- blank" >target="_blank" >glossary/aeg-turbine-factory/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="72cbaf3dc5ba684090582fa2bfff5f46" target="_blank" >AEG Turbine Factory: Iconic example of early modernist architecture designed by Peter Behrens (1868-1940), who was also noted for his pupils Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.
- garden/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="cbd649a74f788dc4326cb323e52cc043" target="_blank" >Alpine garden: An Alpine house is a garden-building with ventilation but no heating, suitable for the cultivation of Alpine species: it may also refer to a cottage/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="0eb6c27a70633dac15e12e7f24341b32" target="_blank" >Swiss cottage or chalet.
- fur-kunst/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="ee34235245f20f35aad6ffddf42ae50d" target="_blank" >Arbeitstrat fur Kunst: Group of German architects founded by Bruno Taut, including Otto Bartning, Walter Gropius, Erich Mendelsohn, and Max Taut. Gropius took over leadership in 1919 and when he moved to the Weimar Bauhaus, the program there reflected the groups ideals; a fusion of the arts under the wing of architecture.
- Atelier 5: Group of Swiss architects established at Berne in 1955…
- atlantis: Well-developed, sculptured, male figure, often occurring in baroque-architecture/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="58155b7a3f46c4329e0b753bce1389e5" target="_blank" >Baroque architecture, especially in Central Europe, supporting an entablature or other architectural-element/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="bd205171e0af256e57388d3fe3c49704" target="_blank" >architectural element…
- 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.
- bargecouple: One of the pair of rafters which carry that part of a pitched-roof/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="b4c1e196951abb0545db9948950c7b38" target="_blank" >gable roof which projects beyond the wall/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="7d142dabcdfaaff5b39ed7aa1a22fa01" target="_blank" >gable wall. These rafters must be carried by projecting horizontal timbers, and these timbers may be the roof plates, the ridgepole, and the purlines, or they may be separate pieces projecting horizontally and supported from beneath by brackets. The two rafters of the couple-close may be chamfered, carved, or the like, as is often done in German wooden buildings, or they may be concealed by the bargeboards.
- revival-style/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="c8754e5b5b729aa20851798b4ad84610" target="_blank" >Baroque Revival Style: A European style of architecture and decoration which developed in the 17th cent. in Italy from late renaissance/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="d482de5641229392316d25503bfe2d0a" target="_blank" >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.
- cellar/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="7cc8d918a1b3d41e50b465a5529bb474" target="_blank" >beer cellar: A cellar for the storage of beer. 2. A drinking place usually partly underground and intended primarily for the sale and the drinking of beer. The idea is made attractive by association with the numerous Rathskellers of Germany.
- Biedermeir: Central European style of architecture, decorative arts, painting, and interior-design/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="8fc8003e1f989831fc7a204f632eff2b" target="_blank" >interior design, especially in Berlin, Vienna, and Munich…
- bier stube: In German inns and eating houses, the room where beer and other drinks, and some few simple eatables, are served; called sometimes kneipe.
- branch-tracery/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="7f0bf57df73e39d5044fd84f5d7d2370" target="_blank" >branch tracery: A form of Gothic tracery in Germany in late 15th and early 16th century; made to imitate rustic-work-2/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="22a08add7f1b994853c90ab464f39fef" target="_blank" >rustic-work/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="4b7c5e17a51b07ff01b2755643a022eb" target="_blank" >rustic work with boughs and knots.
- gate/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="648d01d3420f3347c1536d9eb213a88d" target="_blank" >Brandenburg Gate: Iconic neoclassical building in Berlin designed and built by Carl Gotthard Langhans (1732-1808) during the period 1789-94. His pioneering neoclassicism was further popularized by Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841).
- order/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="c1f3f791cb7dde7f960e37391862a839" target="_blank" >Brittanic Order: See German Order.
- brunnenhaus: In Germany, a building erected over a natural spring; especially one resorted to as curative. Such a building, considered as a place of resort, is often treated in a decorative fashion.
- Bürolandschaft: Type of office-planning (literally ‘office-landscape’) evolved in Germany by Eberhard and Wolfgang Schnelle, based on open-plan offices developed in the USA in the 1940s. Freed from partitions, large spaces could be designed that were decently lit and serviced: informal layouts suggested a landscape, enhanced by fashionable placing of plants in pots.
- châlet: The house of the Swiss mountaineer.
