ARCH HISTORY EXAM 2 - TERMS

A-tectonic

Not revealing structural or constructional aspects of an object

Abstraction

The distillation of a basic idea or parti into its most significant or telling parts

Aesthetics

Branch of philosophy which studies the nature of beauty and taste

Aisle

A passageway separated by an arcade, running parallel to the nave of a church

Anthropomorphic

Resembling or borrowing the form of human beings

Antiquity

The period of the great classical civilizations, i.e. the Greeks and Romans

Antithesis

Opposition, contrast, the opposite of a thesis; the second term in a dialectical argument.

Apse

A semi-circular or polygonal projection of a church

Arcadia

Part of ancient Greece, known for pastoral lifestyle, hence a state of blissful, idyllic pastoral life

Architrave

The lintel or flat horizontal member which spans the space between the columns; in classical architecture, the lowest member of an entablature

Articulation

The use of ornament (the orders, string courses, cornices, panels) etc. to make legible the discrete parts of a systems, and to permit an understanding of the relationship of parts to the whole

axis

A real or imaginary line that structures a linear relationship of objects in space

Basilica

In ancient Roman architecture, a large meeting hall most often used for the law courts, characterized by an oblong plan divided into a nave with two or more side aisles, the former higher and wider than the latter and generally lit by clerestory windows; usually terminated by an apse. In Christian Architecture, the basilica is often transformed into a Latin Cross plan with the addition of a transept

Bay

The area between columns, piers, or buttresses

Buttress

A structure built against a wall to strengthen it

Chancel

Area in Christian churches containing the high altar and reserved for the use of the clergy. Includes the choir when present. Use "choirs" for the spaces in Christian churches, generally between the altar area and the nave, reserved for choristers

Cinquecento

Historical period referring to the 1500s

Clerestory

Upper zones of walls rising above adjacent roofs and pierced by windows so as to admit light to a high central room or space flanked by lower rooms or spaces

Cloister

Use chiefly for enclosed Medieval gardens, generally found in monasteries, often formally arranged with planters and boxed sections

Coffering

Recessed panels, usually square or octagonal, set into ceilings, vaults, or soffits. Corbelling - Masonry constructions whose arch-like form is created by cantilevering successive courses inward beyond the preceding until they meet at the span's midpoint; thus the courses are set horizontally, not radially; not true arches

Cross axis

A secondary axis orthogonal to the principal axis of a building

Crossing

The area of a cross-shaped church, where the nave and transept cross

Cruciform

Floor plan in the form or shape of a cross

Datum

A neutral object or system (line, plane or volume) which, by virtue of its regularity and continuity, makes visible relationships among formally and spatially disparate parts

Decorum

Appropriateness. In architectural theory, having to do with the selection of the correct building type, ornamental program and material for a building, according to the status of the owner and program

Dematerialization

The tendency toward reduced mass and enclosure

Dialectic

An argument which opposes contrasting propositions (thesis and antithesis) to yield a third proposition, "synthesis". A dialectical, spiraling model of historical progress is put forward by GFW Hegel

Eclecticism

Design by means of picking and choosing elements from unrelated historical styles

Entablature

In classical architecture, the top of an Order, horizontally divided into cornice, frieze, and architrave, supported by a colonnade

Entasis

Slight convex curve applied to columns in Classical architecture to counter the illusion that would otherwise occur of the columns being slightly concave

Figure/ground

A graphic device which uses contrasting tones of black and white to make evident the relationship between occupied and empty space

Fluting

A series of shallow concave grooves, vertical on the shaft of a column

Folly

A small garden structure, typical of Romantic gardens, meant more to be looked at and create associations, than to be inhabited

Frieze

An architectural ornament consisting of a horizontal sculptured band between the architrave and the cornice

Gothic Revival

Revival of the Gothic style which took place in the late 18th, and 19th c. Gothic was usually thought to evoke ideas about the sublime through its irregular massing and vague, historical connections to less rational times. In the middle of the nineteenth century 1.) rational construction: the structural clarity and economy of Gothic led to ideas about structural rationalism as a determinant for architectural form; 2.) morality: classicism was pagan; Gothic was Christian; Classicism was Mediterranean, Gothic was Northern, specifically English

Greek Cross

A cruciform plan in which all arms of the cross are of equal length

Greek Revival

Revival of the Greek (classical) style which took place in the late 18th, and 19th centuries. "Greek" revival was usually thought to evoke ideas about the beautiful, through its even, regular massing and clear historical connections to the age of democracy, art and the philosophers

