Brunelleschi’s dome over Florence Cathedral was notable chiefly because it was

built as two shells of brick laid in herringbone, largely without a full timber centring

a single hemispherical shell of Roman concrete cast over a complete timber centring, like the Pantheon

carried on pendentives and semi-domes in the manner of Hagia Sophia, with a ring of windows at its base

built as two shells of brick laid in herringbone, largely without a full timber centring

braced by flying buttresses springing from an octagonal drum, as in the Gothic cathedrals of France

Which one of the following attributions is INCORRECT?

Alberti: the double-shell dome of Florence Cathedral

Bramante: the Tempietto in the courtyard of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome

Palladio: Villa Capra, called La Rotonda, near Vicenza

Alberti: the Florentine town house Palazzo Rucellai

San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome, with its undulating façade of alternating concave and convex surfaces, is the work of

Francesco Borromini, whose work is marked by flowing curves and geometric ingenuity

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, designer of the colonnaded piazza of St Peter’s

Francesco Borromini, whose work is marked by flowing curves and geometric ingenuity

Carlo Maderno, who gave St Peter’s its nave and façade

Andrea Palladio, who designed Il Redentore in Venice

Which statement best distinguishes Rococo from Baroque?

Rococo favoured light, intimate, asymmetrical interior ornament; Baroque sought grand, dramatic, monumental effect

Rococo returned to the strict proportions and temple fronts of Greek architecture, whereas Baroque rejected all classical forms

Rococo used dark, heavy colours and monumental urban planning, whereas Baroque confined itself to pastel interiors

Rococo grew out of the Gothic Revival and used pointed arches and tracery in its interiors, unlike Baroque

Rococo favoured light, intimate, asymmetrical interior ornament; Baroque sought grand, dramatic, monumental effect

A Brussels town house of 1893 has an iron staircase with whiplash curves, floral ornament and glass, with building and ironwork designed together. Its style is

Art Nouveau, as in Horta’s Hôtel Tassel

Art Deco, the geometric style that followed the 1925 Paris exposition

Eclecticism, the choice of past styles for their associations

Art Nouveau, as in Horta’s Hôtel Tassel

De Stijl, the Dutch movement of orthogonal planes and primary colours

In the nineteenth century, the Gothic style was chosen for the Houses of Parliament and Greek or Roman forms for museums and banks because of their associations. This practice is called

Eclecticism, or historicism, the choice of styles for their associations

Functionalism, in which form follows use alone

Eclecticism, or historicism, the choice of styles for their associations

Constructivism, in which exposed industrial structure becomes the expression

Purism, in which pure volumes are stripped of all reference

A house of 1924 in Utrecht by Rietveld is composed of intersecting orthogonal planes in primary colours with black, white and grey. It belongs to

De Stijl, the Dutch movement of neoplasticism

Constructivism, the Russian movement of exposed industrial structure

Expressionism, the German movement of sculptural, emotional form

Futurism, the Italian movement of speed and the dynamic city

De Stijl, the Dutch movement of neoplasticism

Which of the following is NOT one of the three principles of the International Style formulated by Hitchcock and Johnson in 1932?

Axial symmetry as the primary law of composition

Architecture conceived as volume, planes enclosing space, rather than as mass

Regularity, a modular and repeated order, in place of axial symmetry

Avoidance of applied ornament, with beauty drawn from materials and proportion

Robert Venturi’s remark “less is a bore” was a reply to which earlier slogan?

“Less is more”, associated with Mies van der Rohe

“Form ever follows function”, of Louis Sullivan

“Ornament and crime”, the title of Adolf Loos’s essay

“Less is more”, associated with Mies van der Rohe

“A house is a machine for living in”, of Le Corbusier

Which statement correctly separates Postmodernism from Deconstructivism?

Postmodernism quotes recognisable historical forms with irony and colour, whereas Deconstructivism fragments and distorts geometry without quoting

Postmodernism rejected every historical reference, whereas Deconstructivism quoted classical forms with irony

Postmodernism quotes recognisable historical forms with irony and colour, whereas Deconstructivism fragments and distorts geometry without quoting

Postmodernism insisted on glass curtain walls and no ornament, whereas Deconstructivism insisted on pitched roofs

Postmodernism came from the 1925 Paris exposition, whereas Deconstructivism came from the 1932 New York exhibition

A long façade repeats identical bays at equal intervals, with wide and narrow openings alternating. The principle chiefly at work is

rhythm, produced by regular repetition and alternation of elements

radial balance, in which elements are arranged about a central point

hierarchy, in which spaces are ranked by their importance in the plan

asymmetrical balance, in which unequal masses are set in equilibrium

rhythm, produced by regular repetition and alternation of elements

To make the principal hall of a public building read at once as its most important space, which design means is consistent with the principle of hierarchy?

