Early architecture

Little remains of the earliest forms of architecture, but archaeologists have examined remains of prehistoric sites and documented villages of wooden-post buildings with above-ground construction of organic materials (mud or wattle and daub) from the Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. More extensive remains of stone-built structures have given clues to later Neolithic farming communities as well as to the habitations, storehouses, and religious and civic structures of early civilizations. The best documented are those of ancient Egypt, where exhaustive work in the 19th and 20th centuries revealed much about both ordinary buildings and monumental structures, such as the pyramid tombs near modern Cairo and the temple and tomb complexes concentrated at Luxor and Thebes.

Classical

The basic forms of classical architecture evolved in Greece between the 16th and 2nd centuries BC. A hallmark was the post-and-lintel construction of temples and public structures, classified into the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders and defined by simple, scrolled, or acanthus-leaf capitals for support columns. The Romans copied and expanded on Greek classical forms, notably introducing bricks and concrete and developing the vault, arch, and dome for public buildings and aqueducts.

Byzantine

This form of architecture developed primarily in the Eastern Roman Empire from the 4th century, with its centre at Byzantium (later named Constantinople, now Istanbul). It is dominated by the arch and dome, with the classical orders reduced in importance. Its most notable features are churches, some very large, based on the Greek cross plan (Hagia Sophia, Istanbul; St Mark's, Venice), with formalized painted and mosaic decoration.

Islamic

This developed from the 8th century, when the Islamic religion spread from its centre in the Middle East west to Spain and east to China and parts of the Philippine Islands. Notable features are the development of the tower with dome and the pointed arch. Islamic architecture, chiefly through Spanish examples such as the Great Mosque at Córdoba and the Alhambra in Granada, profoundly influenced Christian church architecture, for example, the adoption of the pointed arch in Gothic architecture.

Romanesque

This style flourished in Western European Christianity from the 10th to the 12th centuries. It is marked by churches with massive walls for structural integrity, rounded arches, small windows, and resulting dark volumes of interior space. In England the style is generally referred to as Norman architecture (an example is Durham Cathedral). Romanesque enjoyed a renewal of interest in Europe and the USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Gothic

This form emerged out of Romanesque. The development of the pointed arch and flying buttress made it possible to change from thick supporting walls to lighter curtain walls with extensive expansion of window areas (and stained-glass artwork) and resulting increases in interior light. Gothic architecture was developed mainly in France from the 12th to 16th centuries. The style is divided into Early Gothic (for example, Sens Cathedral), High Gothic (Chartres Cathedral), and Late or Flamboyant Gothic. In England the corresponding divisions are Early English (Salisbury Cathedral), Decorated (Wells Cathedral), and Perpendicular (Kings College Chapel, Cambridge). Gothic was also developed extensively in Germany and Italy.

Renaissance

The 15th and 16th centuries in Europe saw the rebirth of classical form and motifs in the Italian neoclassical movement. A major source of inspiration for the great Renaissance architects - Andrea Palladio, Leon Battista Alberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, Donato Bramante, and Michelangelo Buonarotti - was the work of the 1st-century BC Roman engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio. The Palladian style was later used extensively in England by Inigo Jones; Christopher Wren also worked in the classical idiom. Classicism, or neoclassicism as it is also known, has been popular in the USA from the 18th century, as evidenced in much of the civic and commercial architecture since the time of the early republic (the US Capitol and Supreme Court buildings in Washington; many state capitols).

Baroque

European architecture of the 17th and 18th centuries elaborated on classical models with exuberant and extravagant decoration. In large-scale public buildings, the style is best seen in the innovative works of Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini in Italy and later in those of John Vanbrugh, Nicholas Hawksmoor, and Christopher Wren in England. There were numerous practitioners in France and the German-speaking countries, and notably in Vienna.

Rococo

This architecture extends the baroque style with an even greater extravagance of design motifs, using a new lightness of detail and naturalistic elements, such as shells, flowers, and trees.

Neoclassical

European architecture of the 18th and 19th centuries again focused on the more severe classical idiom (inspired by archaeological finds), producing, for example, the large-scale rebuilding of London by Robert Adam and John Nash and later of Paris by Georges Haussman.

Neo-Gothic

The late 19th century saw a Gothic revival in Europe and the USA, which was evident in churches and public buildings, such as the Houses of Parliament in London, designed by Charles Barry and A W Pugin.

Art nouveau

This architecture, arising at the end of the 19th century, countered neo-Gothic with sinuous, flowing shapes for buildings, room plans, and interior decoration. The style is characterized by the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland (Glasgow Art School) and Antonio Gaudí in Spain (Church of the Holy Family, Barcelona).

Modernist

This style of architecture, referred to as the Modern Movement, began in the 1900s with the Vienna School and the German Bauhaus and was also developed in the USA, Scandinavia, and France. With functionalism as its central precept, its hallmarks are the use of spare line and form, an emphasis on rationalism, and the elimination of ornament. It makes great use of technological advances in materials such as glass, steel, and concrete and of construction techniques that allow flexibility of design. Notable practitioners include Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, and Charles Edouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier. Modern architecture has furthered the notion of the planning of extensive multibuilding projects and of whole towns or communities.

Postmodernist

This style, which emerged in the 1980s in the USA, the UK, and Japan, rejected the functionalism of the Modern Movement in favour of an eclectic mixture of styles and motifs, often classical. Its use of irony, parody, and illusion is in sharp distinction to the modernist ideals of truth to materials and form following function.

High-tech

This building style also developed in the 1980s. It took the ideals of the Modern Movement and expressed them through highly developed structures and technical innovations. Examples include Norman Foster's Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, Hong Kong, and Richard Rogers's Lloyds Building in the City of London.

Deconstructionism

An architectural debate as much as a style, deconstructionism fragments forms and space by taking the usual building elements of floors, walls, and ceilings and sliding them apart to create a sense of disorientation and movement.

Architectural theory

Architectural theory has, since classical times, been concerned with the balance between the three qualities of usefulness, firmness, and delight. It was early realized that the balance ought to vary with the type of building and the conditions under which it was built; this was especially true of the relationship between usefulness and delight (utility dominating in a factory, and delight, or visual effect, dominating in a public monument). Firmness, however, has always been felt to be an essential quality in all architecture. Perhaps for this reason theories focusing on the precedence of structure over function as the generator of forms, and hence delight, have been common. Hence, too, the tendency for many architects to prefer architectural studies, whether historical or technical, which are related to structural categories.

Functional and expressionistic aspects

In the last 100 years or so, however, social studies have stressed the importance of the other two aspects of architecture, the functional, satisfying use, and the expressionistic or symbolic, relating to visual effect or delight. Studies of architecture related to building use, for example, housing, religious buildings, assembly buildings, and so on, have been found to explain architectural evolution, and its opposite, conservatism, more satisfactorily than structural analyses in many cultures. And, though studies of the symbolic meaning and value of architecture in society are still in their infancy, they are presently broadening architects' understanding of the scope of their art.

tables

architecture: Pritzker Prize

architecture: Stirling Prize

essays

Interiors

documents

Wright, Frank Lloyd: Address at Florida Southern College

weblinks

Amiens Cathedral

Architectural Dublin

Architecture: A Virtual Tour

Foster and Partners

Great Buildings Collection

Greek Architecture

Notre Dame

images

design for St Paul's Cathedral

East Loop skyscrapers

Gateway Arch, St Louis

Knoxville Sunsphere

Liberty Monument, Nicosia