117 Fun Facts About Architecture

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is the bell tower of which building?

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is the freestanding campanile of Pisa Cathedral in the Piazza dei Miracoli; construction began in 1173 and the tilt appeared within a decade as the soft subsoil gave way.

Who engineered the great dome of Florence Cathedral, completed in 1436?

Filippo Brunelleschi designed the cathedral's double-shell dome and raised it without wooden centering between 1420 and 1436; his rival Lorenzo Ghiberti was appointed alongside him at first but was later sidelined.

Which Danish architect won the Sydney Opera House competition, then resigned before it was finished?

Jørn Utzon resigned in 1966 amid cost overruns and rows with the state authorities; in 2007 the Opera House became a World Heritage Site while its architect was still alive, a rare honour.

Angkor Wat, the largest religious complex in the world, is in which country?

Cambodia shows Angkor Wat on its national flag; built in the 12th century as a Hindu temple to Vishnu, it later became Buddhist, and monks kept it in use after the rest of Angkor was abandoned.

The Great Pyramid of Giza, Khufu's tomb, dates from which period of ancient Egyptian history?

The Old Kingdom was Egypt's age of the pyramid builders; by the New Kingdom, pharaohs fearing for their rich burials hid their tombs deep in the cliffs of the Valley of the Kings instead.

Burj Dubai was renamed Burj Khalifa at its 2010 opening to honour the ruler of which emirate?

Abu Dhabi had just handed its debt-laden neighbour Dubai a $10 billion lifeline, and at the opening the tower took the name of Abu Dhabi's ruler, UAE president Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Which Greek temple has eight columns across each end instead of the usual six?

The Parthenon in Athens also hides subtler tricks: its floor curves gently upward and its columns bulge slightly, refinements some experts think were meant to correct for distortions in human vision.

Which American architect championed 'organic architecture' and designed Fallingwater?

Frank Lloyd Wright startled his clients: the Kaufmanns expected a weekend house with a view of their favourite waterfall, and he set Fallingwater directly on top of it instead.

Which mid-20th-century architectural movement is known for raw concrete, massive forms and utilitarian aesthetics?

Brutalism emerged in 1950s Britain amid post-war rebuilding and spread across the country through public housing estates.

What is the primary function of a flying buttress in Gothic cathedrals?

Flying buttresses resist the outward push of the vaults by carrying it over the aisle roofs to outer piers, so Gothic walls could be thinned and opened up with huge stained-glass windows.

Which Roman emperor began the Colosseum on the site of the drained lake of Nero's palace?

Vespasian began it in the early AD 70s on what had been Nero's private pleasure grounds and paid for it with plunder from the sack of Jerusalem; his son Titus opened the arena in AD 80.

The Taj Mahal in Agra, India, is a renowned example of which architectural style?

The Taj Mahal is considered the finest example of Mughal architecture, a blend of Indian, Persian, and Islamic architectural styles. It was commissioned by Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife.

Who in 2004 became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize?

Zaha Hadid was long known as a 'paper architect': her daring designs won competitions but stayed unbuilt, among them her winning 1994 scheme for the Cardiff Bay Opera House.

What features characterize Art Deco, the 1920s–30s architectural and design style?

Geometric ornament and streamlined forms define Art Deco, which is named after the 1925 Paris exposition of modern decorative arts, the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs.

What is the primary material used in the construction of the Eiffel Tower?

Wrought iron gave the Eiffel Tower its light lattice, but iron rusts, so the whole tower is repainted about every seven years, a rhythm Gustave Eiffel himself recommended.

Which American futurist patented the geodesic dome and made it famous, though a German engineer built one first?

Buckminster Fuller won his US patent in 1954, three decades after the first such dome went up for a Zeiss planetarium in Jena; the football-shaped carbon molecule buckminsterfullerene is named after him.

In building, what is a cantilever?

A cantilever is a beam anchored at one end only, like a diving board; because the free end needs no support, balconies and bridge arms can jut out with nothing underneath.

Whose glass pyramid became the Louvre Museum's front door in Paris?

I. M. Pei's glass-and-steel pyramid opened in 1989 as the Louvre's main entrance, commissioned by President François Mitterrand; controversial when it opened, it has since become a Paris landmark.

Which Byzantine emperor had the Hagia Sophia rebuilt after rioters burned down the earlier church in 532?