Give it exceptional size, a distinct form and a place on the main axis, unlike its neighbours

Make every space of the same size and shape so that none competes with another for attention

Hide the entrance to the hall behind a series of identical, repetitive corridors of equal width

Reduce the differences of material and light between the hall and the spaces around it

Which of the following are hallmarks of Renaissance architecture?

Classical orders used in correct proportion, with pilasters and pediments

Semicircular arches and hemispherical domes

Centralised church plans based on the circle, the square and the Greek cross

Classical orders used in correct proportion, with pilasters and pediments

Pointed arches and flying buttresses carrying the thrust of ribbed vaults

Semicircular arches and hemispherical domes

Centralised church plans based on the circle, the square and the Greek cross

Which of the following are among Le Corbusier’s five points of a new architecture?

Pilotis lifting the building above the ground

Load-bearing masonry walls running through every floor

A steeply pitched roof with deep eaves

Which of the following statements about the Bauhaus are correct?

It was founded by Walter Gropius at Weimar in 1919

It moved to Dessau in 1925, where Gropius designed its new building

Mies van der Rohe was its last director before it closed in 1933

It was founded by Walter Gropius at Weimar in 1919

It moved to Dessau in 1925, where Gropius designed its new building

Mies van der Rohe was its last director before it closed in 1933

It taught only the fine arts and excluded craft and industrial design

Which of the following buildings are works of Art Deco?

Empire State Building, New York, by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon

Chrysler Building, New York, by William Van Alen

Seagram Building, New York, by Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson

Empire State Building, New York, by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon

Portland Building, by Michael Graves

Chrysler Building, New York, by William Van Alen

Renaissance to the Contemporary: Styles, Modern Movements and the Principles of Design

This chapter answers the rest of AR Part B1, Section B1.1, on the period from “Renaissance, Baroque-Rococo” to “Recent trends in Contemporary Architecture: Art nouveau, Art Deco, Eclecticism, International styles, Postmodernism, Deconstruction in architecture; Influence of Modern art and Design in Architecture”, together with “Principles of art, design and Architecture”. It teaches each style by its ideas, its leading architects and the buildings that are safely attributed to them, sets the modern art movements (Arts and Crafts, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, De Stijl, Constructivism, Bauhaus) beside the architecture they shaped, and ends with unity, balance, rhythm, harmony, proportion, scale, contrast and hierarchy. The numericals are proportion arithmetic: the golden section, the Modulor and Palladian room ratios.

1. The Renaissance: classical order reborn in Italy

The Renaissance (“rebirth”) began in Florence in the early fifteenth century. Humanist scholars revived Greek and Roman ideas: a building should be designed by reason, in mathematical proportion and on the scale of man, with the classical orders used correctly, and with the semicircular arch and hemispherical dome in place of the Gothic pointed arch. The architect became a named author, often a scholar or artist, rather than an anonymous master mason, and treatises by Alberti, Serlio, Vignola and Palladio spread the rules. Vitruvius, rediscovered, was the authority. The phases are Early (Florence, the fifteenth century), High (Rome, early sixteenth) and Late Renaissance with Mannerism (the later sixteenth century, including Palladio in the Veneto).

Hallmarks. Symmetry about an axis; harmony through simple ratios; orders, pilasters, pediments and a strong cornice; semicircular arches and hemispherical domes; centralised church plans (circle, square, Greek cross) as the ideal form; flat coffered ceilings; horizontal emphasis in contrast to Gothic verticality.
The palazzo. A town house built round a courtyard, with a heavily rusticated ground floor, smoother upper floors and a crowning cornice; the Palazzo Rucellai applies pilasters in superposed orders to the façade.

Renaissance architects and their works
Architect	Works to know	Idea
Filippo Brunelleschi	Dome of Florence Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore), finished in 1436, with the lantern after his death; Ospedale degli Innocenti, begun 1419; San Lorenzo; Pazzi Chapel	Double-shell dome in herringbone brickwork, built largely without full timber centring; the Innocenti loggia is generally called the first Renaissance building; credited with linear perspective
Leon Battista Alberti	De re aedificatoria (about 1450); Palazzo Rucellai; façade of Santa Maria Novella; Sant’Andrea, Mantua	Scholar-architect who wrote the first Renaissance treatise; beauty as the harmony of all parts so that nothing could be added or taken away
Donato Bramante	Tempietto at San Pietro in Montorio, Rome (about 1502); the original Greek-cross design for the new St Peter’s (1506)	High Renaissance ideal of the centralised, domed, circular temple with a Doric colonnade
Michelangelo	The dome of St Peter’s (his design, completed after his death); Laurentian Library; Capitoline Hill	Sculptural, muscular treatment of the orders that breaks the rules, a Mannerist trait
Andrea Palladio	Villa Capra “La Rotonda”, near Vicenza; San Giorgio Maggiore and Il Redentore, Venice; I quattro libri dell’architettura (1570)	Temple-front portico on a house, strict ratios of rooms; his books shaped Georgian England and, through Jefferson, early America

