ARCHITECTURAL

STYLES
(TIMELINE)
THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE 2
What is ARCHITECTURE?
• An art and science in designing and constructing buildings
• A method of style of building characterized in keeping
aesthetic and functional criteria

Ar chi tec ture

Art Space Technology Structure
10 Books on Architecture
• Architecture must fulfill 3 conditions
Firmness Durability
Commodity Function
Delight Aesthetics
Influences
• Design

• Nature

• Man
Egyptian 50th C – 1st C BC
• Timeless legacy of eternal pyramidal royal burial
chambers
• Temples of massive, sturdy closely spaced columns and
flat roofs
• Machine-less technical craft
• Astronomical knowledge
Egyptian 50th C – 1st C BC
• Culture founded on deities-spiritual beliefs
• Human resource exploited by overlords to build massive
royal monuments
• Mathematical skills, metaphysical, geological and climate
perceptiveness
Greek 30th C – 1st C BC
• Clear cut architectural style through love of precise forms
• Structures limited to short spans
• Outdoors favored as expressed in the agora
Greek 30th C - 1st C BC
• Symmetry of philosophical thought
• Artistic sense of harmony and simplicity
• Worship of deities
• Colonization
• Building were public monuments
Roman 1st C – 4th C
• Crafted exponents of classical orders
• Abundance of marble and stone-terracotta and brick in
use
• Development of concrete and the vault with the Etruscan
arch
• Regional climate influenced diversity
Roman 1st C – 4th C
• Romans were empire builders with administrative skills
• Colonization through conquest
• Spread of influence of pantheon of deities under the
emperor
• Love of justice expressed through basilicas
• Amphitheaters for contests between man and wild beast
Early Christian 4th C – 12th C
• Recycled ruins of Roman
buildings and adaptation of
fragments quarried from
the past

• Emperor Constantine
• Christianity modeled on
Roman basilicas for worship
thereby retaining some pagan
features
Byzantine 4th C – 12th C
• Architectural forms usually domical on square or
polygonal plans
• Shaded colonnades
• Clay for bricks, rubble for concrete finished in marble
Byzantine 4th C – 12th C
• Christianity became the state religion of Roman Empire
and power moved to Byzantium thereby influencing
architectural style
Romanesque 8th C – 12th C
• New construction principle – structural equilibrium
• Heavy cross vaulting evolved into lighter “rib and panel”
• Glass in general use during the 9thC
• Small fenestration in the south and large in the north
Romanesque 8th C – 12th C
• Decline in Roman power
• Civil government and military protection
• New states and nations formed in previous colonies in
western Europe
• Rise of religious enthusiasm and churches, feudal tenure
Gothic 12th C -16th C
• Throughout Europe climate varied influencing the choice
of detailing
• Use of material varied
• Pointed arch became the structural truth
Gothic 12th C -16th C
• Rise of monastic communities
• The power of the pope supreme
• The church became wealthy and the clergy proliferated
• Growth of towns, commercial activity and rivalry
• Wealth
Renaissance 15th C – 18th C
• Classical orders ruled
• Wall of ashlar masonry laid horizontally often rusticated
• Openings with semicircular arches
• Roofs vaulted with no ribs
Renaissance 15th C – 18th C
• Religious and social activities in Europe affected by
intervention of printing, use of gunpowder, mariner’s
compass and immigration of Greeks into Europe
• A spirit of enquiry and freedom of thought energized by
intellectual vigor
• Classical styles triumph again
Baroque 18th C – 19th C
• Freedom demanded from orthodox of plan, design and
ornament
• Columns crafted with twisted shafts, surmounted by
clumsy curved pediments
Baroque 18th C – 19th C
• Reaction to blind worship of Vitruvian rules
• A new freedom and desire for originality of style and
carved ornament
• The movement commenced in Italy
Neo-classical 1750 - 1900
• Steam power, the iron frame, trade with the new world
• Technical transformations and development in structural
engineering 1775-1939

• Industrial revolution
Neo-classical 1750 - 1900
• Territorial transformations 1800-1909: Urban development
upgrading to utopian communities
• Rising bourgeoisie
Neo-classical 1750 - 1900
• Arts and Crafts Movement
Favored a return to the craft movement of the Middle ages
and was against industrial mass production