- holly-cross/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="a49fb64baf3e19414814fc3ea1021a68" target="_blank" >crosslet: Also called the holy cross and the German cross.
- 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.
- Der Block: Group of German traditionalist architects formed (1928) to resist the Modernist Ring group…
- Der Sturm: Literally ‘The Assault’ or ‘The Storm’, title of a Berlin art-gallery (1912-14) and journal (1910-32) devoted to the avant-garde in Germany, founded by Herwarth Walden (1878-1941). Through Der Sturm Futurism and Expressionism were promoted.
- Deutscher Werkbund: Architecture and applied-art/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="29557fb9d7ead2ec7b19a3688598285b" target="_blank" >applied art organization in Germany set up by Hermann Muthesius (1861-1927).
- diaconia: A chamber or building dependent upon a church and placed under the care of a deacon, for the relief of the poor, aged, or inform; either as a hospital, asylum, or place for dispensing charity. The term is mediaeval, thought it is said to be still used in Germany.
- dom: In German, a cathedral-church/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="166f24687b2d1fd05a6298ccdc0e616d" target="_blank" >cathedral church. 2. In German, same as dome.
- fachwerk building: A distinctive addition to the 19th-century frontier landscape of Wisconsin and Texas, where Germanic settlers homesteaded, was the small farmhouse built of Fachwerk, or half-timbering. Fachwerk consisted of a braced timber-frame/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="f39099c7661d701f365add0285aad67f" target="_blank" >timber frame, usually of white-oak/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="513fd31b3712397c2551cb50cf051d5a" target="_blank" >white oak or cedar, set on a squared timber sill over a field-stone/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="b0eeb0394bfe57d4ec21f5ee28dc56de" target="_blank" >fieldstone foundation. The open framework was filled with an insulation of mud and straw, sandstone, or nogging (kiln-fired brick). A coat of bricks/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="12e36d7ce1e7d235107e0eebecf49a0f" target="_blank" >adobe or lime-plaster-2/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="79f4578701d2ecc0d8ba42fd3e03366f" target="_blank" >lime plaster was often applied over the walls, but the Fachwerk might also be left exposed.
- piece/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="ce876b4f6da9fa82d5de873b586ebaf5" target="_blank" >fish-bladder-2/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="6cf525b6e31fe4e5dc1377b1d7a3bac4" target="_blank" >fish-bladder: Form found in Second-Pointed Curvilinear tracery looking like a tadpole, with a round or pointed head and a curving pointed tail, also called mouchette: apparently from the German Fischblase, referring to comma shapes in Sondergotik tracery.
- German Order: Type of 18th c. Corinthian Order, also called the Britannic Order, the volutes replaced by winged lions and unicorns and the fleuron superseded by the Crown. Its incorporation of Royal emblems led to its association with the House of Hanover, hence its name.
- siding/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="9395e749affc796e4c42ca29e31fda91" target="_blank" >German siding: A type of cladding characterized by overlapping boards with either tongued and grooved or rabbeted top and bottom edges. Oftentimes, the upper part of each board has a concave curve, in which case the siding is sometimes referred to as German siding.
- tile/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="fe2f8805f554ed3f252ec26d57e883f7" target="_blank" >German tile: Tile with concave upper edge fitting into a corresponding groove in the lower edge of the tile above. German siding is timber boarding with similar upper and lower edges to those described previously.
- post-and-girt/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="9232c1d223a302573a56dce608aa4732" target="_blank" >Germanic post and girt: A style of construction in which east post was placed 4′ apart, was comparatively small (e.g., 4″ X 4″) and had a comparable girt connecting paired posts.
- Gläserne Kette: German group founded by Bruno Taut, including Gropius and Scharoun, favoring forms derived from crystals, shells, and plants, using glass, steel, and concrete. Several members later jointed the Ring.
- glyptothek: A building for the exhibition of sculpture; the term being introduced as the name of the building erected by the care of Ludwig I of Bavaria, 1825-1848, while still crown prince. The immediate purpose was to provide a home for the sculptures brought from the Temple of Aegina.
- hallenbau: A building resembling a hall in its construction or plan; especially in German church architecture, a church whose aisles are carried to a height equal or nearly equal to that of nave/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="7838d052bf5a78f941175b04ec46b67c" target="_blank" >the nave, so that there will be no clearstory, and so that the whole interior shall appear as a large hall divided by two (or more) ranges of columns carrying arches.
