Tectonics is the science or art of shaping, ornamenting, or assembling materials in construction.
Stina Holm Jensen | Tectonic Architectural Studio
Archives For November 30, 1999
Massing is a unified composition of two-dimensional shapes or three-dimensional volumes, especially one that has or gives the impression of weight, density, and bulk.
Christopher Drummond // massing diagram
Form is the shape and structure of something as distinguished from its substance or material.
Francois Blanciak // diagrams of site less building forms
Y-tracery is a simple tracery form in which a central mullion splits into two branches, forming a Y-shape.
George Street House | Mississippi, US
Amphiprostyle is the term used when a prostyle arrangement in a Classical temple is repeated for the opisthodomos as well as for the pronaos. In other words, amphiprostyle denotes a temple with a portico both at the front and the rear where the number of columns never exceeded four in the front and four in the rear.
Line art floorplan of an amphirostyle temple
Design rationale is a term used to focus on the primary reasoning behind a design intension.
M01 house by MAS // Diagrams showing reasoning behind geometric form
Environmental design is the ordering of the physical environment by means of architecture, engineering, construction, landscape architecture, urban design, and city planning.
Grimshaw Architects // Ecorium, South Korea
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is the branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with a view to establishing the meaning and validity of critical judgments concerning works of art.
Dada aesthetic // Marcel Duchamp's Fountain 1917
Engaged column is a column which is not free-standing but built into a wall or surface.
Maison Carrée // Engaged columns embedded in the side walls
Amorphous is an irregularly shaped building that has no easily definable form.
MAD // Ordos Art & City Museum, Gobi desert.
Assyrian architecture
The ancient region of Mesopotamia is often called ‘the Cradle of Civilization.’ It is here that we see the earliest form of writing developed along with beautiful art and architecture.
Palace of Sargon // Restoration
Buttress is a masonry or brick structure providing lateral support to a wall.
A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral (sideways) forces arising out of the roof structures that lack adequate bracing. [1]
Flying Buttress // Cathedral of Milan, Italy
Flying buttresses are typical in cathedrals and consist of flying half-arches that help to carry down the thrust of the nave’s high vault or roof. Continue Reading…
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