⚠️ Know who did the dome

Brunelleschi built the dome of Florence Cathedral. Alberti is a theorist and façade-designer and did not. Michelangelo designed the dome of St Peter’s in Rome, and Bramante the first, Greek-cross scheme for that church. Palladio belongs to Vicenza and Venice and to the villa; his name is the usual trap answer for “centralised domed temple” when the answer is Bramante’s Tempietto.

2. Baroque and Rococo: drama, then delicacy

Baroque (about 1600–1750) was born in Rome in the service of the Counter-Reformation Church and then of absolute monarchs. Where the Renaissance sought calm proportion, the Baroque sought movement, drama, emotion and grandeur. Its tools are curved forms (concave and convex walls, elliptical plans and domes), façades that advance and recede, strong light and shade, rich sculpted ornament, painted ceilings that dissolve into illusionary sky, and axial planning on an urban scale: piazzas, avenues and gardens. Architecture, sculpture and painting are fused into one effect.

Baroque architects and works
Architect	Works to know
Carlo Maderno	Nave and façade of St Peter’s, Rome, turning the plan into a Latin cross
Gian Lorenzo Bernini	Elliptical colonnaded piazza of St Peter’s; the bronze baldacchino; Cornaro Chapel
Francesco Borromini	San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane (undulating concave-convex façade); Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza (spiral lantern)
Guarino Guarini	Chapel of the Holy Shroud, Turin, with a dome of interlaced ribs
Le Vau, Hardouin-Mansart, Le Nôtre	Palace and gardens of Versailles; the Hall of Mirrors is by Hardouin-Mansart and the gardens by Le Nôtre
Christopher Wren	St Paul’s Cathedral, London, after the Great Fire of 1666: a restrained English Baroque with a dome

Rococo (about 1720–1780) arose in France as a lighter and more intimate reaction to Baroque grandeur and spread to Germany and Austria. The word comes from rocaille, shell-and-rock ornament. It concentrates on interiors: asymmetrical curves, C- and S-scrolls, shells and flowers, pastel colours, white-and-gold stucco, mirrors and small oval rooms, while exteriors stay comparatively plain. Examples are the Amalienburg in Munich (François de Cuvilliés), the Wieskirche (Dominikus Zimmermann) and Sanssouci in Potsdam.

Baroque and Rococo compared
Feature	Baroque	Rococo
Mood and scale	Grand, dramatic, monumental	Intimate, light, playful
Ornament	Heavy, sculptural, usually symmetrical	Delicate, asymmetrical rocaille
Colour	Rich and dark, strong contrasts	Pastels, white and gold
Emphasis	Façade, plan and urban setting	Interior decoration

3. Eclecticism, Art Nouveau and Art Deco

The nineteenth century had new materials (iron, glass, steel), new building types (railway stations, museums, factories) and no agreed style. Eclecticism, or historicism, chose the style of each building from the past according to its associations: the Gothic Revival for churches and for the Houses of Parliament in London (Charles Barry with A. W. N. Pugin); Greek and Roman revival for museums and banks; and the École des Beaux-Arts method in France, as in the Paris Opéra (Palais Garnier) by Charles Garnier. Engineering went its own way: the Crystal Palace (Joseph Paxton, 1851) and the Eiffel Tower (1889) showed iron and glass without historical dress.

Art Nouveau (about 1890–1910) rejected historicism and sought a new style from nature: whiplash curves, plant and flower motifs, asymmetry, exposed wrought iron and glass, and the design of the whole building, furniture and ironwork together. Its regional names are Jugendstil (Germany), Sezessionstil (Vienna), Modern Style (Britain), Stile Liberty (Italy) and Modernisme (Catalonia). Victor Horta’s Hôtel Tassel in Brussels (1893) is generally regarded as the first major example; Hector Guimard designed the Paris Métro entrances; Gaudí’s Casa Batlló and Casa Milà belong to Catalan Modernisme; Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art uses a more rectilinear “Glasgow Style”.

Art Deco takes its name from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris and flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. It is geometric where Art Nouveau is organic: zigzag and chevron, sunburst, stepped setbacks, streamlined curves, stylised motifs, and rich or machine-age materials such as chrome, lacquer, glass and terrazzo. Examples are the Chrysler Building (William Van Alen, 1930) and the Empire State Building (Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, 1931) in New York, the Art Deco buildings along Marine Drive and the cinemas of Mumbai (inscribed with the city’s Victorian Gothic buildings as a World Heritage site in 2018), and the Umaid Bhawan Palace in Jodhpur by H. V. Lanchester.

