Architecture (Latin architectura, from the Greek ἀρχιτέκτων – arkhitekton, from ἀρχι- "chief" and τέκτων "builder, carpenter, mason") is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols and as works of art. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements.
"Architecture" can mean:
- A general term to describe buildings and other physical structures.
- The art and science of designing and erecting buildings and other physical structures.
- The style and method of design and construction of buildings and other physical structures.
- The practice of the architect, where architecture means the offering or rendering of professional services in connection with the design and construction of buildings, or built environments.
- The design activity of the architect, from the macro-level (urban design, landscape architecture) to the micro-level (construction details and furniture).
- The term "architecture" has been adopted to describe the activity of designing any kind of system, and is commonly used in describing information technology.
In relation to buildings, architecture has to do with the planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, environmental, and aesthetic considerations. It requires the creative manipulation and coordination of material, technology, light and shadow. Architecture also encompasses the pragmatic aspects of realizing buildings and structures, including scheduling, cost estimating and construction administration. As documentation produced by architects, typically drawings, plans and technical specifications, architecture defines the structure and/or behavior of a building or any other kind of system that is to be or has been constructed.
Other articles related to "architecture":
1879) was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture, who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841 ... Semper wrote extensively about the origins of architecture, especially in his book The Four Elements of Architecture from 1851, and he was one of the ...
... He subsequently studied architecture in 1825 at the University of Munich under Friedrich von Gärtner ... he travelled to Italy and Greece in order to study the architecture and designs of antiquity ... Alten (Preliminary Remarks on Polychrome Architecture and Sculpture in Antiquity), in which he took a strong position in favor of polychromy - supported by his ...
... Information architecture (IA) is the art and science of organizing and labelling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability ... focused on bringing together principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape ...
... between early-twentieth-century art and architecture is widely accepted ... between avant-garde practices in painting, sculpture and architecture had early ramifications in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia ... Though there are many points of intersection between Cubism and architecture, only a few direct links between them can be drawn ...
... principal advantage of the pure Harvard architecture—simultaneous access to more than one memory system—has been reduced by modified Harvard processors using modern CPU ... Relatively pure Harvard architecture machines are used mostly in applications where tradeoffs, such as the cost and power savings from omitting caches, outweigh the programming penalties from having ... program (flash memory) and data (SRAM) memory, with no cache, and take advantage of the Harvard architecture to speed processing by concurrent instruction and data access ...
Famous quotes containing the word architecture:
“The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)