Justinian I began the new church only weeks after the Nika riots destroyed the old one, and it was finished in under six years, a remarkably short time for a building of its size.

Which style, the direct forerunner of Gothic in western Europe, is marked by thick walls and round arches?

Romanesque builders needed massive piers and walls with few windows to support their heavy stone ceilings.

Which New York skyscraper went up in just 410 days?

The Empire State Building opened in 1931, deep in the Depression, with so much of its office space unrented that New Yorkers called it the 'Empty State Building'.

What wedge-shaped block at the top of an arch locks all the other pieces into position?

The keystone is the last piece placed when a masonry arch or vault is built, and without it the arch cannot bear weight or stay stable.

By what name, taken from the dynasty that built it, is the Colosseum also known?

Flavian Amphitheatre honours the family of emperors who built it; the name 'Colosseum' is medieval, perhaps from the colossal statue of Nero that long stood beside it.

What term refers to the principal front of a building?

Façade comes through French from the Italian 'faccia', face: it is the face a building shows the street, and the word later came to mean any false front put on for show.

Which Chicago skyscraper pioneer coined the maxim 'form follows function'?

Louis Sullivan actually wrote 'form ever follows function', in an 1896 essay on how a tall office building should look; the shorter version is the one that stuck.

Which tower was the world's tallest building until Dubai's Burj Khalifa opened in 2010?

Taipei 101 rides out typhoons and earthquakes with a 660-tonne steel sphere hung near the top like a pendulum, which swings against the building's sway.

Which Art Deco skyscraper became the world's tallest thanks to a spire assembled in secret inside its crown?

The Chrysler Building's architect had the spire built secretly inside the tower to outfox rival 40 Wall Street, then raised it into place in late 1929; the title lasted only until 1931.

Who was the inaugural winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1979?

Philip Johnson came to building late: he first made his name running the Museum of Modern Art's architecture department and only went back to Harvard to train as an architect in his mid-thirties.

What is a minaret?

A minaret is a mosque tower for the call to prayer: a tall, slender shaft from which the muezzin traditionally summons worshippers; the 9th-century spiral Malwiya at Samarra is a famous example.

What is a clerestory in architectural design?

A clerestory is a band of windows set high in a wall, probably named as the 'clear storey': the lit upper level of a church nave, whose walls rise above the roofs of the side aisles.

The three-tiered Pont du Gard in southern France was built by the Romans as part of what?

An aqueduct: the Pont du Gard carried a water channel across the river Gardon, one link in a long route built to supply the Roman city of Nîmes.

Which cathedral did Sir Christopher Wren rebuild after the Great Fire of 1666?

St Paul's Cathedral is also Wren's memorial: he is buried there beneath an epitaph composed by his son that ends, 'Reader, if you seek a monument, look about you.'

Who opened the Sydney Opera House in October 1973, 16 years after its design was chosen?

Queen Elizabeth II opened it in October 1973, ten years after the planned opening on Australia Day 1963: cost overruns and the engineering problems of building the design had dogged the work.

Which German art school did Walter Gropius found to fuse art, craft and technology?

Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919; it closed under Nazi pressure in 1933, and its teachers carried its ideas abroad, Gropius himself going on to teach at Harvard.

Beyond looking frightening, what practical job does a gargoyle do on a Gothic building?

A gargoyle carries rainwater clear of the walls: a trough cut along its back takes water from the gutter and throws it outward, which protects the mortar; the longer the beast, the farther it lands.

Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was completed in Egypt during the reign of Ptolemy II?

The Lighthouse of Alexandria stood on the island of Pharos, and its fame made 'pharos' a word for any lighthouse: hence the French 'phare' and the Italian and Spanish 'faro'.

Which Paris building famously wears its structure, pipes and escalators on the outside?

The Centre Pompidou, by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, drew notoriety in 1977 for the brightly coloured pipes and ducts on its exterior, then quickly became one of the world's most visited cultural monuments.

Which curved triangular support lets a round dome sit on a square base, as at Hagia Sophia?

A pendentive is a triangular segment of a sphere that tapers to a point at each corner; before it was developed, builders had to bridge the corners of a square room with small arches called squinches.

Ocean Drive, lined with restored Art Deco hotels, runs along the seafront of which Florida city?

Miami Beach's neglected Art Deco hotels found a champion in Barbara Baer Capitman, whose preservation league campaigned to save them from demolition and got the district onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

Which type of column capital curls into scroll-like volutes?

