Architectural StylesArchitecture is a fluid art.

Architectural styles do not start and stop at precise times, but are often associated with

general time periods spanning decades highlighting their rise to prominence and

popular appeal and their fall from popularity.

After a style has gone out of fashion, there are often revivals and re-interpretations.

Styles, Movements & Idealogies

Style

Movement

Idea

Culture

Art & Architecture

Ideology / Philosophy

Architecture in Prehistoric Times

Before recorded history, humans constructed stone circles, megaliths, and other structures.

Ancient Egypt

3,050 BC to 900 BC

In ancient Egypt, powerful rulers constructed monumental pyramids, temples, and shrines.

Classical - Greek / Roman

850 BC to 476 AD

From the rise of ancient Greece until the fall of the Roman empire, great buildings were constructed according to precise rules.

Early Christian and Medieval

373 to 500 AD

European architecture moved from the rectangular basilica forms to the classically inspired Byzantine style.

Romanesque

500 to 1200 AD

As Rome spread across Europe, heavier, stocky Romanesque architecture with rounded arches emerged.

Gothic Architecture

1100 to 1450 AD

Innovative builders created the great cathedrals of Europe.

Renaissance Architecture

1400 to 1600 AD

A return to classical ideas ushered an "age of "awakening" in Italy, France, and England.

Baroque Architecture

1600 to 1830 AD

In Italy, the Baroque style is reflected in opulent and dramatic churches with irregular shapes and extravagant ornamentation. In France, the highly ornamented Baroque style combines with Classical restraint. Russian aristorcrats were impressed by Versailles in France, and incorporated Baroque ideas in the building of St. Petersburg. Elements of the elaborate Baroque style are found throughout Europe.

Rococo Architecture

1650 to 1790 AD

During the last phase of the Baroque period, builders constructed graceful white buildings with sweeping curves.

American Colonial Architecture

1600 to 1780 AD

European settlers in the New World borrowed ideas from their homelands to create their own breed of architecture.

Georgian Architecture

1720 to 1800 AD

Georgian was a stately, symmetrical style that dominated in Great Britain and Ireland and influenced building styles in the American colonies.

Neoclassical / Federalist / Idealist

1730 to 1925 AD

A renewed interest in ideas of Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio inspired a return of classical shapes in Europe, Great Britain and the United States.

Greek Revival Architecture

1790 to 1850 AD

These classical buildings and homes often feature columns, pediments and other details inspired by Greek forms. Antebellum homes in the American south were often built in the Greek Revival style.

Victorian Architecture

1840 to 1900 AD

Industrialization brought many innovations in architecture. Victorian styles include Gothic Revival, Italianate, Stick, Eastlake, Queen Anne, Romanesque and Second Empire.

Victorian Architecture

1840 to 1900 AD

Industrialization brought many innovations in architecture. Victorian styles include Gothic Revival, Italianate, Stick, Eastlake, Queen Anne, Romanesque and Second Empire.

Pre-Modernism

Arts and Crafts Movement in Architecture

1860 to 1900 AD

Arts and Crafts was a late 19th-century backlash against the forces of industrialization. The Arts and Crafts movement revived an interest in handicrafts and sought a spiritual connection with the surrounding environment, both natural and manmade. The Craftsman Bungalow evolved from the Arts and Crafts movement.

Arts and Crafts Movement in Architecture

1860 to 1900 AD

Arts and Crafts was a late 19th-century backlash against the forces of industrialization. The Arts and Crafts movement revived an interest in handicrafts and sought a spiritual connection with the surrounding environment, both natural and manmade. The Craftsman Bungalow evolved from the Arts and Crafts movement.

Art Nouveau Architecture

1890 to 1914 AD

Known as the New Style, Art Nouveau was first expressed in fabrics and graphic design. The style spread to architecture and furniture in the 1890s. Art Nouveau buildings often have asymmetrical shapes, arches and decorative surfaces with curved, plant-like designs.

Charles Rennie MackintoshAlong with the Industrial Revolution, Asian style and emerging modernist ideas also influenced Mackintosh's designs.

Japanese design became more accessible and gained great popularity. In fact, it became so popular and so incessantly appropriated and reproduced by Western artists, that the Western World's fascination and preoccupation with Japanese art gave rise to the new term, Japonism or Japonisme.

