The 

Architect's Handbook of Formulas, Tables, and Mathematical Calculations compiles a vast range of practical, concise formulas, tables, and
calculation methods useful to improve the design process. It is a problem-solving and decision-making tool for the practicing architect and interior
designer. The material included in this book gives you the answer to the many types of problems  you face every day - those dealing with overall site and
space planning, sizes of building components, material selection, finishes, construction assemblies, and building systems. In addition, you will find
useful "rules of thumb" and basic reference data.

The organization of this Handbook is based on how architects actually work through a project and make decisions - from establishing early programming
needs, to making preliminary design and building system choices, to evaluating specific material selections. The tables and calculation methods selected
are practical, proven reference information helpful for all phases of a job. To make the tables and formulas even more useful, step-by-step procedures for
using them and easy-to-follow examples are included where appropriate.

1. List of Illustrations
1. Section 1: How to Determine Building Planning Space Requirements
2. Section 2: Calculating Building Systems
3. Section 3: Energy Standards
4. Section 4: Building Components
5. Section 5: Reference Data
2. 1. How to Determine Building Planning Space Requirements
1.  
1. Parking and Site Work
1. Rules of Thumb
1. Planning Procedures for Parking and Site Work
2. Calculating Minimum Turning Radii of Vehicles
2. Space Planning Guidelines
1. Rules of Thumb
3. Preliminary Elevator Planning
1. Rules of Thumb
4. Stairs and Ramps
1. Rules of Thumb
5. Library Planning
1. Rules of Thumb
6. Audio-Visual Planning
1. Rules of Thumb
1. Formulas for Projection Media
3. 2. Calculating Building Systems
1. 2A. Structural Systems
1. Rules of Thumb
2. Preliminary Structural Design Charts
3. Vertical Support Charts
4. How to Determine Static Loads
1. Diagrams and Formulas for Static Loads
5. Steel Beams
1. Uniform Load Constants Use of Tables
6. Steel Columns
7. Steel Joists
1. K-Series, Economy Table
2. LH-Series
3. DLH-Series
8. Formulas for Structural Lumber Beams
1. Deflection Formula
9. Tables for Design Values, Joist Sizing, and Grade Selection
10. Plywood
11. Glued, Laminated Construction
2. 2B. Heating, Ventilating, and Air-Conditioning Space Allowances
1. How to Do Preliminary Sizing of Mechanical Equipment Space
1. Rules of Thumb
 1. Formulas for Mechanical Equipment Space
2. Fan rooms
2. How to Estimate Duct Sizes
3. Ventilation Requirements
1. Attic Ventilation for Moisture Control
2. Crawl Space Ventilation
3. 2C. Plumbing
1. Minimum Plumbing Fixtures
2. Water Pipe Sizing Using Tables
3. Procedures for Sizing
1. Sizing for Flushometer Valves
2. Sizing Systems with Hot Water Piping
1. Alternate Method of Sizing Systems with Hot Water Piping
4. How to Calculate the Required Size of Drainage Piping
5. How to Calculate the Required Sizing of Rainwater Piping
1. Sizing of Gutters
2. Sizing of Vertical Rainwater Piping
3. Sizing of Horizontal Rainwater Piping
6. Plumbing Pipe Sizes
4. 2D. Fire Protection
1. How to Determine Required Number of Sprinklers and Their Location
2. Maximum Spacing Between Lines and Sprinklers
5. 2E. Electrical Data
1. Formula for Ohm’s Law for AC Circuits:
2. Formula for Power in AC Circuits:
1. Example
2. Energy Formula
3. Sizes of Metallic Conduit
4. Maximum Number of Conductors Allowed in Conduit
5. Conditions
6. 2F. Illumination
1. Measuring Light and Illumination Terms
1. Conversion Factors of Units of Illumination
1. FORMULAS
1. Inverse Square Law
2. Cosine Law
2. How to Select the Recommended Illuminance Level
3. How to Calculate Number of Luminaires Required
1. Light Loss Factor (LLF)
2. Luminaire Dirt Depreciation (LDD)
3. Room Surface Dirt
4. Lamp Selection and Surface Reflection Recommendations
7. 2G. Acoustics
1. How to Use Basic Acoustic Formulas
2. Addition of Decibels of Uncorrelated Sounds
3. How to Calculate Noise Reduction Between Spaces
4. How to Calculate Noise Reduction Within a Space
5. How to Calculate Reverberation Time
1. Rules of Thumb
8. 2H. Vertical Transportation
1. Elevator Selection
1. Rules of Thumb
2. Determining Escalator Space Requirements
4. 3. Energy Standards
1. 3A. Heat Loss Calculations
1. Common Heat Loss Terms
2. Heat Loss Through the Building Envelope
1. Formula That Includes Framing Members and Insulated Areas
3. How to Calculate Heat Loss Through Infiltration
4. Requirements for Building Envelope Components
2. 3B. Heat Gain Calculations
1. How to Calculate Heat Gains Through the Building Envelope
2. How to Calculate Heat Gains Through Glazing
3. How to Calculate Gains from Infiltration and Ventilation
4. How to Calculate Gains from Occupancy
3. 3C. Passive Solar Design
1. Common Solar Formulas and Their Terms
2. Schematic Design Estimates of Collector Area and Thermal Mass
1. Rule of Thumb
3. Design Procedures for Design Development Phase
1. Calculating the Building Load Coefficient (BLC)
2. Determining the Solar Collector Area
4. Effect of Changing System Variables on Performance
5. Preliminary Design, Summary Guidelines Related to Several Variables
1. Direct Gain Systems
2. Thermal Storage Wall Systems
4. 3D. Daylighting
1. Daylighting with Sidelighting Calculations
1. Tables Showing Coefficients of Utilization
2. Tables Showing Coefficients of Utilization and V Factors for Venetian Blinds
2. How to Factor in Overhangs
3. How to Calculate Sun Position
4. Shading Devices
5. Sources for More Information
1.  
5. 3E. Climate
1. Climatic Data for Selected Cities in the U.S.
5. 4. Building Components
1. 4A. Concrete
1. Standards for Concrete Tolerances
2. 4B. Masonry
1. Properties and Coursing of Brick
2. Tables Showing Properties of Limestone and Marble
3. Tables for Selecting Masonry Based on Weathering Requirements
4. Tables Showing Sizes, Tolerances, and Finishes of Building Stone
5. Tables Showing Properties and Thermal Values of Masonry Walls
6. Table Showing Fireplace Opening Recommendations
3. 4C. Metals
4. 4D. Non-Structural Wood Applications
1. Shelf Deflection
2. Table Showing Selection of Wood for Interior Applications
3. Seasoning of Wood and Dimensional Changes
5. 4E. Thermal and Moisture Protection
1. Table Showing Shingles
2. Table Showing How to Select the Correct R Value of Building Insulation
3. Table Showing Guidelines for Selecting Sealants
 6. 4F. Doors and Windows
1. Tables Showing Door and Hardware Selection
2. Tables Showing Selection and Design Guidelines for Glass
7. 4G. Finishes
1. Tables Showing Flooring
2. Tables Relating to Ceramic Tile
6. 5. Reference Data
1.  
1. Conversion Factors
1. Equilateral Triangle
2. Parallelogram
3. Trapezoid
4. Ellipse
5. Parabola
6. Regular Polygons

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https://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/art_movements/impressionism.htm

ART APPRECIATION. This course is an exploration of visual art forms and their cultural connections for the student with little
experience in the visual arts. It includes a brief study of art history and in depth studies of the elements, media, and methods used in
creative processes and thought.

“learning architecture is not a rocket science, but its all about good observation. Things are always around
us, what we need to cultivate is the skill to observe ideas, techniques and skills around us to learn from them,
at no cost”. So this would always be the best teacher for an architect.

Introduction to Art Appreciation and Techniques

This course introduces you to the basics of art appreciation: definitions and roles of the artist, visual thinking, artistic
elements and principles of the visual language, and critical perspectives. (and how art speaks.)
What will I learn?
Art definitions, artistic roles and visual thinking

 Define art within a cultural perspective.

 Explain the difference between objective and subjective.
 Explain the different roles art plays within different cultures.
 Define the term subject matter.
 Define the categories realistic, abstract, and non-objective.
 Recognize, evaluate, and describe artistic styles.
 Discuss the meaning of aesthetics and its relationship to cultural conventions.
 Identify and discuss issues of visual awareness.

The artistic process

 Describe specific processes used by visual artists.

 Compare and contrast art as a social activity and a singular creative act.
 Identify and discuss historical forms of artistic training.
  Describe the cultural ties to artistic process and training.

The visual language: artistic elements and principles

 Define and describe artistic elements.

 Translate a realistic artwork into an abstract composition.
 Discuss compositional constructs and their effectiveness in the artistic process.
 Using the language of art, compare and contrast artworks from disparate cultures.
 Define and describe the artistic principles.
 Translate a realistic artwork into an abstract composition.
 Discuss compositional constructs and their effectiveness in the artistic process.
 Using the language of artistic principles, compare and contrast artworks from disparate cultures.

How art speaks

 Explain the meaning of both form and content.

 Undertake comparative descriptions of form and content.
 Identify the three levels of meaning in works of art.
 Identify the use of iconography in art.
 Define the term “context,” and discuss its essential role in finding meaning in art.
 Describe the role of the critic.
 Identify and describe the six critical perspectives.
 Identify, research, integrate, and explain visual information concerning artworks and specific meaning.

The term art appreciation is referred to the knowledge of the general and everlasting qualities that classify all great
art. It is seen used to refer to the exploration of visual art forms or the introduction of basic principles of visual
literacy.  It refers to analyzing the form of an artwork to general audiences to enhance their enjoyment of such works
of art. It may be analyzed without reference to subject matter, symbolism or historical context. Art appreciation can
be subjective depending on personal preference to aesthetics and form, or it can be based on several elements and
principle of design and also depends on social and cultural acceptance. Most of the modern art critics and art
historians draw back from this term, underrating art appreciation as demanding too little serious thought.

Art Appreciation is the knowledge and understanding of the universal and

timeless qualities that identify all great art. The more you appreciate and
understand the art of different eras, movements, styles and techniques, the
better you can develop, evaluate and improve your own artwork.

What is an Art Movement ?

 Art Movements are the collective titles that are given to artworks which
share the same artistic ideals, style, technical approach or timeframe.

 There is no fixed rule that determines what constitutes an art movement.

The artists associated with one movement may adhere to strict guiding
principles, whereas those who belong to another may have little in
common.
  Art Movements are simply a historical convenience for grouping together
artists of a certain period or style so that they may be understood within
a specific context.

 Art Movements are usually named retrospectively by art critics or

historians and their titles are often witty or sarcastic nicknames pulled
from a bad review.

 Grouping artists of similar interests or styles into Art Movements is mainly

a characteristic of Western Art.

 Art Movements are essentially a 20th century development when there

was a greater variety of styles than at any other period in the history of
art.

Art Movements and Styles

Art Movements are convenient terms for classifying artists of a certain period

or style. They are simply historical titles which are usually dubbed
retrospectively by art critics or historians and their titles are often witty or
sarcastic nicknames pulled from a bad review.

Italian Renaissance Art

 Italian Renaissance Art
Introduction

 Italian Renaissance Art

Naturalism

 Italian Renaissance Art

Humanism

 Italian Renaissance Art

Fresco Painting

 Italian Renaissance Art

Tempera Painting

 Italian Renaissance Art

Oil Painting
 

The Italian Renaissance was a 'rebirth' of Classical values in art, literature and

philosophy. It was a period of artistic development in Western Art that
stretched from the revival of naturalism in the art of Giotto at the end of the
13th century to the expressive forms of Mannerism in the art of Michelangelo
at the start of the 16th century. Its influence spread across Europe and gave
rise to the cultural and scientific ideas that shaped artistic thought for the next
five hundred years.

The term 'Renaissance', which means 'rebirth' in French, was coined in 1855 by
Jules Michelet in his nineteen-volume masterpiece 'Histoire de France'.

The Key Elements of Italian Renaissance Art

 During the 14th century many Italians believed that the barbarous cultures of
the Dark and Early Middle Ages had discarded the high artistic standards set
by the ancient Romans and Greeks. Therefore, in order to restore these lost
ideals, it was necessary for art to retrace its steps to find a new path to
progress. This quest led to a revival of certain artistic principles from the
classical era which were merged with contemporary ideas to form the key
elements of art during the Italian Renaissance. Among the most important of
these were:

Naturalism: A search for the perfection of form that was inspired by the
naturalism of Classical sculpture.

Humanism: The influence of the philosophy of Classical humanism which is

revealed in the gradual shift from religious to secular subject matter in art.

Perspective Drawing: The development of perspective drawing as the

standard means of organizing the spatial depth of a picture.
New Media and Techniques: The development of new media and techniques
which were essential to achieve a greater naturalism in art.

The development of Italian Renaissance art can be broken down into four
distinct stages - the Proto Renaissance, the Early Renaissance, the High
Renaissance and the Venetian Renaissance.

The Proto Renaissance

The Proto Renaissance is the name given to that uncertain period of

transition in Italian art as the creative influence of the Byzantine
tradition began to decline. Artists saw the need for a more relevant art form
that reflected the aspirations of an ambitious Italy, desperate to emerge from
the stagnation of its medieval past.

During the Proto Renaissance, there was a gradual development of naturalism

in Italian art which was inspired by the values of Classical humanism and the
anatomical beauty of Classical sculpture. You can see the start of this process
when you compare two paintings by Duccio and Giotto.

In Duccio's 'Maestà', the huge altarpiece that he painted for Siena Cathedral,
the artist still has one foot stuck in the flat frontal conventions of Byzantine
composition. The other tries to free itself through the greater naturalism of the
figures, as they turn to focus on the Christ child or, in a few distracted cases,
on one another.

 In Giotto's 'Betrayal of Christ', a scene from his fresco cycle of the Life of Christ
in the Arena Chapel in Padua, the naturalism of his figures and their layered
composition is turned up a notch to let the dramatic narrative unfold in a more
naturalistic space. The figures have a greater three-dimensional form, more
expressive body language and eye contact, with a particular focus on the
revealing look between Jesus and Judas, just at the moment of his betrayal.

 
The main artists associated with the Proto Renaissance are:

 Giotto di Bondonne (c.1267-1337) - Florence

 Duccio di Buoninsegna (c.1255/60-1319) - Sienna
 Simone Martini (1284-1344) - Sienna
 Ambrogio Lorenzetti (c.1290-1352) - Sienna
 Pietro Lorenzetti (c.1280-1348) - Sienna

The Early Renaissance

The Early Renaissance is mainly associated with the city of Florence as the
birthplace of the movement and as its main centre of artistic innovation. Early
Renaissance art introduces a greater degree of naturalism by placing an
emphasis on the observational drawing of the human figure. It also establishes
a more precise spatial organization of the figures, buildings and landscapes
through the invention of perspective drawing.

Humanistic subject matter, based on the study of Classical mythology, along

with portraiture and landscape evolved as acceptable subjects for art during
The Early Renaissance. This marks a shift from the exclusive position held by
religious art.

Some artists, for example Masaccio, Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca,
followed in the footsteps of Giotto by increasing the degree of naturalism in
painting within the traditional themes of Christian art. Others, such as Paolo
Uccello and Sandro Botticelli, advanced the same aesthetic ideals by using
secular subjects to reflect the historical and classical interests of their wealthy
patrons.

The main artists associated with the Early Renaissance are:

  Masaccio (1401-28) -Florence
 Donatello (1386-1466) - Florence
 Fra Angelico (1387-1455) - Florence
 Paulo Uccello (1397-1475) -Florence
 Fra Filippo Lippi (c.1406-69) - Florence
 Piero della Francesca (1416-92) - Umbria
 Andrea Mantegna (1430-1506) - Padua, Mantua
 Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) - Florence, Rome
 Pietro Perugino (1450-1523) - Umbria

The High Renaissance

The High Renaissance relocated to Rome which became the cultural capital of
the movement under the generous patronage of successive popes. Giorgio
Vasari writes about this period (which he calls the 'third manner') as the
highest peak of artistic achievement in which Renaissance art reached an
unsurpassed level of grandeur. Some individual artists and their patrons also
gained recognition for their local regions in Central Italy through the creation
of significant artworks.

The path to realism in art reached its peak in the sixteenth century with
Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael who achieved the classical ideals that
artists had pursued since the Proto-Renaissance. The general character of this
art was classical and intellectual in its concept, focusing on ideas relating to the
structure, form, proportion and the arrangement of figures within a formally
balanced composition.

Although these three great masters have come to personify the art of the High
Renaissance, each offers a unique character in their art that reflects their
individual personality:

 The intense observation, invention and psychological insights of

Leonardo.
  The graceful proportions, harmony and atmosphere in the paintings of
Raphael.
 The heroic power and form of the human figure in Michelangelo.

The main artists associated with the High Renaissance are:

 Leonardo da Vinci (1452 -1519) - Florence, Milan, France

 Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) - Florence, Rome
 Raffaello Sanzio (1483-1520) - Umbria, Rome
 Fra Bartolommeo (1472-1517) - Florence
 Dosso Dossi (c.1474/79-1542) - Ferrara
 Andrea del Sarto (1486-1530) – Florence
 Antonio Allegri Correggio (1489-1534) – Parma

The Venetian Renaissance

The Venetian Renaissance gave rise to a different character of art with a

stronger emphasis on color, pattern and atmosphere.

During the 15th century, Venice was the most prosperous city in Italy due to its
favorable location on the Adriatic Sea for trade with the vast Byzantine empire
to the East. It was a cosmopolitan port that traded in timber, exotic spices,
luxuriant lace and silks, Islamic porcelain and metalwork, and colorful minerals
and dyes. The city was built on a group of small islands separated by canals
whose shimmering reflections illuminate the area with a special quality of light.
This peculiar blend of economic, cultural and topographical conditions
combined to inspire paintings with a more vibrant use of color.

While artists from Florence and Rome were more concerned about using the
rational elements of line, shape and form to construct an ordered vision that
reflected their classical mindset, Venetian artists more naturally engaged with
the sensually charged elements of color and light to create an atmospheric
reflection of their world.
The artist responsible for transforming painting in Venice was Giovanni Bellini.
He experimented with the new technique of oil painting to create radiant
images whose atmosphere was modelled with luminous color and delicate
tone. His stunning landscape backgrounds rank among the greatest in the
history of art.

Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli) and Titian (Tiziano Vecelli), both students of

Bellini, took up their master's mantle developing the atmospheric and
expressive qualities of oil paint. When Bellini died, Titian went on to become
the supreme master of the Venetian Renaissance, excelling in every genre with
a style of spontaneous brushwork in his later paintings that unshackled
painting technique for future generations of artists.

The last master of the Venetian Renaissance was Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti).
His weightless figures, angular perspectives, dramatic lighting and vigorous
brushwork create a uniquely personal vision of his subjects which, although
criticized in his own time for their unorthodox technique, are appreciated
today for their individuality and freedom of expression.

The main artists associated with the Venetian Renaissance are:

 Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516) - Venice

 Giorgione (1476-1510) - Venice
 Titian (1487-1576) - Venice, Rome
 Tintoretto (1518-94) - Venice

Italian Renaissance Notes

 The Italian Renaissance was the 'rebirth' of Classical values in art that

influenced artistic thought for the next five hundred years.

 The Key Elements that formed the art of the Italian Renaissance

were Naturalism, Classical Humanism, perspective drawing and the
development of oil painting.
 The Main Painting Techniques of Italian Renaissance art were fresco for
large scale murals and tempera for smaller panel paintings, which was
later superceded by the greater versatility of oil paints.

 The Four Main Stages of the Italian Renaissance were the Proto
Renaissance, the Early Renaissance, the High Renaissance and the
Venetian Renaissance.

 The Proto Renaissance is the name given to the period of transition in

Italian art as Byzantine art began to decline and a more naturalistic style
evolved.

 The Early Renaissance introduced perspective drawing and a greater

naturalism to the drawing of the human figure.

 The High Renaissance achieved the classical ideals that artists had

pursued since the Proto-Renaissance.

 The Venetian Renaissance produced a more colorful atmospheric style

of painting that reflected the vibrant cultural character of the region.

Modern Art Movements

 Impressionism
 Post-Impressionism
 Cubism
 Fauvism
 Expressionism
 Dadaism

Impressionism was an art movement in France at the end of the 19th

century. The Impressionists were a group of artists renowned for their
innovative painting techniques and approach to using color in art.

