England during the Middle Ages.
medieval: Of the Middle Ages, that period extending from the decay of Rome to the Renaissance.
Mediterranean Revival style: Design evoking historic styles of construction from the Mediterranean.
Mesoamerica: The area of Mexico and Central America in which the presence of certain pre-Hispanic culture traits permits the classification of the cultures of the region as one civilization; includes central and southern Mexico, the Yucatan peninsula, Guatemala, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica.
Mid Century Modern style: An architectural, interior, product and graphic design that generally describes mid-20th century developments in modern design, architecture and urban development from roughly 1933 to 1965. In architecture, it is primarily the International style
Middle Ages: The period extending from the fall of Rome, 476 A.D., until about 1500 A.D.
Middle Kingdom: An era of architectural design in Upper/Lower Egypt. See: Egyptian Middle Kingdom Architecture (BC 2055-1650).
Middle Pointed: The Second-Pointed or Decorated style of the late 13th c. It seems to refer more to early Second Pointed of the Geometrical variety rather than to the later Flowing or Curvilinear type, so comes just after the First-Pointed so-called Lancet style.
Miesian: Architecture in the manner of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), a German architect noted for rational, austere designs devoid of any ornament.
Minimalism: Style inspired by severe Modern architecture (such as the purest of Mies van der Rohe’s work or the bare images of Barragán’s designs), traditional Japanese architecture, and Zen-Buddhist gardens. Minimalism seeks to avoid clutter, ornament, and even color, while possessions were stored away. It has sometimes been adopted to suggest exclusiveness and luxury. A feature of the Modern Movement since the 1920s, it re-emerged in the 1960s and 1980s.
Mission: An architectural style characterized by stucco walls, round arches supported by piers, continuous wall surface forming parapets, hip roof with red tile roof covering, decorative stringcourse outlining the arches, and overhanging eaves with exposed rafters. (Towers, curvilinear gables, and gablets found in larger examples of this style).
Mission Revival: Variant of American Colonial Revival which drew on the RC mission buildings in CA popularized from the 1890s after the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, IL (1893). It is characterized by arcades, balconies, courtyards, and towers, with plain rendered walls and pan-tile roofs, and an absence of ornament or frippery…
Mission Revival style: A popular style in the early 20th century that made liberal use of elements seen in earlier Spanish/Mexican buildings; originally regional, the style spread nationwide by 1920.
Mission Style: A style of architecture associated with that of early Spanish colonial missions in Mexico and the southwestern U.S., mainly in the 18th century.
Mixed style: Eclectic architectural style incorporating hybrid elements from different periods, styles, and even cultures in order to attempt the creation of a new ‘style’, sometimes called Synthetic Eclecticism or Syncretism. Although much discussed in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, it was also a phenomenon of other periods notably during the Regency and late 19th c.
Moche: A pre-Incan culture that flourished on the northern coast of Peru from c200 B.C. to A.D. 700, noted for its fine pottery and the colossal Temple of the Sun, a terraced pyramid made entirely of adobe bricks.
Mochica: A pre-Incan culture that flourished on the northern coast of Peru from c200 B.C. to A.D. 700, noted for its fine pottery and the colossal Temple of the Sun, a terraced pyramid made entirely of adobe bricks. Also called Moche.
Modern: A house built with 20th century skills and materials. Usually means contemporary but could be a modern reproduction.
Modern style: The various styles or approaches of Modernism have similar characteristics— primarily the simplification of form and elimination of ornament. This was a significant departure from Western architecture, which was based on principles of Greek and Roman design.
Moderne: A modern style: streamlined stucco and chromium, as if buildings traveled at the speed of automobiles. Inspired by the Paris International Exposition of 1937.
Moderne style: Also see Art Moderne.
Modernism: A deliberate philosophical and practical estrangement from the past in the arts and literature occurring in the course of the 20th century and taking form in any of various innovative movements and styles.
Modernisme: Cultural movement (c. 1880-c. 1920) in Catalonia, Spain, divided into conservative National Romanticism (La Renaixença – which promoted and celebrated Catalonian culture and language) and Progressivism (which tended to embrace many European tendencies, including the Arts-and-Crafts movement, Art Nouveau, and faith in the benefits of scientific investigation, technological advances, and industrialization). Catalan intellectuals saw Progressivism as a release from the stifling centralist structures of Madrid, and so Modernisme was associated with an assertion of regional (even nationalist) identity. Its architectural expression lay in the incorporation of eclectic elements derived from historic styles, notably Moorish and Gothic; exploitation of materials (especially brick and tile) to express structure as well as to embellish every visible part of the fabric; and exuberant use of enrichment, applied or integral to the structure. Its most celebrated protagonists were Domènech i Montaner, Gaudí, and Puig i Cadafalch.
Modernismo: The Spanish, particularly Catalan, version of Art Nouveau.
Modernist: The architectural style current from c.1920 till the late 20th century.
Modernistic: A derogatory term for a copy or imitation contemporary. Particularly pertinent to Moderne buildings of the 1920s and 1930s.
Moghul: See Indian style; Mughal architecture; Mughal garden.
Mogul: See Indian style; Mughal architecture; Mughal garden.
Monterey: A style (c. 1830) originating before the Anglo-American cultural assault on California. Characterized by a pitched roof, adobe construction, and second-level balconies.
Moorish: The Islamic architecture of North Africa and of the regions of Spain under Islamic domination. Also see Hispano-Moresque architecture.
Moorish Revival style: Style that was adopted by architects of Europe and the Americas in the wake of the Romanticist fascination with all things oriental. In Spain, Moorish Revival was called Neo-Mudéjar and influenced Antoni Gaudí’s early work.
Moresque: Also see Moorish.
Mozarabic: Northern Spanish architecture built after the 9th century by Christian refugees from Moorish dominatio