Architecture styles
85 named styles, from Gothic Revival to Deconstructivism. Filter by family, region, or formal traits — or search by name, building, or keyword.
85 styles
1740s–1900sGothic Revival
A 19th-century revival of medieval Gothic forms — pointed arches, soaring verticality, and rich ornament — applied to churches, universities, and civic landmarks.
1830s–1900sBeaux-Arts
A grand, symmetrical classicism taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris — monumental facades layered with sculpture, columns, and richly worked stone.
1890–1910Art Nouveau
A short-lived but radical style of flowing, organic line — whiplash curves, plant and vine motifs, and ornament fused with structure.
1910s–1940Art Deco
Glamorous machine-age modernism — bold geometry, stepped setbacks, and stylized ornament that made the skyscraper feel like the future.
1930s–1940sStreamline Moderne
The aerodynamic, late phase of Deco — curved corners, smooth horizontal lines, and a nautical, machine-for-speed look.
1920s–1970sInternational Style
The austere, functional modernism of glass curtain walls and unornamented volumes — 'form follows function' built in steel and glass.
1950s–1970sBrutalism
Raw concrete made monumental — massive, sculptural, honest-to-materials buildings that wear their structure on the outside.
1945–1969Mid-Century Modern
Warm, livable modernism — clean lines and flat planes opened up with glass walls that dissolve the boundary between indoors and out.
1970s–1990sPostmodern Architecture
A playful rebellion against modernist austerity — color, ornament, historical quotation, and wit brought back into architecture.
1980s–presentDeconstructivism
Fragmented, dynamic forms that break the grid — twisted volumes and unstable, angular geometries that look caught mid-motion.
1750s–1850sNeoclassical Architecture
A disciplined return to the pure forms of Greek and Roman antiquity — calm symmetry, columns and porticoes, and noble restraint after Baroque excess.
1919–1933Bauhaus
The German school that fused art, craft, and industry into a functional modernism — clean geometry, flat roofs, and 'form follows function' applied to the whole designed world.
1915–1935Constructivism
The avant-garde architecture of the early Soviet Union — abstract, dynamic geometry and exposed structure put in the service of a new social order.
1900–1920sPrairie School
An indigenous American style led by Frank Lloyd Wright — long horizontal lines, sheltering roofs, and open plans that echo the flat Midwestern prairie.
c. 3000 BCE–30 BCEAncient Egyptian Architecture
Monumental stone architecture of temples, pylons, and pyramids — massive, axial, and built to outlast eternity, with forests of columns and walls of carved hieroglyphs.
c. 700 BCE–100 BCEAncient Greek Architecture
The refined temple architecture that gave the West its classical orders — Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns, pediments, and a near-mathematical pursuit of proportion.
c. 500 BCE–400 CEAncient Roman Architecture
Rome took the Greek orders and added the arch, vault, dome, and concrete — engineering classical beauty into vast public space at imperial scale.
4th–15th centuryByzantine Architecture
The Christian architecture of the Eastern Roman Empire — vast domes floating on pendentives over centralized plans, interiors dissolved in gold mosaic and coloured marble.
c. 1000–1150Romanesque Architecture
Massive, round-arched medieval architecture — thick walls, barrel vaults, and small windows producing solemn, fortress-like churches across post-Roman Europe.
11th–12th centuryNorman Architecture
The robust Romanesque the Normans built across England, Normandy, and Sicily — vast, fortress-like cathedrals and keeps with round arches and bold, incised ornament.
c. 1140–1500Gothic Architecture
The soaring medieval architecture of cathedrals — pointed arches, rib vaults, and flying buttresses dissolving walls into walls of stained glass and skeletal stone.
14th–15th centuryVenetian Gothic
Venice's own Gothic — pointed and ogee arches, delicate tracery, and polychrome stone fused with Byzantine and Islamic influence into lacy, light palace façades over water.
8th–15th centuryMoorish Architecture
The Islamic architecture of medieval Iberia and the western Maghreb — horseshoe arches, intricate stucco and tile ornament, and serene arcaded courtyards, peaking under the Umayyads of Córdoba and the Nasrids of Granada.