Impressionism Notes
  The name 'Impressionism' comes from a sarcastic review of Monet's
painting, 'Impression, Sunrise' (1873), written by Louis Leroy in the
satirical magazine 'Le Charivari'.

 Impressionism was a style of painting that used a more scientific analysis

of color to capture the effects of light in nature.

 The main artists associated with Impressionism were Claude Monet,

Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley and
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec.

 The Impressionists painted with small strokes of pure colours which

mixed in the eye of the spectator when viewed from a distance.

 The Impressionists were the first group of artists to embrace painting 'en
plein air' (painting outside).

 The Impressionists had to paint quickly to capture the atmosphere of a

particular time of day or the effects of different weather conditions on the
landscape.

 The speed of the Impressionists' painting technique forced them to

sacrifice accurate line and detail in favour of atmospheric effect.

 The subject most suited to the Impressionist technique was landscape,

but they also painted portraits, still lifes and figure compositions.

 Impressionist compositions were strongly influenced by the development

of photography and the discovery of Japanese woodcuts.

 Impressionism is now seen as the first movement in modern art, and had
a huge influence on the development of art in the 20th century.

The Impressionist Artists

Many artists contributed to the first exhibition of French Impressionist painting in 1874 but Claude Monet (1840-1926),
Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Camille Pissarro (1831-1903), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Alfred Sisley (1839-99) and
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) were the main figures who formed the backbone of the
movement.
 Impressionist Painting Technique
Impressionism and Photography
Impressionism and Japanese Prints
Impressionism and Landscape Painting
Impressionism and Figure Composition
Impressionism and Still Life
Impressionism and The Salon - The Salon de Paris; The Salon des Refusées
Impressionism and Beyond

POST IMPRESSIONISM

Post Impressionism was not a formal movement or style. The Post

Impressionists were a few independent artists at the end of the 19th century
who rebelled against the limitations of Impressionism. They developed a range
of personal styles that focused on the emotional, structural, symbolic and
spiritual elements that they felt were missing from Impressionism. Their
combined contributions form the artistic roots of modern art for the next
eighty years.

Impressionism was the first movement in the canon of modern art. Like most
revolutionary styles it was gradually absorbed into the mainstream and its
limitations became frustrating to the succeeding generation. Artists such
as Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and Georges Seurat,
although steeped in the traditions of Impressionism, pushed the boundaries of
the style in different creative directions and in doing so laid the foundations
for the art of the 20th century. Their name was derived from the title of the
exhibition 'Manet and the Post-Impressionists' which was organized in London
by the English artist and critic Roger Fry in the winter of 1910-11. For historical
convenience these artists have been labeled as Post Impressionists but, apart
from their Impressionist influence, they don't have that much in common.
 PAUL GAUGUIN (1848-1903)
'The Yellow Christ', 1889 (oil on canvas)
  PAUL GAUGUIN (1848-1903)
'Tahitian Landscape', 1893 (oil on canvas)
 VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890)
'Wheatfield with Crows', 1890 (oil on canvas)
 PAUL CÉZANNE (1839-1906)
'The Château at Médan', 1880 (oil on canvas)
 GEORGES SEURAT(1859-1891)
Detail: 'A Sunday Afternoon on the Île de la Grande Jatte', 1884 (oil on canvas)
Post Impressionism Notes

  The Post Impressionists were a few independent artists at the end of the
19th century who rebelled against the limitations of Impressionism to
develop a range of personal styles that influenced the development of art
in the 20th century.

 The art of Paul Gauguin was a major influence in the development

of Fauvism.

 The art of Vincent Van Gogh was an influence on Expressionism in the

20th century.

 The art of Paul Cézanne was an influence on Cubism at the start of the
20th century.

 The analytical method of Seurat's Pointillism influenced those artists who

adopted more calculated approach to painting, particularly in the
development of abstract art.

CUBISM

Cubism was a truly revolutionary style of modern art developed by Pablo

Picasso and Georges Braques. It was the first style of abstract art which evolved
at the beginning of the 20th century in response to a world that was changing
with unprecedented speed. Cubism was an attempt by artists to revitalise the
tired traditions of Western art which they believed had run their course. The
Cubists challenged conventional forms of representation, such as perspective,
which had been the rule since the Italian Renaissance. Their aim was to
develop a new way of seeing which reflected the modern age.
In the four decades from 1870-1910, western society witnessed more
technological progress than in the previous four centuries. During this period,
inventions such as photography, cinematography, sound recording, the
telephone, the automobile and the airplane heralded the dawn of a new age.
The problem for artists at this time was how to reflect the modernity of the era
using the tired and trusted traditions that had served art for the last four
centuries. Photography had begun to replace painting as the tool for
documenting the age and for artists to sit illustrating cars, planes and images
of the new technologies was not exactly rising to the challenge. Artists needed
a more radical approach - a 'new way of seeing' that expanded the possibilities
of art in the same way that technology was extending the boundaries of
communication and travel. This new way of seeing was called Cubism - the first
abstract style of modern art. Picasso and Braque developed their ideas on
Cubism around 1907 in Paris and their starting point was a common interest in
the later paintings of Paul Cézanne.

Cubism Notes

 Cubism was invented around 1907 in Paris by Pablo Picasso and Georges
Braque.

 Cubism was the first abstract style of modern art.

 A Cubist painting ignores the traditions of perspective drawing and

shows you many views of a subject at one time.

 The Cubists introduced collage into painting.

 The Cubists were influenced by art from other cultures, particularly

African masks.

 There are two distinct phases of the Cubist Style: Analytical Cubism (pre
1912) and Synthetic Cubism (post 1912)
  Cubism influenced many other styles of modern art including
Orphism, Futurism,
Vorticism, Suprematism, Constructivism and Expressionism.

FAUVISM

Fauvism has its roots in the post-impressionist paintings of Paul Gauguin. It

was his use of symbolic color that pushed art towards the style of Fauvism.
Gauguin proposed that color had a symbolic vocabulary which could be used
to visually translate a range of emotions. In 'Vision after the Sermon' where
Gauguin depicts Jacob wrestling with an angel, he paints the background a flat
red to emphasise the mood and subject of the sermon: Jacob's spiritual battle
fought in a blood red field of combat. Gauguin believed that color had a
mystical quality that could express our feelings about a subject rather than
simply describe a scene. By breaking the established descriptive role that color
had in painting, he inspired the younger artists of his day to experiment with
new possibilities for color in art.

 Fauvism was a style of painting developed in France at the beginning of

the 20th century by Henri Matisse and André Derain.

 The artists who painted in this style were known as 'Les Fauves'.

 The title 'Les Fauves' (the wild beasts) came from a sarcastic remark by
the art critic Louis Vauxcelles.

 Les Fauves believed that color should be used to express the artist's
feelings about a subject, rather than simply to describe what it looks like.

 Fauvist paintings have two main characteristics: simplified drawing and

exaggerated color.

 Les Fauves were a great influence on German Expressionism.

EXPRESSIONISM
Expressionism is a term that embraces an early 20th century style of art, music
and literature that is charged with an emotional and spiritual vision of the
world.

 The 'self expression' in the art of Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch
inspired Expressionist artists in the 20th century.

 German Expressionism also drew inspiration from Fauvism, German

Gothic and 'primitive art'.

 German Expressionism was divided into two factions: Die Brücke and Der
Blaue Reiter

 Die Brücke (The Bridge) was an artistic community of young Expressionist

artists in Dresden. Their aim was to overthrow the conservative traditions
of German art. Their 'bridge' was the path to a new and better future for
German art.

 Der Blaue Reiter was a publication of essays on the Expressionist art

forms. The aim of Der Blaue Reiter exhibitions was to find the common
creative ground between these diverse art forms.

 After the various Expressionist groups disbanded, Expressionism spread

and evolved in the work of many individual artists across the world.

DADAISM

Dadaism or Dada was a form of artistic anarchy born out of disgust for the
social, political and cultural values of the time. It embraced elements of art,
music, poetry, theatre, dance and politics. Dada was not so much a style of art
like Cubism or Fauvism; it was more a protest movement with an anti-
establishment manifesto.

 Dada was a form of artistic anarchy that challenged  the social, political
and cultural values of the time.
 Dada embraced elements of art, music, poetry, theatre, dance and
politics.

 Dada aimed to create a climate in which art was unrestricted by

established values.

 Dada was anti-establishment and anti-art.

 The name 'Dada' means 'hobbyhorse' or the exclamation "Yes-Yes".

 The Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich was the birthplace of Dada.

 After the war the Dadaists relocated to Berlin, Cologne, Hanover and New
York.

 The Dadaists published 'manifestos' and magazines to  help

communicate their ideas.

 The Dadaists used techniques such as automatism, chance,

photomontage and assemblage.

 The Dadaists introduced the concept that an artwork could be a

temporary installation.

 The Dadaists expanded the boundaries and context of what was

considered acceptable as art.

 Several Dada exhibitions caused public outrage and were closed by the
authorities.

 Dada influenced the development of Surrealism, Action Painting, Pop Art,

Happenings, Installations and Conceptual Art.

 The main artists associated with Dada were Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara,
Marcel Janco, Richard Huelsenbeck, Jean (Hans) Arp, Raoul Hausmann,
Hannah Höch, John Heartfield, Kurt Schwitters, Johannes Baargeld,
Johannes Baader, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Hans Richter, Francis Picabia,
Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp.
 SURREALISM

Surrealism was the 20th century art movement that explored the hidden
depths of the 'unconscious mind'. The Surrealists rejected the rational world
as 'it only allows for the consideration of those facts relevant to our
experience'. [1] They sought a new kind of reality, a heightened reality that they
called 'surreality', which was found in the world of images drawn from their
dreams and imagination.

Surrealism was founded in Paris where many of the Dadaists had settled after
the Great War. It was originally a literary movement but its unusual imagery
was more suited to the visual arts and to those artists who were searching for a
more consistent approach to art as an antidote to the chaos of Dada.

Surrealism was similar in character to Dadaism as both were hostile to the

traditions of academic art and the values that it stood for. The main difference
between the two movements was in their method of opposition. While the
Dadaists were content to blast the establishment with a scattergun of
negativity, the Surrealists were in search of a more creative and positive
philosophy.

Surrealist Techniques

There is long list of Surrealist techniques that were devised to tap into the
'unconscious mind' and most of the artists explored a range of these in their
work. However, the essence of Surrealist art can be summarized in three basic
techniques:

 Automatism

 The Interpretation of Dreams

 The Juxtaposition of Unrelated Images

Surrealism Notes

 Surrealism was first defined by André Breton in the Surrealist Manifesto

of 1924.
 Surrealism was greatly influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud, the
founder of psychoanalysis.

 Surrealism was the 20th century art movement that sought to liberate
creativity from the limitations of rational thought.

 Surrealism explored the hidden depths of the 'unconscious mind'.

 The Surrealists saw their historical ancestors in artists like Hieronymus

Bosch, Giuseppe Archimboldo, Goya, Henry Fuseli, Gustave Moreau,
Odilon Redon and genres such as Folk, Primitive, Ethnic and what we now
call 'Outsider Art'.

 The most immediate influence of Surrealism was the Italian artist, Giorgio
de Chirico who developed a style of painting called 'Pittura Metafisica'
(Metaphysical Art).

 Automatism was the first Surrealist technique to be developed and the

artworks created through this method are mostly abstract in form.

 Automatism was pioneered by André Masson and developed by Max

Ernst and Joan Miro.

 The interpretation of dreams was a source of inspiration for many

Surrealist artists.

 Salvador Dali was the master of hallucinatory dreamscapes.

 Dali's illusionistic realism could subvert your senses and open your mind
to the irrational.

 The juxtaposition of disassociated images was a technique that Max Ernst

and René Magritte employed to generate a Surrealist reaction in the
mind of the spectator.

 The main artists associated with what we now call the 'Golden Age' of
Surrealism comprise André Masson, Max Ernst, Joan Miro, Salvador Dali
and René Magritte.
 POP ART

Pop Art was the art of popular culture. It was the visual art movement that
characterized a sense of optimism during the post war consumer boom of the
1950's and 1960's. It coincided with the globalization of pop music and youth
culture, personified by Elvis and the Beatles. Pop Art was brash, young and fun
and hostile to the artistic establishment. It included different styles of painting
and sculpture from various countries, but what they all had in common was an
interest in mass-media, mass-production and mass-culture.

 Pop Art was a brash, young and fun art movement of the 1960's.

 Pop Art coincided with the globalization of Pop Music and youth culture.

 Pop Art included different styles of painting and sculpture but all had a
common interest in mass-media, mass-production and mass-culture.

 Although Pop Art started in Britain, it is essentially an American

movement.

 Pop art was strongly influence by the ideas of the Dada movement.

 Pop Art in America was a reaction against Abstract Expressionism.

 The art of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg is seen as a bridge

between Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art.

 The artist who personifies Pop Art more than any other is Andy Warhol.

 Warhol's paintings of Marilyn Monroe are the most famous icons of Pop
Art.

 Roy Lichtenstein developed an instantly recognizable style of Pop Art

inspired by the American comic strip.

 Claes Oldenburg was the greatest sculptor of the Pop Art movement,
creating many large scale public works.
 A knowledge of The Visual Elements of Art helps you to understand
how artworks are created. It will assist you in breaking an artwork down
to its component
parts (line, shape, tone, color, pattern, texture, form) so that you may
appreciate the skill and imagination that the artist has used in composing
it.

The Visual Elements of Art

Line - Shape - Tone - Color - Pattern - Texture - Form

The Visual Elements of line, shape, tone, color, pattern, texture and
form are the building blocks of composition in art. When we analyse any
drawing, painting, sculpture or design, we examine these component parts to
see how they combine to create the overall effect of the artwork.

The Visual Elements have a relationship to one another:

 Most images begin their life as line drawings.

 Lines cross over one another to form shapes.
 Shapes can be filled with tone and color, or repeated to create pattern.
 A shape may be rendered with a rough surface to create a texture.
 A shape may be projected into three dimensions to create form.

Each of the elements may also be used individually to stress their own
particular character in an artwork. Different elements can express qualities
such as movement and rhythm, space and depth, growth and structure,
harmony and contrast, noise and calm and a wide range of emotions that
make up the subjects of great art.

Line is the foundation of all drawing. It is the first and most versatile of the
visual elements of art. Line in an artwork can be used in many different ways. It
can be used to suggest shape, pattern, form, structure, growth, depth,
distance, rhythm, movement and a range of emotions.

We have a psychological response to different types of lines:

  Curved lines suggest comfort and ease
 Horizontal lines suggest distance and calm
 Vertical lines suggest height and strength
 Jagged lines suggest turmoil and anxiety

The way we draw a line can convey different expressive qualities:

 Freehand lines can express the personal energy and mood of the artist
 Mechanical lines can express a rigid control
 Continuous lines can lead the eye in certain directions
 Broken lines can express the ephemeral or the insubstantial
 Thick lines can express strength
 Thin lines can express delicacy

 Shape can be natural or man-made, regular or irregular, flat (2-dimensional)

or solid (3-dimensional), representational or abstract, geometric or organic,
transparent or opaque, positive or negative, decorative or symbolic, colored,
patterned or textured.

The Perspective of Shapes: The angles and curves of shapes appear to

change depending on our viewpoint. The technique we use to describe this
change is called perspective drawing.

The Behaviour of Shapes: Shapes can be used to control your feelings in the
composition of an artwork:

 Squares and Rectangles can portray strength and stability

 Circles and Ellipses can represent continuous movement
 Triangles can lead the eye in an upward movement
 Inverted Triangles can create a sense of imbalance and tension

Tone is the lightness or darkness of a color. The tonal values of an artwork can
be adjusted to alter its expressive character.

Tone can be used:

 to create a contrast of light and dark.

  to create the illusion of form.
 to create a dramatic or tranquil atmosphere.
 to create a sense of depth and distance.
 to create a rhythm or pattern within a composition.

Color is the visual element that has the strongest effect on our emotions. We
use color to create the mood or atmosphere of an artwork.

There are many different approaches to the use of color:

 Color as light
 Color as tone
 Color as pattern
 Color as form
 Color as symbol
 Color as movement
 Color as harmony
 Color as contrast
 Color as mood

 Pattern is made by repeating or echoing the elements of an artwork to

communicate a sense of balance, harmony, contrast, rhythm or
movement.

 There are two basic types of pattern in art: Natural Pattern and Man-

Made Pattern. Both natural and man-made patterns can be regular or
irregular, organic or geometric, structural or decorative, positive or
negative and repeating or random.

 Natural Pattern: Pattern in art is often based on the inspiration we get

from observing the natural patterns that occur in nature. We can see
these in the shape of a leaf and the branches of a tree, the structure of a
 crystal, the spiral of a shell, the symmetry of a snowflake and the
camouflage and signalling patterns on animals, fish and insects.

 Man-Made Pattern: Pattern in art is used for both structural and

decorative purposes. For example, an artist may plan the basic structure
of an artwork by creating a compositional pattern of lines and shapes.
Within that composition he/she may develop its visual elements to create
a more decorative pattern of color, tone and texture across the work.

 Texture is the surface quality of an artwork - the roughness or

smoothness of the material from which it is made.

 We experience texture in two ways: optically (through sight)

and physically (through touch).

 Optical Texture: An artist may use his/her skillful painting technique to

create the illusion of texture. For example, in the detail from a traditional
Dutch still life above you can see remarkable verisimilitude (the
appearance of being real) in the painted insects and drops of moisture on
the silky surface of the flower petals.

 Physical Texture: An artist may paint with expressive brushstrokes whose

texture conveys the physical and emotional energy of both the artist and
his/her subject. They may also use the natural texture of their materials to
suggest their own unique qualities such as the grain of wood, the
grittiness of sand, the flaking of rust, the coarseness of cloth and the
smear of paint.

 Ephemeral Texture: This is a third category of textures whose fleeting

forms are subject to change like clouds, smoke, flames, bubbles and
liquids.

 Form is the physical volume of a shape and the space that it occupies.

 Form can be representational or abstract.

  Form generally refers to sculpture, 3D design and architecture but may
also relate to the illusion of 3D on a 2D surface.

Three-Dimensional Form can be modelled (added form), carved (subtracted

form) and constructed (built form). It can be created from sculptural materials
like clay, wax, plaster, wood, stone, concrete, cast and constructed metal,
plastics, resins, glass and mixed media. It may also be kinetic, involving light
and movement generated by natural, mechanical and electronic means. More
recently the CAD process of 3D printing has be been added to the list of
sculptural processes.

Two-Dimensional Form constructs the illusion of 3D in 2D media by a skilful

manipulation of the visual elements. Perspective drawing, trompe l'oeil [1], 3D
computer graphics programs and holograms are examples of 2D form.

Theory Of Architecture

The term theory of architecture was originally simply the accepted translation of the

Latin term ratiocinatio as used by Vitruvius, a Roman architect-engineer of the 1st
century CE, to differentiate intellectual from practical knowledge in architectural education,
but it has come to signify the total basis for judging the merits of buildings or building
projects. Such reasoned judgments are an essential part of the architectural creative
process. A building can be designed only by a continuous creative, intellectual dialectic
between imagination and reason in the mind of each creator.
A variety of interpretations has been given to the term architectural theory by those
who have written or spoken on the topic in the past. Before 1750
every comprehensive treatiseor published lecture course on architecture could
appropriately be described as a textbook on architectural theory. But, after the changes
associated with the Industrial Revolution, the amount of architectural knowledge that could
be acquired only by academic study increased to the point where a complete synthesis
became virtually impossible in a single volume.
The historical evolution of architectural theory is assessable mainly from
manuscripts and published treatises, from critical essays and commentaries, and from the
surviving buildings of every epoch. It is thus in no way a type of historical study that can
reflect accurately the spirit of each age and in this respect is similar to the history of
philosophy itself. Some architectural treatises were intended to publicize novel concepts
rather than to state widely accepted ideals. The most idiosyncratic theories could (and
often did) exert wide and sometimes beneficialinfluence, but the value of these influences
is not necessarily related to the extent of this acceptance.
The analysis of surviving buildings provides guidance that requires great caution,
since, apart from the impossibility of determining whether or not any particular group of
buildings (intact or in ruins) constitutes a reliable sample of the era, any such analyses will
usually depend on preliminary evaluations of merit and will be useless unless the extent to
which the function, the structure, and the detailing envisaged by the original builders can
be correctly re-established. Many eruditestudies of antique theories are misleading
because they rest on the assumption that the original character and appearance of
fragmentary ancient Greek and Hellenistic architectural environments can be adequately
deduced from verbal or graphic “reconstructions.” Even when buildings constructed before
1500 remain intact, the many textbooks dealing with antique and medieval theories of
architecture seldom make qualitative distinctions and generally imply that all surviving
antique and medieval buildings were good, if not absolutely perfect.
Nevertheless, the study of the history of architectural philosophy, like that of the
history of general philosophy, not only teaches what past generations thought but can help
individuals decide how they themselves should act and judge. For those desirous of
establishing a viable theory of architecture for their own era, it is generally agreed that
great stimulus can be found in studying historical evidence and in speculating on the
ideals and achievements of those who created this evidence.