Grotto

A cave like element in a garden, often associated with water, heavy rustication , and deformation of canonical form: hence "grotesque"

Ha-ha

A ditch, or "sunken fence", which could restrict the movement of animals without creating a visible barrier in the landscape. Typical in English Romantic gardens, especially those by Capability Brown

hierarchy

A structure of relationships which organizes by relative importance members of a group or items in a system

Hotel

A grand urban residence in France

Humanism

A branch of philosophy, popular in the Renaissance, which placed special value on rational understanding, the Neo-Platonic connection between earthly and divine beauty, man as the image of God and therefore sacred, and the literature, philosophy and art of antiquity

Iconography

Subject matter in works of art, including characters, animals, plants, themes, stories, events, places, objects, and their symbolism

Intercolumniation

The spacing between columns

Interstitial Space

The space between things

Jeffersonian grid

The vast, continental surveying project, initiated by Jefferson, which measured, divided up, and ultimately distributed land

Lateral Thrust

The tendency of vaulted structures, especially rounded vaulted, to exert force sideways, perpendicular to the height of the space

Latin Cross

A cross in which the transept is shorter than the nave

Loggia

A covered porch, often related to a garden

Mannerism

An artistic style of the late 16th century characterized by distortion of elements such as scale, perspective, realistic proportions, posture, and classical balance

Massing

The relationship between various masses or volumes of a building or structure

Materiality

The state or quality of being material, or physical matter; In architecture, Materiality means the poetic and deliberate use of building materials to bring attention to their natural properties, texture, and scale, so that material becomes a bearer of meaning, rather than a simple construction device

Microcosm

Anything relegated as a world in miniature, reflective of a larger order module. The size of some part of a building, taken as a unit of measurement for the whole

Module

The size of some part of a building, taken as a unit of measurement for the whole

Morphology

the study of forms

Nave

The central section of the church, where the worshippers stand or sit

Neoclassic(al)

An eighteenth century style of art and architecture which looked to antiquity, but following modern precepts, makes use of a rationalized system and more pared down, clarified understanding of form. The look tends to be thinner and more disjointed than real classical architecture (i.e. architecture of antiquity, or of the Renaissance or Baroque)

Niche / Exedra

Curved recesses in walls, vaulted with a half dome. Niches are small, Exedrae are large

Obelisk

Tall, slender, four-sided, usually monolithic stone shafts which taper upward and end in a pyramidal tip

Oculus

Round or oval openings, such as windows in a wall or openings in the crown of a dome

Orders

The codified, canonical presentation of systems of trabeation found in classical architecture. In Greece Doric, Ionic and Corinthian; In Rome, Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Composite (listed from the stoutest and simplest to the slenderest and most complex)

Orthographic Projections

A technique for representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions by using parallel projecting lines that are perpendicular to the plane of projection or picture surface

Palazzo

Grand urban dwelling in Italy, organized around a courtyard

Panopticon

A method of surveillance, promoted by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) , often used to organize prisons, insane asylums, and other institutions. The plan of a panopticon is typically centralized and radial, so that a guard in a central watch tower can observe the inmates without being observed, so that surveillance becomes internalized

Paradigm

An ideal example or model; a.) regarding form or type; b.) regarding the general structure of relationships in a culture as to how knowledge is acquired and organized

Paradise Garden

An enclosed garden, organized as a four-square grid, representing the four rivers flowing out of Eden. The Paradise garden often serves as a basic formal organization, which sustains transformations, especially in landscape design

Parterre

A garden which is meant to be viewed from an elevated position and is comprised of crisply clipped shrubbery, which form patterns. Parterre, literally means "on the ground"

Parti

A point of departure for an architectural idea; usually a formal diagram which may result from transformations of an ideal paradigm based on a more elaborate understanding of site, program or meaning of the building

Pastoral ideal

The ideal that virtue and simplicity resided in a simple, golden age of shepherds and shepherdesses- Arcadia. The Pastoral Ideal is one impulse underlying the design of Romantic gardens

Patronage

The system whereby works are commissioned and paid for, which usually has influence on the character and aspirations of a building

Pergola

A trellised, colonnaded walkway, forming an architectural edge in a garden setting

Perspective

A mathematical system for projecting three dimensional space onto a two-dimensional surface

Philosophes

French Enlightenment philosophers who were especially productive during the mid 1700s. Proponents and major works include: Voltaire, Candide, (1759), A Treatise on Tolerance, (1762), Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748), Rousseau's Social Contract, Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences (1750), and, finally, the great capstone of the French philosophes movement, the first edition of Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie in 1751