Art Nouveau and Art Deco compared
Feature	Art Nouveau	Art Deco
Period	About 1890–1910	The 1920s and 1930s
Line	Whiplash curves, organic	Zigzag, chevron, stepped, geometric
Inspiration	Plants and flowers; craft	Machine age, speed, luxury
Materials	Wrought iron, glass, ceramic	Chrome, lacquer, steel, terrazzo, stone

4. The influence of modern art and design

From about 1850, art and design movements changed how architects thought about form, space, ornament and the machine. The table gives the movements the syllabus names, with the idea each brought to architecture.

Modern art movements and architecture
Movement	Place and key figures	Idea	Effect on architecture
Arts and Crafts	Britain, from the 1850s: John Ruskin, William Morris, Philip Webb (Red House, 1859)	Revive craft, honest materials, reject shoddy machine ornament	Truth to materials, simple vernacular forms; a root of later design reform
Cubism	Paris, from about 1907: Picasso, Braque	An object shown from several viewpoints at once, in fragmented planes	Space and mass as interpenetrating planes; Le Corbusier’s Purism developed from, and reacted against, it
Futurism	Italy, 1909: Marinetti; Antonio Sant’Elia’s Città Nuova drawings	Speed, dynamism, the machine and the modern city	Unbuilt visions of towers, power stations and transport
Expressionism	Germany, 1910s–20s: Erich Mendelsohn (Einstein Tower, Potsdam), Bruno Taut	Form shaped by feeling, not by function alone	Sculptural, curved, plastic forms
De Stijl	Netherlands, 1917: Theo van Doesburg, Piet Mondrian, Gerrit Rietveld (Schröder House, Utrecht, 1924)	Neoplasticism: straight lines, right angles, primary colours with black, white and grey	Asymmetric compositions of intersecting planes; open plan
Constructivism	Russia, after 1917: Tatlin, the Vesnin brothers, Melnikov, El Lissitzky	Industrial materials, exposed structure, art in the service of society	Steel and glass frames, workers’ clubs; Tatlin’s Tower remained a project
Bauhaus	Germany, 1919–33 (Weimar, Dessau, Berlin): Walter Gropius, then Hannes Meyer, then Mies van der Rohe	Unity of art, craft and technology; design for industrial production; a common preliminary course	The model of modern design education; Gropius designed the Dessau building (1925–26)

⚠️ Three movements students confuse

De Stijl is Dutch and is recognised by primary colours and orthogonal planes; Constructivism is Russian and is recognised by industrial structure and social purpose; Cubism is a painting movement about multiple viewpoints, not a building style. The Bauhaus is a school, not a style, and its founder was Gropius; Mies was its last director.

5. The Modern Movement and the International Style

Modern architecture grew from the Chicago School (Louis Sullivan: “form ever follows function”), Adolf Loos’s essay “Ornament and Crime” (1908), the Bauhaus and the freedom given by steel and reinforced-concrete frames. The term International Style comes from the 1932 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson. They named three principles: architecture as volume (planes enclosing space) rather than mass; regularity (modular, rhythmic order) rather than axial symmetry; and avoidance of applied ornament.

Le Corbusier’s five points of a new architecture (1920s): pilotis (columns lifting the building off the ground), the free plan, the free façade, the horizontal (ribbon) window and the roof garden. The free plan and façade are possible because the frame, not the wall, carries the load.
Exemplars. Villa Savoye, Poissy (Le Corbusier, 1928–31), the five points in one house; the Barcelona Pavilion (Mies van der Rohe, 1929), flowing space on a plinth; the Bauhaus building, Dessau (Gropius, 1925–26); the Seagram Building, New York (Mies with Philip Johnson, 1958); Lever House, New York (Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, 1952).

The critique followed. The glass box ignored climate, place and culture; the same tower rose in every city. Mies’s “less is more” and “God is in the details” were answered by regional modernism (Aalto, Kahn, Correa), by the raw-concrete Brutalism of the 1950s and 60s (béton brut), and finally by Postmodernism. Remember the family relationship: Functionalism, the Modern Movement and the International Style are close but not identical, since the International Style is the name given to the formal result.

⚠️ Regularity is not axial symmetry

Hitchcock and Johnson’s second principle replaced axial symmetry by regularity: a modular, repeated order that need not be mirror-symmetrical. So if an option says that the International Style made axial symmetry its main compositional law, it is the wrong one. Likewise the flat roof, the glass curtain wall and the lack of ornament are features, but the three official principles are volume, regularity and no applied ornament.