This style was admired by Mackintosh because of: its restraint and economy of means rather than ostentatious accumulation; its simple forms and natural materials rather than elaboration and artifice; the use of texture and light and shadow rather than pattern and ornament. In the old western style, furniture was seen as ornament that displayed the wealth of its owner and the value of the piece was established according to the length of time spent creating it. In the Japanese arts furniture and design focused on the quality of the space, which was meant to evoke a calming and organic feeling to the interior.

At the same time a new philosophy concerned with creating functional and practical design was emerging throughout Europe: the so-called "modernist ideas". The main concept of the Modernist movement was to develop innovative ideas and new technology: design concerned with the present and the future, rather than with history and tradition. Heavy ornamentation and inherited styles were discarded. Even though Mackintosh became known as the ‘pioneer’ of the movement, his designs were far removed from the bleak utilitarianism of Modernism. His concern was to build around the needs of people: people seen, not as masses, but as individuals who needed not a machine for living in but a work of art. Mackintosh took his inspiration from his Scottish upbringing and blended them with the flourish of Art Nouveau and the simplicity of Japanese forms.

While working in architecture, Charles Rennie Mackintosh developed his own style: a contrast between strong right angles and floral-inspired decorative motifs with subtle curves, e.g. the Mackintosh Rose motif, along with some references to traditional Scottish architecture.

Industrial Architecture Industrial architecture is the design and construction of buildings serving industry. Such buildings rose in importance with the industrial revolution, and were some of the pioneering structure of modern architecture.

The AEG turbine factory was built around 1909, in the Berlin district of Moabit, the best known work of architect Peter Behrens.

It is an influential and well-known example of industrial architecture. Its revolutionary design features 100m long and 15m tall glass and Steel walls on either sides. A bold move and world first that would have a durable impact on Architecture as a whole.

Art Deco Architecture

1925 to 1937 AD Zigzag patterns and vertical lines create dramatic effect on jazz-age, Art Deco buildings.-combines traditional craft motifs with Machine Age imagery and materials. -rich colors, bold geometric shapes, and lavish ornamentation.- embrace of technology. represented luxury, glamour, exuberance, and faith in social and technological progress.

20th Century Trends in Architecture

1900 to Present.

Modern Art & Bauhaus MovementModernismFormalismStructuralismPostmodernismDeconstructivism

Modernism

Modernism - 2 Powerful Ideas

- Form follows function- Ornament is crime

Form follows Function

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.

~ Louis Sullivan The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered

Ornament is Crime

Every period had its style: why was it that our period was the only one to be denied a style? By “style” was meant ornament. I said, “weep not. Behold! What makes our period so important is that it is incapable of producing new ornament. We have out-grown ornament, we have struggled through to a state without ornament. Behold, the time is at hand, fulfilment awaits us. Soon the streets of the cities will glow like white walls!

~ Adolf Loos

Art Nouveau & Deco

Art Deco

Adolf Loos

Bauhaus

Bauhaus

- founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany - The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design.- The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.- white, colors, geometrical compositions & glass

Bauhaus: Graphic Design Typography

Marcel Breuer1928

Wassily Chair - by Marcel Breuer

Pioneering Masters of Modern Architecture

- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe- Le Corbusier - Alvar Aalto- Frank Lloyd Wright

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

- last director of Berlin's Bauhaus- called his work: "skin and bones" architecture IDEAS

- Less is More- God is in the Details

Le Corbusier

- worked near Berlin for the renowned architect Peter Behrens, - where he may have met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius.- Le Corbusier felt that “all men have the same needs,” and that a house should be “a machine for living.”

Le Corbusier - 5 points of architecturePilotis – The replacement of supporting walls by a grid of reinforced concrete columns that bears the load of the structure is the basis of the new aesthetic.

Roof gardens – The flat roof can be utilized for a domestic purpose while also providing essential protection to the concrete roof.

The free designing of the ground plan – The absence of supporting walls means that the house is unrestrained in its internal usage.

The free design of façade – By separating the exterior of the building from its structural function the façade becomes free.

The horizontal window – The façade can be cut along its entire length to allow rooms to be lit equally

Le Corbusier - Modulor SystemHe sectioned his model human body's height at the navel with the two sections in golden ratio, then subdivided those sections in golden ratio at the knees and throat; he used these golden ratio proportions in the Modulor system.