Pictorial space

The two-dimensional illusion and construction of three-dimensional space

Picturesque

Looking like a landscape picture, preferably one by Claude Lorrain. Perspective. Used to describe landscapes, the Picturesque is characterized by gentle, curvilinear forms and a highly contrived presentation of "natural" hillocks, reflecting lakes and streams

Plasticity

Three dimensionality, sculptural value

Platonic form

Ideal, mathematically definable, geometric form, e.g. cubes, spheres, tetrahedrons, icosahedrons, dodecahedrons, (whereby all surfaces of a 3-dimensional object are identical. In common parlance, other, somewhat less ideal volume called "Platonic," such as cylinders, rectangular prisms, and cones

Poché

The space between two surfaces of a wall, which can be carved and shaped to create figural spaces; in drawing, the dark infill which the draftsman colors between two lines to represent a solid which has been cut through

Polychromy

Literally, involving many colors. In Ruskin's terms, taking advantage of the natural colors of different materials

Primitive Hut

The first dwelling, architecture free from the burdens of history and style, which authenticity and naturally expressed the original way of building, thereby thought to be truer than an architecture practice, which relied on historical styles

Progress

The belief that human history is largely a history of the improvement of humanity in three respects:- a knowledge of the natural world and the ability to manipulate the world through technology;

• overcoming ignorance bred of superstitions and religions;- overcoming human cruelty and violence through social improvements and government structures

Proportion

The mathematical ordering of rations of length: width: height so that dimension of parts adhere to and reiterate the order of the whole. Arithmetic, Geometric and Harmonic proportion are discussed in Renaissance architectural theory

Res privata

The private realm, used in urbanism to discuss the dissolution of the architectural expression of the collective, in favor of separate, individualized expressions of many diverse interests. Democratic, but it ends to erode the formal cohesion of a city

Res publica

The public realm, in urbanism, used to discuss the expression of collective aims in the shaping of public spaces like squares and boulevards, while suppressing the expression of the individual. Tends to require a despotic regime to made fully manifest

Rococo

A style of architecture and art that arose in France during the Regency Period and proliferated in Germany and Austria. The style is characterized by a profusion of asymmetrical, curvilinear ornament, the suppression of tectonic values, an ambiguous definition of boundary, and a playful use of light and mirrors

Romantic Classicism

The recognition that the same Romantic anxieties- see above motivates both Classical/ Neoclassical revivals and Romanticism

Romanticism

A late 18th c., but especially 19th c way of thinking that was characterized by- a love a nature;- an acute self-consciousness about one's position in history

• an expression of its anxiety through nostalgic revivals and eclectic re-composition of historically based parts, which aimed at

• connecting to the authenticity of an earlier era;- evoking a specific feeling or mood,- an ascendancy of sentiment over reason

Rustication

Heavy, roughly worked stone which conveys a sense of stone that has been freshly quarried, or which, indeed is returning to its natural, un-geometric, and un-finished state

Scenographic

Like a stage set

Seicento

1600's

Skeletal Structure

A structural system based on ribs, pointed arches, flying buttresses, and column bundles, so that loads are directed to point supports, instead of continuous surfaces. Skeletal systems make possible extensive dematerialization of the wall, and thereby afford large surfaces for stained glass windows

Structural Rationalism

Deriving from Abbe Laugier's primitive hut and Viollet-le-Duc, a belief that the best architecture derived from the honest expression of structure and construction, rather than the application of traditional ornament or the use of traditional types

Sublime

Overwhelming, awe-inspiring; frightening, often associated with nature. The "Sublime", opposed to "beauty", is provoked by "delight" (the sensation that you are about to die, but then you don't). In formal terms, the sublime is characterized by strong, blinding light, enormous scale, irregular outlines, obscurity, violence, etc. See Edmund Burke's Inquiry into our Ideas ...On the Sublime and the Beautiful for details

Synthesis

The resolution of the opposition of thesis and antithesis, which joins together aspects of both; the resolution of a Hegelian dialectic

Tartan Grid

In an architectural application of the "tartan grid" wide bands usually contain major spaces, while narrow bands (a.k.a. "interstitial spaces") usually contain service spaces, or are flexible, able to join with a wider band, or to remain distinct.

Taste

The ability to judge and appreciate beauty; taste may be thought of as innate, or taste may be thought of as the product of study and exposure to excellent models

Tectonic

Having to do with the development of and the display of a structural and constructional system