6. Postmodernism and Deconstruction

Postmodernism (from the 1960s, strongest in the 1970s and 1980s) reacted against the austerity and universalism of the International Style. Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) argued “less is a bore”, answering Mies’s “less is more”; Learning from Las Vegas (1972, with Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour) contrasted the decorated shed, a plain building with applied signs, and the duck, a building whose form is itself the sign. Charles Jencks described postmodern buildings as double-coded: they speak to experts and to the public at once. Typical traits are historical quotation, symbolism, ornament, colour, irony and respect for context. Examples are the Vanna Venturi House in Philadelphia (Venturi), the Portland Building (Michael Graves, 1982), the AT&T Building in New York with its broken pediment (Philip Johnson with John Burgee), the Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans (Charles Moore) and the Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart (James Stirling).

Deconstruction (deconstructivism) borrowed from the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and was announced by the 1988 exhibition “Deconstructivist Architecture” at the Museum of Modern Art, curated by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley, which showed Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Peter Eisenman, Coop Himmelb(l)au and Bernard Tschumi. Its traits are fragmentation, distorted and non-orthogonal geometry, colliding volumes, apparent instability and a rejection of harmony and unity. Examples are the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Gehry, 1997), the Vitra Fire Station (Hadid, 1993), the Jewish Museum Berlin (Libeskind) and the Parc de la Villette in Paris (Tschumi), a grid of red follies.

Three attitudes compared
Aspect	International Style	Postmodernism	Deconstruction
History	Rejects it	Quotes it with irony	Neither quotes nor copies it
Ornament	None applied	Welcomed; symbol and colour	Not the point; form itself is disturbed
Geometry	Orthogonal, regular	Recognisable, often classical forms	Skewed, fragmented, colliding
Key figures	Le Corbusier, Mies, Gropius	Venturi, Graves, Moore, Stirling	Gehry, Hadid, Libeskind, Eisenman

⚠️ Deconstruction is not demolition

The word comes from Derrida’s philosophy of questioning fixed meanings. It does not mean taking buildings down, and it does not mean the historical jokes of Postmodernism. A deconstructivist building is real, often rigorous, and disturbs the box rather than quoting a temple front.

7. Principles of art, design and architecture

The principles of composition
Principle	Meaning	Means in a building
Unity	All parts belong to one whole; variety held within one theme	A shared module, material, colour or dominant idea
Balance	Visual equilibrium: symmetrical (formal), asymmetrical (informal) or radial	A mirror-image façade; or a heavy mass near the centre balancing a light element placed far away
Rhythm	Ordered repetition: repetition, alternation, progression, radiation	Equal bays; wide and narrow openings alternating; stepped setbacks
Harmony	Agreement of parts through likeness of shape, colour, material or proportion	Consistent window shapes, tones and detailing
Proportion	The relation of parts to one another and to the whole	Golden section, simple ratios, the orders, the Modulor
Scale	Size judged against the human body or surroundings	Intimate, human or monumental scale
Contrast	Difference used to create interest and emphasis	Solid and void, light and dark, curve and straight line
Emphasis and hierarchy	A focal point and an order of importance among parts	Exceptional size, shape or position on an axis for the principal space or entrance

The ordering principles taught by Francis Ching add axis (a line about which forms are arranged), datum (a line, plane or volume that organises what is related to it), repetition and transformation (a known form altered to fit its situation). Hierarchy and axis work together: a long axis ending in a larger, differently shaped hall tells the visitor where the building’s heart lies.

Proportion has numbers. The golden section divides a line so that the whole is to the larger part as the larger part is to the smaller. The ratio is φ = (1 + √5)/2 ≈ 1.618. A golden rectangle has sides in the ratio 1 : 1.618, and the ratios of consecutive Fibonacci numbers (8/5 = 1.6, 13/8 = 1.625, 21/13 = 1.615) approach it. Worked example: a golden rectangle of shorter side 5 m has longer side 5 × 1.618 = 8.09 m; a 10 m line divided in the golden section gives parts 10/1.618 = 6.18 m and 3.82 m.

Le Corbusier’s Modulor (published 1948) is a proportional system built from a man 1.83 m tall and the golden ratio: the red series includes 113 cm (navel height) and 183 cm (height), and the blue series, double the red, includes 226 cm (the raised hand), with 113 × 1.618 ≈ 183. Palladio recommended seven plan shapes for rooms: the circle, the square, and rectangles in the ratios √2, 4:3, 3:2, 5:3 and 2:1. Worked example: a room in the ratio 3:2 with a shorter side of 6 m has a longer side of 9 m and a floor area of 54 m².