- hansel-and-gretel house: A house associated with fairy tales of Germanic origin. The story of Hansel and Gretel is a fairy tale in which two children lost in a forest come upon a vergeboard/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="4845643e51586754dfb4046be2b40199" target="_blank" >gingerbread house trimmed with candy, but which is presided over by a child-eating witch.
- 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.
- hof: In German, originally a court in the sense of an open yard, and hence, exactly as in English, a court in the sense of an establishment kept up by a sovereign or great noble…
- holly cross: Also called the holy cross and the German cross.
- Jugendstil: Called “Youth style”; the German version of nouveau/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="a5930c202bd5ea249e90f9a7f8509733" target="_blank" >Art Nouveau.
- Kitsch: German term meaning rubbishy pretentious trash; anything that is shoddy, tawdry, mawkishly sentimental, and in bad taste…
- kneipe: In German, popular usage, a tavern; but in student slang, much influencing common usage, a drinking room, the term being connected more or less closely with ideas of comparative freedom of restraint and perhaps excess. The word kneiperei means the resorting to such a room for drinking and festivity.
- lamella-roof/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="a93311e868ab83f738f6de19c03650a0" target="_blank" >Lamella roof: A combination of arch and short-timber network, patented in 1925 by a German engineer; used for framing/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="388f63d5ef4c2182f3f0b95ff94ea3fa" target="_blank" >roof framing of large enclosures.
- Langchor: Choir style used in the churches of German mendicant orders, separated from the nave by a screen.
- laufgang: In German, a gallery; an ambulatory; a deambulatory.
- meissen: An 18th century German porcelain also known as Dresden.
- 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.
- motorway: Class of highway with two or more lanes in each direction, designed and regulated for fast motor-traffic only. The German super-highway concept dates from 1911…
- 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…
- Neue Sachlichkeit: Term coined (1923) to describe so-called ‘Noew Objectivity’ in art/architecture, especially in the German Weimar Republic. Reacting to Expressionism, it was associated with the development of rationalism/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="89d8675c58ec1a0af29ddf1eaa73f471" target="_blank" >Rationalism and the International-Modernist style.
- Neues Bauen: Avant-garde architecture in German-speaking countries (1920s and 1930s), originally associated with Arbeitstrat für Kunst…
- Novembergruppe: Association of Left-wing German artists and architects founded immediately after their nation’s defeat in the 1914-18 war…
- system/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="13e6701b6552cfe68cdc4884fc7efd56" target="_blank" >Ostwald system: A widely used system for the designation and nomenclature of surface colors, developed by Wilhelm Ostwald of Germany and published in the Jacobson Color Harmony Manual obtainable from the Container Corporation of America, Chicago, Illinois.
- Ottonian: The pre-Romanesque round-arched architecture of Germany during the rule of the Ottonian emperors in the second half of the 10th century.
- 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.
- Ottonian style: Evolved in the reign (962-973) of Kaiser Otto I (‘the Great’), and continuing to the late 11th c…
- pigtail and periwig style: In German, zopf and perucke style, the fantastic late neoclassic of Germany, a term of ridicule corresponding to barock. The style is more commonly designated Zopf Style simply, and this abbreviated form is rather common even in serious writing.
- press-bed/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="2d3cb3e5de67d3c4d90fe1624331c6ff" target="_blank" >press bed: A bed permanently built in a recess and more or less enclosed by woodwork, as frequently in the houses of peasants in Holland Germany; so called from the outward resemblance of the structure to a press or cupboard.
- rathaus: The building housing the administrative offices of a municipality.
- rathskeller: A room, originally a cellar, in which beer and other refreshments are served.
- Reisner work: Surfacing of inlaid colored woods, a 17th century German practice.
- residenz: In German, a residence, especially that of a sovereign; applying equally to a royal or other palace and to city/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="1bb14b1aa6022028057269551c15df6d" target="_blank" >the city in which it is situated…
- Rundbogenstil: German eclectic mid-19th century style, combining Romanesque and Renaissance elements and characterized by arcaded round arches.
- Sezession: The Austrian variant of Art Nouveau, so named because its adherent seceded from the official Academy of Art in Vienna.
