Visual arts: architecture
The architecture questions test structural vocabulary, the classical orders, and the ability to place a building in a style from its described features.
Structure first
Post-and-lintel construction spans openings with horizontal beams; the arch (round in Roman work, pointed in Gothic) and the vault (barrel, groin, rib) carry loads in compression. The dome appears at the Pantheon in coffered concrete, at Hagia Sophia on pendentives, and at Florence Cathedral as Brunelleschi's double shell. Flying buttresses carry Gothic vault thrust outward. Modern spans depend on cast iron and steel (Crystal Palace, Eiffel Tower) and reinforced concrete (Perret, Le Corbusier).
The Greek orders and the plan
Doric: plain capital, frieze of alternating triglyphs and metopes. Ionic: volute capitals. Corinthian: acanthus-leaf capitals. Roman builders added Tuscan and composite. In plan, learn nave, aisle, apse, transept, narthex, and clerestory, plus the difference between a Latin cross and a central plan.
Style markers
Romanesque: massive walls, small windows, round arches, barrel vaults. Gothic: pointed arches, rib vaults, flying buttresses, tall stained-glass clerestories (Chartres, Notre-Dame). Renaissance: symmetry and centralized domes (Brunelleschi; Palladio's villas). Baroque: curved façades and dramatic interior light (Bernini's colonnade). The nineteenth century brings Neoclassicism, Gothic Revival, Beaux-Arts, and Art Nouveau (Gaudí). The twentieth brings the Bauhaus (Gropius), the International Style (Mies's less is more; Le Corbusier's pilotis and roof garden at the Villa Savoye), Wright's organic Prairie style (Fallingwater), and Gehry's deconstructivism.
Worked example
A described church has pointed arches, ribbed vaults, exterior flyers, and walls reduced to tracery and glass. Candidates sometimes answer Romanesque because the building is medieval and stone. But Romanesque uses round arches and thick, largely windowless walls; the flyer paired with the pointed arch is diagnostic, so the answer is Gothic.
Traps
- Attributing form follows function to Wright or Mies; it is Louis Sullivan's phrase, while Mies said less is more.
- Confusing pendentives (Hagia Sophia) with squinches.
- Reversing the arch sequence: round is Romanesque, pointed is Gothic.
- Assuming every dome is Roman; Byzantine and Renaissance domes differ in support and profile.