🎯 Why proportion matters more than ornament

Proportion is what survives when ornament is stripped away. A plain Renaissance room, a Modernist façade and a Greek temple all rely on ratios between parts, and the eye reads those ratios whether or not the viewer can name them. That is why a question on any style can end in a ratio.

Key takeaways

The Renaissance revived classical order: proportion, symmetry, the semicircular arch and the hemispherical dome. Brunelleschi built the Florence dome, Alberti wrote the treatise, Bramante drew the Tempietto and Palladio the villas.
Baroque is drama, curved forms and grandeur (Bernini, Borromini, Versailles); Rococo is light, intimate, asymmetrical decoration of interiors.
Eclecticism chose past styles by association; Art Nouveau (about 1890–1910) is organic whiplash curves; Art Deco (named for the 1925 Paris exposition) is geometric, streamlined and machine-age.
Modern art shaped architecture through Arts and Crafts (honest craft), Cubism (many viewpoints), De Stijl (primary colours, orthogonal planes), Constructivism (industrial structure) and the Bauhaus (art, craft and technology united, founded by Gropius).
The International Style (Hitchcock and Johnson, 1932) means volume, regularity and no applied ornament; Le Corbusier’s five points are pilotis, free plan, free façade, ribbon window and roof garden. Postmodernism (Venturi: “less is a bore”) quotes history; Deconstruction fragments and distorts geometry.
The principles are unity, balance, rhythm, harmony, proportion, scale, contrast and emphasis or hierarchy. The golden ratio is 1.618, so a golden rectangle of short side s has long side 1.618 s; the Modulor uses 113 and 183 cm.