Distinction between the history and theory of architecture

The distinction between the history and theory of architecture did not emerge until the mid-
18th century. Indeed, the establishment of two separate academic disciplines was not
even nominal until 1818, when separate professorships with these titles were established at
the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Even then, however, the distinction was seldom scrupulously
maintained by either specialist. It is impossible to discuss meaningfully the buildings of the
immediate past without discussing the ideals of those who built them, just as it is impossible to
discuss the ideals of bygone architects without reference to the structures they designed.
Nevertheless, since any two disciplines that are inseparably complementary can at the same time be
logically distinguishable, it may be asserted that this particular distinction first
became manifest in Les Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grèce (“The Ruins of the Most
Beautiful Monuments of Greece”), written in 1758 by a French architecture student, Julien-David
LeRoy. Faced with the problem of discussing Athenian buildings constructed in the time of
Vitruvius, he decided to discuss them twice, by treating them separately under two different
headings. Before this date, “history” was of architectural importance only as a means of justifying,
by reference to classical mythology, the use of certain otherwise irrational elements, such
as caryatids. Even Jacques-François Blondel, who in 1750 was probably the first architectural
teacher to devote a separate section of his lecture courses to “history,” envisaged the subject mainly
as an account of the literary references to architecture found in antique manuscripts—an attitude
already developed by the 15th-century Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti.

The modern concept of architectural history was in fact simply part of a larger trend
stimulated by the leading writers of the French Enlightenment, an 18th-century intellectual
movement that developed from interrelated conceptions of reason, nature, and man. As a result of
discussing constitutional law in terms of its evolution, every branch of knowledge (especially the
natural and social sciences) was eventually seen as a historical sequence. In the philosophy of
architecture, as in all other kinds of philosophy, the introduction of the historical method not
only facilitated the teaching of these subjects but also militated against the elaboration of
theoretical speculation. Just as those charged with the responsibility of lecturing on ethics found it
very much easier to lecture on the history of ethics, rather than to discuss how a person should or
should not act in specific contemporary circumstances, so those who lectured on architectural
theory found it easier to recite detailed accounts of what had been done in the past, rather than to
recommend practical methods of dealing with current problems.

Moreover, the system of the Paris École des Beaux-Arts (which provided virtually the only
organized system of architectural education at the beginning of the 19th century) was radically
different from that of the prerevolutionary Académie Royale d’Architecture. Quatremère de
Quincy, an Italophile archaeologist who had been trained as a sculptor, united the school of
architecture with that of painting and sculpture to form a single organization, so that, although
architectural students were ultimately given their own professor of theory, the whole theoretical
background of their studies was assimilated to the other two fine arts by lecture courses and
textbooks such as Hippolyte Taine’s Philosophie de l’art, Charles Blanc’s Grammaire des arts du
dessin, and Eugène Guillaume’s Essais sur la théorie du dessin.

Similarly, whereas before 1750 the uniformity of doctrine (the basic premises of which were
ostensibly unchanged since the Renaissance) allowed the professor of architecture to discuss
antique and 16th-century buildings as examples of architectural theory and to ignore medieval
buildings completely, the mid-19th-century controversy between “medievalists” and “classicists”
(the “Battle of the Styles”) and the ensuing faith in Eclecticism turned the studies of architectural
history into courses on archaeology.

Thus, the attitudes of those scholars who, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, wished to
expound a theory of architecture that was neither a philosophy of art nor a history of architecture
tended to become highly personal, if not idiosyncratic. By 1950 most theoretical writings
concentrated almost exclusively on visual aspects of architecture, thereby identifying the theory of
architecture with what, before 1750, would have been regarded as simply that aspect that Vitruvius
called venustas (i.e., “beauty”). This approach did not necessarily invalidate the conclusions
reached, but many valuable ideas then put forward as theories of architecture were only partial
theories, in which it was taken for granted that theoretical concepts concerning construction and
planning were dealt with in other texts.
Distinction between the theory of architecture and the theory of art
Before embarking on any discussion as to the nature of the philosophy of architecture, it is
essential to distinguish between two mutually exclusive theories that affect the whole course of any
such speculation. The first theory regards the philosophy of architecture as the application of a
general philosophy of art to a particular type of art. The second, on the contrary, regards the
philosophy of architecture as a separate study that, though it may well have many characteristics
common to the theories of other arts, is generically distinct.
 The first notion (i.e., that there exists a generic theory of art of which the theory of
architecture is a specific extension) has been widely held since the mid-16th century, when the
artist and writer Giorgio Vasari published in his Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed
architettori italiani… (The Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Painters, Sculptors and Architects…)
his assertion that painting, sculpture, and architecture are all of common ancestry in that all depend
on the ability to draw. This idea became particularly prevalent among English-speaking theorists,
since the word design is used to translate both disegno (“a drawing”) and concetto (“a mental
plan”). But its main influence on Western thought was due to Italophile Frenchmen, after Louis
XIV had been induced to establish in Rome a French Academy modelled on Italian art academies.
As a result of the widespread influence of French culture in the 17th and 18th centuries, the concept
of the beaux arts (literally “beautiful arts” but usually translated into English as “fine arts”) was
accepted by Anglo-Saxon theorists as denoting a philosophical entity, to the point where it was
generally forgotten that in France itself the architectural profession remained totally aloof from the
Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture until they were forced to amalgamate after the French
Revolution.

This theory of fine art might not have been so widely adopted but for the development
of aesthetics, elaborated after 1750. Thus, when academies of fine art were being established
successively in Denmark, Russia, and England on the model of the French Academy in Rome,
German philosophers were gradually asserting (1) that it was possible to elaborate a theory of
beauty without reference to function (Zweck); (2) that any theory of beauty should be applicable to
all sensory perceptions, whether visual or auditory; and (3) that the notion of beauty was only one
aspect of a much larger concept of life-enhancing sensory stimuli.
The alternative theory (i.e., that a philosophy of architecture is unique and can therefore be
evolved only by specific reference to the art of building) will be dealt with below with reference to
the traditional triad usually cited in the formula coined, by the English theorist  Sir Henry Wotton,
in his book The Elements of Architecture, namely “commodity, firmness, and delight.”

Generally speaking, writers on aesthetics have been noticeably reluctant to use architectural

examples in support of speculations as to the nature of their general theories, but references to
buildings have been used in most “philosophies of art” ever since the German
philosophers Immanuel Kant and G.W.F. Hegel first popularized the philosophical discipline. Kant,
in his Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790; Eng. trans., Critique of Judgment, 1951), distinguished between
what he termed free beauty (pulchritudo vaga) and dependent beauty (pulchritudo adhaerens). He
classified architecture as dependent beauty, saying that in a thing that is possible only by means of
design (Absicht)—a building or even an animal—the regularity consisting in symmetry must
express the unity of the intuitionthat accompanies the concept of purpose (Zweck), and this
regularity belongs to cognition. Nevertheless, he claimed that a flower should be classified as free
beauty (where the judgment of taste is “pure”) “because hardly anyone but a botanist knows what
sort of thing a flower ought to be; and even he, though recognizing in the flower the reproductive
organ of the plant, pays no regard to this natural purpose if he is passing judgment on the flower by
taste.” What Kant’s reaction would have been to a modern plastic imitation flower is impossible to
guess, but it will readily be perceived (1) why those who, in the 19th century, accepted the notion
that beauty in architecture is pulchritudo adhaerens felt such antipathy toward “shams,” (2) how
the distinction between “pure art” and “functional art” (Zweckkunst) became confused, and (3) why
there arose a tendency to pursue definitions of “pure beauty” or “pure art” without specifically
referring to the function and structure of any particular class of beautiful or artistic objects, such as
buildings.

This latter tendency was reinforced when the French philosopher Victor Cousin, writing in
1835, classified the history of philosophy under three distinct headings: the true, the beautiful, and
the good. The ensuing acceptance of the idea that beauty was to be studied independently of truth
and goodness produced a tendency not merely to regard beauty as something added to a building
(rather than conceptually inseparable from the truth and goodness of its structure and function) but
to regard beauty as limited to visual and emotional qualities.

In the first half of the 20th century, philosophers grew less dogmatic about aesthetics. But its
influence on theories of architecture became stronger because of the popular view that sculpture
was essentially nonrepresentational. Thus, although the assertion that “aesthetically, architecture is
the creation of sculpture big enough to walk about inside” was meaningful in the 20th century, it
would have seemed nonsensical to any architectural theorist living before 1900, when sculpture
was invariably thought of either as representational or as a carved refinement of load-bearing wood
or stone. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/architecture/Theory-of-architecture)

Functionalism, in architecture, the doctrine that the form of a building should be

determined by practical considerations such as use, material, and structure, as
distinct from the attitude that plan and structure must conform to a preconceived
picture in the designer’s mind.

Although Functionalism is most closely associated with modern architecture (and to

some extent with modern furniture), it is by no means an exclusively modern conception.
Apart from the fact that even the most fanciful architecture has practical functions to fulfill,
there have been times in the past when functional considerations have been unusually
dominant, and the artistic character of the buildings of such times has been directly
derived from the way the challenge of function has been met. Historical European
examples include the military architecture of the early Middle Ages, certain periods of
Gothic ecclesiastical architecture, and much of the industrial and commercial architecture
of the 19th century. The expression “the functional tradition” is applied to this emphasis on
functionalism, which appears and reappears throughout the history of architecture
independently of changes in style.
The Functionalist creed, however, is especially associated with the modern style of
architecture, which developed during the second quarter of the 20th century as a result of
changes in building technique, new types of buildings required, and changing cultural
and aesthetic ideals. In fact, as architects began to show discontent with the historical
revivalism that had been paramount in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a type of
architecture based on the clear outward expression of the function of the building was
bound to develop. The slogan “form follows function,” coined in the 1880s by one of the
pioneers of modern architectural design, Louis Sullivan, and the dictum of the architect Le
Corbusier “a house is a machine for living,” which dates from 1920, both state the idea
uncompromisingly. The latter assertion, however, although typical of the polemical
statements made in the 1920s, when the battle for a more functional approach to
architecture was being most strenuously fought, was not meant literally, as other
statements of Le Corbusier indicate. The supporters of Functionalism in architecture have
on occasion asserted that good architecture is automatically produced by the fulfillment of
practical needs; yet in this fulfillment there remain many alternatives among which the
architect must choose, and such a choice may determine the difference between good
and bad architecture.
Le Corbusier’s and similar statements do, nevertheless, reflect the insistence of the
modern architect that the process of design begins with an analysis of the building’s
function and of the best technical means of meeting it and that aesthetic character,
instead of being superimposed, emerges as a part of the same process. For this reason,
the emphasis on Functionalism in modern architecture implies a reunion of architecture
and engineering, which had become separated in the 19th century.

Functionalism
The notion of functional art, most actively promoted by German writers and termed by
them Zweckkunst, is most appropriately related to architectural theory under three headings, namely
(1) the idea that no building is beautiful unless it properly fulfills its function, (2) the idea that if a
building fulfills its function it is ipso facto beautiful, and (3) the idea that, since form relates to
function, all artifacts, including buildings, are a species of industrial, or applied, art (known in
German as Kunstgewerbe).
The first proposition will be dealt with later under the heading utilitas. The second
proposition, though widely popularized through the publication of the French architect Jean-
Nicholas-Louis Durand’s lectures delivered during the economic depression of the beginning of the
19th century, has had little influence except during similar periods of economic depression. The
third proposition has, however, had a wide influence, since, unlike the second proposition, it is
closely akin to (rather than antagonistic toward) the theory of aesthetics, in that it regards all
the visual arts as generically related.
This last theory seems to have been popularized, if not originated, by Gottfried Semper, an
architect from Dresden who, after finding political asylum in England (where he then helped to
organize the Great Exhibition of 1851), published a book in German on arts and crafts that seems to
have been influential not only in Germany but also in areas of the United States heavily populated
by German-speaking immigrants, such as Chicago. Later, in 20th-century Germany,
the Bauhaus(officially Hochschule für Gestaltung; Academy for Form Giving) was ostensibly
intended to train students in separate creative disciplines, but its didactic method was based on the
assumption—implied by the general introductory courses—that, if one could design anything, one
could design everything. In the explanatory words of its founder, the architect Walter Gropius,
“The approach to any kind of design—a chair, a building, a whole town or a regional plan—should
be essentially identical.”
The art of building
The notion that architecture is the art of building was implied by Leon Battista Alberti in the
first published treatise on the theory of architecture, De re aedificatoria (1485; Eng. trans., Ten
Books on Architecture, 1955); although he was a layman writing for other lay scholars, he rejected,
by his title, the idea that architecture was simply applied mathematics, as had been claimed
by Vitruvius. The specific denotation of architecture as “the art of building,” however, seems to be
a French tradition, deriving perhaps from the medieval status of master masons, as understood by
the 16th-century architect Philibert Delorme. This definition occurs in most
French treatises published before 1750, and, although the humanistic and antiquarian aspects of
fine building were rarely questioned after the Renaissance, the distinction between “architecture”
and “building” never had any appreciable significance before Renaissance ideas succumbed to the
combined assault of “aesthetics” and the Gothic Revival movement.
Before the 18th century it was generally accepted that the theory of architecture was
concerned mainly with important private or civic buildings such as palaces, mansions, churches,
and monasteries. Buildings such as these required the superior skill that only book learning could
provide, and so relatively little attention was given, in theoretical writings, to simple and
straightforward buildings that could be competently built in accordance with local traditions by
unlettered craftsmen. But, with the expansion of the architectural profession, with the perversion of
the idea that social prestige was symbolized by ornamentation, with the wider distribution of
wealth, and with the growing urge toward individualism in an increasingly egalitarian society, the
real distinction between these two kinds of buildings was obscured, and in its place was substituted
an antithesis. Henceforth, “building” was associated with the notion of cheapness, whereas
“architecture” was associated with what John Ruskin would have called “sacrifice” (but which
his antagonists would have called conspicuous waste). A distinction was made between the
respective attitudes of “art architects” and practical-minded civil engineers. This distinction
persisted because of the different methods of training candidates for the two professions. Whereas a
fledgling engineering student is seldom asked to design a whole structure (such as a bridge),
architectural students begin by designing whole structures and proceed with structures of increasing
size and complexity, either graphically or by means of small-scale models.
It was doubtless the difference in educational methods that prompted Le Corbusier to state:
The engineer, inspired by the law of economy and led by mathematical calculation, puts us in accord with the
laws of the universe. He achieves harmony. The architect, by his arrangement of forms, achieves an order
which is a pure creation of his spirit…it is then that we experience beauty.
Yet some 80 years previously the English critic James Fergusson had felt obliged to qualify,
with a comparable distinction, his enthusiasm for the new architecture of the Crystal Palace, by
observing that “it has not a sufficient amount of decoration about its parts to take it entirely out of
the category of first-class engineering and to make it entirely an object of fine art.” The distinction
between architecture and “mere building” was stated by Nikolaus Pevsner in the opening paragraph
of his Outline of European Architecture (1942): “a bicycle shed is a building; Lincoln Cathedral is
a piece of architecture…the term architecture applies only to buildings designed with a view
to aesthetic appeal.” Whatever the justification for such assertions, it must nevertheless be
recognized that neither of these authors suggests that aesthetic appeal or art are synonyms for
superfluity. Although adjustment in proportions or refinement of profiles may increase the
thickness of short-span structural members beyond the structural analytical minima, this does not
necessarily imply any radical decrease in real economy but simply indicates a concept of economy
that takes into account the assembly and amenity of spatial enclosures and admits that there is value
in environmental harmony. It is thus as misleading to imply (as Fergusson implied) that
architecture is civil engineering plus ornament as it is to imply (as Le Corbusier did) that the status
of the two professions is to be distinguished by the relative superiority of beauty over harmony.
It is important to insist that the theory of architecture is concerned primarily with the
attainment of certain environmental ideals rather than with their cost; for these two problems are
philosophically distinct, as is clear if one considers such a concept as, for example, that of
standardization. The financial saving made by standardizing rolled-steel sections or by casting
concrete in reusable formwork is so obvious that it requires no elaboration with respect to
Vitruvius’s demand for oeconomia. But such standardization also fulfills
Vitruvius’s concurrent demand for order, arrangement, eurythmy, symmetry, and propriety.
The Place Vendôme in Paris is adorned with over 100 identical pilasters and half columns,
all carved with the same Corinthian capitals under the supervision of a member of the Académie
Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Whether or not the resultant uniformity was or still is both
pleasing and desirable is certainly open to discussion, but it will be perceived that any argument
about architectural standardization must primarily be a question of value, rather than of cost, and it
is with values that architectural theory has always been predominantly concerned.
Architecture, the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills
associated with construction. The practice of architecture is employed to fulfill both practical and
expressive requirements, and thus it serves both utilitarian and aesthetic ends. Although these two
ends may be distinguished, they cannot be separated, and the relative weight given to each can vary
widely. Because every society—whether highly developed or less so, settled or nomadic—has a
spatial relationship to the natural world and to other societies, the structures they produce reveal
much about their environment (including climate and weather), history, ceremonies, and artistic
sensibility, as well as many aspects of daily life.
The characteristics that distinguish a work of architecture from other built structures are (1) the
suitability of the work to use by human beings in general and the adaptability of it to particular
human activities, (2) the stability and permanence of the work’s construction, and (3) the
communication of experience and ideas through its form. All these conditions must be met in
architecture. The second is a constant, while the first and third vary in relative importance
according to the social function of buildings. If the function is chiefly utilitarian, as in a factory,
communication is of less importance. If the function is chiefly expressive, as in a monumental
tomb, utility is a minor concern. In some buildings, such as churches and city halls, utility and
communication may be of equal importance.
The present article treats primarily the forms, elements, methods, and theory of architecture. For the
history of architecture in antiquity, see the sections on ancient Greeceand Rome in Western
architecture; as well as Anatolian art and architecture; Arabian art and architecture; Egyptian art
and architecture; Iranian art and architecture; Mesopotamian art and architecture; and Syro-
Palestinian art and architecture. For later historical and regional treatments of
architecture, seeAfrican architecture; Chinese architecture; Japanese architecture; Korean
architecture; Oceanic art and architecture; Western architecture; Central Asian arts; Islamic
arts; South Asian arts; and Southeast Asian arts. For a discussion of the place of architecture and
architectural theory in the realm of the arts, see aesthetics. For related forms of artistic
expression, see city; interior design; and urban planning.
Use

The types of architecture are established not by architects but by society, according to the needs of
its different institutions. Society sets the goals and assigns to the architect the job of finding the
means of achieving them. This section of the article is concerned with architectural typology, with
the role of society in determining the kinds of architecture, and with planning—the role of the
architect in adapting designs to particular uses and to the general physical needs of human beings.

Architectural types
Architecture is created only to fulfill the specifications of an individual or group. Economic law
prevents architects from emulating their fellow artists in producing works for which the demand is
nonexistent or only potential. So the types of architecture depend upon social formations and may
be classified according to the role of the patron in the community. The types that will be discussed
here—domestic, religious, governmental, recreational, welfare and educational, and commercial
and industrial—represent the simplest classification; a scientific typology of architecture would
require a more detailed analysis.
Domestic architecture
Domestic architecture is produced for the social unit: the individual, family, or clan and their
dependents, human and animal. It provides shelter and security for the basic physical functions of
life and at times also for commercial, industrial, or agricultural activities that involve the family
unit rather than the community. The basic requirements of domestic architecture are simple: a place
to sleep, prepare food, eat, and perhaps work; a place that has some light and is protected from the
weather. A single room with sturdy walls and roof, a door, a window, and a hearth are the
necessities; all else is luxury.