16th–18th centuryMughal Architecture
The imperial architecture of the Mughal dynasty in South Asia, blending Persian, Central Asian, and indigenous Indian forms into symmetrical, garden-set monuments crowned by bulbous domes — its supreme expression the white-marble Taj Mahal.
14th–18th centuryOttoman Architecture
The imperial architecture of the Ottoman Empire, defined by vast central domes cascading over half-domes and pencil-thin minarets. Its classical phase, led by the architect Sinan, perfected a unified, light-filled domed interior.
16th–18th centuryPersian Safavid Architecture
The architecture of Safavid Iran, centered on Isfahan, celebrated for turquoise-and-cobalt tiled domes, towering iwan portals, and grand axial urban squares — the brilliant late flowering of the Persian building tradition.
13th–16th centuryMamluk Architecture
The monumental Islamic architecture of the Mamluk Sultanate, centered on Cairo — soaring stone façades, carved stone domes, and polychrome ablaq masonry on towering mosque-madrasa and funerary complexes.
5th–13th centuryNagara (North Indian) Temple Architecture
The North Indian Hindu temple tradition defined by the curvilinear shikhara tower rising in a smooth parabolic profile over the sanctum, with richly sculpted exteriors and a clustered, mountain-like silhouette.
7th–17th centuryDravidian (South Indian) Temple Architecture
The South Indian Hindu temple tradition built around the stepped pyramidal vimana over the sanctum and, in later periods, towering gateway gopurams — marked by walled rectangular precincts and dense figural sculpture.
9th–15th centuryKhmer (Angkorian) Architecture
The temple architecture of the Khmer Empire — great stone temple-mountains crowned by clustered lotus-bud towers, ringed by moats and galleried enclosures. Angkor Wat is its supreme realization of cosmic Mount Meru in sandstone.
7th century–1912Chinese Imperial Architecture
The monumental palace-and-temple tradition of China's imperial courts — a modular timber frame with sweeping tiled roofs, brilliant polychrome, and a rigorously axial, hierarchical site plan, canonized in the Ming–Qing complexes of Beijing.
6th century–1868Traditional Japanese Architecture
A refined timber tradition that absorbed Chinese temple construction and reshaped it around Japanese materials, seismic conditions, and aesthetics — wooden temples, shrines, castles, and houses defined by exposed structure, deep eaves, and elegant restraint.
7th century–1910Korean Hanok Architecture
Korea's traditional timber architecture — sharing the East Asian bracket-and-tile system but distinguished by gentle restraint, dancheong colour painting, and the under-floor ondol heating that shapes its low, ground-hugging halls.
1st–17th centuryPagoda (East Asian Buddhist Tower)
A tiered, multi-story Buddhist tower that evolved in East Asia from the Indian stupa, marking sacred relics with stacked eaved roofs around a central axis — built in timber, brick, or stone.
c. 750 BCE–1200 CEMaya Architecture
A monumental stone tradition of the Maya civilization built around stepped temple-pyramids, corbel-vaulted palaces, and ceremonial plazas, fusing precise astronomy with dense relief sculpture — its most famous expression El Castillo at Chichén Itzá.
c. 1200–1521Aztec (Mexica) Architecture
The monumental tradition of the Mexica (Aztec) empire — twin-shrine temple-pyramids rising in stacked battered terraces above great plazas, exemplified by the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan and the well-preserved double pyramid of Teopanzolco.
c. 1400–1533Inca Architecture
An Andean tradition defined by extraordinary mortarless ashlar masonry — stones cut so tightly that no blade can pass between them — integrated with mountain terrain through terracing, trapezoidal openings, and battered walls. Its emblem is Machu Picchu.
13th century–presentSudano-Sahelian Architecture
A West African mudbrick tradition of sun-dried earth and plaster — massive battered walls, projecting wooden toron beams, and pinnacled buttresses — exemplified by the Great Mosque of Djenné, the largest mudbrick building in the world.
1420–1600Renaissance Architecture
A rebirth of ancient Greek and Roman architectural principles emphasizing symmetry, proportion, and geometry — originating in early-15th-century Florence and spreading across Europe as the style of humanist culture.
1540–1620 (and later revivals)Palladian Architecture
A refined classical style developed by Andrea Palladio in the Venetian mainland — strict symmetry, temple-front porticoes, and harmonic proportion — whose codification in his treatise made it the most influential architectural language in the Western world.