Practice questions (19)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

Brunelleschi’s dome over Florence Cathedral was notable chiefly because it was
1. a single hemispherical shell of Roman concrete cast over a complete timber centring, like the Pantheon
2. carried on pendentives and semi-domes in the manner of Hagia Sophia, with a ring of windows at its base
3. built as two shells of brick laid in herringbone, largely without a full timber centring
4. braced by flying buttresses springing from an octagonal drum, as in the Gothic cathedrals of France
Show answer
Answer: C — built as two shells of brick laid in herringbone, largely without a full timber centring
The Florence dome is a double shell, the inner thicker than the outer, built of brick in a herringbone pattern so that rings could stay in place while the dome rose, and largely without full centring. The Pantheon method (cast concrete on centring) and the Hagia Sophia method (pendentives) belong to Rome and Byzantium, and the Gothic cathedrals’ buttresses are not used at Florence.
Which one of the following attributions is INCORRECT?
1. Alberti: the double-shell dome of Florence Cathedral
2. Bramante: the Tempietto in the courtyard of San Pietro in Montorio, Rome
3. Palladio: Villa Capra, called La Rotonda, near Vicenza
4. Alberti: the Florentine town house Palazzo Rucellai
Show answer
Answer: A — Alberti: the double-shell dome of Florence Cathedral
The dome of Florence Cathedral is Brunelleschi’s, so crediting it to Alberti is the error. The Tempietto is Bramante’s, La Rotonda is Palladio’s, and the Palazzo Rucellai façade is Alberti’s; the temptation is that Alberti is the best-known theorist of the period.
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome, with its undulating façade of alternating concave and convex surfaces, is the work of
1. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, designer of the colonnaded piazza of St Peter’s
2. Francesco Borromini, whose work is marked by flowing curves and geometric ingenuity
3. Carlo Maderno, who gave St Peter’s its nave and façade
4. Andrea Palladio, who designed Il Redentore in Venice
Show answer
Answer: B — Francesco Borromini, whose work is marked by flowing curves and geometric ingenuity
The undulating concave-convex façade is Borromini’s signature. Bernini is the tempting answer because he is the other great Roman Baroque architect, but his best-known works are the piazza and baldacchino of St Peter’s; Maderno completed St Peter’s nave and façade, and Palladio belongs to the Veneto.
Which statement best distinguishes Rococo from Baroque?
1. Rococo returned to the strict proportions and temple fronts of Greek architecture, whereas Baroque rejected all classical forms
2. Rococo used dark, heavy colours and monumental urban planning, whereas Baroque confined itself to pastel interiors
3. Rococo grew out of the Gothic Revival and used pointed arches and tracery in its interiors, unlike Baroque
4. Rococo favoured light, intimate, asymmetrical interior ornament; Baroque sought grand, dramatic, monumental effect
Show answer
Answer: D — Rococo favoured light, intimate, asymmetrical interior ornament; Baroque sought grand, dramatic, monumental effect
Rococo, which came later in France, is a lighter and more intimate decorative style of shells, scrolls, pastels and mirrors that concentrates on interiors; Baroque is grand and monumental. The other statements reverse the facts: neither style rejected the classical vocabulary wholesale, the dark heavy colours belong to the Baroque, and the Gothic Revival is a nineteenth-century movement.
A Brussels town house of 1893 has an iron staircase with whiplash curves, floral ornament and glass, with building and ironwork designed together. Its style is
1. Art Deco, the geometric style that followed the 1925 Paris exposition
2. Eclecticism, the choice of past styles for their associations
3. Art Nouveau, as in Horta’s Hôtel Tassel
4. De Stijl, the Dutch movement of orthogonal planes and primary colours
Show answer
Answer: C — Art Nouveau, as in Horta’s Hôtel Tassel
Whiplash curves, plant motifs, exposed iron and glass and total design are Art Nouveau, and Horta’s Hôtel Tassel of 1893 is the usual first major example. Art Deco is geometric and belongs to the 1920s and 30s, so it is the tempting but wrong choice.
In the nineteenth century, the Gothic style was chosen for the Houses of Parliament and Greek or Roman forms for museums and banks because of their associations. This practice is called
1. Functionalism, in which form follows use alone
2. Eclecticism, or historicism, the choice of styles for their associations
3. Constructivism, in which exposed industrial structure becomes the expression
4. Purism, in which pure volumes are stripped of all reference
Show answer
Answer: B — Eclecticism, or historicism, the choice of styles for their associations
Choosing the style of each building from earlier periods according to its associations is Eclecticism, also called historicism. Functionalism and Purism strip away reference, and Constructivism is the Russian movement of exposed structure.
A house of 1924 in Utrecht by Rietveld is composed of intersecting orthogonal planes in primary colours with black, white and grey. It belongs to
1. Constructivism, the Russian movement of exposed industrial structure
2. Expressionism, the German movement of sculptural, emotional form
3. Futurism, the Italian movement of speed and the dynamic city
4. De Stijl, the Dutch movement of neoplasticism
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Answer: D — De Stijl, the Dutch movement of neoplasticism
Orthogonal planes, primary colours with black and white, and Rietveld’s Schröder House identify De Stijl. Constructivism is Russian and uses industrial structure, Expressionism is curved and emotional, and Futurism is Italian and concerned with speed.
Which of the following is NOT one of the three principles of the International Style formulated by Hitchcock and Johnson in 1932?
1. Axial symmetry as the primary law of composition
2. Architecture conceived as volume, planes enclosing space, rather than as mass
3. Regularity, a modular and repeated order, in place of axial symmetry
4. Avoidance of applied ornament, with beauty drawn from materials and proportion
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Answer: A — Axial symmetry as the primary law of composition
Hitchcock and Johnson’s principles are volume rather than mass, regularity rather than axial symmetry, and the avoidance of applied decoration. Axial symmetry is exactly what the second principle set aside, so naming it as the main compositional law is the odd one out.
Robert Venturi’s remark “less is a bore” was a reply to which earlier slogan?
1. “Form ever follows function”, of Louis Sullivan
2. “Ornament and crime”, the title of Adolf Loos’s essay
3. “Less is more”, associated with Mies van der Rohe
4. “A house is a machine for living in”, of Le Corbusier
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Answer: C — “Less is more”, associated with Mies van der Rohe
Venturi’s pun turns Mies’s slogan “less is more” against itself, arguing that bare minimalism is dull and that buildings should be rich and contradictory. The other slogans are also Modern Movement statements, which is why they tempt, but none is the one he answered.
