Architectural Styles

• Art Deco

  A style of bold geometry, stepped setbacks, vertical emphasis, and streamlined ornament in luxurious materials.

• Art Nouveau

  A style inspired by natural forms, featuring flowing lines, plant motifs, curved ironwork, and decorative glass.

• Baroque

  A theatrical style using curving facades, dramatic light, rich ornament, and bold spatial sequences to create movement and emotion.

• Beaux-Arts

  A monumental academic style combining classical forms, symmetrical planning, grand stairs, and abundant sculptural ornament.

• Brutalism

  A style characterized by massive forms, exposed concrete, repetitive modular elements, and a direct expression of structure.

• Gothic

  A medieval style defined by pointed arches, rib vaults, flying buttresses, tall proportions, and large areas of stained glass.

• Gothic Revival

  A 18th–19th-century movement that revived pointed arches, steep roofs, tracery, and other medieval Gothic features.

• Modernism

  A movement favoring function, simple forms, open plans, minimal ornament, and expressed modern materials such as steel, concrete, and glass.

• Neoclassical

  A revival of Greek and Roman architecture that favors restrained ornament, clear geometry, columned porticoes, and pediments.

• Renaissance

  A style that revived the classical orders, symmetry, proportion, and geometry of ancient Roman buildings, beginning in Florence.

• Romanesque

  A European medieval style marked by thick masonry walls, round arches, sturdy piers, barrel and groin vaults, and small windows.

• Vernacular

  Building rooted in local needs, climate, materials, and craft traditions rather than formal academic design.

• Wattle and daub

  A wall-building method in which a lattice of woven wooden strips, the wattle, is coated with daub, a mix of wet clay, soil, sand, dung, and straw.

• Ziggurat

  A massive stepped tower of receding terraces built in ancient Mesopotamia, usually with a temple at the summit reached by long ramps or stairs.