American Architecture Styles

 A beginner’s guide to
architecture for students.

 Presented by
: Bruce Black Art.com
THE 3 BASICS OF DESIGN IN
ARCHITECTURE:

 Style

 Form

 Structure
 STYLES & TIME PERIODS FOR
 AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE
Colonial Architecture 1600-1820

 Dutch Colonial  Architecture Between Wars c. 1920-1940

French Colonial

 Prairie Style
 Spanish Colonial
 Modernistic
 Georgian Colonial

 Romantic Architecture c.1820-1880

 Craftsman
 Greek Revival  Art Deco Style c. 1923-1940 **
 Gothic Revival  Post WWII Architecture c. 1945-1965
 Italianate
 Formalism
 Exotic Revival
 International II
 Octagon

 Victorian Architecture c. 1870-1900

 Late Twentieth-Century 1965-present
 Second Empire  Late Modernism
 Stick  Post-Modernism
 Queen Anne

 Shingle

 Richardson Romanesque

 Folk Victorian

 ** Art Nouveau (1890-1914)**

 Early 20th-Century 1900-1920

 Colonial Revival

 Neoclassical

 Tudor

 Chateauesque

 Beaux Arts

 French Eclectic

 International I
COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE
 Stately, Symmetrical appearance being rectangular
shape with two stories.
 Gables on the side and an entry door at the center.
 To conserve heat, a massive chimney ran through the
center.
 An orderly arrangement of windows around a central
front door.
 Double-hung windows usually have many small,
equally sized square panes or “candles” separated
with “mutton-bars.”

GEORGIAN COLONIAL
ROMANTIC ARCHITECTURE
 Elaborate wooden millwork after
the Industrial Revolution fueled the
construction.
 "Gothic" windows with distinctive
pointed arches
 Exposed framing timbers
 Steep, vaulted roofs with cross-
gables.
 Extravagant features may include
towers and verandas.
 Ornate wooden detailing is GOTHIC REVIVAL
generously applied as gable,
window, and door trim.
 VICTORIAN ARCHITECTURE
 Use of mass-produced ornamentation such as
brackets, spindles, and patterned shingles.
 The last true Victorians were constructed in
the early 1900s.
 These homes combine modern materials with
19th century details, such as curved towers
and spindled porches.
 Elaborate exterior trim (“gingerbread”) and
carved oak moldings.
 New machines made it possible to mass-
produce ornamental features such as
moldings, columns, and brackets. The
expansion of the railroad meant that building VICTORIAN
parts could be sent to far corners of the
country so people in remote rural areas could
build fancier homes.
 ART NOUVEAU ** a world-wide movement

 Dynamic, undulating, and

flowing, with curved http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikip
'whiplash' lines which
characterized much of Art
Nouveau movement.
 Conventional moldings
seem to spring to life and
GRAND PALAIS INTERIEUR
'grow' into plant-derived PARIS FRANCE
forms.
Gaudí devoted his last years to the project, and at the time of his
death in 1926, less than a quarter of the project was
complete. Sagrada Família's construction progressed slowly, as it
relied on private donations and was interrupted by the Spanish Civil
War—only to resume intermittent progress in the 1950s. Construction
passed the midpoint in 2010 with some of the project's greatest
challenges remaining and an anticipated completion date of 2026—
the centennial of Gaudí's death. 
 EARLY 20TH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE
(contemporary)
 Exposed functional building elements,
such as ground-to-ceiling plate glass
windows, and smooth facades.
 The style was molded from modern
materials--concrete, glass, and steel.
 Characterized by an absence of
decoration.
INTERNATIONAL
 Interior and exterior walls merely act as
design and layout elements, and often
feature dramatic, but nonsupporting
projecting beams and columns
ARCHITECTURE BETWEEN WARS
 Boxy and symmetrical or low-
slung and asymmetrical.
 Roofs are low-pitched, with
wide eaves.
 Brick and clapboard are the
most common building
materials
 Rows of casement windows
 One-story porches with
massive square supports. PRAIRIE STYLE
 Stylized floral and circular
geometric terra-cotta or
masonry ornamentation around
doors, windows, and cornices.
 Frank Lloyd Wright
(1867-1959)
 Flat planes to accent
the parries of the
Midwest.
 Designed around
centralized fireplace
 Attempted to create a
complete environment
out the conviction that
buildings have a
profound influence on
their inhabitants,
making architects
molders of people.
Taliesin West
ART DECO STYLE
 Echoed the Machine Age
 Geometric decorative elements & a vertically
oriented design.
 This distinctly urban style was never widely
used in residential buildings
 Towers and other projections above the
roofline enhance the vertical emphasis of this
style.
 Flat roofs, metal window casements, and
smooth stucco walls with rectangular cut-outs
mark the exteriors of Art Deco homes.
 Facades are typically flush with zigzags and
other stylized floral, geometric, and "sunrise"
motifs. ART DECO
 By 1940 the Art Deco style had evolved into
"Art Moderne," which features curved corners,
rectangular glass-block windows, and a boat-
like appearance.
POST WWII ARCHITECTURE

 Two versions: the flat-roof

and gabled types. The latter is
often characterized by
exposed beams.
 Both types tend to be one-
story tall and were designed
to incorporate the surrounding
landscape into their overall CONTEMPORARY
look.
Seagram Building 1954-58 (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip
Johnson.

 This structure, and  On completion, the construction

the International style in which it costs of Seagram made it the
was built, had enormous world's most expensive
influences on skyscraper at the time, due to
American architecture. the use of expensive, high-quality
materials and lavish interior
 A building's structural elements decoration. The interior was
should be visible, Mies thought. designed to assure cohesion with
 I beams were sheathed internally the external features, repeated
with concrete (fire code) but in the glass and bronze
duplicated outside for aesthetics. furnishings and decorative
As designed, the building used scheme.
1,500 tons of bronze in its  Another interesting feature of the
construction. Seagram Building is the window
blinds. The blinds were made to
be– fully open, halfway
open/closed, or fully closed to
reduce cluttered look.
LATE 20TH CENTURY
ARCHITECTURE
 The walls of the building create
planes, which enclose the building.

 The walls tend to be very smooth

with little interruption including
windows that are level with the
walls themselves.
 These smooth-surfaced buildings
define a volume enclosed by the
building. SPLIT LEVEL
 Symmetry is rejected in favor of
regularity. Under these principals,
the facade of buildings were
designed with windows and doors
spaced at regular intervals.
Project: Design a building and create
an architectural model.

 Blue Print
 Model
End Slide Show

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