Which statement correctly separates Postmodernism from Deconstructivism?
1. Postmodernism rejected every historical reference, whereas Deconstructivism quoted classical forms with irony
2. Postmodernism quotes recognisable historical forms with irony and colour, whereas Deconstructivism fragments and distorts geometry without quoting
3. Postmodernism insisted on glass curtain walls and no ornament, whereas Deconstructivism insisted on pitched roofs
4. Postmodernism came from the 1925 Paris exposition, whereas Deconstructivism came from the 1932 New York exhibition
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Answer: B — Postmodernism quotes recognisable historical forms with irony and colour, whereas Deconstructivism fragments and distorts geometry without quoting
Postmodernism (Venturi, Graves, Moore) brings back recognisable historical forms, ornament, colour and wit; Deconstructivism (Gehry, Hadid, Libeskind) skews and fragments the geometry rather than quoting. The glass curtain wall belongs to the International Style, and the Paris and New York dates in the claim about exhibitions belong to Art Deco and the International Style instead.
A long façade repeats identical bays at equal intervals, with wide and narrow openings alternating. The principle chiefly at work is
1. radial balance, in which elements are arranged about a central point
2. hierarchy, in which spaces are ranked by their importance in the plan
3. asymmetrical balance, in which unequal masses are set in equilibrium
4. rhythm, produced by regular repetition and alternation of elements
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Answer: D — rhythm, produced by regular repetition and alternation of elements
Ordered repetition with alternation is rhythm. Balance concerns equilibrium of visual weight and hierarchy concerns the ranking of importance, neither of which is described by the regular repeated bays.
To make the principal hall of a public building read at once as its most important space, which design means is consistent with the principle of hierarchy?
1. Give it exceptional size, a distinct form and a place on the main axis, unlike its neighbours
2. Make every space of the same size and shape so that none competes with another for attention
3. Hide the entrance to the hall behind a series of identical, repetitive corridors of equal width
4. Reduce the differences of material and light between the hall and the spaces around it
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Answer: A — Give it exceptional size, a distinct form and a place on the main axis, unlike its neighbours
Hierarchy is expressed by making the important element exceptional in size, shape or position. Making everything identical, hiding the hall or removing contrast all erase the order of importance, which is the opposite of the principle.
A designer draws a golden rectangle, with sides in the ratio 1 : 1.618, whose shorter side is 5 m. The longer side, in metres and correct to two decimal places, is ____.
Numerical answer — type the value.
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Answer: 8.09
Longer side = 5 × 1.618 = 8.09 m. Check: 8.09/5 = 1.618. Using φ = 1.6180339 gives 8.0902, which rounds to the same 8.09 m.
Palladio recommended rooms planned in ratios such as 5:3 between length and width. A room is planned at 5:3 with a length of 7.5 m. Its floor area, in square metres and correct to two decimal places, is ____.
Numerical answer — type the value.
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Answer: 33.75
Width = 7.5 × 3/5 = 4.5 m. Area = 7.5 × 4.5 = 33.75 m². Check by ratio units: 7.5/5 = 1.5 m per unit, so the sides are 5 × 1.5 and 3 × 1.5, and the area is 15 units × 1.5² = 15 × 2.25 = 33.75 m².
In Le Corbusier’s Modulor the red series is built on the golden ratio. Multiplying the navel height of 113 cm by 1.618 gives the height of the Modulor man. To the nearest centimetre, this height, in centimetres, is ____.
Numerical answer — type the value.
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Answer: 183
Height = 113 × 1.618 = 182.83 cm, which is 183 cm to the nearest centimetre, the Modulor man’s height (about 1.83 m). Check: 183/113 = 1.619.
Which of the following are hallmarks of Renaissance architecture?
1. Classical orders used in correct proportion, with pilasters and pediments
2. Pointed arches and flying buttresses carrying the thrust of ribbed vaults
3. Semicircular arches and hemispherical domes
4. Centralised church plans based on the circle, the square and the Greek cross
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Answer: A — Classical orders used in correct proportion, with pilasters and pediments; C — Semicircular arches and hemispherical domes; D — Centralised church plans based on the circle, the square and the Greek cross
The Renaissance revived Roman proportion, the semicircular arch and the dome, and favoured centralised plans as the ideal. Pointed arches with flying buttresses are Gothic.
Which of the following are among Le Corbusier’s five points of a new architecture?
1. Pilotis lifting the building above the ground
2. Load-bearing masonry walls running through every floor
3. A garden on the flat roof
4. A steeply pitched roof with deep eaves
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Answer: A — Pilotis lifting the building above the ground; C — A garden on the flat roof
The five points are pilotis, free plan, free façade, ribbon window and roof garden. Load-bearing walls would rule out the free plan, and the steep pitched roof is the reverse of the roof garden on a flat roof.
Which of the following statements about the Bauhaus are correct?
1. It was founded by Walter Gropius at Weimar in 1919
2. It moved to Dessau in 1925, where Gropius designed its new building
3. Mies van der Rohe was its last director before it closed in 1933
4. It taught only the fine arts and excluded craft and industrial design
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Answer: A — It was founded by Walter Gropius at Weimar in 1919; B — It moved to Dessau in 1925, where Gropius designed its new building; C — Mies van der Rohe was its last director before it closed in 1933
Gropius founded the school in 1919, built the Dessau building in 1925–26, and Mies directed it from 1930 until closure in 1933. The idea was the unity of art, craft and technology, so the claim that craft and industrial design were excluded is the opposite of the truth.
Which of the following buildings are works of Art Deco?
1. Seagram Building, New York, by Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson
2. Empire State Building, New York, by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon
3. Portland Building, by Michael Graves
4. Chrysler Building, New York, by William Van Alen
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Answer: B — Empire State Building, New York, by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon; D — Chrysler Building, New York, by William Van Alen
The Chrysler Building (1930), with a stainless-steel crown of stepped, sunburst arches, and the Empire State Building (1931), with its stepped setbacks, are classic Art Deco skyscrapers. The Seagram Building is International Style and the Portland Building is Postmodern.