The Ionic capital's twin spiral scrolls are its distinguishing feature; the Romans later set them above the Corinthian order's acanthus leaves to create the Composite order.

Which architect designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, known for its deconstructivist style?

Frank Gehry's titanium-clad museum drew so many visitors that it revived the city's economy, and the 'Bilbao effect' became shorthand for a landmark building that turns a city around.

The Hagia Sophia, originally a church and later a mosque, is located in which city?

Istanbul's Hagia Sophia became a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of 1453, was turned into a museum in 1935 and was made a mosque again in 2020.

What term describes the protective capping laid along the top of a wall or parapet?

Coping is usually sloped so that rain runs off the top of the wall instead of soaking in; the word is a use of 'cope', the cape-like vestment worn by priests.

Which movement pared buildings down to geometric forms, exposed steel and no ornament?

The International Style, named by a 1932 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, rejected ornament, favoured volume over mass and built in glass, steel and concrete; it remained the dominant style until the 1970s.

Who designed the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, a basilica begun in 1882?

Antoni Gaudí took over in 1883, a year after work began under another architect, and transformed the project; when he died in 1926, less than a quarter of the basilica was complete.

What is the roof-supporting framework of interconnected triangles called?

A truss is built from triangles because a triangle cannot be pushed out of shape, so a frame of light, straight pieces can carry a heavy load across a wide span.

The Great Ziggurat of Ur, a stepped temple tower in what is now Iraq, was built by which people?

The Sumerians raised it for the moon god Nanna under King Ur-Nammu some 4,000 years ago, and its massive lower stage has survived astonishingly well.

The White House owes its colour to paint over which porous stone, quarried at Aquia Creek in Virginia?

Sandstone soaks up water, so the walls were whitewashed in 1798 to protect the porous stone from freezing; the white coat has nothing to do with hiding the fire of 1814.

Which late-19th and early-20th-century architectural style features organic forms and nature-inspired ornament?

Art Nouveau means 'new art': it set out to be free of the imitative historicism of the 19th century, and took its sinuous lines from flower stalks, vine tendrils and insect wings.

Who designed Villa Savoye, the built manifesto of modern architecture's 'five points'?

Le Corbusier's showpiece had its problems: the roof leaked on the Savoye family every autumn, and the house later survived several proposals to demolish it before being listed as a historic monument in 1965.

What is the name for a large, circular window often found in Gothic cathedrals?

Gothic masons filled the round opening with stone tracery radiating from the centre like spokes, which is why a rose window is also called a wheel window; the 'rose' name dates only from the 17th century.

The Petronas Towers, the world's tallest buildings from 1998 to 2004, stand in which city?

Kuala Lumpur's twin towers were designed by César Pelli, who gave each an eight-lobed floor plan and a steel-and-glass skin echoing motifs from Islamic art, a nod to Malaysia's Muslim culture.

Which wood, used for the medieval roof frame nicknamed 'the forest', rebuilt Notre-Dame de Paris after its 2019 fire?

Oak: so many beams went into the 13th-century roof frame that it was known as 'the forest', and the frame and spire were rebuilt in French oak.

Which pioneer of modern architecture took 'Less is more' as his motto?

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe made 'Less is more' the motto of his pared-down steel-and-glass buildings; the architect Robert Venturi later answered it with a motto of his own, 'Less is a bore.'

What projecting block built into a wall carries a weight such as a shelf above it?

A corbel takes its name from the Old French for 'little raven', because the jutting block was thought to look like a bird's beak.

Which ancient Greek order of architecture is the simplest, with plain, unadorned capitals?

The Doric order has no base, so its columns stand directly on the temple floor; the Roman writer Vitruvius said its proportions echoed the strength and beauty of a man's body.

What term refers to the vertical grooves or channels found on the shaft of a column?

Fluting takes its name from a fancied resemblance to the inside of a flute split lengthwise; the grooves set up a play of light that makes a column look more perfectly round.

Which architect designed Brasília's National Congress, with its twin towers flanked by a dome and an upturned bowl?

Oscar Niemeyer designed the civic buildings of Brazil's new capital; a Communist Party member, he left the country after the 1964 military coup and went on to build the French Communist Party's headquarters in Paris.

Which 17th–18th century style made Renaissance domes higher, grander and more dramatic?