1520–1600Mannerist Architecture
A sophisticated, deliberately rule-bending phase of late-Renaissance design that toyed with classical conventions for dramatic and intellectual effect — introducing tension, ambiguity, and visual 'jokes' into the ordered classical system.
1600–1750Baroque Architecture
A dramatic, theatrical style that used curves, movement, light, and rich ornament to overwhelm and persuade — serving the Counter-Reformation Church and absolutist courts as an instrument of emotional spectacle.
1715–1780Rococo Architecture
A light, playful, and intimate late-Baroque style defined by asymmetric shell-like ornament, pastel palettes, and graceful curves — favoring charm and elegance over the weighty grandeur of the high Baroque.
16th–early 19th centurySpanish Colonial
Church and civic architecture spread across Spain's American and Pacific colonies, fusing European Baroque and Renaissance models with local materials, labor, and indigenous decorative sensibilities.
Late 17th–18th centuryChurrigueresque
An extravagantly ornamented late-Spanish-Baroque mode — named for the Churriguera family — defined by densely sculpted façades and the inverted-obelisk estípite pilaster, reaching its wildest expression in New Spain.
1714–1830Georgian Architecture
The dominant English-speaking style of the 18th century — symmetry, classical proportion, and restrained brick-and-stone façades — named for the four King Georges.
1780–1830Federal Architecture
The classical style of the early American republic — refining colonial Georgian with lighter Adam-derived ornament, delicate detail, and emblems of the new nation.
1800–1860Greek Revival
An early-19th-century revival that modeled banks, capitols, and houses on the temples of ancient Greece — bold columned porticoes and pediments expressing democratic and civic ideals.
1840–1885Italianate
A romantic Victorian-era style evoking the informal villas of rural Italy — deep bracketed eaves, tall narrow windows, and an asymmetrical tower.
1855–1890Second Empire
A grand, modern-yet-monumental Victorian style defined by the steep mansard roof and rich Baroque-derived ornament, named for the France of Napoleon III.
1870–1910Queen Anne
The exuberant high-Victorian style of asymmetrical towers, wraparound porches, and richly textured surfaces — prizing picturesque variety over rule-bound order.
1870–1900Richardsonian Romanesque
A muscular American revival of Romanesque forms — heavy rusticated stone, broad round arches, and powerful massing — named for architect H. H. Richardson.
1840–1920Renaissance Revival
A 19th-century revival drawing on the palaces and civic buildings of the Italian and French Renaissance — symmetry, classical orders, and dignified masonry façades for libraries, banks, and mansions.
1860–1940Tudor Revival
A romantic revival of late-medieval and early-modern English building — half-timbering, steep gables, tall clustered chimneys, and leaded casement windows on picturesque, asymmetrical houses.
1876–1955Colonial Revival
An American revival of Georgian and Federal colonial-era building — symmetrical brick or clapboard façades, a centered classically framed entrance, and balanced rows of multi-paned, shuttered windows.
1890–1930Mission Revival
A turn-of-the-century American style inspired by California's Spanish colonial missions — smooth stucco walls, curvilinear shaped gables, arcaded porches, and red-tiled roofs.
1875–1910Châteauesque
An opulent revival modeled on the early French Renaissance châteaux of the Loire Valley — steep roofs, pinnacled towers, and elaborate carved stonework.
1860–1910Arts and Crafts
A British reform movement that rejected industrial mass production in favour of handcraft, honest materials, and vernacular building traditions — prizing craftsmanship and the unity of architecture with garden and interior.
1900–1930Craftsman
An American domestic style that translated Arts and Crafts ideals into low-slung, timber-rich houses with deep porches and exposed structure, celebrating visible woodwork and an easy indoor-outdoor relationship.
1897–1918Vienna Secession
The Viennese branch of Art Nouveau, founded by artists who seceded from the conservative academy — pairing clean geometric massing with concentrated zones of gilded, stylised ornament.
1910–1930Expressionist Architecture
An early-twentieth-century German movement that shaped buildings into dramatic, emotionally charged sculptural forms, often in moulded brick — prizing expressive subjective form over rational function.
