Architecture & Town Planning CE-208

Lecture 2
(Styles of Architecture)

Engr. Dr. Muhammad Arsalan Khan

DCE, IIU Islamabad
Email: [email protected]
What is Architecture?
• Architecture is the art and process of designing buildings.
• Building first evolved out of the dynamics between needs
(shelter, security, worship, etc.) and means (available 
building materials and attendant skills).
• As human cultures developed and knowledge began to
be formalised through oral traditions and practices,
building became a craft, a style and "architecture" is the
name given to the most highly formalised and respected
versions/styles of that craft.
Architectural Style
• Architectural style is a way of classifying
architecture, largely by apparent characteristics:
• Form
• Techniques
• Materials
• Architectural style is a way of classifying
architecture that gives emphasis to characteristic
features of design.
Architectural Style
• STYLE is a quality; the “historic styles”
represent phases of development. 
• A historic style is the particular phase, the
characteristic manner of design, which
prevails at a given time and place.
• It is the result of intellectual, moral, social,
religious, and even political conditions. 
• Style is character expressive of definite
conceptions, as of grandeur, or solemnity.
• Technically, architectural styles are identified by:-
• the means to cover enclosed spaces,
• the characteristic forms of the supports and other
members (piers,columns, arches, mouldings, etc.),
• And the decoration of buildings
Architectural Style
• Major architectural styles include:
• Neolithic style
• Egyptian style
• Roman style
• Gothic style
• Renaissance style
• Neoclassical style
• Modern style
• Post modern style
Neolithic Architecture
• Also known as “Stone-Age” architecture contains some
of the oldest known structures made by mankind.
• Distinguishable by Paleolithic and Mesolithic making
and use of stone tools.
• Neolithic cultures have been shown to have existed in
southwest Asia as early as 8000 B.C. to 6000 B.C.
Neolithic Architecture
• Neolithic Architects were great builders who used mainly
mud-brick to construct houses and villages.
• Houses were plastered and painted with ancient scenes of
humans and animals.
• Many of the more famous Neolithic structures were
remarkably made by enormous stones.
Stonehenge
Egyptian Architecture
• Due to lack of wood most Egyptian architecture was made
with mud-brick and stone.
• Minerals included sandstone, limestone, and granite, which
were generally used for tombs and temples.
• Most ancient Egyptian towns have been lost because they
were situated in the cultivated and flooded area of the Nile
Valley.
Egyptian Architecture
• Temples and tombs have survived:
• Built on ground unaffected by the Nile flood
• Constructed of stone.
• Egyptian architecture is based mainly on its
religious monuments such as Pyramids.
• All monumental buildings are post and lintel
constructions, with flat roofs constructed of huge
stone blocks supported by the external walls and
the closely spaced columns.
Temple of Ramesses II
Great Pyramid of Giza
2.3 million limestone blocks
8,000 tons of granite
500,000 tons of mortar
 Greek architecture

 Our word “architecture”

comes from the Greek
architecton, which means
“master carpenter.”

 Greek architecture
employed wood and stone
but the early structures,
have not survived.
Greek architecture

• Early temples had

massive pillars as
architects worried
about their ability to
Temple of Hera, Paestum support the weight
above.
• Later temples appear
more elegant.

Hephaistion, Athens
CAPITALBUENOSAIRESARGENTINA:

Greek Architecture
Roman Architecture
• After conquest of Greece by the Roman Empire,
builders took many examples from Greek
architecture but gave their structures more
decorations.
• In addition to houses, temples, and palaces,
Romans constructed aqueducts, public baths,
shops, theaters, and outdoor arenas.
Roman Architecture
• Adopted from Greek classical architecture.
• Constructed new structural principles based on the
development of the arch and a new building material,
concrete.
• First to utilize two forms of roof design, the arch and vault
(dome).
• Vault is an arched roof or ceiling (dome).
• Eliminated use for columns to support roofs.
• Columns used mainly for sculptural decoration.
 The Shanghai International
Convention Centre, China