“Vernacular” architecture
In much of the world today, even where institutions have been in a continuous process of change,
dwelling types of ancient or prehistoric origin are in use. In the industrialized United States, for
instance, barns are being built according to a design employed in Europe in the 1st millennium BCE.
The forces that produce a dynamic evolution of architectural style in communal building are
usually inactive in the home and farm. The lives of average people may be unaltered by the most
fundamental changes in their institutions. The people can be successively slaves, the subjects of a
monarchy, and voting citizens without having the means or the desire to change their customs,
techniques, or surroundings. Economic pressure is the major factor that causes average individuals
to restrict their demands to a level far below that which the technology of their time is capable of
maintaining. Frequently they build new structures with old techniques because experiment
and innovation are more costly than repetition. But in wealthy cultures economy permits and
customs encourage architecture to provide conveniences such as sanitation, lighting, and heating, as
well as separate areas for distinct functions, and these may come to be regarded as necessities. The
same causes tend to replace the conservatism of the home with the aspirations of institutional
architecture and to emphasize the expressive as well as the utilitarian function.
“Power” architecture
As wealth and expressive functions increase, a special type of domestic building can be
distinguished that may be called power architecture. In almost every civilization the pattern of
society gives to a few of its members the power to utilize the resources of the community in the
construction of their homes, palaces, villas, gardens, and places of recreation. These few, whose
advantages usually arise from economic, religious, or class distinctions, are able to enjoy
an infinite variety of domestic activities connected with the mores of their position. These can
include even communal functions: the palace of the Flavian emperors in ancient Rome incorporated
the activities of the state and the judicial system; the palace of Versailles, a whole city in itself,
provided the necessities and luxuries of life for several thousand persons of all classes and was the
centre of government for the empire of Louis XIV. Power architecturemay have a complex
expressive function, too, since the symbolizing of power by elegance or display is a responsibility
or a necessity (and often a fault) of the powerful. Since this function usually is sought not so much
to delight the patrons as to demonstrate their social position to others, power architecture becomes
communal as well as domestic. In democracies such as ancient Greece and in the modern Western
world, this show of power may have been more reserved, but it is still distinguishable.
Group housing
A third type of domestic architecture accommodates the group rather than the unit and is therefore
public as well as private. It is familiar through the widespread development of mass housing in the
modern world, in which individuals or families find living space either in multiple dwellings or in
single units produced in quantity. Group housing is produced by many kinds of cultures: by
communal states to equalize living standards, by tyrants to assure a docile labour force, and by
feudal or caste systems to bring together members of a class. The apartment house was developed
independently by the imperial Romans of antiquity to suit urban conditions and by the American
Indians to suit agricultural conditions. Group architecture may be power architecture as well,
particularly when land values are too high to permit even the wealthy to build privately, as in the
17th-century Place des Vosges in Paris, where aristocratic mansions were designed uniformly
around a square, or in the 18th-century flats in English towns and spas. Although most domestic
architecture of the 20th century employed the style and techniques of the past, the exceptions are
more numerous and more important for the development of architecture than ever before. This is
because the distribution of wealth and power is widespread in parts of the world where architecture
is vital and because the modern state has assumed responsibility for much high-quality housing.
Religious architecture
The history of architecture is concerned more with religious buildings than with any other type,
because in most past cultures the universal and exalted appeal of religion made
the church or temple the most expressive, the most permanent, and the most influential building in
any community.
The typology of religious architecture is complex, because no basic requirements such as those that
characterize domestic architecture are common to all religions and because the functions of any one
religion involve many different kinds of activity, all of which change with the evolution of cultural
patterns.

Places of worship
Temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues serve as places of worship and as shelters for the
images, relics, and holy areas of the cult. In the older religions, the temple was not always designed
for communal use. In ancient Egypt and India it was considered the residence of the deity, and
entrance into the sanctum was prohibited or reserved for priests; in ancient Greece it contained an
accessible cult image, but services were held outside the main facade; and in the ancient Near
East and in the Mayan and Aztec architecture of ancient Mexico, where the temple was erected at
the summit of pyramidal mounds, only privileged members of the community were allowed to
approach.

Few existing religions are so exclusive. Beliefs as dissimilar as Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism,

and Islam are based on communal participation in rites held inside each religion’s place of worship.
The buildings have even evolved into similar plans, because of a common requirement that the
maximum number of worshippers be able to face the focal point of the service
(the mosque’s “point” is the wall facing the direction of Mecca, the city of Muhammad’s birth and
therefore the most sacred of all Islamic religious sites). Consequently, the Muslims were able to
adopt the Byzantine church tradition, modern synagogues are often scarcely distinguishable from
churches, and early Protestantism absorbed Catholic architecture with only minor revision
(elimination of subsidiary chapels and altars, repositories of relics, and some symbolic decoration).
Shelter is not always required for worship. Primitive rites are often practiced outdoors with some
monument as a focus, while the altar of Pergamum and the Ara Pacis (Augustan Altar of Peace) in
Rome are evidences of the open-air religious observances of the classical world. The atrium of
early Christian architecture and the cloister were isolated areas for prayer.
The complex programs of later religions made the place of worship the focus for varied activities
demanding architectural solutions—for example, the baptistery, bell towers, and chapter houses of
Christian architecture, the minarets of Islamic architecture, and the holy gates of Buddhist
architecture. Most modern sects demand space for religious education adjoining the community
church or temple. Catholicism and the religions of Asia have produced
madrasahs, monasteries, convents, and abbeys—connected to places of worship—that
accommodate the organized practice of religion, adding domestic and often industrial, agricultural,
and scholarly functions to the religious.
Shrines and memoria
Shrines consecrate a holy place for its miraculous character or for its association with the life of the
founder, gods, or saints of a cult. Since the importance of such structures is usually proportionate to
the antiquity of their tradition and associations with cult origins, they have had little importance in
later architectural history. The major commemorative buildings of Christianity are those connected
with the life of Jesus Christ (Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem) and the Apostles or early Church
Fathers (St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome) or with the medieval cult of relics (Santiago de
Compostela in Spain). No single formal design characterizes this type, but the theme of the domed
or central-plan structure (round, square, polygon, Greek cross, etc.) connects the memoria of Asia
(the Indian stupa, Chinese pagoda), pagan antiquity (the Pantheonin Rome), and Christianity
(the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem). The significance of the form is discussed below
under Content.

Funerary art
Expressing relationship to the afterlife, funerary art is not always architectural, since it may be
purely symbolic and therefore suitable to sculptural treatment, as in the classic Greek, medieval,
and modern tomb. Funerary architecture is produced by societies whose belief in the afterlife is
materialistic and by individuals who want to perpetuate and symbolize their temporal importance.
Monumental tombshave been produced in ancient Egypt (pyramids), Hellenistic Greece (tomb of
Mausolus at Halicarnassus, which is the source of the word mausoleum), ancient Rome (tomb
of Hadrian), Renaissance Europe (Michelangelo’s Medici Chapel, Florence), and Asia (Taj Mahal,
Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India). Modern tomb design has lost vitality, though it remains as elaborate
(Monument to Victor Emmanuel II, Rome) or as meaningful in terms of power (Lenin Mausoleum,
Moscow) as before. The exceptional examples are partly sculptural in character (e.g., Louis
Sullivan’s Wainwright Tomb, St. Louis, Missouri; Walter Gropius’s war memorial, Weimar,
Germany).
Since the 18th century much of religious architecture has lost individuality and importance through
the weakening of liturgical traditions. But today, as in the past, outstanding architects have met new
demands of use and expression with superior solutions.
Governmental architecture
The basic functions of government, to an even greater extent than those of religion, are similar in
all societies: administration, legislation, and the dispensing of justice. But the architectural needs
differ according to the nature of the relationship between the governing and the governed. Where
governmental functions are centralized in the hands of a single individual, they are simple and may
be exercised in the ruler’s residence; where the functions are shared by many and established as
specialized activities, they become complex and demand distinct structures. There are, however, no
basic formal solutions for governmental architecture, since the practical needs of government may
be met in any sheltered area that has convenient space for deliberation and administration. A
distinct type is created rather by expressive functions arising from the ideology of the different
systems of political organization (monarchy, theocracy, democracy, etc.) and from the traditions of
the various offices of government (law courts, assembly houses, city halls, etc.). Governments that
exercise power by force rather than by consent tend to employ the expressive functions of
architecture to emphasize their power; they tend to produce buildings of a monumentality
disproportionate to their service to the community. Those in which the ruler is given divine
attributes bring religious symbolism into architecture. Democratic governments have the
responsibility of expressing in their architecture the aims of the community itself, a difficult task in
the modern world, when the community may be neither small enough to express itself easily
nor homogeneous enough to agree on how to do so.
The simple democratic processes of the Greek city-states and the medieval free towns produced
governmental architecture on a domestic scale, while the Roman Empire and later monarchies
seldom made important distinctions between the palace and the seat of state functions. The
widespread growth of representative government and the increase in the size and functions of the
state in the 19th century created a great variety of buildings, some for entirely new uses. Some
examples are: first, capitols, courthouses, parliament buildings, printing offices, and mints and,
later, post offices, embassies, archives, secretariats, and even laboratories, when the work, the
increased personnel, and the complexity of mechanical aids demanded specialized architectural
solutions. Bureaucracy, for better or for worse, has made governmental architecture more important
than at any time in history.
In the first rapid expansion from about 1780 to 1840, Neoclassical architects found impressive
solutions to the new problems, but afterward governmental architecture lapsed into a century
of conservatism, following at a safe distance behind private building. After World War II,
governmental architecture showed new vitality. Outstanding are Le Corbusier’s work at
Chandigarh, Punjab, India, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
headquarters in Paris, and the program of the U.S. Department of State for building American
embassies.
Military architecture is closer to the governmental type than to others, but its expressive function is
so much subordinated to the practical that it is usually regarded as a class
of engineering(see fortification).
Recreational architecture
Few recreations require architecture until they become institutionalized and must provide for both
active and passive participation (athletic events, dramatic, musical performances, etc.) or for
communal participation in essentially private luxuries (baths, museums, libraries). Throughout
history, recreational architecture has been the most consistent in form of any type. Diversions may
change, but, as in domestic architecture, the physical makeup of human beings provides
consistency. If their participation is passive, they must be able to hear and to see in comfort. If their
participation is active, they must be given spaces suited to the chosen activities. In most cultures,
recreational institutions have their origins in religious rites, but they easily gain independence, and
religious expression is reduced or eliminated in their architecture.
Theatres
Theatres originated in ancient Greece with the rites of the god Dionysus, first as temporary
installations and later as outdoor architecture using the natural slope and curves of hillsides to bring
the spectator close to the stage and to avoid the need for substructures. The Greek theatre was
monumentalized and modified by the Romans, whose arches and vaults allowed construction of
sloping seats from level foundations. In the Middle Ages churches and temporary structures were
used for dramatic purposes, and in the Renaissance the form of the Roman theatre was occasionally
revived (Andrea Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy). The 17th-century development
of opera, drama, and ballet in Europe brought about a revival of theatre building but in a new form
conceived to satisfy class and economic distinctions (e.g., the Teatro Farnese in Parma, Italy;
Residenztheater, in Munich). A flat or inclined pit accommodated standing patrons, tiers of boxes
rose vertically above in a horseshoe plan, and permanent covering (for both acoustics and comfort)
made artificial lighting an important feature in theatrical performances. While the modern theatre
has been greatly improved in efficiency by new acoustical methods and materials, it also has kept
much of the Baroque form. However, it provides seating throughout and usually substitutes sloping
galleries (into which the unprivileged have been moved) for boxes. The motion picturehas had little
effect on theatre design (see theatre).

Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza, Italy; designed by Andrea Palladio and completed by Vincenzo Scamozzi, 1585.© travelview/Fotolia

Auditoriums
The auditorium is distinguished by the absence of stage machinery and by its greater size. The
development of large symphony orchestras and choirs and of the institution of lectures and mass
meetings combined with growing urban populations to produce this modification of the theatre.
Athletic facilities
Sport arenas, racetracks, and public swimming pools of the present day owe their origin to the
ancient Romans (though certain precedents can be found in Crete and Greece). Although the
classical tradition of sports was broken from the early Middle Ages to the 19th century, even the
design of arenas and tracks has been scarcely altered from the Colosseum and Circus Maximus,
though the construction of large grandstands has inspired magnificent designs in reinforced
concrete (stadiums at Florence, Helsinki, and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México).
Sports that have no precedents in antiquity, such as baseball, have required modifications in design
but have not been important for architecture.
Museums and libraries
Museum and library architecture was also an innovation of classical antiquity (library architecture
appears independently in ancient China and Japan). Early examples are found on the acropolis of
Hellenistic Pergamum and in Roman Ephesus. Museums were not cultivated in the Middle Ages,
and libraries were incorporated into monasteries. In the Renaissance and Baroque periods, library
construction like Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach’s Hofbibliothek in the Hofburg, Vienna, was
rare, but important civic buildings were designed within religious institutions (Michelangelo’s
Biblioteca Laurenziana in Florence) and universities (Sir Christopher Wren’s Trinity College
Library, Cambridge; James Gibbs’s Radcliffe Camera, Oxford). This type of architecture became
truly communal for the first time in the 19th century, when the size of library collections and the
number of visitors inspired some of the finest architecture of the modern period (Michael Gottlieb
Bindesbøll’s Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen; Sir Robert Smirke’s British Museum in
London; Henri Labrouste’s Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris; Alvar Aalto’s library in
Viipuri, Finland; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City).


 
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.© Index Open
Architect Renzo Piano discussing his design for the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, from the documentary Riches, Rivals,
and Radicals: 100 Years of Museums in America.Great Museums Television

Architecture of welfare and education

The principal institutions of public welfare are those that provide facilities for education, health,
public security, and utilities. Some of these functions are performed by the churchand the state, but,
since their character is not essentially religious or political, they may require independent
architectural solutions, particularly in urban environments. A consistent typology of this
architecture, however, cannot be established throughout history, because the acceptance of
responsibility for the welfare of the community differs in degree in every social system.
Buildings for the specific purposes of public welfare were seldom considered necessary in
antiquity, in most of Eastern architecture, or in the early Middle Ages. But in ancient Greece health
facilities were included in precincts of Asclepius, the god of healing, and in the East within
Buddhist precincts. The Romans produced a highly developed system of water supplyand
sewerage, of which their monumental aqueducts are an impressive survival.
In the later Middle Ages consistent forms began to emerge. With the separation of the university
from a purely religious context, a concept of planning developed (particularly
at Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris) that still influences educational architecture. Hospitals designed
as large halls were established as adjuncts to churches, convents, and monasteries (Hôtel-Dieu,
Beaune, France) and gained architectural independence in the Renaissance (Ospedale degli
Innocenti, Florence). Ancient and medieval prisons and guardhouses were occasionally isolated
from military architecture (e.g., Tower of London; Bargello in Florence), but the prison did not
become an important architectural type until the late 18th and 19th centuries (e.g., George Dance’s
Newgate Prison, London; Henry Hobson Richardson’s Allegheny County Jail, Pittsburgh).
The expansion of education and health facilities beginning in the 19th century created a widespread
and consistently growing need for specialized architectural solutions. Schools, from the nursery to
the university, now demand not only particular solutions at all levels but structures for a variety of
purposes within each level; advanced education demands buildings for scientific research, training
for trades and professions, recreation, health, housing, religious institutions, and other purposes.
Most of the countries of the Western world have produced educational architecture of the highest
quality; this architectural type is more important than in any past age.
Commercial and industrial architecture
Buildings for exchange, transportation, communication, manufacturing, and power production meet
the principal needs of commerce and industry. In the past these needs were mostly unspecialized.
They were met either within domestic architecture or in buildings distinguished from domestic
types chiefly by their size. Stores, banks, hostelries, guildhalls, and factories required
only space for more persons and things than houses could accommodate. Bridges, warehouses, and
other structures not used for sheltering people were, of course, specialized from the beginning and
survived the Industrial Revolution without basic changes. The Industrial Revolution profoundly
affected the typology as well as the techniques of architecture. Through the introduction of
the machine and mass production, economic life moved out of the domestic environment into an
area dominated by devices and processes rather than by individuals, creating the need for buildings
more specialized and more numerous than the total accumulation of types throughout history. All
the types cannot be discussed here, but a categorical listing into which they can be fitted will
illustrate their importance for architecture: exchange (office buildings, stores, markets, banks,
exchanges, warehouses, exhibition halls); transportation (roads, bridges, tunnels; stations for rail,
sea, and air transport and the dispensing of fuel; garages, hangars, and other storage
facilities; hotels); communication (structures for the transmission and reception
of telephone, telegraph, radio, television, and radar communication; for the printing and
distribution of newspapers, magazines, books, and other reading matter; for motion-picture
production; and for advertising functions); production (mines, factories, laboratories, food-
processing plants); power (dams, generating plants; fuel storage, processing, and distribution
installations).
Each of these functions demands its own architectural solution, but in general they may be divided
into two classes according to whether the plan must give greater attention to the size and movement
of machinery or of persons. Wherever human activity is the chief concern, there has been less
departure from traditional expression; banks in the form of Roman temples are an obvious example.
The demands of machines have no tradition and have encouraged a search for greater, simpler, and
more flexible spaces, but frequently the practical function has entirely eliminated the expressive, so
that, with some distinguished exceptions (e.g., Frank Lloyd Wright’s S.C. Johnson & Sons, Inc.,
building, Racine, Wisconsin; Eero Saarinen’s General Motors Technical Center, Warren,
Michigan), most modern factories are not architecture. Where both human beings and machines
had to be given equal attention, as in railroad stations, architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries
vacillated between creating new forms and grasping for irrelevant traditions.
Architectural planning
The architect usually begins to work when the site and the type and cost of a building
have been determined.

The site involves the varying behaviour of the natural environment that must be adjusted
to the unvarying physical needs of human beings; the type is the generalized form
established by society that must be adjusted to the special use for which the building is
required; the cost implies the economics of land, labour, and materials that must be
adjusted to suit a particular sum.
Thus, planning is the process of particularizing and, ultimately, of harmonizing the
demands of environment, use, and economy. This process has a cultural as well as a
utilitarian value, for in creating a plan for any social activity the architect inevitably
influences the way in which that activity is performed.

Planning the environment

The natural environment is at once a hindrance and a help, and the architect seeks both to invite its
aid and to repel its attacks. To make buildings habitable and comfortable, the architect must control
the effects of heat, cold, light, air, moisture, and dryness and foresee destructive potentialities such
as fire, earthquake, flood, and disease.
The methods of controlling the environment considered here are only the practical aspects of
planning. They are treated by the architect within the context of the expressive aspects. The
placement and form of buildings in relation to their sites, the distribution of spaces within
buildings, and other planning devices discussed below are fundamental elements in the aesthetics of
architecture.
Orientation
The arrangement of the axes of buildings and their parts is a device for controlling the effects
of sun, wind, and rainfall. The sun is regular in its course; it favours the southern and neglects the
northern exposures of buildings in the Northern Hemisphere, so that it may be captured for heat or
evaded for coolness by turning the axis of a plan toward or away from it. Within buildings, the axis
and placement of each spacedetermines the amount of sun it receives. Orientation may control air
for circulation and reduce the disadvantages of wind, rain, and snow, since in most climates the
prevailing currents can be foreseen. The characteristics of the immediate environment also
influence orientation: trees, land formations, and other buildings create shade and reduce or
intensify wind, while bodies of water produce moisture and reflect the sun.
Architectural forms
Planning may control the environment by the design of architectural forms that may modify the
effects of natural forces. For example, overhanging eaves, moldings, projections, courts,
and porches give shade and protection from rain. Roofsare designed to shed snow and to drain or
preserve water. Walls control the amount of heat lost to the exterior or retained in the interior by
their thickness and by the structural and insulating materials used in making them. Walls, when
properly sealed and protected, are the chief defense against wind and moisture. Windows are the
principal means of controlling natural light; its amount, distribution, intensity, direction,
and quality are conditioned by their number, size, shape, and placement and by the characteristics
of translucent materials (e.g., thickness, transparency, texture, colour). But the planning of
fenestration is influenced by other factors, such as ventilation and heating. Since most translucent
materials conduct heat more readily than the average wall, windows are used sparingly in extreme
climates. Finally, since transparent windows are the medium of visual contact between the interior
and exterior, their design is conditioned by aestheticand practical demands.
Colour
Colour has a practical planning function as well as an expressive quality because of the range of its
reflection and its absorption of solar rays. Since light colours reflect heat and dark colours absorb it,
the choice of materials and pigments is an effective tool of environmental control.
Materials and techniques
The choice of materials is conditioned by their own ability to withstand the environment as well as
by properties that make them useful to human beings. One of the architect’s jobs is to find a
successful solution to both conditions; to balance the physical and economic advantages of wood
against the possibility of fire, termites, and mold, the weather resistance of glass and light metals
against their high thermal conductivity, and many similar conflicts. The more violent
natural manifestations, such as heavy snow loads, earthquakes, high winds, and tornadoes, are
controlled by special technical devices in regions where they are prevalent.
Any number of these controls may be out of reach of the planner for various reasons. The urban
environment, for example, restricts freedom of orientation and design of architectural forms and
creates new control problems of its own: smoke, dirt, noise, and odours.
Interior control
The control of the environment through the design of the plan and the outer shell of a building
cannot be complete, since extremes of heat and cold, light, and sounds penetrate into the interior,
where they can be further modified by the planning of spaces and by special conditioning devices.

