Art Noveau

Casa Mila, Bareclona, Spain, 1907

The Final secular design of the Spanish surrealist Antoni Gaudi, Casa Mila Barcelona is an apartment building with a fanciful aura. They have wavy walls made of rough-chipped stone. They have fossilized ocean waves. The windows and doors look like they were dug out of sand. A comical array of chimney stacks are across the roof.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Guggenheim Museum, New york city, New york, 1956

The guggenheim Museum is one of the most popular museums in new york city. It is also globally known. In the 1920's they started abstract art. In 1959 the musuem recieved a permanent home that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The building represents a radical departure from traditional museum design, spiraling upward and outward in smoothly sculptured coils of massive, unadorned white concrete.

American Arts & Crafts

Glessner House

The John J. Glessner House was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson and the site was completed in 1887. The house has an innovative floor plan which pushes the walls of the house to the lot lines. This allows room for a large spacious courtyard within the walls. A long servant hall buffers the noise of the streets and brutal winter winds. The exterior of the home is lined in Braggville granite which gives it a strong horizontal appearance. The ornamentation is minimal and the design was distinct and unique from the neighbors.

American Arts & Crafts 1877-1915

Palace of Fine Arts- Bernard Maybeck 1913

ThePalace of Fine Arts was designed by Bernard Maybeck. His inspiration was from Roman and Greek architecture. The sculptures and figures represent contemplation, wonderment, and meditation. A single dome remain from the original eight. Connected walkways tower between the buildings and link them together and the lagoon creates a mirror from which the magnificent buildings are reflected on the water's surface. Swans, ducks, geese, turtles, and frogs have made their home there inside the lagoon which is enclosed by Australian eucalyptus trees. The Palace of Fine Arts has been restored on the interior making the beautiful building a highly favored wedding location throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

American Victorian Architecture

Queen Anne Revival House 1830-1901

The Queen Anne Style is a furniture and decoration style that reached its greatest popularity in the last quarter of the 19th century, manifesting itself in a number of different ways in different countries. It consisted largely of influences that harked back to "old English" or even tudor styles and charateristics. This type of architecture was poplularized by george devey. This Style revived features of english architecture from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including, intitially, elements from the historical reign of Queen Anne.

Industrial Revolution Architecture

Eiffel Tower by Gustave Eiffel 1889The Eiffel tower was built as the entrance arch for the World's Fair in 1889. At 985 feet tall it was the tallest building in the world until the Empire State Building was built in 1930. The tower was the topic of much controversy; the French considered it an "eye sore" and were very angry it was going to be allowed to stand for 20 years (that was how long the architect obtained a license for the structure to stand). During the World's Fair the tower received so much praise and recognition and attention that it quickly became a symbol of France. Nearly 2 million people visited the tower in its first year which boosted the French economy as well. The shape of the tower was determined by mathematical calculations and wind resistance and thermal heat were factored into the equation as well. The structure is made of up 15,000 pieces of iron and weighs approximately 7,000 tons and depending on the temperature the top of the tower may shift away from the sun by up to 7 inches because of thermal expansion of the metal on the side facing the sun. The tower also sways 2–3 inches in the wind. To protect the tower and prevent rust it is painted every 7 years with 50-60 tons of paint. In order to maintain a uniform appearance to an observer on the ground, three separate colors of paint are used on the tower, with the darkest on the bottom and the lightest at the top.

"Can one think that because we are engineers, beauty does not preoccupy us or that we do not try to build beautiful, as well as solid and long lasting structures? Aren't the genuine functions of strength always in keeping with unwritten conditions of harmony? ... Besides, there is an attraction, a special charm in the colossal to which ordinary theories of art do not apply."
— Gustave Eiffel

Post Modern Architecture

The Glass Pyramids by I.M. Pei 1984 In 1984 the French president Francois Mitterrand commissioned I.M. Pei to design a structure that would serve as the entrance for the Louvre in Paris, France. I.M. Pei created the Glass Pyramids; a structure constructed entirely with reflective glass panels. The main pyramid stands 71 feet tall and it is made up of over 630 glass segments. There are other smaller pyramids that function as skylights for the underground lobby to the museum.

The construction of the pyramids generated a considerable controversy because many people felt it the ultra-modern structure looked out of place or completed with the classical architecture of the Louvre. While others appreciated the contrasting architectural styles and thought it was a successful merge between the old and the new, the classic with the modern. "The solid is for the dead, but the transparent is for the living."

- I.M. Pei

Art Nouvea 1880-1914

Casa Batillo by Antonio Gaudi in Barcelona, Spain in 1907.

Casa Batllo is a building restored by Antoni Gaudi. the local name for this building is Casa Dels Ossos (hosue of Bones). The building itself has visceral, skeletal organic quality. Much of the facade is decorated with a mosaic made of broken cramic tiles that starts in shades of golden orange moving into greenish blues.

The roof is arched and was likened to the back of a dragon or dinosaur. A common theory about the building is that the rounded feature to the left of centre terminating at the top in a turret and cross, represents the sword of Saint George.