Chateau de Chambord CASTLE LOIRE VALLEY, FRANCE
DOMENICO DA CORTONA The most famous of the Loire chateaus, Chambord was commissioned by King Francois I as a base for hunting and entertaining. Its location was conveniently near …
ABBAYE DE STE-MADELEINE FRANCE
Abbaye de Ste-Madeleine c. 1120-38 CHURCH VEZELAY, FRANCE ARCHITECT UNKNOWN The basilica of St. Mary Magdalene, Vezelay, is one of the greatest examples of Romanesque architecture, a style influenced …
BULGUKSA TEMPLE SOUTH KOREA
Bulguksa Temple c. 751-774 CE TEMPLE JINHEON-DONG, SOUTH KOREA KIM DAESEONG The Temple of the Buddha Land is a masterpiece of Korean architecture. It was built in the 8th …
CHAPEL AACHEN, GERMANY
ODO OF METZ Commissioned by Charlemagne, the king of the Franks (later Holy Roman Emperor), as part of his great palace complex at Aachen (also known as Aix-la-Chapelle), the …
BOROBUDUR INDONESIA
Borobudur c. 825 CE TEMPLE MAGELANG, JAVA, INDONESIA ARCHITECT UNKNOWN The world’s greatest Buddhist monument, Borobudur is a vast 9th-century temple that combines a stupa (shrine to the Buddha), …
TEMPLE ANGKOR CAMBODIA
ARCHITECT UNKNOWN A vast and magnificent temple complex at the heart of Angkor, the capital of the powerful Khmer dynasty that ruled Cambodia from the 9th to the early …
THE PARTHENON GREECE
KALLIKRATES AND IKTINOS By the middle of the 5th century bce Athens was the most powerful city in Greece and one of the major cultural centers of the ancient …
COMPACT OR EXTENDED FORMS
Even two buildings with a similar purpose two country houses, for example can take radically different forms because their owners and architects had different priorities. Some houses, such as …
FORM AND EFFECT
It is always worth walking around a building before entering, since this can tell you a lot about its form and what its builders wanted to achieve. On most …
SIMPLE AND COMPLEX SPACES
Some buildings are relatively simple in spatial terms. When you open the door and walk inside, you can take in the whole interior in one glance. This is the …