Temperature, light and sound are all subject to control by the size and shape of interior spaces, the
way in which the spaces are connected, and the materials employed for floors, walls, ceilings,
and furnishings. Hot air may be retained or released by the adjustment of ceiling heights and
sources of ventilation. Light reflects in relation to the colour and texture of surfaces and may be
reduced by dark, rough walls and increased by light, smooth ones. Sounds are transmitted by some
materials and absorbed by others and may be controlled by the form of interiors and by the use of
structural or applied materials that by their density, thickness, and texture amplify or restrict sound
waves.
Conditioning devices played only a small part in architecture before the introduction of mechanical
and electrical systems in the 19th century. The fireplace was almost the only method of temperature
control (though the ancient Romans anticipated the modern water system for radiant heating); fuel
lamps and candles had to be movable and were rather in the sphere of furnishings than of
architecture; the same is true of the tapestries and hangings used for acoustical purposes and to
block drafts.
Today, heating, insulation, air conditioning, lighting, and acoustical methods have become basic
parts of the architectural program. These defenses and comforts of industrialization control the
environment so efficiently that the contemporary architect is free to use or to discard many of the
traditional approaches to site and interior planning.
Planning for use
While environmental planning produces comfort for the senses (sight, feeling, hearing) and reflexes
(respiration), planning for use or function is concerned with convenience of movement and rest. All
activities that demand architectural attention require unique planning solutions to facilitate them.
These solutions are found by differentiating spaces for distinct functions, by providing circulation
among these spaces, and by designing them to facilitate the actions of the human body.
Differentiation
The number of functions requiring distinct kinds of spacewithin a building depends not only upon
the type of building but also upon the requirements of the culture and the habits and activities of the
individual patrons. A primitive house has a single room with a hearth area, and a modern one has
separate areas for cooking, eating, sleeping, washing, storage, and recreation. A meetinghouse with
a single hall is sufficient for Quaker religious services, while a Roman Catholic cathedralmay
require a nave, aisles, choir, apse, chapels, crypt, sacristy, and ambulatory.
The planning of differentiated spaces involves as a guide to their design (placement, size, shape,
environmental conditions, sequence, etc.) the analysis of use (number of uses and character,
duration, time of day, frequency, variability, etc., of each), users (number, behaviour, age, sex,
physical condition, etc.), and furniture or equipment required.
Circulation
Communication among differentiated spaces and between the exterior and the interior may be
achieved by openings alone in the simplest plans, but most buildings require distinct spaces allotted
to horizontal and vertical circulation (corridors, lobbies, stairs, ramps, elevators, etc.). These are
designed by the procedure of analysis employed for differentiating uses. Since their function is
usually limited to simplifying the movement of persons and things toward a particular goal,
their efficiencydepends on making the goal evident and the movement direct and easy to execute.
Facilitation
The convenience of movement, like the comfort of environment, can be increased both by planning
and by devices. Planning methods are based on analysis of the body measurements, movements,
and muscular power of human beings of different ages and sexes, which results in the establishment
of standards for the measurements of ceilings, doorways, windows, storage shelves, working
surfaces, steps, and the like and for the weight of architectural elements that must be moved, such
as doors, gates, and windows. These standards also include allowances for the movement of
whatever furnishings, equipment, or machinery are required for the use of any building. Devices
for facilitating movement within buildings replace or simplify the labours of daily life: the
traditional pumps, plumbing, and sewerage systems and the innumerable modern machines for
circulation, food preparation and preservation, industrial processing, and other purposes.
Economic planning
Major expenses in building are for land, materials, and labour. In each case they are high when the
commodity is scarce and low when it is abundant, and they influence planning more directly when
they become restrictive.

The effect of high land values is to limit the amount of space occupied by any building as well as
the amount of expenditure that can be reserved for construction. When land coverage is limited, it
is usually necessary to design in height the space that otherwise would be planned in breadth and
depth, as in the ancient Roman insula (apartment houses) or the modern skyscraper. When the
choice of materials is influenced by cost, all phases of architectural design are affected, since the
planning procedure, the technique, and the form of buildings are dependent on materials. High
labour costs influence the choice of techniques and, consequently, of materials. They encourage
simplification in construction and the replacement of craftsmanship by standardization. The
development in the 19th and 20th centuries of light wood-frame construction and methods
of prefabrication was largely the result of the rising cost of labour.
Planning involves not only the control of cost in each area but also the proportioning of
expenditures among land, materials, and labour in order to produce the most effective solution to an
architectural problem.
Techniques
The techniques of architecture in the sense that they will be considered here are simply
the methods by which structures are formed from particular materials. These methods are
influenced not only by the availability and character of materials but also by the total
technological development of society, for architecture depends on an organized
labour force and upon the existence of the tools and skills necessary to secure,
manufacture, transport, and work durable materials.
The evolution of techniques is conditioned by two forces. One is economic—the search for
a maximum of stability and durability in building with a minimum of materials and labour.
The other is expressive—the desire to produce meaningful form. Techniques evolve
rapidly when economic requirements suggest new expressive forms or when
the conception of new forms demands new procedures. But they remain static when
architects avoid the risk of pioneering with untried and possibly unsuccessful methods and
depend instead on proved procedures or when the need for the observance of tradition,
for the communication of ideas, or for elegance and display is best fulfilled by familiar
forms.
The ultimate purpose of building techniques is to create a stable structure. In mechanical
terms, structures are stable when all their parts are in a state of equilibrium, or rest. Walls
and roofs can buckle, crack, or collapse if they are not properly designed. These
movements are caused by forces that tend to push or pull bodies in a given direction.
Forces acting on any member (part) of a building are, first, its own weight and, second, the
loads it carries, principally from other members but also from persons, furnishings, wind,
etc. Their action encounters a reaction in opposing forces that hold the member in place
by resisting at its joints. These forces may be active in all directions, and they must be
balanced for stability. They tend to crush, pull apart, and bend the member—in other
words, to change its size and shape.
Within the member itself there are forces, too, that tend to resist any deformation. They
are called stresses, and they vary according to the strength of materials and the form of
the member. The kinds of stress under consideration are compression, which resists
crushing; tension, which resists pulling apart; and bending, which occurs when one part of
a member is in compression and the other is in tension. A column is put into compression
by the loads it carries; in a trussed roof the piece that forms the base of the triangle is put
into tension by the outward-pushing forces in the sides; and a lintel or beam (the member
that spans a space) is put into bending by loads and forces that push down on its top and
encounter a reacting force at its ends. Some materials are strong only in compression
(e.g., stone, brick, cast iron, concrete) and others in tension as well (e.g.,
wood, steel, reinforced concrete), so the latter are more efficient in resisting bending
forces.
Finally, the stability of the total structure whose single members are all in equilibrium is
achieved by diverting the loads from all of them downward so that they may be resisted by
the upward-supporting forces of the ground.

Techniques will be discussed in terms of the characteristics of building materials and the
methods by which they are used in architecture (see building construction).
Materials
Stone
In most areas where stone is available, it has been favoured over other materials for the
construction of monumental architecture. Its advantages are durability, adaptability
to sculptural treatment, and the fact that it can be used in modest structures in its natural state. But
it is difficult to quarry, transport, and cut, and its weakness in tension limits its use for beams,
lintels, and floor supports.
The simplest and cheapest stonework is rubble; i.e., roughly broken stones of any shape bounded
in mortar. The strongest and most suitable stonework for monumental architecture is ashlar
masonry, which consists of regularly cut blocks (usually rectangular). Because of its weight and the
precision with which it can be shaped, stone masonry (in contrast with brick) does not depend on
strong bonding for stability where it supports only direct downward loads. The entablatures (the
upper sections of a classical order that rest on the capital of a column) of an ancient Greek temple,
for example, were bonded by small bronze dowels. But the weight creates problems of stability
when loads push at an angle; stone vaults and arches require more support and buttressing than
equivalent forms in other materials.
The best stone (and brick) bonding is that in which blocks are placed so that the vertical joints in
one course are not above the joints in the courses above and below, since the stone resists
deformation better than any bonding material. Many stones are strong enough to
provide monolithic supports (columns and piers) and beams (lintels), and in some styles stone slabs
are employed even for roofing (ancient Egyptian temples, early Christian basilicas in Syria), but
this roofing requires so many columns that unvaulted masonry buildings are almost always
combined with floors and covering in wood. Stone has been consistently used for building since
the Stone Age, as exemplified by Stonehenge, in England. Although it has generally been replaced
as a structural material by cheaper and more efficient manufactured products, it is still widely used
as a surface veneer for its practical and expressive qualities.
Brick
Brick compares favourably with stone as a structural material for its fire- and weather-resisting
qualities and for the ease of production, transportation, and laying. The size of bricks is limited by
the need for efficient drying, firing, and handling, but shapes, along with the techniques of
bricklaying, have varied widely throughout history. Special shapes can be produced by molding to
meet particular structural or expressive requirements (for example, wedge-shaped bricks are
sometimes employed in arch construction and bricks with rounded faces in columns). Bricks may
be used in construction only in conjunction with mortar, since the unit is too small, too light, and
too irregular to be stabilized by weight. Each course (or layer) must be laid on an ample mortar bed
with mortar filling the vertical joints. The commonest ancient Roman bricks were cut into triangles
and laid with the base out and the apex set into a concrete filling that provided additional strength.
Rectangular bricks are bonded either as headers (short side out) or stretchers (long side out).
Standard modern types provide a ratio of width to length of slightly less than 1:2 to permit a wide
variety of bonding patterns within a consistent module, or standard of measurement. Brick, which
has been used since the 4th millennium BCE, was the chief building material in the ancient Near
East. The versatility of the medium was expanded in ancient Rome by improvements in the
manufacture of both bricks and mortar and by new techniques of laying and bonding. Employed
throughout the Middle Ages, brick gained greater popularity from the 16th century on, particularly
in northern Europe. It was widely used in the 20th century, often for nonbearing walls in steel
frame construction.
Wood
Wood is easier to acquire, transport, and work than other natural materials. All parts of a building
can be efficiently constructed of wood except foundations; its disadvantage is susceptibility to fire,
mold, and termites. The strength of wood in both tension and compression arises from its organic
nature, which gives it an internal structure of longitudinal and radial fibres that is not impaired by
cutting or long exposure. But like all organisms it contains moisture and is not uniformly strong, so
it must be carefully selected and seasoned to prevent warping, splitting, and failure under loads.
Wood is used in building both solid and skeletal structures. The principal solid system,
called log construction, is employed when only primitive cutting tools are available. Four walls
must be built up together in horizontal layers of single hewn or uncut logs and jointed at the
corners. The stability of the log building depends entirely on the mutual support of the walls, and
the method is suitable only for simple structures of limited size. The skeletal system requires
precise cutting and shaping of lumber. It provides a rigid framework of jointed or nailed members
independent of the walls, which are attached to the exterior and interior surfaces after completion.
Almost all masonry buildings of the past had wood floors and coverings, since wood is the lightest,
the most practical, and the most inexpensive material for spanning spaces.

The monumental architecture of the West has typically employed materials rarer than wood for
expressive purposes, but the history of wood construction can be traced consistently in China,
Korea, and Japan and in the domestic architecture of northern Europe and North America. Wood
continues to be used in a growing number of techniques and products: heavy framing systems
with compound beams and girders, interior and exterior facing with plywood and other composite
panels, and arch and truss systems with laminated members that can be designed to meet particular
structural demands (see wood).
Iron and steel
The development of construction methods in iron and steel was the most important innovation in
architecture since ancient times. These methods provide far stronger and taller structures with less
expenditure of material than stone, brick, or wood and can produce greater unsupported spans over
openings and interior or exterior spaces. The evolution of steel frame construction in the 20th
century entirely changed the concept of the wall and the support.
In architecture before 1800, metals played an auxiliary role. They were used for bonding masonry
(dowels and clamps), for tension members (chains strengthening domes, tie rods across arches to
reinforce the vaults), and for roofing, doors, windows, and decoration. Cast iron, the first metal that
could be substituted for traditional structural materials, was used in bridge building as early as
1779. Its ability to bear loads and to be produced in an endless variety of forms, in addition to its
resistance to fire and corrosion, quickly encouraged architectural adaptations, first as columns and
arches and afterward in skeletal structures. Because cast iron has much more compressive
than tensile strength (for example, it works better as a small column than as a beam), it was largely
replaced in the late 19th century by steel, which is more uniformly strong, elastic, and workable,
and its high resistance in all stresses can be closely calculated.
Steel structural members are rolled in a variety of shapes, the commonest of which are plates,
angles, I beams, and U-shaped channels. These members may be joined by steel bolts or rivets, and
the development of welding in the 20th century made it possible to produce fused joints with less
labour and materials. The result is a rigid, continuous structure in which the joint is as firm as the
member and which distributes stresses between beams and columns. This is a fundamental change
in architectural technique, the effect of which cannot yet be estimated.
Normally, steel must be protected against corrosion by surface coverings, but alloys such
as stainless steel have been developed for exposed surfaces. Aluminum and other light metal alloys
have come to be favoured for exterior construction because of their weather resistance.
Concrete
Concrete is a manufactured mixture of cement and water, with aggregates of sand and stones,
which hardens rapidly by chemical combination to a stonelike, water- and fire-resisting solid of
great compressive (but low tensile) strength. Because it can be poured into forms while liquid to
produce a great variety of structural elements, it provides an economical substitute for traditional
materials, and it has the advantages of continuity (absence of joints) and of fusing with other
materials.
Concrete was employed in ancient Egypt and was highly developed by the ancient Romans, whose
concrete made with volcanic-ash cement (pozzolana) permitted a great expansion of architectural
methods, particularly the development of domes and vaults (often reinforced by brick ribbing) to
cover large areas, of foundations, and of structures such as bridgesand sewerage systems where
waterproofing was essential. The technique of manufacture declined in the Middle Ages and was
regained in the 18th century, but concrete had only a limited importance for architecture until
the invention of reinforced concrete in the 1860s.
Reinforced concrete was developed to add the tensile strength of steel to the compressive strength
of mass concrete. The metal is embedded by being set as a mesh into the forms before pouring, and
in the hardened material the two act uniformly. The combination is much more versatile than either
product; it serves not only for constructing rigid frames but also for foundations, columns, walls,
floors, and a limitless variety of coverings, and it does not require the addition of other structural
materials. Although the making of forms is a slow and costly process, the technique competes
economically with steel frame construction because the mesh, composed of thin, bendable metal
rods or metal fabric, employs far less steel, and concrete is itself inexpensive.

The steel reinforcement is employed to take full advantage of the plastic, or sculptural, character of
concrete. It can be jointed or bent to unify supporting members with the floors and the coverings
they carry. Furthermore, stresses produced in floors, domes, and vaults may be distributed within
the slabs themselves to reduce load, and the diminished load may be concentrated at desired points
so that the number and size of supports is greatly reduced.

Three 20th-century developments in production had a radical effect on architecture. The

first, concrete-shell construction, permits the erection of vast vaults and domes with a concrete and
steel content so reduced that the thickness is comparatively less than that of an eggshell. The
second development, precast-concrete construction, employs bricks, slabs, and supports made
under optimal factory conditions to increase waterproofing and solidity, to decrease time and cost
in erection, and to reduce expansion and contraction. Finally, prestressed concrete provides bearing
members into which reinforcement is set under tension to produce a live force to resist a particular
load. Since the member acts like a spring, it can carry a greater load than an unstressed member of
the same size.
Methods
Wall
The two types of wall are load bearing, which supports the weight of floors and roofs, and
nonbearing, which at most supports its own weight.

Load-bearing wall
The load-bearing wall of masonry is thickened in proportion to the forces it has to resist: its own
load, the load of floors, roofs, persons, etc., and the lateral forces of arches, vaults, wind, etc., that
may cause it to crack or buckle. Its thickness often can be reduced at the top, because loads
accumulate toward the base; in high buildings this is done by interior or exterior setbacks at the
floor level of upper stories. Walls that must resist lateral forces are thickened either along the whole
length or at particular points where the force is concentrated. The latter method is
called buttressing. Doors and windows weaken the resistance of the wall and divert the forces
above them to the parts on either side, which must be thickened in proportion to the width of the
opening. In multistory buildings, windows—unless they are very small—must be placed one above
the other so as to leave uninterrupted vertical masses of wall between them to transfer loads directly
to the ground. The number of openings that can be used depends on the strength of the masonry and
the stresses in the wall. Walls in light, wood-framed structures and in reinforced-concrete
construction may have a bearing function also. But the nature of the material admits other means of
resisting forces than the increase of mass.
The placement of walls is determined by the type of support for floors and roofs. The commonest
support is the beam, which must be jointed to walls at both ends; consequently, its maximum
permissible length establishes the distance between bearing walls. All floors and coverings are most
easily supported on straight, parallel walls except the dome (see below Dome).
Nonbearing wall
Excluding the independent garden variety, the nonbearing wall appears only where loads are
carried by other members, as in heavy timber and other skeletal structures. Modern steel and
reinforced-concrete frames require exterior walls only for shelter and sometimes dispense with
them on the ground floor to permit easier access. Since the wall rests or hangs upon members of the
frame, it becomes a curtain or screen and admits treatment in any durable, weather-resisting
material. Traditional materials are often used, but light walls of glass, plastic, metal alloys, wood
products, etc., can be equally efficient. This freedom of choice extends also to the form of walls
and offers greatly expanded opportunities for creative expression.
Post-and-lintel
The simplest illustration of load and support in construction is the post-and-lintel system, in which
two upright members (posts, columns, piers) hold up a third member (lintel, beam, girder, rafter)
laid horizontally across their top surfaces. This is the basis for the evolution of all openings. But, in
its pure form, the post-and-lintel is seen only in colonnades and in framed structures, since the posts
of doors, windows, ceilings, and roofs are part of the wall.
 post-and-lintel systemStonehenge, an example of early post-and-lintel construction.Kristian H. Resset

The job of the lintel is to bear the loads that rest on it (and its own load) without deforming or
breaking. Failure occurs only when the material is too weak or the lintel is too long. Lintels
composed of materials that are weak in bending, such as stone, must be short, while lintels in
materials that are strong in bending, such as steel, may span far greater openings. Masonry lintels
are inefficient because they must depend on the cohesiveness of mortar, which is weaker than the
blocks it bonds; so, in masonry construction, lintels of monolithic(single-slab) stone, wood, and
stronger materials are employed.
The job of the post is to support the lintel and its loads without crushing or buckling. Failure
occurs, as in lintels, from excessive weakness or length, but the difference is that the material must
be especially strong in compression. Stone, which has this property, is more versatile as a post than
as a lintel; under heavy loads it is superior to wood but not to iron, steel, or reinforced concrete.
Masonry posts, including those of brick, may be highly efficient, since the loads compress the
joints and add to their cohesiveness. Although monolithic stone columns are used, they are
extravagant to produce for large structures, and columns are usually built up of a series of
cylindrical blocks called drums.
From prehistoric times to the Roman Empire, the post-and-lintel system was the root of
architectural design. The interiors of Egyptian temples and the exteriors of Greek temples
are delineated by columns covered by stone lintels. The Greeks opened their interior spaces by
substituting wooden beams for stone, since the wood required fewer supports. The development of
the arch and vault challenged the system but could not diminish its importance either in masonry
construction or in wood framing, by its nature dependent on posts and beams.
Ancient uses of the post-and-lintel were refined but not fundamentally altered until the production
of cast-iron columns, which, offering greater strength and smaller circumference, greatly reduced
the mass and weight of buildings. Much construction in modern materials is based on the post-and-
lintel system of the past. Steel and concrete skeletons restore to modern architecture the formal
simplicity of the oldest structures known. But, because they are rigid frames, they abandon the
fundamental concept of the duality of post-and-lintel by fusing them into a unit throughout which
stresses are distributed. The “mushroom” column is a further departure, since the unit can be
extended into a covering slab and becomes a ceiling as well as a support.

