ARCH 10211 - Final - Key Terms

Abbey

A grouping of buildings that constitutes the housing and other necessary structures for a society of monks or nuns living under a specific religious rule

Cloister

An enclosed rectangular space in a monastery, usually an open, garden court surrounded by roofed passages on all four sides, connecting the church to domestic structures

Pilgrimage Plan

A basilica plan church with side-aisles that envelop the entire structure, allowing for crowd circulation without disruption of the liturgy

Ribbed vault

A vault with projecting bands

Flying Buttress

An arch transmitting the thrust of a vault or roof from the upper part of the wall to an outer support buttress to give additional support

Groin vault

Two intersecting barrel vaults

Pinnacle

A small, steep turret-like structure crowning spires and other roof structures

Rose window

A circular window with foils of patterned tracery arranged like the spokes of a wheel

Allees

Broad roadways usually radiating outwards from a single point

Formal garden

A style of landscape architecture characterized by form and visual order as expressed through a symmetrical plan, rigid geometries, and long straight roads and sight lines

Parterre de broderie

A lawn shaped to imitate decorative geometric forms like those found on a carpet

Chahar bagh

Persian for “four gardens,” indicating a quadrilateral garden divided by water channels based on the Four Gardens of Paradise as described in the Quran

Chatri

A dome raised by four pillars usually found in South Asian palace and funerary architecture

Iwan

A shallow hall with a pointed vault serving as a portal or closed at the back and facing a court

Enlightenment Rationalism

A style of architectural designs inspired by scientific studies featuring ideal proportions and geometric forms

Architecture parlante

Architecture that explains its own function by means of its form, originally associated with Claude-Nicolas Ledoux

Ferrovitreous Architecture

A style of glass and steel architecture that became possible after the invention of new materials in the Industrial Revolution

Neo-Gothic Style

A 19th-century style returning to the medieval style, especially popular in France, Germany, and the UK for different nationalistic reasons and to capture pre-industrial spiritual and moral purity

Neo-Classical Style

A style reviving ancient Greek and Roman styles characterized by rational design and a scientific approach to building inspired by emerging archaeological studies of ancient cities

Arts & Crafts Movement

A style emerging from the attempt to reform design and decoration in 19th century Britain as a reaction to a perceived decline in standards due to machinery and factory production

Useful Beauty

A design principle stressed in the Arts & Crafts movement of a belief in craftsmanship stressing the inherent beauty of a material, the importance of nature as inspiration, and the value of simplicity and utility

Prairie Style

A style believing that a structure should reflect the surrounding environment by being rooted in nature with a sense of place and the incorporation of modern elements like flat planes and stylized ornamentation, similar to the Arts & Crafts movement but distinctly American

Vienna Secession Movement

Art movement closely related to Art Nouveau formed in 1897 by a group of painters, artists, sculptors, and architects

Form Follows Function

Phrase coined by Louis Sullivan about modern architectural design

International Style Modernism

A style developed in the 1920s and 30s in Holland, France, and Germany after WWI closely related to modernism that became the dominant style around the world until the 1970s characterized by an emphasis on volume over mass, the use of lightweight, mass-produced, industrial materials, rejection of ornament and color, repetitive modular forms, flat surfaces, and areas of glass

Machine for living

A term coined by Le Corbusier to describe the modern house

Pilotis

Part of Le Corbusier’s 5 Points for a New Architecture; the replacement of supporting walls in favor of a grid of concrete columns as the basis of a new aesthetic allowing for open floor plans

The Free Plan

Part of Le Corbusier’s 5 Points for a New Architecture; achieved through the separation of load-bearing columns from walls subdividing a space

The Free Facade

Part of Le Corbusier’s 5 Points for a New Architecture; The corollary of the free plan in the vertical plane

Ribbon Window

Part of Le Corbusier’s 5 Points for a New Architecture; a long horizontal sliding window reimagining the exterior view as a film strip

Roof Garden

Part of Le Corbusier’s 5 Points for a New Architecture; restoring the area of ground covered by the house

Post Modernism

A style emerging in the 1960s as a reaction to the austerity, formality, and lack of variety in modern architecture that can be identified through quotation, metaphor, plurality, and parody

Critical Regionalism

An approach to architecture countering the lack of identity of International Style Modernism and rejecting the individualism and ornamentation of Postmodernism seeking an architecture rooted in modern tradition and tied to geographical and cultural context

Wapan Masonry

A traditional Chinese tiling technique evolved into a hybrid construction process involving brick, stone, and roof tiles traditionally used in villages to utilize readily available materials and now used as a response to heritage masonry and sustainability.