History of Architecture: Key Terms, Styles, and Works

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering major styles, movements, architects, and manifestos from nineteenth-century Historicism through contemporary and bioclimatic architecture.

Stages of Historicism

The chronological sequence of nineteenth-century architectural historicism: the Romantic stage (until 1870), the strict stage (1870–1890), and the late stage (after 1890).

Palacio de Westminster

The most important work of the Neogothic style, featuring complete interior and exterior ornamentation designed by Augustus Pugin.

British Museum

A major Neogreek (Greek Revival) building designed by Robert Smirke, renowned for its facade of 44 Ionic columns.

Rundbogenstil

A German architectural style that unifies an entire building composition through the repetition of the semicircular arch (arco de medio punto).

Neomudéjar

A historicist style utilizing red brick and horseshoe arches, exemplified in Madrid by the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas.

Neoperuano (Neoincaico)

An architectural movement in Peru and Argentina that sought a national identity described as 'neither European nor indigenous.'

Crystal Palace

The landmark 1851 iron-and-glass exhibition hall designed by Joseph Paxton, who worked professionally as a gardener and greenhouse builder.

Ensanche de Barcelona

The modern urban grid expansion of Barcelona designed by Ildefonso Cerdà, characterized by square blocks with chamfered corners.

Garden City (Ciudad Jardín)

An urban planning model proposed by Ebenezer Howard in 1898 consisting of small, planned cities ringed by permanent green belts.

Arts and Crafts

An English movement that championed handmade craftwork over industrial machine production, epitomized by Philip Webb's 1859 Red House for William Morris.

Golpe de látigo (Whiplash line)

The characteristic sinuous, asymmetrical curved line typical of Art Nouveau ornamentation and structural expression.

Jugendstil

The German name and manifestation of the Art Nouveau movement.

Home Insurance Building

An 1885 building designed by William Le Baron Jenney in Chicago, recognized as the world's first skyscraper.

Form follows function

The foundational modernist design maxim formulated by Chicago School architect Louis Sullivan.

Tripartite Skyscraper Composition

The classical tripartite division applied to Chicago School skyscrapers, composed of a base, a shaft, and a crowning capital.

Raumplan

Adolf Loos's spatial planning concept in which each room is designed with an individualized ceiling height determined strictly by its function.

Ornamento y delito (Ornament and Crime)

The 1908 theoretical text written by Adolf Loos arguing against the use of applied decorative ornament in modern culture.

Deutscher Werkbund

An association of artists, architects, and industrialists founded in Munich in 1907 by Hermann Muthesius to unite crafts and mass production.

De Stijl (Neoplasticism)

A Dutch avant-garde movement founded in 1917, characterized by the rigorous use of straight lines, right angles, and primary colors.

Monument to the Third International

A 400-meter Constructivist spiraling iron tower conceived by Vladimir Tatlin that was never constructed.

Edificio Narkomfin

A Constructivist residential building in Moscow (1928–1930) functioning as a 'social condenser' with duplex units and communal facilities.

Vorkurs

The mandatory preliminary foundation course taken by all incoming students at the Bauhaus school.

Directors of the Bauhaus

The chronological sequence of three architects who directed the Bauhaus: Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Villa Tugendhat

A residence in Brno designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe that served as the first domestic application of the open plan using cruciform steel pillars.

Materials of Rationalism

The primary modern industrial materials that defined Rationalist architecture: reinforced concrete, structural steel, and glass.

Chrysler Building

An Art Déco skyscraper designed by William Van Alen with a tiered stainless steel crown, which stood as the world's tallest building for eleven months.

Streamline Moderne

An aerodynamic late Art Déco design movement spurred by the 1929 Wall Street crash and the Great Depression.

Styling

The commercial practice of redesigning the outer cosmetic appearance of a manufactured product without altering its internal mechanism in order to boost sales.

Style Paquebot

An ocean-liner-inspired variant of Art Déco featuring porthole windows, nautical railings, and streamlined horizontal decks.

Fallingwater (Casa de la Cascada)

Frank Lloyd Wright's landmark organic residence built in 1934–1935 over a running waterfall using cantilevered concrete terraces.

Béton brut

Raw, unfinished concrete showing the texture of its formwork; the French phrase that originated the term Brutalism.

Unité d'Habitation

Le Corbusier's residential housing block in Marseille, designed as a self-contained 'vertical city' for community living.

Metabolism

A post-war Japanese architectural movement that viewed the city and its buildings as dynamic living organisms subject to continuous biological growth.

Nakagin Capsule Tower

Kisho Kurokawa's iconic Metabolist high-rise in Tokyo composed of 140 prefabricated, replaceable modular living capsules.

Villa Savoye

A villa in Poissy designed by Le Corbusier that serves as the definitive manifesto embodying his Five Points of a New Architecture.

Pilotes

One of Le Corbusier's Five Points: structural columns that raise the volume of a building above the ground, freeing the grade level for circulation.

Seagram Building

A bronze and tinted glass skyscraper designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, set back from the street front to generate an open public urban plaza.

Casa Vanna Venturi

Robert Venturi's residential project featuring a split pediment, recognized as the first built manifesto of Postmodernism.

Tinglado decorado (Decorated Shed)

A concept by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown defining a simple, utilitarian container building wrapped in communicative symbolic decoration.

Bowellism

An architectural expression coined by Richard Rogers referring to buildings designed with their mechanical services and circulatory 'entrails' exposed on the exterior.

Centre Pompidou

A High-Tech Parisian cultural institution by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers featuring color-coded infrastructure and circulation exposed across its facade.

Deconstructivism

An architectural movement codified by MoMA's 1988 exhibition, grounded in the deconstructive philosophy of Jacques Derrida and characterized by fragmented, non-rectilinear geometry.

Iglesia de la Luz (Church of the Light)

A concrete sanctuary designed by Tadao Ando featuring a cruciform opening cut into the altar wall that casts a beam of natural light across the interior.

Ventilación cruzada (Cross-ventilation)

A passive bioclimatic cooling technique that utilizes aligned openings in opposing exterior walls to establish natural convective airflow.

Quinta Monroy

An incremental social housing development in Iquique designed in 2004 by Alejandro Aravena, offering expandable half-houses for low-income residents.

Catedral de Cartón (Cardboard Cathedral)

A temporary post-disaster house of worship constructed by Shigeru Ban in Christchurch following the 2011 earthquake, framed with 98 cardboard tubes.

Museo del Mañana

Santiago Calatrava's museum in Rio de Janeiro, equipped with motorized solar panel wings and an HVAC cooling system powered by deep bay water.

Cobogós y celosías

Perforated structural blocks and lattices used notably by Lina Bo Bardi to mitigate intense direct sunlight while allowing the passage of natural breezes.

PREVI

The Proyecto Experimental de Vivienda constructed in Lima in 1969 with United Nations sponsorship to innovate high-density, low-rise expandable housing.

Proyecto situado

A localized architectural design methodology that derives its solutions directly from geographic and social context, utilizing appropriate regional technologies and participatory community engagement.