Modern Architecture: Beaux-Arts to International Style

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, concepts, architectural movements, and notable buildings from late 19th and early 20th-century architecture.

Trabeation

A structural system based on post-and-lintel construction using piers or columns to support horizontal members.

Arcuation

A structural system using arches, vaults, and domes, requiring temporary wooden formwork during construction and structural buttressing to offset outward thrust.

Point-load System

A structural planning arrangement represented in plan as a grid system of points, such as piers or columns.

Load-bearing Wall

A structural system in which continuous vertical masonry or timber walls carry the weight of upper floors and roofing.

Beaux-Arts Architecture

An academic classical movement propagated by the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, characterized by central axial symmetry, three-part elevations, classical orders, clear circulation patterns, and appropriate spatial character.

Arts and Crafts Movement

A 19th-century reform movement proposing a revival of traditional hand craftsmanship, local vernacular forms, and medieval principles as a response to industrial mass production.

Rationalism

An architectural movement responding to new materials (iron, steel, glass, concrete) and building types by advocating straightforward, logical planning, structural transparency, and elimination of applied historicist ornament.

Art Nouveau

A decorative and architectural style favoring plant and animal forms found in nature, sinuous structural lines, and dynamic 'whiplash' surface ornament.

Picturesque Design

An architectural aesthetic emphasizing asymmetry, non-axial compositions, visual cues, and historical associations rather than rigid classical geometry.

Neo-Classicism

An architectural movement that relied on archaeological findings to reproduce or adapt the forms, proportions, and orders of ancient Greek and Roman architecture.

Vernacular Architecture

Traditional regional architecture designed and built by local artisans using local materials and established craft traditions rather than formally trained architects.

Total Work of Art

A unified design approach (Gesamtkunstwerk) where every aspect of a building, including interior decoration, furniture, fixtures, and exterior landscaping, is conceived as a single complete environment.

Shinto

Traditional Japanese indigenous religion centered on reverence for natural divine spirits (kami), exemplified in shrines like the Ise Grand Shrine.

Tatami Mats

Traditional woven rice-straw floor mats measuring 3 by 6 feet that defined the proportional module for traditional Japanese room layouts.

Shoji Screens

Sliding timber-framed partitions covered in translucent rice paper used to partition spaces and connect interiors with the exterior landscape in Japanese architecture.

Shoin Style

A refined style of Japanese residential architecture featured in Zen-inspired residences, characterized by tatami flooring, square posts, sliding shoji screens, an elevated writing desk (shoin), and a display alcove (tokonoma).

Tokonoma

A raised decorative alcove in traditional Japanese rooms intended for displaying hanging scrolls or seasonal flower arrangements.

Taian Teahouse

A classic rustic Japanese tea house designed according to Zen principles, showcasing unrefined natural materials and minimal proportions.

Chicago School of Architecture

A late 19th-century commercial building tradition that developed skeleton steel framing, large plate-glass Chicago windows, and expressive tall building elevations following the Great Chicago Fire.

Floating System

An engineering foundation method developed by Dankmar Adler using heavy grids of iron beams and concrete rafts laid in soft soil to support heavy skyscraper walls.

Deutscher Werkbund

A German association founded in 1907 to link artists, architects, and industrial manufacturers to establish high standards of design for mass-produced products and standardized building components.

Expressionism

An early 20th-century architectural movement utilizing modern materials like glass and concrete to create emotionally evocative, sculptural, and poetic building forms.

Futurism

An avant-garde movement embracing the speed, dynamic energy, industrial machinery, and technological infrastructure of the modern city, represented by Antonio Sant'Elia's 'La Città Nuova'.

Paris Opera House

A landmark Beaux-Arts theatre designed by Charles Garnier in the 1860s–1870s featuring elaborate axial circulation, a grand staircase, and opulent classical decoration.

Red House

An influential Arts and Crafts residence in Bexleyheath designed by Philip Webb for William Morris, featuring local brick masonry, asymmetrical medieval planning, and integrated artisan craftsmanship.

Crystal Palace

A revolutionary 1851 exhibition building in London designed by Joseph Paxton using prefabricated cast-iron columns, wrought-iron trusses, and sheet glass.

The Orchard

A British Arts and Crafts home in Chorleywood designed by Charles Voysey for his family, featuring low horizontal window bands, broad roughcast walls, and sloping roofs.

Hill House

A residence in Helensburgh designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the 100s, blending traditional Scottish baronial exterior massing with refined interior woodwork and Art Nouveau touches.