“Mushroom” column with fountain, supporting a cantilever, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, by Pedro Ramírez
Vázquez and Rafael Mijares, 1964.Victor Englebert

Arch
The arch can be called a curved lintel. Early masonry builders could span only narrow openings
because of the necessary shortness and weight of monolithic stone lintels. With the invention of the
arch, two problems were solved: (1) wide openings could be spanned with small, light blocks, in
brick as well as stone, which were easy to transport and to handle; and (2) the arch was bent
upward to resist and to conduct into its supports the loads that tended to bend the lintel downward.
Because the arch is curved, the upper edge has a greater circumference than the lower, so that each
of its blocks must be cut in wedge shapes that press firmly against the whole surface of
neighbouring blocks and conduct loads uniformly. This form creates problems of equilibrium that
do not exist in lintels. The stresses in the arch tend to squeeze the blocks outward radially, and
loads divert these outward forces downward to exert a resultant diagonal force, called thrust, which
will cause the arch to collapse if it is not properly buttressed. So an arch cannot replace a lintel on
two free-standing posts unless the posts are massive enough to buttress the thrust and to conduct it
into the foundations (as in ancient Roman triumphal arches). Arches may rest on light supports,
however, where they occur in a row, because the thrust of one arch counteracts the thrust of its
neighbours, and the system will remain stable as long as the arches at either end of the row are
buttressed by walls, piers, or earth.
The size of arches is limited only by economy; large arches exert large thrusts, and they are hard to
buttress and to build. The form may be varied to meet specific problems; the most efficient forms in
masonry are semicircular, segmental (segment of a circle), and pointed (two intersecting arcs of a
circle), but noncircular curves can be used successfully.
Arches were known in Egypt and Greece but were considered unsuitable for monumental
architecture. In Roman times the arch was fully exploited in bridges, aqueducts, and large-scale
architecture. New forms and uses were found in medieval and particularly Gothic
architecture (flying buttress, pointed arch), and Baroque architects developed a vocabulary of
noncircular forms for expressive reasons. Steel, concrete, and laminated-wood arches of the 20th
century changed the concept and the mechanics of arches. Their components are completely
different from wedge-shaped blocks (voussoirs); they may be made entirely rigid so as to require
only vertical support; they may be of hinged intersections that work independently, or they may be
thin slabs or members (in reinforced concrete) in which stresses are so distributed that they add the
advantages of lintels to those of arches, requiring only light supports. These innovations provide a
great freedom of design and a means of covering great spans without a massive substructure.

France: Roman aqueductPont du Gard, an ancient Roman aqueduct in Nîmes, France. © Karel Gallas/Shutterstock.com

Vault
The evolution of the vault begins with the discovery of the arch, because the basic “barrel” form,
which appeared first in ancient Egypt and the Near East, is simply a deep, or three-dimensional,
arch. Since the barrel vault exerts thrust as the arch does, it must be buttressed along its entire
length by heavy walls in which openings must be limited in size and number. This is a
disadvantage, since it inhibits light and circulation.
 barrel vaultBarrel vault in Aranjuez, Spain.© Antonio Ovejero Diaz/Shutterstock.com

But Roman builders discovered that openings could be made by building two barrel vaults that
intersected at right angles to form the groin vault, which is square in plan and may be repeated in
series to span rectangular areas of unlimited length. This vault has the additional advantage that its
thrusts are concentrated at the four corners, so that the supporting walls need not be uniformly
massive but may be buttressed where they support the vault.
Two disadvantages of the groin vault encouraged Gothicbuilders to develop a modification known
as the rib vault. First, to build a groin vault, a form must be made to pour or lay the entire vault, and
this requires complex scaffolding from the ground up; second, the groin vault must be more or less
square, and a single vault cannot span extended rectangular areas. The rib vault provided a skeleton
of arches or ribs along the sides of the area and crossing it diagonally; on these the masonry of the
vault could be laid; a simple centring sufficedfor the ribs. To cover the rectangular areas, the
medieval mason used pointed arches, which, unlike round arches, can be raised as high over a short
span as over a long one. Thus, the vault could be composed of the intersection of two vaults of
different widths but the same height.
To reduce further the thickness of the wall (to the point of substituting large areas of glass for
masonry), Gothic builders developed the flying buttress, which counteracts vault thrust not by
continuous wall mass and weight but by counterthrust created by exterior half-arches placed at the
height of the vaults at the points of greatest stress. These buttresses conduct stresses to heavier wall
buttresses below the window level.
 flying buttressTwo flying buttresses on the abbey of Bath, England.Adrian Pingstone

The next important development in vaults, as in arches, came with 19th-century materials. Great
iron skeleton vaults were constructed as a framework for light materials such as glass (Crystal
Palace, London). The elimination of weight and excessive thrust, the freedom in the use of
materials, and the absence of centring problems favoured the simple barrel vault and made more
complex types obsolete. But in many of the modern frame systems the vault itself loses its
structural function and becomes a thin skin laid over a series of arches.

The transept of the Crystal Palace, designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, at the Great Exhibition of 1851, Hyde Park, London.Hulton
Archive/Getty Images

While the arch is supplanting the vault in one area of technique, the vault has abandoned the arch
principle in another. The reinforced-concrete shell vault, based on the principle of the bent or
molded slab, is one of the most important innovations in the history of architecture. It has all the
advantages of load distribution of the concrete floor slab, plus the resistance to bending provided by
its curved form. The shell is reinforced in such a way that it exerts no lateral thrust and may be
supported as if it were a beam or truss; hence, the form no longer necessitates the conducting of
loads into the wall, and the vault may be designed with great freedom.
Dome
Domes appeared first on round huts and tombs in the ancient Near East, India, and the
Mediterranean region but only as solid mounds or in techniques adaptable only to the smallest
buildings. They became technically significant with the introduction of the large-scale masonry
hemispheres by the Romans. Domes, like vaults, evolved from the arch, for in their simplest form
they may be thought of as a continuous series of arches, with the same centre. Therefore, the dome
exerts thrusts all around its perimeter, and the earliest monumental examples required heavy walls.
Since the walls permitted few openings and had to be round or polygonal to give continuous
support, early domes were difficult to incorporate into complex structures, especially
when adjacent spaces were vaulted.
Byzantine architects perfected a way of raising domes on piersinstead of walls (like groin vaults),
which permitted lighting and communication from four directions. The transition from a cubic plan
to the hemisphere was achieved by four inverted spherical triangles called pendentives—masses of
masonry curved both horizontally and vertically. Their apexes rested on the four piers, to which
they conducted the forces of the dome; their sides joined to form arches over openings in four faces
of the cube; and their bases met in a complete circle to form the dome foundation. The pendentive
dome could rest directly on this foundation or upon a cylindrical wall, called a drum, inserted
between the two to increase height.
The dome was unsuited to the lightness and verticality of late medieval styles but was widely used
in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Renaissance builders adapted the Gothic rib system to
dome construction and found new means to reduce loads and thrust (concentric chains, etc.) that
permitted high drums and variations in the curvature of the dome. The awkward, tunnellike effect
produced on the interior by high domes was often hidden by an internal shell built on the same
foundations (as at Florence Cathedral and St. Paul’s Cathedral, London).
The effort and ingenuity devoted to doming rectangular buildings can be explained principally by
the symbolic character of the form, since vaulting is a simpler alternative. So it was chiefly the
desire to observe tradition that preserved the dome in the early era of iron and steel construction,
and, with rare exceptions (Halle aux Blés, Paris; the Coal Exchange, London), 19th-century
examples retained masonry forms without exploiting the advantages of metal.
Newer techniques, however, have added practically to the expressive advantages of domes. The
reinforced-concrete slab used in vaulting can be curved in length as well as width (like an inflated
handkerchief or a parachute). And in this development the distinction between vaults and domes
loses significance, being based on nothing but the type of curvature in the slab. Geodesic domes,
developed in the 20th century by R. Buckminster Fuller, are spherical forms in which triangular or
polygonal facets composed of light skeletal struts or flat planes replace the arch principle and
distribute stresses within the structure itself, as in a truss. Geodesic domes can be supported by light
walls and are the only large domes that can be set directly on the ground as complete structures.
 geodesic domeThe Climatron geodesic dome, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis.© ksteffens/iStock.com

Truss
By far the commonest covering throughout history is the trussed roof, constructed upon a frame
composed of triangular sections spaced crosswise at intervals and made rigid in length by
beams. Trusses formerly were principally of wood and were used to cover masonry as well as
framed structures, even when these were vaulted. The variety of trusses is so great that only the
general principle of the form can be given here.

Nave of San Miniato al Monte (1062) showing roof trusses, Florence. © Vvoevale/Dreamstime.com
The truss is based on the geometric law that a triangle is the only figure that cannot be changed in
shape without a change in the length of its sides; thus, a triangular frame of strong pieces firmly
fastened at the angles cannot be deformed by its own load or by external forces such as wind
pressure. These forces, which in a vault thrust outward against the walls, are contained within the
truss itself, because the piece (chord) at the base of the triangle resists by tension the tendency of
the two sides to behave like a vault. With its forces in equilibrium, the truss exerts only a direct
downward pressure on the walls, so that they need not be thickened or buttressed. This explains
why most roofs are triangular in cross section.
In trusses that are too large to be constructed of three members of moderate size, a complex system
of small triangles within the frame replaces the simple triangle.

Not all peaked roofs are trusses, for in primitive building, in ancient Greece, and in much Chinese
and Japanese wood architecture the chord is omitted and the sides exert thrust. Nor are all trusses
triangular, since the principle may be modified (as in modern steel and heavy timber construction)
to apply to arches and vaults if chords of sufficient strength can be found.
Framed structures
A framed structure in any material is one that is made stable by a skeleton that is able to stand by
itself as a rigid structure without depending on floors or walls to resist deformation. Materials such
as wood, steel, and reinforced concrete, which are strong in both tension and compression, make
the best members for framing. Masonry skeletons, which cannot be made rigid without walls, are
not frames. The heavy timber frame, in which large posts, spaced relatively far apart, support thick
floor and roof beams, was the commonest type of construction in eastern Asia and
northern Europe from prehistoric times to the mid-19th century. It was supplanted by the American
light wood frame (balloon frame), composed of many small and closely spaced members that could
be handled easily and assembled quickly by nailing instead of by the slow joinery and dowelling of
the past. Construction is similar in the two systems, since they are both based on the post-and-lintel
principle. Posts must rest on a level, waterproof foundation, usually composed of masonry or
concrete, on which the sill (base member) is attached. Each upper story is laid on crossbeams that
are supported on the exterior wall by horizontal members. Interior walls give additional beam
support.
In the heavy-timber system, the beams are strong enough to allow the upper story and roof to
project beyond the plane of the ground-floor posts, increasing the space and weather protection.
The members are usually exposed on the exterior. In China, Korea, and Japan, spaces between are
enclosed by light screen walls and in northern Europe partly by thinner bracing members and partly
by boards, panels, or (in half-timbered construction) bricks or earth.
The light frame, however, is sheathed with vertical or horizontal boarding or shingling, which is
jointed or overlapped for weather protection. Sheathing helps to brace as well as to protect the
frame, so the frame is not structurally independent as in steel frame construction. The light-frame
system has not been significantly improved since its introduction, and it lags behind other modern
techniques. Prefabricated panels designed to reduce the growing cost of construction have not been
widely adopted. Modern heavy-timber and laminated-wood techniques, however, provide means of
building up compound members for trusses and arches that challenge steel construction for certain
large-scale projects in areas where wood is plentiful.
Steel framing is based on the same principles but is much simplified by the far greater strength of
the material, which provides more rigidity with fewer members. The load-bearing capacity of steel
is adequate for buildings many times higher than those made of other materials. Because the
column and beam are fused by riveting or welding, stresses are distributed between them, and both
can be longer and lighter than in structures in which they work independently as post-and-lintel.
Thus, large cubic spaces can be spanned by four columns and four beams, and buildings of almost
any size can be produced by joining cubes in height and width. Since structural steel must be
protected from corrosion, the skeleton is either covered by curtain walls or surfaced in concrete or,
more rarely, painted. The steel frame is used also in single-story buildings where large spans are
required. The simple cube then can be abandoned for covering systems employing arches, trusses,
and other elements in a limitless variety of forms in order to suit the functions of the building.
Differences between reinforced-concrete and steel framing are discussed in the section on
materials. The greater rigidity and continuity of concrete frames give them more versatility, but
steel is favoured for very tall structures for reasons of economy in construction and space. An
example is the system called box frame construction, in which each unit is composed of two walls
bearing a slab (the other two walls enclosing the unit are nonbearing curtain walls); this type of
construction extends the post-and-lintel principle into three dimensions. Here, again, concrete
crosses the barriers that separated traditional methods of construction.
Expression
Expression in architecture is the communication of quality and meaning. The functions and the
techniques of building are interpreted and transformed by expression into art, as sounds are made
into music and words into literature.
The nature of expression varies with the character of culture in different places and in different
times, forming distinct modes or languages of expression that are called styles. Style communicates
the outlook of a culture and the concepts of its architects. The boundaries of a style may be national
and geographical (e.g., Japanese, Mayan) or religious (e.g., Islamic)
and intellectual (e.g., Renaissance), embracing distinct linguistic, racial, and national units;
different expressions within each of these boundaries are produced by the particular style of
regions, towns, groups, architects, or craftsmen. The life span of styles may be long (ancient
Egyptian, over 3,000 years) or short (Baroque, less than 200 years) according to the changeability
of cultural patterns. The principal forces in the creation of a style are tradition, the experience of
earlier architecture; influence, the contribution of contemporary expressions outside the immediate
cultural environment; and innovation, the creative contribution of the culture and the architect.
These forces operate to produce an evolution within every style and ultimately to generate new
styles that tend to supplant their predecessors.
The components of expression, which communicate the particular values of style, are content and
form. Since content can be communicated only through form, the two are organically united, but
here they will be discussed separately in order to distinguish the specific and concrete meaning
(content) from the abstract expression of qualities (form).
Content
Content is the subject matter of architecture, the element in architectural expression that
communicates specific meanings that interpret to society the functions and techniques of buildings.
Symbols of function
Society requires that architecture not only communicate the aspirations of its institutions
but also fulfill their practical needs. Differences in expression, apart from differences in
planning, distinguish the forms of architectural types (the house from the church, etc.), the
kinds of use (the Catholic from the Protestant church), and the traditions and customs of
users (the English from the Swiss Protestant church). When architectural forms become
the vehicles of content—in plan, elevation, and decoration—they are symbolic.
Their symbolismcan be understood consciously or unconsciously, by association (e.g.,
spire = church) to a building one has seen before and by the fact that it suggests certain
universal experiences (e.g., vertical forms “rise”; low roofs “envelop”). One comprehends
the meaning of symbols that are new, as well as those that are known, by association,
because the laws of statics restrain builders from putting them into forms so completely
unfamiliar that they do not suggest some tradition, just as the structure of language
permits endless new meanings but retains a fairly constant vocabulary. The meaning of
architectural symbols—or of words—may even change, but the process must be both
logical and gradual, for, if the change is irrational, the purpose—communication—is lost.
The architectural plan, when used symbolically, communicates through its shape. From
prehistoric times and in many cultures, the circle, with its suggestion of the planets and
other manifestations of nature, gained a symbolic, mystical significance and was used in
the plans of houses, tombs, and religious structures. By slow processes it came to be
employed for memoria and shrines and for hero cults in both the East and the West. When
building techniques permitted, its symbolism often merged with that of the dome. In
Hindu temples, the square (and the cross plans developed from it) expressed
celestial harmony. The central-plan Christian church (circle, polygon, Greek cross, ellipse)
fascinated the architects of the Renaissance with its symbolic and traditional values, and it
is found in their drawings and treatises to the virtual exclusion of the more practical
longitudinal basilicas that architects were often commissioned to build.
Plan symbolism remained almost exclusively in the sphere of religion after antiquity, and
its traditions gradually disappeared in the course of the 19th century. The modern plan is
determined by problems of form (space-mass relationships, etc.) and by the practical
demands of use rather than by symbolic communication.

