Architecture Styles: fun facts and quiz

Ancient Greek architecture used three main column styles: plain Doric, scroll-topped Ionic and leafy Corinthian. Banks and museums still copy them.

Key fact
The Parthenon in Athens uses Doric columns.

Gothic cathedrals, from the 1100s, soared with pointed arches, ribbed vaults and flying buttresses, letting their walls hold huge stained-glass windows.

Key fact
Notre-Dame de Paris is a Gothic masterpiece.

Art Deco, popular in the 1920s and 30s, mixed bold geometry, zigzags and shiny materials. New York’s Chrysler Building is a classic example.

Key fact
Miami Beach has hundreds of Art Deco buildings.

Modernist architects like Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus school stripped away ornament: clean lines, flat roofs and lots of glass. “Form follows function.”

Key fact
The Bauhaus school was founded in Germany in 1919.

Brutalism, from the 1950s, used raw, exposed concrete in bold, heavy shapes. Its name comes from the French “béton brut”: raw concrete.

Key fact
Brutalist buildings divide opinion like few others.

Antoni Gaudí gave Barcelona its unique, curving buildings, inspired by nature. His Sagrada Família has been under construction since 1882.

Key fact
Gaudí is buried inside the Sagrada Família.

Today’s architects use computers to design daring shapes, like Frank Gehry’s titanium-clad Guggenheim Bilbao or Zaha Hadid’s flowing curves.

Key fact
The Guggenheim Bilbao opened in 1997.