Philip Webb &William Morris

Red House Founder
Art Nouveau c.1880 – c.1910
• Extensive use of the “tensility” of iron with glass in public
and domestic architecture
• Freeing space with iron superstructures over walled
enclosures
1890 Art Nouveau, Jugendstil
• Originally an arts and crafts movement in England
• Directed against the prevailing imitations of historical
styles
• Characterized by ornamentation derived from natural
forms, abstract shapes
Art Nouveau
• Antoni Gaudi – Sagrada Familia
Art Nouveau
• Hector Grimard – Paris metro Entrance
Art Nouveau
• Victor Horta – Hotel Tassel
Art Nouveau
• Charles Rennie Mackintosh
1870 Chicago School
• A group of architects active in Chicago
who played an important role in
development of the skyscraper
• The use of metal framework or
skeleton structures
• Invention of the elevator
1870 Chicago School

Daniel Burnham

Holabird & Roche

Flatiron Building Tacoma Building
1870 Chicago School

William Lebaron Jenny

Home Insurance Building

Louis Sullivan
Prudential Building
European Expressionism 1910 -1925
• Promotion of glass to
elevate culture leading to
strides in development of
glass technology
• Collective of European
architects believed that “to
raise our culture to a higher
level, we are forced… to
change our architecture by
introducing glass
architecture.
Centennial Hall in Wrocław, Poland
Max Berg
Expressionism 1910
• Freeform and rational prefabricated construction shown
as compatible
• Architecture characterized by free, abstract monumental
sculptural form

Goetheanum, Switzerland
Rudolf Steiner Einstein Tower
Erich Mendelsohn
Expressionism 1910

1912 Department Store, Wrocław

Hans Poelzig

Het Schip, Amsterdam

Michel de Klerk
Art Deco
• A style in art during the
20’s and 30’s one of its
distinguishing features is
the use of rounded
corners

Chrysler Building Empire State Building

Willian Van Allen Shreve, Lamb and Associates
Functionalism -1900
• Theory that architectural form should be determined by
function alone.
• Rejects historicism ornamentation like Art Nouveau
• Developed boring bowed-like structures seen in Part War
social Housing

Villa Moller AEG Factory

Adolf Loos Peter Behrens
Functionalism -1900

Auditorium Building, Chicago

Louis Sullivan

Fagus Factory, Germany Farnsworth House

Walter Groupius & Adolf Meyer Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe
Neoclassism 1900+
• An architectural style based on Ancient Greek and Roman
examples
• Flourished in the second half of 18th century and
underwent revival in the 20th century.
• It played a key role on Post Modernism
• Simplicity, rigor order and rationality of Greek and Roman
Architecture

Stockholm Public Library

Gunnar Asplund
Neoclassism 1900+

Midland Bank Building Hellerau Festival House

Edwin Lutyens Heinrich Tessenow
Deutsher Werkbund 1907
• Set to improve the design of domestic appliances and
furnishing
• Motto “Honesty to Materials”
Amsterdam School
• Small group of Dutch Architects
• Worked in an Imaginative / Experiment Style of Brick
Architecture strongly sculptural forms

Pieter Lodewijk Kramer Michael de Klerk

De Stijl 1917
• Neo Plasticism
• Designing from inside out, taking into account of the
purpose each individual room

Rietveld Schröder House

Theo Van Doesburg

Fascist Architecture 1917
• The architecture of Hitler’s third Reich and Mussolini's
Italy

Reich’s Chancellery Berlin TempleHof

Albert Speer Ernst Sagebiel
Constructivism 1918
• Constructivist Movement
• Rejection of all traditions in favor of a
new reality
• Believed that a building should consist
solely of the part required to ensure its
structural integrity.

Monument of the Third Millennium

Vladimir Tarlin
Tram Workers Club Pravda Building
Konstantin Melnikov Alexander Vesnin
Bauhaus 1919 - 1925
• A culture of teaching of crafts for designing for mass
production
• Collaboration with existing industrial enterprises for
mutual stimulation

• Proclamation of Weinmer
Bauhaus programmed by
Gropius envisaged the
encompassing of
architecture, sculpture and
art like the “symbols of a
new faith”
Modern Movement c1920+
• First serious confrontation of art with the machine
characterized by depreciation of material that results from
the treatment by machine
• Architectural ideology of unadorned “form follows
function”, “Less is more” – purism in simplicity, machine
aesthetic, anti-metaphor
• Utopian with architect as savior/doctor

Barcelona Pavilion, Meis Van Der Rohe

International Style 1925 - 1961
• Skeleton construction enveloped by a curtain wall, typified
by the tower block on podium
• Prime architectural symbol no longer the dense brick but
the open box – free plan flexibility
• Rudiments and initial principles of modern architecture
betrayed