The United States Capitol Building

The Schermerhorn Symphony Center in

Nashville, Tennessee; built in 2006.
Gothic Architecture
• Mainly flourished in France from the 1100’s to 1400’s. They
marked it as “Gothic” to suggest it was the crude work of
German barbarians (Goths).
• New systems of construction allowed for architects to design
churches with thinner walls and lighter piers.
• Piers extended several stories high and into the roof area
making individual columns like ribs on an open umbrella.
Gothic Architecture
• Its styles included pointed arches, stained-glass colored
windows, flying buttresses.
• A buttress is an architectural structure built against or
projecting from a wall which serves to support or
reinforce the wall
• Flying buttresses were brick or stone arched supports
built along outside walls.
• Gothic cathedrals could be highly decorated with statues
and paintings.
Renaissance Architecture
• Beginning between the early 15th and the early 17th centuries
in different regions of Europe.
• The Renaissance style places emphasis on symmetry,
proportion, geometry and the regularity of parts
• Renaissance buildings have a square, symmetrical, planned
appearance.
Renaissance Architecture
• Orderly arrangement of arches replaced the more complex
proportional view of buildings.
• Facades (front of building) are symmetrical around their vertical
axis.
• The columns and windows show a progression towards the center.
• Roofs are fitted with flat or coffered ceilings. They are not left
open. They are frequently painted or decorated.
St. Peter’s
Neoclassical Architecture
• Neoclassical style produced by the neoclassical movement
during the 18th century.
• Neoclassical, or "new" classical, architecture describes
buildings that are inspired by the classical architecture of
ancient Greece and Rome.
Neoclassical Architecture

• A Neoclassical building is likely to have some

(but not necessarily all) of these features:
• Symmetrical shape
• Tall columns that rise the full height of the
building
• Triangular Pediment
• Domed roof
• Examples: U.S. Capitol Building, White House
Modern Architecture
• Building styles with similar characteristics, primarily the
simplification of form and the elimination of ornament.
• Dominant architectural style, particularly for institutional and
corporate building, for several decades in the 20th century.
• Use materials such as iron, steel, concrete, and glass.
• The most commonly used materials are glass for the facade, steel
for exterior support.
• Modern architecture seen in most skyscrapers.
Modern Architecture
• Modern architecture is usually characterized by:▪
• a rejection of historical styles as a source of architectural form
(historicism)
• an adoption of the principle that the materials and functional
requirements determine the result
• an adoption of the machine aesthetic
• a rejection of ornament
• a simplification of form and elimination of "unnecessary detail"
La Défense
Golden Gate
Art Deco Architecture
• Popular design movement from 1920 until 1939.
• materials such as aluminum, stainless steel, lacquer, etc.
• Popular themes in art deco were zigzagged, geometric, and
jumbled shapes, which can be seen in many early pieces.
• Bold use of stepped forms, and sweeping curves, symmetry and
repetition.
• Art Deco style celebrates the Machine Age through explicit use of
man-made materials (particularly glass and stainless steel)
Post-Modern Architecture
• Began as American style whose first examples
are generally cited as being from the 1960s
• Diverse aesthetics, styles collide.
• Postmodernists feel buildings fail to meet the
human need for comfort both for body and for
the eye.
• Most post-modernists works are small buildings
such as houses and stores.
• BASICALLY, ANYTHING GOES!
Deconstructivist Architecture
• Deconstructivism in architecture is a
development of postmodern architecture that
began in the late 1980s.

• It is characterized by
• Ideas of fragmentation,
• Non-linear processes of design,
• An interest in manipulating ideas of a
structure's surface or skin,
• And apparent non-Euclidean geometry (i.e.,
non-rectilinear shapes) which serve to distort
and dislocate some elements of architecture
Deconstructivist Architecture
• The finished visual appearance of buildings that exhibit
the many deconstructivist "styles" is characterized by a
stimulating unpredictability and a controlled chaos.
THANK YOU!!