1910–1930Amsterdam School
A Dutch movement of sculptural, hand-crafted brick architecture, applied especially to social housing — treating brick as a plastic, almost living material modelled into rounded, undulating façades.
1917–1931De Stijl
A Dutch avant-garde movement reducing design to straight lines, rectangular planes, and primary colours plus black, white, and grey — composing buildings from sliding, intersecting planes for a radically abstract, weightless effect.
1909–1940sItalian Futurism (Architecture)
An aggressive, machine-age Italian avant-garde celebrating speed, industry, and the dynamism of the modern metropolis through bold, soaring, technologically expressive forms.
1900–1959Organic Architecture
A philosophy of design in which buildings grow from their site as integrated, living wholes — harmonizing structure, materials, landscape, and human use into a single continuous expression.
1925–1960Functionalism
A modernist approach holding that a building's form should follow directly from its purpose — prioritizing utility, hygiene, light, and rational planning over decoration.
1945–1970Googie
An exuberant Space Age commercial style of postwar America — upswept roofs, boomerang and starburst motifs, bold signage, and futuristic optimism aimed at the passing motorist.
1959–1980Metabolism
A postwar Japanese avant-garde envisioning cities and buildings as living, growing organisms — assembled from replaceable prefabricated units that could adapt and regenerate over time.
1933–1955Stalinist Architecture
Monumental, symmetrical state architecture of the Stalin era fusing neoclassical grandeur with tiered, spire-topped silhouettes — the official aesthetic of Soviet power.
1936–1960Usonian
Frank Lloyd Wright's affordable single-story houses for middle-class America — built on modular grids with deep eaves, open plans, and a central hearth.
1940–1980Tropical Modernism
Modernist architecture adapted to hot, humid climates through brise-soleil sunshades, cross-ventilation, deep shade and indoor-outdoor planning.
1970–1995High-Tech Architecture
Architecture that celebrates industrial technology by exposing structure and services — ducts, trusses, pipes — as the building's expressive language.
1990–presentNeo-Futurism
A forward-looking, sculptural architecture of sweeping curves, white organic forms and advanced engineering — evoking optimism and the future.
2000–presentParametricism
A digital-age style that uses parametric modelling and algorithms to generate fluid, continuously curved buildings in which every element responds to adjustable variables.
1995–presentBlobitecture
A playful digital-era style of bulging, organic, amoeba-like buildings whose rounded biomorphic volumes reject straight lines and right angles.
1980–presentCritical Regionalism
An approach that resists placeless modernism by grounding modern architecture in local climate, light, topography and material culture — without lapsing into nostalgic pastiche.
1980–presentNew Classical Architecture
A contemporary revival of classical and traditional architecture, often paired with New Urbanist town-planning — returning to columns, symmetry and human scale.
1990–presentSustainable Architecture
A design ethos prioritising environmental performance — energy efficiency, low embodied carbon and integrated greenery — exemplified by vertical-forest towers clad in living plants.
1980–presentMinimalist Architecture
A reductive style that strips architecture to essential geometry, raw material and light — achieving calm through restraint, repetition and meticulous detail.
1905–1940Pueblo Revival
An earth-toned Southwestern revival that reinterprets ancestral Puebloan and Spanish-colonial adobe building in stepped, sculptural masses with projecting roof beams.
Colonial origins; 20th-c. revivalCape Cod
A compact, symmetrical one-to-one-and-a-half-story New England cottage with a steep gabled roof, central chimney, and clapboard or shingle skin, built low against coastal wind.
1932–1975Ranch
A sprawling single-story postwar house, long and low to the ground, with an open plan, wide eaves, and an attached garage — the signature form of American suburbia.
1895–1935American Foursquare
A boxy, two-and-a-half-story house with a low hipped roof, central dormer, and full-width front porch — an efficient, democratic form sold widely through mail-order catalogs.
1874–1910Shingle Style
A sophisticated New England resort style wrapping irregular, flowing building masses in an unbroken skin of wood shingles — prizing horizontal continuity over applied ornament.
1903–1942National Park Service Rustic
A monumental yet naturalistic style for park lodges and structures, built from massive local logs and boulders so buildings appear to grow out of their wilderness settings.
Design Style Book architecture style index.