BrutalismBrutalist architecture is a style of architecture that flourished from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, spawned from the modernist architectural movement. Examples are typically very linear, fortresslike and blockish, often with a predominance of concrete construction. Initially the style came about for government buildings, low-rent housing and shopping centres to create functional structures at a low cost, but eventually designers adopted the look for other uses such as college buildings.

The English architects Alison and Peter Smithson coined the term in 1953, from the French béton brut, or "raw concrete", a phrase used by Le Corbusier to describe the poured board-marked concrete with which he constructed many of his post-World War II buildings.

Brutalism as an architectural philosophy, rather than a style, was often also associated with a socialist utopian ideology, which tended to be supported by its designers, especially Alison and Peter Smithson, near the height of the style.

The best known early Brutalist architecture is the work of the French architect Le Corbusier, in particular his Unité d'Habitation (1952) and the 1953 Secretariat Building in Chandigarh, India.

Aalvar Aalto

Aalto's career spans the changes in style from (Nordic Classicism) to purist International Style Modernism to a more personal, synthetic and idiosyncratic Modernism. Aalto's wide field of design activity ranges from the large scale of city planning and architecture to interior design, furniture and glassware design and painting.

Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture.

So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal and the teaching so much needed if we are to see the whole of life, and to now serve the whole of life, holding no traditions essential to the great TRADITION. Nor cherishing any preconceived form fixing upon us either past, present or future, but instead exalting the simple laws of common sense or of super-sense if you prefer determining form by way of the nature of materials...

- Frank Lloyd Wright, written in 1954

Frank Lloyd Wright

Early Work

Textile Block SystemF.L.Wright used an innovative building process in 1923 and 1924, which he called the textile block system[47] where buildings such as the Alice Millard House (Pasadena), the John Storer House (West Hollywood), the Samuel Freeman House (Hollywood) and the Ennis House in the Griffith Park area of Los Angeles were constructed with precast concrete blocks with a patterned, squarish exterior surface.

Organic Architecture

Organic architecture is a philosophy of architecture which promotes harmony between human habitation and the natural world through design approaches so sympathetic and well integrated with its site, that buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelated composition.

Post Modernism

Postmodern ArchitecturePostmodern architecture has also been described as neo-eclectic, where reference and ornament have returned to the facade, replacing the aggressively unornamented modern styles.

Postmodern architects may regard many modern buildings as soulless and bland, overly simplistic and abstract. This contrast was exemplified in the juxtaposition of the "whites" against the "grays," in which the "whites" were seeking to continue (or revive) the modernist tradition of purism and clarity, while the "grays" were embracing a more multifaceted cultural vision, seen in Robert Venturi's statement rejecting the "black or white" world view of modernism in favor of "black and white and sometimes gray."

Postmodernism is a rejection of strict rules set by the early modernists and seeks meaning and expression in the use of building techniques, forms, and stylistic references.

Robert Charles Venturi

Less is Bore

In 1972, Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour published the folio, A Significance for A&P Parking Lots, or Learning from Las Vegas later revised in 1977 as Learning from Las Vegas: the Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form using the student work as a foil for new theory. This second manifesto was an even more stinging rebuke to orthodox modernism and elite architectural tastes.

The book coined the terms "Duck" and "Decorated Shed"--descriptions of the two predominant ways of embodying iconography in buildings. The work of Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown adopted the latter strategy, producing formally simple "decorated sheds" with rich, complex and often shocking ornamental flourishes.

Postmodern Buildings

traditional gable roof, in place of the iconic flat roof of modernism

diverse aesthetics which gives emphasis on unique forms.

- Return of "wit, ornament and reference- breaking away from convention - Neo-eclectic - where reference and ornament meet

Deconstructivism

Deconstructivism is a development of postmodern architecture that began in the late 1980s. It is influenced by the theory of "Deconstruction", which is a form of semiotic analysis. It is characterized by fragmentation, an interest in manipulating a structure's surface or skin, non-rectilinear shapes which appear to distort and dislocate elements of architecture, such as structure and envelope. The finished visual appearance of buildings that exhibit deconstructivist "styles" is characterized by unpredictability and controlled chaos.