Gamble House

A Craftsman residence in Pasadena designed by Charles and Henry Greene, noted for its exposed wooden joinery, broad sleeping porches, and Japanese timber influences.

Tassel House

An 1890s Brussels residence by Victor Horta, celebrated as an early Art Nouveau building for its exposed structural iron columns and sinuous whiplash wall murals.

Glasgow School of Art

A landmark Scottish building designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh featuring dramatic masonry walls, custom ironwork, and a timber-framed double-height library interior.

Sagrada Familia

A church in Barcelona begun in the 1880s by Antoni Gaudí, combining Gothic traditions with organic geometric structures inspired by natural forms.

Casa Mila

An apartment building in Barcelona designed by Antoni Gaudí with a wavy stone facade, forged iron balconies, open interior courtyards, and sculpted rooftop chimneys.

Hector Guimard's Metro Stations

Art Nouveau Paris Métro station entrances (1899–1905) featuring modular cast-iron components styled into organic, plant-like tendrils and glass canopies.

1st Leiter Building

An 1870s commercial building in Chicago designed by William Le Baron Jenney that moved toward skeleton framing by pairing exterior brick piers with wide interior window spans.

Auditorium Building

A large multi-purpose building in Chicago designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, notable for its advanced acoustic design, raft foundation, electric lighting, and Sullivan's intricate organic ornament.

Wainwright Building

An 1890 office building in St. Louis by Adler & Sullivan that established the classical tripartite model (street base, vertical shaft, upper cornice) for skyscraper design.

Marshall Field Wholesale Store

A Chicago store designed by Henry Hobson Richardson in the 1880s, showcasing heavy rusticated stonework and stacked Romanesque arches.

Winslow House

An 1890s residence in River Forest designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, featuring a formal symmetrical front facade, broad eaves, and a low hip roof.

Willits House

A 1900s house in Highland Park designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, featuring a cruciform pinwheel plan centered around a core fireplace and dissolved corner windows.

Robie House

A 1900s Prairie Style house in Chicago designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, known for its extreme horizontal roof overhangs, custom brickwork, steel cantilever beam, and fluid interior spaces.

Unity Temple

A 1900s place of worship in Oak Park designed by Frank Lloyd Wright using unadorned poured reinforced concrete, cubic geometry, and processional interior paths.

World's Columbian Exposition

The 1893 World's Fair in Chicago whose central 'White City' popularized Beaux-Arts neoclassical architecture and grand axial planning in America.

Secession Exhibition Building

An exhibition building in Vienna designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich in the 1890s, characterized by smooth cubic geometric masses topped by a gilt laurel leaf dome.

Post Office Savings Bank

A public bank building in Vienna designed by Otto Wagner in the 1900s, featuring marble facade panels attached with exposed aluminum-capped rivets and a vaulted glass banking hall.

Adolf Loos

A Viennese architect who rejected applied ornament in modern building, famous for designing the minimalist Steiner House in Vienna.

Auguste Perret

A French architect who pioneered the structural and expressive use of reinforced concrete in projects like the Apartment Building on rue Franklin and Notre Dame de Raincy.

Peter Behrens

A German architect and industrial designer associated with the Werkbund, known for designing the AEG Turbine Factory in Berlin.

Walter Gropius

A German architect who co-designed the 1914 Werkbund Pavilion and founded the Bauhaus, designing its Dessau campus in the 1920s.

Mies van der Rohe

A Modernist architect who developed a precise steel-and-glass aesthetic, demonstrated in the Barcelona Pavilion, Tugendhat House, and Weissenhofsiedlung exhibit.

Trabeation

A structural system based on post-and-lintel construction utilizing vertical piers or columns to support horizontal members.

Arcuation

A structural system utilizing arches, vaults, and domes, requiring temporary wooden scaffolding (form work) during construction and mechanisms to offset outward thrust.

Point-Load System

A structural planning method where structural loads are concentrated on a grid of discrete supports, such as columns or piers.

Beaux-Arts Architecture

An academic classical tradition propagated by the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris that emphasized central axes, tri-partite compositions, classical orders, building character suited to function, and clear circulation patterns.

Arts and Crafts Movement

A reform movement proposing a revival of traditional handcrafts, local materials, and vernacular forms as a means for social improvement and artistic renewal, often displaying medieval or Gothic Revival influences.

Rationalism

An architectural approach reacting against eclecticism that sought straightforward, logical planning inspired by engineering and embraced new materials like iron, steel, glass, and concrete without historical ornament.

