Architecture glossary

Carol Strickland

Thursday, March 28, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

PYLON: Monumental gateway of ancient Egyptian temples at Karnak and Luxor covered with incised hieroglyphics and painted reliefs.

Doric: Classical order of Greek architecture denoting simple capital atop column.

Irving Gill: (1870-1936) Early Modernist California architect who radically simplified the indigenous Spanish Mission-style architecture and focused on basic geometric forms like the arch and the circle.

cole des Beaux-Arts: Official French art school in Paris. It taught neoclassical architecture into the late- 19th century and is known for conservative taste and practices.

Modernism: In architecture, also known as International Style. It was developed in Europe and the US in the 1920s and '30s, and became dominant in middle decades of the 20th century. Characterized by rectilinear forms stripped of ornament and historical forms, bare glass, steel boxes.

Post-modernism: Began in the late '70s, '80s as revolt against austerity of corporate skyscrapers, reintroduced color, variety, decoration, historical forms and materials, pop-culture elements

Alvar Aalto: (1898-1976) Finnish modernist architect known for smooth white surfaces, ribbon windows, and flat roofs.

Le Corbusier: (1887-1965) Swiss modernist architect who defined a house as a 'machine for living;' famous design, Villa Savoye (1929-30 in Poissy, France) is concrete cube on stilts with strip windows.

Neomodernism: Attempt to revive abstract geometric style of avant-garde architecture in which building is monument to designer's personal vision; as Iraqi-born London architect Zaha Hadid has said, 'For architects, context is a sheet of white paper.'