In elevation the most consistent symbolic forms have been the dome, the tower,
the stairway, the portal, and the colonnade. Domes imply the meanings of the circle and
more, since a dome is a covering. Long before masonry domes could be built, the
hemisphere was associated with the heavens as a “cosmic canopy,” and throughout
history domes have been decorated with stars and astrological symbols. In ancient
Romeand among Christians and Indian Buddhists, the dome came to mean universal
power. During the Renaissance it spread from religious structures to palaces and
government buildings, retaining some of its implications of power. In the United States the
national capitol is domed, and there are few state capitols without domes; the symbol has
survived the loss of its original meanings. The tower, with origins in primitive nature rites,
has consistently symbolized power. The Chinese pagodaextends central-plan symbolism
into towers; many towers and spires rose from the northern European Gothic cathedral,
and the medieval Italian city was a forest of towers erected by nobles in constant
competition to express their supremacy. This meaning survives in modern skyscrapers;
their height is more frequently boasted of than their efficiency or beauty.
Architectural elements conceived to facilitate the use of buildings may also take on
symbolic significance. The stairway, employed in the past to give “monumentality” to
important buildings, frequently became more expressive than convenient, especially in
Baroque palaces. Portals, from the time of ancient Egyptian temple pylons and Babylonian
city gates, became monuments in themselves, used to communicate a heightened
significance to what lay behind them. In the Gothic cathedral they became the richest
element of the facade—a translation of biblical doctrine into stone. Since the development
of the classical Greek temple, the colonnade on the exterior of buildings has borne similar
implications.
Such symbols have become archaic in modern culture and appear as a sign of resistance
to new forms. This resistance is especially evident in the popular symbolism of domestic
architecture, where the atmosphere of the home is often expressed by cottage-like roofs,
shutters, trellises, mullioned windows, grilles, and other associations with a more peaceful
past.
Decoration, the most easily recognized medium of content, communicates meaning either
through architectural elements or through the figural arts
(sculpture, painting, mosaic, stained glass, etc.). The architectural elements used
decoratively, such as the classical orders, usually originate in technique and in time lose
their structural significance to become symbols. In ancient Rome and from the
Renaissance to the 20th century, the formal Grecian orders were applied to buildings of
many different techniques as expressions of the continuing influence of Greek institutions.
Similarly, the new vocabulary of Gothic architecture, developed with new building
techniques (the pointed arch, the flying buttress, etc.), became in later periods a source
for religious and romantic symbolism. The Art Nouveauof the turn of the 20th century, a
system of ornament based on floral and other organic forms, survived for only two
decades, perhaps because its symbols were neither drawn from a tradition nor derived
from a structural system. (Architectural ornament will be further treated below.)
The function of the figural arts in conveying content is a subject outside the scope of this
article, but its importance for architecture must be mentioned. The figural arts not only
offer the means of expressing more specific ideas than any architectural symbols, but in
many architectural styles they define the character of mass and space. The sculptures of
the Hindu temple, the mosaics of the Byzantine church, and the stuccoes of Moorish
palaces are not ornamental applications; they determine the form of the building itself.
The virtual absence of traditional symbols in modern architecture is evidence of the failure
of these symbols to express the cultural patterns of the 20th century. In these times,
architecture, like painting, sculpture, and other arts, has tended to be abstract, to
emphasize qualities of form rather than the communication of familiar ideas through
symbols.
Expression of technique
The second aspect of content is the communication of the structural significance of materials and
methods. Its purpose is to interpret the way in which architecture is put together. The characteristics
of materials that are important in expressing design techniques are the properties of
their composition (e.g., structure, weight, durability) and the way they are used in structure. Their
properties may be expressed and interpreted by the treatment of the surface, and their use may be
expressed by emphasis on the dimensions and joining of the building units into which they are
formed.
The hardness, weight, and crystalline composition of stonemasonry traditionally have been
emphasized by devices not necessarily connected with structural methods: rustication (finishing in
rough, uneven surfaces), drafting (more refined, linear cutting), and polishing. Niches and other
indentations, projecting courses, or frames around openings suggest massiveness. In nonbearing
walls, a smooth, unbroken surface implies thinness. The use of stone or brick masonry in
construction is emphasized by clarifying the limits of each block and by the amount of mortar used
and by distinguishing lintels, arches, and other specific members from the construction of the wall.
The properties of wood are suggested by revealing and emphasizing its texture in load-bearing
members and by treating the sheathing of light wood frames in patterns (of shingling or boarding)
that communicate thinness. The plasticity of concrete is shown by freedom in modelling and its use
in construction by emphasizing the impressions of the wooden forms in which it is cast. The
sections of light metal curtain walls are frequently stamped into geometric patterns to illustrate their
nonbearing character. Materials that must be covered for protection, such as unfired brick and the
steel used in framing, are not adaptable to this type of communication.
At times building methods are demonstrated simply by exposing the structure, as in the heavy
timber frame, but in many styles the functions of structural systems have been interpreted by
designing their members in forms that often are more explanatory than efficient. The Greek
column, which is narrower at its summit than at its base, is diminished by a curve beginning
slightly below the midpoint, giving it an effect of an almost muscular power to resist loads. The
expression is more explicit in the caryatid, a human figure that replaces the column, and in the
burdened animals and dwarfs that support the columns of Romanesque portals. Many elements in
the Gothic cathedral serve as diagrams of structure: the supporting piers are clusters of shafts, each
of which extends upward without interruption to become the rib of the vault, and the ribs
themselves are an elucidation of technique; the flying buttress and the window tracery are elegant
interpretations of their functions. In the modern steel-frame building, the hidden forms of the
skeleton are often repeated on the facade to enable one to “see through” to the technique, but the
system also permits the alternative of expressing the lightness and independence of the curtain
wall by sheer surfaces of glass and other materials. The work of the concrete slab is made explicit
by projecting indications of the placement of reinforcement or of the distribution of stresses.
The expression of technique is characteristic not of all architectural styles but only of those such as
the Gothic and modern, in which new techniques excite a search for the interpretive design of their
materials and methods. More often than not, both materials and methods have been disguised by
decorative forms or surfacing such as veneers, stucco, or paint, because of emphasis on the
expression of content or of form. Most early stone architecture in Egypt, Greece, and India retained
as decoration the forms developed in wooden forerunners. The precious marble of Greek temples
was disguised under painted stucco, Roman brickwork was hidden by slabs of coloured marble, and
19th-century cast-iron columns were molded into classic or Gothic forms. The history of domes is
filled with examples of the successful disguising of method, of giving the ponderous mass the
effect of rising from the exterior and of floating from within.
Technical content was one of the foundation stones of 20th-century architectural theory,
particularly in its early phases, and represented a reaction against 19th-century symbolic content. It
is essential for the understanding of modern architecture that the expression of technique be seen as
an art—a creative interpretation that heightens awareness of the nature of architecture.
Form
In the sphere of function and technique, architects are responsible to the patterns of their culture on
one hand and to the patterns of technology on the other, but, in the expression of form, they are free
to communicate their own personalities and concepts. Not every architect has the gift to exercise
this prerogative to the fullest. As in other arts and sciences, a few individuals generate new styles
and others follow, interpreting these styles in original and personal ways. But the majority accept
styles as given and perpetuate them without leaving a mark. The architect’s principal responsibility
in the formation of style is to create meaningful form. When form is spoken of in the arts, not only
the physical shape, size, and mass of a work are meant but also all the elements that contribute to
the work’s aesthetic structure and composition. Many of these may be without a fixed form of their
own—a rest in music, a line in painting, a space in architecture—and gain significance only as they
are organized into the finished product. The basic formal elements of architecture in this sense are
space and mass. The process of organizing these elements into an ordered form is called
composition, and the principal means by which they are given expressive quality are scale, light,
texture, and colour.
Space and mass
Space, that immaterial essence that the painter suggests and the sculptor fills, the architect
envelops, creating a wholly human and finite environment within the infinite environment of
nature. The concept that space can have a quality other than emptiness is difficult to grasp. When a
building is entered, floor, supports, walls, and a ceiling are seen, all of which can be studied and
perhaps enjoyed, while the space, in the sense that one is accustomed to think of it, is void: the
absence of mass, filled by air.
But spatial experiences that express something are common to everyone, though they are not
always consciously grasped. One feels insecure in a low cave or a narrow defile, exhilarated and
powerful on a hilltop; these are psychological and motor reactions that result from measuring one’s
potential for movement against the surrounding spaces, and the same reactions take root even in
language (“confining” circumstances and “elevating” experiences are spoken of). An infinite
variety of such reactions may be summoned by the architect, because the architect controls the
limits above, below, and on all sides of the observer. People entering the architect’s space measure
it in terms of the degree and the quality of their potential for movement. The concept of potentiality
is important, first, because observers can anticipate where they may move merely looking about
and, second, because they can conceive movements that they cannot execute. Thus, in the nave of
a Gothic cathedral, the high walls closely confining the observers on two sides restrict their
possible movements, suggesting advance along the free space of the nave toward the altar, or their
compression forces the observers to look upward to the vaults and the light far overhead, there to
feel a sense of physical release, though they are earthbound. The experience of Gothic space is
called uplifting because it urges one to rise.
 Bayeux, France: Gothic cathedralInterior of the Gothic cathedral, Bayeux, France. © PHB.cz/Fotolia

Renaissance space, on the other hand, attempts to balance its suggestion of movement, to draw
observers to a focal point at which they can sense an equilibrium of movement in all directions, a
resolution of the conflict of compression and release. At this point one feels physically at rest, at
the opposite extreme from the elevating sensation of the cathedral.
Of course, one does not use the eyes alone to feel spatial quality, because only the simplest spaces
—a cubic room, for example—can be wholly experienced from one standpoint. In a complex of
spaces, such as that of the cathedral, the observer walks about, gaining new sensations, seeing new
potentials for movement at every step. Most modern architecture, in its free organization of space
sequences, demands mobility; its techniques have made it possible to remove the heavy walls and
supports of the past, reducing the sense of compression. Walls become membranes to be arranged
at will for spatial experience, and some are transparent and so extend one’s potential for movement
into the limitless out-of-doors.

Spatial experience is not restricted to the interiors of buildings. The sensations one has in nature’s
open spaces may be re-created by art. City squares and streets, even gardens, achieve a variety of
expression comparable with that of interiors. The Baroque piazza of St. Peter’s in Rome, which
directs the observer along its great embracing arcs toward the entrance, is at least as moving as
the church interior.
 St. Peter's SquareView of St. Peter's Square from the dome of the basilica, Vatican City.© Norbert Rehm/Fotolia

The exterior of a single building, particularly one that is isolated from other architecture, does not
create a space. It occupies the space of nature. Thus, it may be experienced as sculpture, in terms of
the play of masses in a void. The aesthetics of masses, like that of spaces, is rooted in one’s
psychology. When a tall tree or a mountain is called majestic and a rocky cliff menacing, human
attributes are being projected. People inevitably humanize inert matter and so give the architect the
opportunity to arouse predictable patterns of experience.
The appreciation of mass, like that of space, depends on movement, but this movement must be
physical. It cannot be experienced in anticipation, because, no matter where one stands to observe
even the simplest building, part of it is out of sight. The mass of a complex building is differently
composed from every point of view. The 20th-century art critic Sigfried Giedion, emphasizing the
need for movement in experiencing modern architecture, suggested that architecture may be four-
dimensional, since time (for movement) is as meaningful as the spatial dimensions.

Some architecture depends much more on mass expression than on space expression. The
Egyptian pyramid, the Indian stupa, and the dagoba of Sri Lanka have no meaningful interior
spaces; they are architectural in function and technique, sculptural in expression. The interior of a
Greek temple is of little interest compared with the wonderful play of forms on its colonnaded
exterior, while early Christian and Byzantine architecture reverse the emphasis, making the simple
exterior a shell for a splendid and mystical space. Gothic architecturebalances the two, partly in
order to express a dual content: earthly power over the world outside, spiritual power inside.
Modern techniques permit a reduction of the contrast between space and mass expressions by
reducing the mass of walls and the size and number of supports and by allowing the
interpenetration of interior and exterior space.
Composition
Space and mass are the raw materials of architectural form; from them the architect creates an
ordered expression through the process of composition. Composition is the organization of the
whole out of its parts—the conception of single elements, the interrelating of these elements, and
the relating of them to the total form.
The simplest architectural element is a plane, the flat, two-dimensional surface that limits masses
and spaces. The simplest plane is a rectangular one without openings or decoration—the wall of a
room, for example. This wall is given quality solely by the proportion of its width to its height.
Now a door is put into the wall; the door itself has a certain proportion, and a third element is
injected, the relation of two proportions. A window is added, and the composition becomes more
complex; then a row of windows, and sequence becomes a factor in addition to the elements of
proportion and relation. Sequence again involves the concept of motion; the row of windows is said
“to run along” the facade or is “rhythmically” designed.

Finally, this wall may gain rich subtleties of composition within its proportions and rhythms. It can
be modelled—into a complex of planes or irregular or curved surfaces—to provide the dimension
of depth to its proportions, or symbols of use or of technique can become part of its expressive
form.

No architectural planes stand alone, of course; they always intersect other planes. The room wall
meets two other walls, the floor, and the ceiling, and a facade wall meets the ground, the roof, and
two other walls. So the total composition of a wall must be harmonized with the composition of
other planes in a three-dimensional whole.

The means of achieving this harmony differ in every style. Greek architects developed a system of
proportions based on the lower diameter of the temple column, from which spatial intervals and the
measurement of masses were derived by multiplication and division. Medieval architects first used
arithmetical modules based on the measurements of areas in the cathedral plan and, in the Gothic
period, changed to a geometric system that employed chiefly the equilateral triangle and the square,
figures that had symbolic and mystical values. In Renaissance theory, proportions and harmonies
were developed from systems of musical composition, since architects believed that relationships in
all the arts depended on an all-pervading celestial harmony. Several modular and proportional
systems have been evolved by modern architects (e.g., Le Corbusier’s “Modulor”), but none has
been widely adopted.
Behind these changing theoretical methods, however, there seems to be a constant human reaction
to spatial relationships that distinguishes harmony from cacophony, that makes one bored with a
perfectly cubic room or prefer certain rectangular forms to others. This psychological response to
form probably is connected to one’s mechanisms of balance, movements, and stature—in short, to
one’s own composition—but the scientific analysis of the process is still at an early stage of
development.
Some buildings have only a single, simple interior space (the Pantheon in Rome) or exterior mass
(the pyramids of Egypt) and are not less expressive on this account. But composition carries on into
a richer dimension as soon as two or more spaces or masses are organized into the whole. Such a
complex composition must give a coordinated form to connecting spaces and masses, each of them
in itself a unique harmony. The observer must be made to feel, in moving through the spaces and
around the masses, not only that each is related to the one that precedes and follows it but that each
one is contributing to a concept of the whole: a form that is greater than the sum of its parts. In
the Gothic cathedral, the nave, the aisles alongside it, the transept that crosses it toward one end,
the choir, and apse beyond may each be experienced separately for its own quality. But the
experience gains its full meaning only when the form of the total expression is realized: the low
aisles giving grandeur to the high nave, the three together leading to the confluence of the two
transept arms at the crossing in a vast climax that prepares for the resolution or finale at the altar. In
the same way, the significance of a total mass composition unfolds as one moves about its separate
parts. At St. Peter’s in Rome, the three projecting apses are gathered into a unity by the undulating
walls; they prepare for the cylindrical drum, the drum for the dome, the form of which leads to the
culminating lantern, which is harmonized with the drum. Toward the facade, two little domes frame
and prophesy the great one, as the cathedral aisles do the nave. While these particular examples
from the past illustrate symmetrical compositions with a climax, other buildings that are of equal
quality might be chosen to show irregular unity that is no less expressive (e.g., the Erechtheum in
Athens; the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel in France).
In modern architecture, as in modern painting, Renaissancelaws of composition, which emphasized
the symmetry and balance of semi-independent units, have been supplanted by principles that imply
the continuity of the whole and remove distinctions between parts. The biological term organic is
sometimes used to describe a process of composition that seeks to develop interdependent spaces
and masses that function expressively as members of an organism.
If composition were merely a matter of organizing a certain number of relationships, the process
would be mechanical, not creative, and all architecture would be equally good or, more likely, bad.
The purpose of composition is to express particular concepts and experiences, and it is successful
only when these are fully communicated to the observer.
Scale
When the proportions of architectural composition are applied to a particular building, the two-
termed relationship of the parts to the whole must be harmonized with a third term—the observer,
who not only sees the proportions of a door and their relationship to those of a wall (as would be
seen in a drawing of the building) but measures them against his or her own dimensions. This three-
termed relationship is called scale.
A well-scaled building such as a Greek temple will serve for illustration. If it were to be magnified
to the size of St. Peter’s in Rome, with its proportions remaining unchanged in their own
relationships, the temple would be out of scale, and the result would appear monstrous. If the
columns were to be doubled in width while the temple remained the same size, they would be out
of scale and out of proportion with the whole. The proportions of the temple are satisfactory as they
are because they are based on certain aesthetic principles established by the Greeks, principles that
are partly rooted in human psychological makeup and partly accepted by custom (e.g., as are
musical consonances). It is difficult to understand, however, why the scale of these temples is so
successful within a certain range of size, for neither the ancient Greeks nor anyone else established
laws to relate scale to size. They found their solution by experiment and subjective judgment.
It may be that the success of scale depends upon the ability to comprehend proportions in relation
to some unit or module that is roughly human-sized and close enough to the persons in a building to
permit them to measure it against themselves. The Greeks, in employing the base of the column as
a module for all the proportions of a temple, found a unit of a size that can be grasped easily and
one that is close to eye level as a person approaches the temple. This module is a key to
relationships among elements too far away to measure. This can be done in much larger buildings,
too, where the elements close to the observer are too massive to be measured easily. Roman
and Renaissance architecture retained the ancient Greek orders as decoration partly for this reason,
using them to break up huge masses into more comprehensible parts. In entirely different styles of
architecture, such as the Gothic, where the expressive function requires immeasurable proportions,
there is still a measurable module given in the base of the pier. But piers and columns are not
always a source of the module. In masonry construction, the single block can serve the same
purpose. In frame construction, the bay (distance between floors or columns) or doors and windows
may make a better key. The most successful modern skyscrapers retain a comprehensible scale, in
spite of their size, by the repetition of some such module, and this is one reason why the skeleton is
so often expressed on the exterior even when it is hidden behind walls.
Light
Light is a necessity for sight and, in architecture, a utility. But light is also a powerful,
though ephemeral, vehicle of expression. Because it moves, changes character, and comes and goes
with its source, light has the power to give to the inert mass of architecture the living quality of
nature. The architect does not quite control it but can predict its behaviour well enough to catch its
movements meaningfully. Architects channel it through openings into their spaces and mold it on
the surfaces of their masses by changes of plane, making it enliven their forms by contrast with
shadow.
The sunlight that falls on the exteriors of buildings cannot be directed or changed in quality, but it
can be reflected or absorbed in a wide range of modulation by the relief and texture of surfaces.
The planes and decoration of a facade, therefore, are not just the lines the architect makes on
working drawings but are receptacles of light and shadow that change in character, even in form, as
the Earth moves about the Sun.

Because of this link between nature and art, an important part in the formation of local architectural
styles is played by the variation in the quality and intensity of light in different climatic regions.

Architects control interior light better than exterior light, since they can select the position, size,
and shape of its source. With glass and other transparent materials, they transform even its colour
and intensity and so give light a meaning independent of that which it imparts to the structure. One
realizes this most powerfully in the Gothic cathedral, where the stained-glasswindows transform
the rays of the sun into a mystical diffusionthat descends from above like a supernatural vision.
Furthermore, light may be illusory, dissolving rather than clarifying form. When it comes out of
darkness in great intensity it seems to spread outward from its architectural channel.
This illusion may be employed to express meanings, as at the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, where the
light from the base of the dome hides the supports, giving the impression that the canopy floats on
air.
Texture
Texture plays a dual role in architecture: it expresses something of the quality of materials, and it
gives a particular quality to light. Although one absorbs both qualities simultaneously by eye, the
first has tactile, the second visual associations.
Specific tactile textures are peculiar to every material by virtue of its manufacture or
natural composition, but they may be altered to produce a variety of expressive qualities. Any stone
may be used in its natural, irregular state, or it may be chiselled in a rough or smooth texture or
highly polished to convey a range of meanings from vigour to refinement.
Visual textures are produced by the patterns given to the lighting of the surface both through the
way the materials are worked (e.g., vertical or horizontal chiselling of stone) and through the way
they are employed in building (e.g., vertical or horizontal boarding, projection and recession of
courses of brick). Like all patterns, visual textures create associations of movement, giving rhythm
to the surface.
A single texture is rarely employed in building. The variety of materials and treatments typically
produces a complex of textures that must be composed and harmonized like the forms and spaces
of architecture into a consistent expressive whole.
Colour
Since colour is a characteristic of all building materials, it is a constant feature of architecture. But
building materials are selected primarily for their structural value, and their colours are not always
suited to expressive requirements; thus, other materials chosen for their colour are frequently added
to the surface. These include pigments, which usually preserve the texture of the original surface,
and veneers of stone, wood, and a variety of manufactured products that entirely alter the surface
character.

Ishtar GateReconstructed Ishtar Gate, in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin.© pio3/Shutterstock.com

But colour, regardless of how it is produced, is the most impermanent element in architecture. It
changes with the weathering and staining of materials (the white Gothic cathedrals are now deep
gray), or, if it is superficial, it can easily be altered or removed (as the coloured stucco veneers of
ancient Greek temples or the bright marble facing on Roman brickwork).

The values that are associated with colour (yellow and red, for instance, are called “gay,” black and
deep blue “sombre”) are independent of materials and forms, and they give architects a range of
expression not provided by other means at their disposal. A different expressive device is provided
by the great range of light reflection in the colour scale. Colours that reflect light brilliantly appear
to advance toward the viewer, and those that absorb light appear to recede; the degree of projection
and recession of architectural forms may be altered, emphasized, or subdued by the colours of their
surfaces.
Environment
Architecture, unlike most of the other arts, is not often conceived independently of particular
surroundings. The problems of design extend beyond the organizing of space and mass complexes
to include the relating of the total form to its natural and architectural environment.
In site planning, a primary function of architectural design, the architect aims to create harmonies
with preexisting elements in the landscape and “townscape.”