Art Nouveau

A decorative and architectural movement featuring plant and animal forms drawn from nature, sinuous structures, and organic whiplash surface patterns.

Vernacular Architecture

Buildings designed and constructed by local artisans using regional materials, traditional practices, and native methods rather than formal architectural traditions.

Tatami Mat

A traditional Japanese woven rice-straw floor mat measuring approximately $3\text{ ft} \times 6\text{ ft}$ ($91\text{ cm} \times 182\text{ cm}$), which serves as the foundational proportion module for interior space layout.

Shoji Screen

A translucent sliding panel constructed of paper stretched over a lightweight wooden frame, used to flexibly divide rooms or blur interior and exterior space in traditional Japanese architecture.

Shoin

An elevated writing alcove placed beside a window in traditional Japanese residential design, which gave its name to a refined, simple architectural style.

Tokonoma

A recessed decorative alcove in a traditional Japanese room specifically reserved for the display of a painting scroll or flower arrangement.

Deutscher Werkbund

An organization founded in Germany in 1907 to bridge artists and industrial manufacturing by applying honest design principles to mass-produced industrial materials and standardized building details.

Expressionism

An architectural movement that utilized mass-produced modern materials to create poetic, emotionally evocative, and expressive forms rather than standardized or utilitarian designs.

Futurism

An early 20th-century movement focused on visually expressing the dynamic energy of industrialization, speed, machinery, artificial light, and motion through space and time.

Red House

An Arts and Crafts residence designed by Philip Webb for William Morris in Bexley Heath, featuring red brick vernacular details, a non-axial entry procession, and medieval influences.

Paris Opera House

A grand Academic Classicist opera house designed by Charles Garnier in Paris, recognized for its rich classical details, axial symmetry, and elaborate circulation spaces including a grand staircase.

Crystal Palace

A landmark Rationalist exhibition hall designed by Joseph Paxton in London using prefabricated cast iron and sheet glass to create an unadorned structural space.

The Orchard

An influential British Arts and Crafts home designed by Charles Voysey for his family in Chorleywood, featuring low walls, prominent rooflines, and compacted window openings.

Hill House

A residence in Helensburgh designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh that merged Scottish vernacular traditions with refined interior woodwork and asymmetrical window groupings.

Gamble House

A Craftsman bungalow in Pasadena designed by Charles and Henry Greene, incorporating exposed timber joints, sleeping porches, and spatial inspiration from Japanese architecture.

Tassel House

An Art Nouveau townhouse in Brussels designed by Victor Horta, famous for its exposed iron structure, flowing interior layout, and organic whiplash decorative motifs.

Auditorium Building

A multi-use Chicago structure designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, featuring a concrete floating raft foundation, iron joists, electric lighting, and rich organic interior ornamentation.

Wainwright Building

An early skyscraper in St. Louis designed by Louis Sullivan that expressed its internal functions through a tri-partite facade composition and emphasized verticality through continuous piers.

Willits House

A Prairie Style house in Highland Park designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that dissolved boxy interior corners by extending pinwheeling two-dimensional wall planes from a central hearth.

Robie House

A Prairie Style home in Chicago designed by Frank Lloyd Wright with strong horizontal brick bands, cantilevered roof planes, concealed entryways, and flowing interior spaces around a fireplace.

Unity Temple

A reinforced concrete church in Oak Park designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, featuring cubic geometry, industrial aesthetic finishes, and a processional movement from profane entry to sacred worship space.

Post Office Savings Bank

A modern building in Vienna designed by Otto Wagner featuring a simplified stone facade anchored with visible metal bolts and a glass-vaulted banking hall.

Secession Exhibition Building

An exhibition pavilion in Vienna designed by Joseph Maria Olbrich featuring white cubic volumes topped by a gilded foliage dome.

First Leiter Building

An early Chicago School commercial building designed by William Le Baron Jenney utilizing an exposed point-load structural system of iron and stone piers.

Marshall Field Wholesale Store

A Chicago store designed by Henry Hobson Richardson that expressed heavy rusticated masonry load-bearing construction through stacked tiers of round arches.

Sagrada Familia

A basilica in Barcelona designed by Antoni Gaudí that combines Gothic structural principles with organic geometry and tree-like branching interior columns.

Casa Mila

An apartment building in Barcelona designed by Antoni Gaudí with an undulating stone exterior, light-filled interior courtyards, and sculpted rooftop chimneys.

Oakland YWCA

A building in Oakland designed by Julia Morgan incorporating Roman colonnades and Renaissance palace precedents around a central skylit courtyard.