- sixteen-principles-of-urbanism/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="67f7783aa02f306445ce0af2fe991d46" target="_blank" >Sixteen Principles of Urbanism: Agreed with Moscow (1948), the Principles were drawn up in Communist East Germany as a radical alternative to the Le Corbusier-CIAM-Athens Charter dogmas so widely accepted in the West after 1945. Among the Principles were the rejection of urban motorways cutting swaths through the urban fabric, the abandonment of zoning that played havoc in Western cities, and the reestablishment of the urban block and traditional street as essentials, all of which were reassessed at the end of the 20th c. as part of New Urbanism.
- Sondergotik: German late-Gothic from c. 1380, characterized by hall-churches of immense height, complicated vaults, fine portrait-sculpture, and highly complex filigree tracery.
- stump tracery: Tracery, late German Gothic whose interpenetrating bars are cut off like stumps.
- 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…
- cap/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="f8c0592b016ee0a4d00a39d61b56651f" target="_blank" >Swiss cap: A decorative furnace cap that spins as smoke is exhaled.
- Swiss Chalet: A minor style vaguely recalling a Swiss chalet, promoted in pattern books in the mid-19th century. Generally with a gable in front, it was identified by gable-end balconies with decorative railings and extended roof overhangs.
- Swiss garden: Garden with real or allusive Swiss elements (buildings, landscape, planting)… 2. Swiss public parks, gardens, and botanic gardens attached to the universities of Geneva (1818), Zurich (!834), and Bern (1860) were renowned for their ‘neatness’ in the 19th c., while the country’s close turf carpet and the grandeur of its mountains rendered all Switzerland a garden in the eyes of travellers…
- Swiss treatment: Design evoking historic styles of Switzerland.
- Tendenza: A 1960s Neo-Rationalist architectural movement that rose to eminence (1970s), led by Mario Botta, Giorgio Grassi, Bruno Reichlin, Fabio Reinhart, and Aldo Rossi, associated with the Swiss canton of Ticino. It recognized the social and cultural significance of established urban fabric, the importance of historical forms and elements as resources, and the need for architecture to be redefined in terms of rules and types. Opposed to the inflated pretensions of Functionalism, the vulgar popularism of High Tech, and increasing commercialization by those seen as having betrayed architecture, a cornice-return/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="40c3e3ec99f2c9a75cb5cf827d930c19" target="_blank" >return to academic theories propounded by Quatremère de Quincy and others was proposed…
- Ticnese School: Group of architects working in the Ticino region of Switzerland from the 1960s, concerned with a reconsideration of architectural style, a greater historical awareness, and the promotion of Rational architecture…
- timber house: A type of house, usually lofty, found in secular Gothic architecture, especially in Central Europe; characterized by a lower story of masonry which supports the timber construction above, usually with richly carved gables.
- 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.
- Vienna Secession House: The iconic building known as Haus der Wiener Sezession (1897-98), designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich (1867-1908), to exhibit modern art in Vienna at the turn of the century.
- Volksgarten: German public park, e.g. that in Vienna.
- Wallfahrtskirche: Pilgrimage-church in German-speaking lands.
- Wandpfeiler: Literally a wall-pier or -column, the term is given to internal buttresses forming the walls of side-chapels or pierced with arches to form aisles in South-German Baroque churches, especially those of the Voralberg School (e.g. Thumb’s Obermarchtal).
- Weserrenaissance: Renaissance and Mannerist architecture dating from c.1550 in the valley of the River Weser, Germany.
- westwork: In German Romanesque, a monumental entrance to a church consisting of porches and towers, with a chapel above.
- west-work: Westwerk in German, i.e. massive, wide, tower-like west front of an early Romanesque or Carolingian church containing an entrance-vestibule with a chapel and other rooms over it opening to the upper part of the nave…
- Wiener Werkstätte: Literally ‘Vienna Workshop’, founded 1903 to emulate English Arts-and-Crafts workshops, such as the Guild of Handicrafts of C.R. Ashbee. It grew partly from the Sezession exhibition (1900) that included designs by Mackintosh and Ashbee. By 1905 the Werkstätte was employing over 100 people, most of the artefacts being designed by Joseph Hoffmann and Koloman Moser…
- zeilenbau: Row housing.
- Zopf und Perücke: German term (literally Pigtail and Periwig) for a style of late-18th c. rococo-architecture/" class="glossaryLink" data-cmtooltip="93c4256e4849b462225ec980003d30bc" target="_blank" >Rococo architecture, also called Zopfstil.
- zwinger: The protective fortress of a city. 2. By extension, the modern name of several German palaces, or parts of palaces.
Also see Architecture Origin index.
Also see Architecture index.