But the province of the architect is not limited to the conception of single structures
in harmony with a given setting. Throughout history, architects have been employed in giving a
new form to the environment itself: planning the natural surroundings by the design of parks,
roadways, waterways, etc.; designing complexes of related buildings; and organizing the urban
environment into areas of residence, recreation, assembly, commerce, etc., both to increase their
utility and to give them unique expressive qualities through the interrelationship of groups of
buildings to the open areas about them.
James S. Ackerman
Ornament
Although it would be difficult to cover in any single definition all conceptions, past and present, of
what constitutesornament in architecture, three basic and fairly distinct categories may be
recognized: mimetic, or imitative, ornament, the forms of which have certain definite meanings or
symbolic significance; applied ornament, intended to add beauty to a structure but extrinsic to it;
and organic ornament, inherent in the building’s function or materials.
Mimetic ornament
Although it is still found today, mimetic ornament is by far the commonest type of architectural
ornament in primitive cultures, in Asian civilizations, and generally throughout antiquity. It grows
out of what seems to be a universal human reaction to technological change: the tendency to
reproduce in new materials and techniques shapes and qualities familiar from past usage, regardless
of appropriateness. This tendency may be called the principle of mimesis. Most common building
types in antiquity, both East and West (e.g., tombs, pyramids, temples, towers), began as imitations
of primeval house and shrine forms. An obvious example is the dome, which developed as a
permanent wooden or stone reproduction of a revered form originally built of pliable materials. In
the mature stages of early civilizations, building types tended to evolve beyond primitive
prototypes; their ornament, however, usually remained based on such models. Decorative motifs
derived from earlier structural and symbolic forms are innumerable and universal. In developed
Indian and Chinese architecture, domical and other originally structural forms occur often and
lavishly as ornament. In ancient Egypt, architectural details continued to preserve faithfully the
appearance of bundled papyrus shafts and similar early building forms. In ancient Mesopotamia,
brick walls long imitated the effect of primitive mud-and-reed construction. In the carved-stone
details of the Greco-Roman orders (e.g., capitals, entablatures, moldings), the precedent
of archaic construction in wood was always clearly discernible.
The prevalence of mimetic ornament in architecture may be explained in two ways. Some (perhaps
most in primitive cultures) is religious in origin. Certain forms and shapes, through long association
with religious rites, became sacred and were preserved and reproduced for their symbolic value.
These forms continued to be understood even though they were often stylized into abstract or
geometric patterns, unrecognizably removed from their naturalistic models. Much mimetic
ornament, however, even in early times, can be ascribed simply to inertia or conservatism. People
have generally tended to resist change; they find it reassuring to be surrounded by known and
familiar forms. Reproducing them as ornament on newly introduced forms is a common reaction to
the vague feeling of uneasiness that rapid social and technological change induces; it provides a
satisfying sense of continuity between the past and the present. This resistance was a factor in the
19th- and early 20th-century practice of disguising new techniques of construction in metal and
glass by an overload of ornament imitating earlier styles.
Applied ornament
Architectural ornament in the 19th century exemplified the common tendency for mimetic
ornament, in all times and places, to turn into mere applied decoration, lacking either symbolic
meaning or reference to the structure on which it is placed. By the 5th century BCE in Greece, the
details of the orders had largely lost whatever conscious symbolic or structural significance they
may have had; they became simply decorative elements extrinsic to the structure. The
Doric friezeis a good case: its origin (i.e., an imitation of the effect of alternating beam ends and
shuttered openings in archaic wood construction) remained evident, but it came to be treated as a
decorative sheath without reference to the actual structural forms behind. In losing their mimetic
character, the details of the Greek orders acquired a new function; they served to articulate or unify
the building visually, organizing it into a series of coordinated visual units that could be
comprehended as an integrated whole, rather than as a collection of isolated units. This concept of
applied decoration was passed on through the Greco-Roman period. The triumphal arch of Rome,
with its system of decorative columnsand entablature articulating what is essentially one massive
shape, is a particularly good illustration; the Colosseum is another. Most of the great architecture of
the Renaissance and Baroque periods depends on it; to a large extent, the difference between these
styles is the difference in decoration. The characteristic serenity and balance of Filippo
Brunelleschi’sarchitecture in the 15th century, for example, is very largely effected by his treatment
of pilasters (rectangular ornamental columns with bases and capitals) and entablatures applied to
them, whereas, in 16th-century wall-surface designs such as Michelangelo’s Medici chapel or the
dome of St. Peter’s, the same elements are used in different combinations to create a quite opposite
effect of tension and release.

Marble tomb of Giuliano de' Medici by Michelangelo, 1520–34; in the Medici Chapel, San Lorenzo, Florence. SCALA/Art Resource, New
York
Judicious and intelligent use of applied ornament remained characteristic of most Western
architecture until the 19th century, when the rationale of applied ornament frequently broke down,
and an often indiscriminate and inappropriate use of decoration became characteristic. The reasons
for this development are complex. In part it was a reaction to an overly rapid pace of social
change during the period; partly, also, it was a logical outgrowth of the increasingly lavish
decoration of late Baroque and Rococo architecture in the 18th century. Also, there was an
overemphasis on the purely literary and associative values attached to the ornament characteristic
of historical architectural styles. But compounding all these factors was the development
of machinery, such as multiple lathes and jigs, which provided builders with cheap prefabricated
ornament to give their often shoddy and ill-proportioned structures an illusion of elegance.
Architectural ornament and architectural forms proper tended to part company and to be designed
quite independently of each other.
Organic ornament
By the early 20th century a preoccupation with the proper function of architectural ornament was
characteristic of all advanced architectural thinkers, and by the mid-20th century a concept of
architectural ornament had been formulated that has been called organic ornament. This concept,
however, is by no means peculiar to the 20th century. Its essential principle is that ornament in
architecture should derive directly from and be a function of the nature of the building and the
materials used. This principle is characteristic of both Christian and Islamic religious
architecture of the medieval period. In the architectural ornament of Muslim India or Persia, as in
early Christian and Byzantine work, there is a strong mimetic element. The proscription of
representational forms in the Qurʾān and the tendency of both Muslim and early Christian artists to
borrow and adapt their formal vocabulary from preceding cultures led inevitably to their
transforming what had been meaningful forms into systems of abstract ornament. But basically this
ornament was neither mimetic nor applied. Throughout the Middle Ages, church buildings were
conceived primarily as tangible symbols of heaven. Their architectural ornament, no matter how
various or lavish, was consistently designed to promote this symbolism; whether by gilt, intricacy,
or multiplicity, it all contributed to an overall effect of glory and so was integral to the architectural
form.
Twentieth-century concepts of the function of architectural ornament, generally speaking, began
with an understanding of this medieval usage that grew out of the 19th-century writings of the
English art critic John Ruskin and the French Gothic Revival architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-
le-Duc, as well as through the interpretations and applications of the British designer William
Morris. The immediate influence of these men proved rather unfortunate. The first result of Viollet-
le-Duc’s disciplined and scholarly investigations into the principles of medieval architecture was a
school of slick archaeological architects, capable of decorating all manner of collegiate, civic, and
domestic buildings with frigidly correct reproductions of the details of medieval cathedrals
and châteaus. Out of Ruskin’s demonstration of the origins of medieval decoration in natural forms
there grew the so-called Art Nouveau movement toward exaggerated floral and curvilinear
ornament, and out of Morris’s insistence on handicrafts, inspired by infatuation with the
medieval guildsystem, developed the Arts and Crafts movement.
As early as the 1870s the U.S. architect H.H. Richardson adopted the Romanesque style, less for its
historical associations than for the opportunities it afforded him to express the nature and texture of
stone. In mature examples of his architecture from the mid-1880s, ornament in the older, applied
sense had virtually disappeared, and his buildings depend for their aesthetic effect mainly on
the inherent qualities of their materials. The generation following Richardson saw a further
international development of this principle.
In Great Britain Sir Edwin Lutyens and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, in the Netherlands Hendrik
Petrus Berlage, and in the United States Louis Sullivan were among many architects who
contributed to the new ornamental expression. It was largely based on intrinsic texture and pattern
but with interspersed bands and patches of naturalistic ornament, applied with studied discipline.
With the general reaction against 19th-century eclectic principles of ornamentation after World
War I, however, leading designers rejected even this kind of applied ornament and relied for
ornamental effect on building materials alone. The so-called International Style, in which the
German architect Walter Gropius and the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier were the chief
figures, dominated advanced design during the late 1920s and 1930s. The barrenness that resulted
from their reliance on such materials as concrete and glass, however, along with other factors,
resulted in a reaction in the 1940s in favour of the neglected precedent set by the U.S.
architect Frank Lloyd Wright in his early 20th-century work, which emphasized more visually
interesting materials, intricate textural patterns, and natural settings as the proper basis of
architectural ornament. This trend continued in later decades; the style known as the New
Brutalism was related to it.
“Commodity, firmness, and delight”: the ultimate synthesis
It has been generally assumed that a complete theory of architecture is always concerned
essentially in some way or another with these three interrelated terms, which,
in Vitruvius’s Latin text, are given as firmitas, utilitas, and venustas (i.e., structural stability,
appropriate spatial accommodation, and attractive appearance). Nevertheless, a number
of influential theorists after 1750 sought to make modifications to this traditional triad (1)
by giving its components a radically different equilibrium (such as the primacy given by the
18th-century French architect Étienne-Louis Boullée to the effects of geometric forms in
light or the claim made by Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand that the fulfillment of function was
the sole essence of architectural beauty), (2) by adding ethical values (such as Ruskin’s
“sacrifice” and “obedience”), or (3) by introducing new scientific concepts (such as
Giedion’s “space-time”).
Furthermore, it has been argued that the traditional concept of firmitas, utilitas,
and venustas ceased to have any real value after 1800, when engineers began creating
structures that seemed so ostentatiously to defy the stonemasons’ laws of gravity, when
scientific studies were creating more and more doubts as to the economical, sociological,
psychological, acoustical, thermal, or optical determinants of appropriate spatial
accommodation and when beauty was “altogether in the eye of the beholder.”
Clearly, one must be wary of attributing too much importance to the sequence, since a
slight variation occurs in the writings of even the most traditional theorists. Vitruvius gives
these terms in the sequence firmitas, utilitas, venustas, whereas both Alberti and,
following him, the 16th-century Venetian architect and theorist Andrea Palladio reverse the
order of the first two. Thus, Sir Henry Wotton’s sequence (which is normally used in
English-language texts) does not, as so often stated, derive directly from the Latin text of
Vitruvius but from the Italian text of Palladio’s I quattro libri dell’architettura (i.e., comodità,
perpetuità, bellezza). But it does seem worth noting that venustas generally comes last,
implying that firmitas and utilitas are to be regarded as essential logical prerequisites of
architectural beauty.
On the other hand, the practical advantages, in academic treatises, of giving priority
to venustas are evident. Jacques-François Blondel, in his nine-volume Cours
d’architecture (1771–77; “Architecture Course”), used this sequence because he observed
that considerations of “decoration” are almost entirely within the domain of the theory of
architecture, whereas neither distribution (utilitas) nor construction (firmitas) can be
explained properly without practical experience. The growing emphasis on aesthetics,
combined with developments in psychology and the influence of art-historical methods,
added weight to this argument, while the corresponding independence of scientific
techniques of structural and spatial analysis led many teachers of architecture to
consider utilitas and firmitas as totally separate academic disciplines. Important
exceptions can be found to this generalization. At the end of the 19th century, Julien
Guadet, in reaction against the creation of a chair of aesthetics at the Paris École des
Beaux-Arts, considered it his duty, as professor of architectural theory, to devote his
lectures to the study of architectural planning, and this method, which
achieved prestige as a result of his keen mind and wide historical knowledge, was
pursued by many later scholars. But Guadet’s approach became unfashionable, and since
the 1960s the predominant methods of teaching architectural theory have ranged from a
return to the synthesis of structural, spatial, and formal values espoused by Robert Venturi
to the exploration of the architectural implications of general theories of linguistics
advanced by Christian Norberg-Schulz.
Venustas
This Latin term for “beauty” (literally, the salient qualities possessed by the goddess Venus) clearly
implied a visual quality in architecture that would arouse the emotion of love, but it is of interest to
note that one of the crucial aspects of this problem was already anticipated by Alberti in the 15th
century, as is made clear by his substitution of the word amoenitas(“pleasure”) for Vitruvius’s
more anthropomorphic term venustas. Alberti not only avoids the erotic implications of the
term venustas but, by subdividing amoenitas into pulchritudoand ornamentum, gives far more
precise indications as to the type of visual satisfaction that architecture should
provide. Pulchritudo, he asserts, is derived from harmonious proportions that are comparable to
those that exist in musicand are the essence of the pleasure created by architecture. Ornamentum,
he claims, is only an “auxiliary brightness,” the quality and extent of which will depend essentially
on what is appropriate and seemly. Both pulchritudo and ornamentumwere thus related to function
and environment in that, ideally, they were governed by a sense of decorum, and, since the
etymological roots of both decoration and decorum are the same, it will be understood why, before
1750, the term decoration had in both English and French a far less superficial
architectural implication than it often does today.
After the German philosopher and educator Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten had introduced the
neologism aesthetics about 1750, the visual merits of all artifacts tended to be assessed more
subjectively than objectively, and, in the criticism of all those sensory stimuli that, for want of a
better term, critics somewhat indiscriminately lumped together as the fine arts, the
visual criteria were extended to include not only beauty but also sublimity, picturesqueness, and
even ugliness. Now it is clear that, once ugliness is equated with beauty, both terms (being
contradictory) become virtually meaningless. But ugliness, after the mid-19th century, was not only
one of the most important themes of many popular dramas and novels. Ugliness was also often
considered the most appropriate architectural expression for all sorts of virtues—especially those of
manliness, sincerity, and so on.
Before 1750, architects had expressed these qualities more subtly (e.g., by slight modifications of
proportions or by unobtrusive ornament). In later years, when the value of proportion and ornament
became highly controversial, architectural theorists tended to avoid committing themselves to any
criteria that might be subsumed under the heading venustas. In the last resort, however, some
concept of beauty must be essential to any theory of architecture, and, whether one considers Le
Corbusier’s buildings beautiful or not, his most stabilizing contribution toward the theory of
modern architecture was undoubtedly his constant reiteration of this term and his insistence on the
traditional view that beauty in architecture is essentially based on harmonious proportions,
mathematically conceived.
In the 20th century the main obstacle to an acceptance of Alberti’s notions
of pulchritudo and ornamentum resulted from the influence of nonrepresentational sculpture after
1918, whereby ornament was no longer conceived as an enrichment of proportioned structure but
as an integral, all-pervading part of each building’s totality. This ideal of the fusion between good
proportions and “auxiliary brightness” was expressed by Walter Gropius in The New Architecture
and the Bauhauswhen he wrote in 1935:
Our ultimate goal, therefore, was the composite but inseparable work of art, the great building, in which the
old dividing-line between monumental and decorative elements would have disappeared for ever.

The idea was accepted in most schools of architecture by the mid-20th century, but one may
question whether it fully justified the expectations of its protagonists, once it had been exemplified
and proliferated in so many urban environments. It is by no means certain that Gropius’s concept of
the fundamental interdependence of architectural proportion and architectural ornament was
irrevocably established by the Bauhaus theorists or that future architectural theorists need only
concentrate on such minor modifications to the concept as may be required by sociological
and technological developments.
Utilitas
The notion that a building is defective unless the spaces provided are adequate and appropriate for
their intended usage would seem obvious. Yet the statement itself has been a source of controversy
since the 1960s. The main reasons for the controversy are: first, whereas there are seldom exact
statistical means of computing spatial adequacy or appropriateness, there are many building types
or building elements for which one cannot even establish the optimum forms and dimensions with
any confidence that they will be generally accepted. Second, edifices are frequently used for
purposes other than those for which they were originally planned. Furthermore, there is some doubt
as to whether “form follows function” or “function follows form,” since, although, in general, it can
reasonably be assumed that an architect’s task is to construct specific spaces for the fulfillment of
predetermined functions, there is plenty of historical evidence to suggest that many important social
institutions have resulted from spaces already built. No better example could be found than the
evolution of parliamentary systems. The British system, based on the concept of legislatures in
which the sovereign’s government and the sovereign’s opposition confront each other, originated in
the fact that the earliest parliaments met in the medievalpalace chapel. The French system, created
concurrently with the Greek and Roman revivals, was based on the concept of legislatures
addressed by orators, and its environment was that of an antique theatre. In the former system the
seating was designed in accordance with the liturgical requirements of a Christian church; in the
latter, with the evolution of Greek drama. Neither had anything to do with preconceived notions
regarding the most effective environment for parliamentary debate, yet both have had divergent
influences on constitutional procedures, thereby deeply affecting the whole theory of government.
Third, the exact significance of what is meant by “adequate appropriate spaces” becomes far more
complex in buildings requiring a large number of interrelated spaces than it is in single-cell
buildings. The emotional effect of transitions from spacious to constricted volumes and vice
versa transcends in architectural importance the statistical evaluation of floor areas; a fact which
explains the attractiveness of theories that have tacitly adopted places of worship as
spatial paradigmsand bolstered their arguments by historical reference to temples and churches.
This bias is perceptible not only in the most influential theories enunciated before 1900 (when
the prototypes were either primeval, antique, or medieval) but also in the most influential
ideas promulgated by such great architectural leaders of the 20th century as Frank Lloyd
Wrightand Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
The idealization of monumental single-cell spaces is sometimes justified, but the difficulty of
evolving theories of planning by the use of historical prototypes should be emphasized. It is in this
branch of architectural theory that the influences of historicism have been most insidious, precisely
because they are less obvious here than in systems of construction, of proportions, and of
ornamentation. Such influences persist mainly because of art-historical indifference to the essential
distinction between building types, since such distinction conflicts with the chronological sequence
of particular architects’ stylistic evolution, but it is for this reason that Julien Guadet’s greatest
contribution to the theory of architecture may well have been his decision to evolve a history of
architecture in which all buildings were classified solely in accordance with their function.
Firmitas
Two plausible reasons can be given for according logical primacy in the Vitruvian triad to firmitas.
The first is the notion that architecture is essentially the “art of building.” The second is that, since
the uses or functions of a building tend to change, the structures serving such functions may be
considered as taking logical precedence over them. This idea was expressed with characteristic
lapidary vigour by the 20th-century French architect Auguste Perret when he asserted that
architecture is the art of organizing space; but it is by construction that it expresses itself…Functions, customs,
and building regulations and fashions impose conditions which are only transitory.

Some later architectural theorists have become so concerned with the rapid obsolescence of modern
buildings that they have envisaged edifices that express the temporary nature of these transitory
qualities and are therefore built in such a way as to enable the structures themselves to be discarded
completely after a few years. On the other hand (since the economic feasibility of this technique is
questionable), there are still many architects who believe in the inevitability of permanent buildings
and who therefore hold views more compatible with this belief.
From the time of the Renaissance to the mid-18th century—as also before the decline of the
ancient Roman Empire on which the culture of this era was modelled—little concern seems to have
been given to the idea that there was any virtue in manifesting the actual structural system of a
building. Albertirecommended a distinctive articulation of the skeleton frame in conformity with
the antique concept of trabeation, or the post-and-lintel system (and hence the independence of the
“infilling” elements, such as arches or solid walling), but the more commonly accepted notion
seems to have been that, provided a trabeated system was expressed externally, the relationship of
this visual expression to the actual system of construction was relatively unimportant. Theoretical
pronouncements on this matter depended of course on the architectural traditions of each country.
In Italy (where the traditional technique of building had, even during the Middle Ages, assumed
that structure was independent of appearance and where it was common to complete a building in
brick before adding its marble facades) the idea that there could be any theoretical dilemma
regarding the unison between these two elements was virtually inconceivable. Palladio and his
generation seem to have generally accepted the idea that, in regions where masonry was scarce, the
use of stuccoed, painted, or veneered brickwork, with plastered timber beams, was architecturally
as “genuine” as the use of stone, provided it was all of one colour. But in the Île-de-France region
around Paris, on the contrary, the medieval traditions of French masonry construction, combined
with the abundance of good freestone, caused theorists from the Renaissance to the time of
the French Revolution to favour a less tenuous relationship between the external appearance of a
building and the system by which it was constructed. Nevertheless, it is probably fair to say that in
all European countries before the end of the 18th century, as well as in their American colonies, the
only problem concerned with firmitas (other than technical problems) was the problem of the
relationship between “real and apparent stability,” and, when theorists pronounced on this problem,
it was usually to assert that a building should not only be structurally stable but should also appear
to be so.
A violent assault upon this point of view was launched by the Gothic Revivalists, who in the mid-
19th century contended that the breathtaking counterpoise of a cathedral’s flying buttresses was far
more dramatically expressive of firmitas than the ponderous massiveness of its sturdy western
towers. It was in this era that the term daring (which Ruskin had frequently used with reference to
the paintings of the English Romanticartist J.M.W. Turner) became popular as a laudatory epithet,
thereby indicating an ideal of structural expression that was to be increasingly exploited
when steel and reinforced concretepermitted higher buildings with fewer and more slender
supports.
But the most controversial issue concerning firmitas in the 19th century—which also arose through
the influence of the Gothic Revival movement—concerned the extent to which a building
should manifest its structural system and the materials used. The attraction of this particular
interpretation of the concept of truthful architecture was probably due to the popularity of new
attitudes toward experimental science and to the disrepute into which mythology had been cast by
the philosophers of the Enlightenment. Presumably, truth was no less prized in the 17th or 18th
centuries than in the 19th century (though shams may have been less rife), while hypocrisy was
regarded with as much contempt. Moreover, although the 19th century was a period of
growing realism in literature, it was also a period of growing expressiveness in painting and music.
Whatever the reason for this change of attitude, the 19th century saw a general acceptance of the
notion that buildings were “true” only insofar as their structural form and appearance corresponded
to the structural systems and materials employed, and this dogma was developed by means of many
elaborate biological and mechanical analogies.
This particular doctrine had a highly beneficial influence on architectural evolution during the 20th
century, since it helped to demonstrate why the radical changes in building technology rendered
earlier concepts of architectural form (based on load-bearing masonry construction)
theoretically untenable. While it may readily be admitted that a building can express many other
things besides its function and structure, failure to express the latter in some manner, however
remote, must always lead to arbitrariness. This would not only be harmful to the evolution of
architectural form but would inevitably result in a somewhat cynical concept of building as “pure
form”—a concept that only those who regard architecture as nothing more than large-scale
packaging or abstract sculpture could accept.