Architecture
110 flashcards by MentisLibrary
Read a building the way an architect does. Styles from the ziggurat to mass timber, the structural tricks that made each one possible, and the vocabulary for every arch, vault, and buttress.
- Post and lintel
- The simplest structural system: two vertical supports carrying a horizontal beam across the opening between them.
- Corbel
- A bracket or stepped projection of stone or brick that carries a load out from a wall.
- Corbel arch
- An opening closed by successive courses of stone stepped inward until they meet, without wedge shaped voussoirs.
- True arch
- A curved opening built from wedge shaped voussoirs that transfer load outward and downward into the supports.
- Keystone
- The central wedge at the top of an arch, the last piece placed, which locks the others in position.
- Voussoir
- One of the wedge shaped blocks that make up an arch.
- Barrel vault
- A continuous arched ceiling, essentially an arch extended along a length.
- Groin vault
- The vault formed where two barrel vaults intersect at right angles, concentrating load at four corners.
- Ribbed vault
- A vault whose thrust is carried on a framework of stone ribs, with lighter infill between them.
- Flying buttress
- An arched external support that carries the outward thrust of a vault across open space to a freestanding pier.
- Pointed arch
- An arch rising to a point rather than a semicircle, directing thrust more steeply downward.
- Pendentive
- A curved triangular section of vaulting that transitions from a square plan to the circular base of a dome.
- Squinch
- An arch or corbelled bracket set across the corner of a square bay to support a dome above.
- Oculus
- A circular opening, usually at the crown of a dome.
- Entablature
- The horizontal band carried on classical columns, made up of the architrave, frieze, and cornice.
- Frieze
- The middle band of the entablature, often carrying sculpture or ornament.
- Cornice
- The projecting top band of an entablature, or any projecting molding that crowns a wall.
- Pediment
- The triangular gable above the entablature at the end of a classical building.
- Tympanum
- The recessed area within a pediment, or the semicircular field above a doorway and beneath an arch.
- Doric order
- The plainest Greek order: sturdy fluted columns with no base and a simple cushion capital, with a frieze of triglyphs and metopes.
- Ionic order
- A Greek order with slimmer, based columns and a capital carrying paired scrolls, or volutes.
- Corinthian order
- The most ornate Greek order, with a tall capital of carved acanthus leaves.
- Entasis
- The slight outward curve given to a column shaft so it does not appear to sag inward at the middle.
- Fluting
- The shallow vertical grooves cut into a column shaft.
- Capital
- The sculpted or molded head of a column, which spreads the load from the beam above.
- Ziggurat
- A stepped, terraced temple platform of mud brick built in ancient Mesopotamia.
- Hypostyle hall
- A hall whose roof rests on rows of closely spaced columns.
- The Great Pyramid of Giza
- The tomb of the pharaoh Khufu, built around the 26th century BCE and the largest of the Giza pyramids.
- The Parthenon
- The Doric temple to Athena on the Athenian Acropolis, built in the 5th century BCE under Pericles, with Iktinos and Kallikrates as architects.
- The Pantheon in Rome
- A temple rebuilt under Hadrian in the 2nd century CE, with a vast unreinforced concrete dome lit by a single oculus.