Villa Savoye, Paris, Le Corbusier

International Style 1925 - 1961

Glass House, Philip Johnson

L Esprit Nouveau, Le Corbusier Seagram Building

CIAM 1928
• Congress International
d’Architecture Moderne 1928
• Aim to gain support for innovative
solution in Architectural planning
• Simple, cubic volumes. Flat roofs.
Unornamented white facades,
horizontal emphasis provided by
window bands, detailed design
entrances, forecourts ande bays,
sensitivity to site
• Styles existed for more than 30
years by CIAM
Totalitarian Architecture
• Demand a new type of architecture
• Favoring monumental public buildings
• Shrines for celebration of political power
• Housing styles were based on national tradition

New Reich Chancellory Red Army Theatre

Rationalism 1931
• MIAR or Movimento Italiano Per I’ Architectura Rationale
funded in 1926
• Economic construction tech
• Prefabricated building elements and mans product implies
an adherence to the laws of logic and search for
elementary fundamental forms

Casa del Fascio Casa Al Villaggio Dei Giornalisti

Guiseppe Terragni Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini
Brutalism 1950
• Style originated with Le Corbusier
• Use of Raw concrete
• Brutalist Architecture displays honest to materials and the
exposure of structures and services
• In the interiors, structural element including plumbing and
heating pipes were left exposed
• The uncompromising display of materials was intended to
show what the building was made of
• Worldwide trend in 1950
Brutalism 1950

Robin Hood Gardens The Convent of Sainte Marie de

Peter and Alison Smithson La Tourette, Le Corbusier

Yale Art and Architecture Building

Salk Institute, Louis Kahn
Paul Rudolph
International Building Exhibition
(INTERBAU)
• International Architecture from 13 nations build
apartments in contemporary styles
• Set standards for subsequent Public Housing in Germany

Jo van der Broek &

Jaap Bakema
Structuralism 1960
• Characterized by the innovative use of new technologies
brought about by the industrial revolution
• Application of a basic order to every sphere
• Most obvious manifestation is the grid
• Structuralist buildings basic layout has bee established,
the interior development is left to the user’s needs
Structuralism 1960

Centraal Beheer
Herman Hertzberger

Habitat 67
Moshe Safdie

Municipal Orphanage
Aldo van Eyck
Eclectism
• Hybrid of several historical styles
Metabolist 1960
• Japanese Architecture who brought new solution to the
congestion of Japanese sites
• Problems it rapidly changing society
• Considered architecture not as solid and immutable but
as transformable / replicable.
• Flexibility in the use of buildings was the central element
in their work
Metabolist 1960

Oita Medical Hall,

Arata Isozaki

The Nakagin Capsule Tower

Kisho Kurokawa Spiral Building
Fumihiko Maki
Post Modernism 1965
• Rebirth of eclectism and pluralism in Modern Architecture
• Represented rejection of the prevailing modernism and
functionalism
• Rearranged stylistic elements from the past into new
imaginative and occasionally ionic visual idiom
Post Modernism 1965

Vanna Venturi House

Robert Venturi Team Disney Building
Michael Graves

History Faculty Library,

University of Cambridge Piazza d'Italia
James Stirling Charles Moore
Post Modern elitist
• Non-canonic variety of solutions, adherance to irrational
and exhibitionists designs with little regard for affordability,
sustainability or structural rationality

• Reaction to modern movement as practiced by later

exponents
• Replaced by a culture of individuality of self indulgence
eclectic manifestations
• No declaration of intent regarding pressing contemporary
environmental issues
High Tech 1970
• A style based on the expression and accentuation even if
the industrial materials
• High tech buildings are open transparent structures
composed of multiple layers and super impositions of
stones and walls
High Tech 1970
• Usually hidden inside the buildings clearly displayed on
the extension
• Architecture represented by empathically technically
looking buildings
High Tech 1970

Lloyd’s Building
Richard Rogers

30 St. Mary Axe

Norman Foster
Kansai Airport
Renzo Piano
Deconstructivism 1980
• Totally new visual language aimed at destabilization of
existing architectural styles
• Introduced in Yew York exhibition in 1988

Heydar Aliyev Center Walt Disney Concert Hall

Zaha Hadid Frank O Gehry
Reuse / Conversion / Conservation 2000
• Architectural projects based in conversion of use of
buildings
• Respect for existing buildings
• Deeper or more sensitive response of the past

Royal Ontario Museum Jewish Museum

Darling & Pearson, addition: Daniel Libeskind
Chapman & Oxley
New Age 2000+
• Protection of the natural world and global resources and
development committed to an environmental ethos
• Architecture to be reclaimed by societies at large to meet
changed cultural and environmental paradigm

Magny House Centre Pompidou-Metz

Glenn Murcutt Shigeru Ban