Baroque grew out of the Counter-Reformation: the Catholic Church wanted buildings that appealed to the emotions and the senses and filled worshippers with awe, in answer to the Protestant Reformation.

What is the purpose of a 'lintel' in construction?

A lintel's job is to carry the wall above an opening such as a door or window; the horizontal stones of Stonehenge are lintels, fixed to their uprights with joints normally found in woodworking.

Which ancient Roman building is famous for its massive unreinforced concrete dome?

The Pantheon's builders graded the stone in the concrete, from heavy rock low in the walls to the lightest pumice near the top of the dome, which is how it has stood without reinforcement for some 1,900 years.

550 Madison Avenue, topped by a Chippendale-style pediment, is often called the first skyscraper in which style?

Postmodern is the label that stuck to the former AT&T Building of 1984; when its owners planned to swap the granite base for glass in 2017, architects picketed and the city made it a landmark.

Prague's Dancing House was originally nicknamed after which dance duo?

Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire gave the paired towers their first nickname, 'Fred and Ginger'; one of its architects later dropped it, afraid of importing Hollywood kitsch to Prague.

Which kind of window projects outward from the main wall of a building, forming a recess inside the room?

A bay window pushes out past the wall line so a room feels larger, sees more of the street and catches more daylight than a flush window allows; a curved one is called a bow window.

What term describes a vertical timber or metal support forming part of a wall or partition?

A stud is one upright in a framed wall; studs stand at regular intervals, commonly 16 inches apart in North America, because the spacing has to suit the boards fixed across them.

Who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.?

Maya Lin was a 21-year-old Yale undergraduate when her entry, judged by number alone, won a national competition that drew more than 1,400 designs.

Which 18th-century architectural style revived Greek and Roman forms, stressing symmetry and proportion?

Neoclassical architecture was a reaction against the frills of Rococo: designers went back to the plain columns and blank walls of Greek and Roman temples.

Which New York landmark stands on a hidden metal skeleton engineered by Gustave Eiffel, years before his Paris tower?

The Statue of Liberty hangs its thin copper skin on Eiffel's inner frame, so the outside carries no load. That makes it one of the earliest examples of curtain wall construction.

Ming dynasty builders strengthened the Great Wall of China's mortar by mixing slaked lime with a soup of which food?

Sticky rice soup gave the lime mortar extra strength and water resistance, enough for stretches of the wall to shrug off earthquakes. The old tale that workers' bones were mixed in is only a legend.

In church architecture, where would you find a chancel, named after the lattice screens that once fenced it off?

Around the altar, at a church's east end, lies the chancel, the part kept for the clergy and choir. The same Latin word for a lattice gave us chancellor, an usher who worked behind one.

Which Bavarian castle, built by a reclusive Wagner-loving king, inspired Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle?

Neuschwanstein was meant as the king's private retreat, yet it opened to paying visitors no more than six weeks after his death in 1886. Disneyland's version followed in 1955.

Emily Warren Roebling ran daily supervision of which New York crossing after illness left her husband bedridden?

The Brooklyn Bridge was finished with her as the link between her husband and the site for more than ten years. She was the first to cross it by carriage, carrying a rooster as a sign of victory.

Which Italian city's oldest buildings rest on closely packed alder trunks driven through mud to a layer of hard clay?

Venice was begun by people fleeing barbarian invasions, who learned to build this way on the sandy islands of a lagoon. Slabs of Istrian limestone laid across the piles carry the walls.

Which American landmark, built for a 1962 World's Fair, began as a napkin sketch of a balloon tethered to the ground?

The Space Needle crossed businessman Edward Carlson's doodle with architect John Graham's idea of a flying saucer. At 605 feet, it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi when Seattle built it.

Which Renaissance artist took over as architect of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome at the age of 71?

Michelangelo succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger in 1546 and stayed on the job until he died at 88. The great cupola he designed was finished only after he was gone.

Which US president designed his own Virginia mountaintop home, Monticello, and the nearby University of Virginia?

Thomas Jefferson began designing Monticello after inheriting the land at 14 and reworked it through much of his presidency. The house has appeared on the back of the US nickel almost every year since 1938.

Architect Liz Diller's firm helped turn a derelict freight railway on Manhattan's West Side into which popular park?

The High Line runs along an abandoned viaduct of the New York Central Railroad. Its designers were inspired by another elevated park, a tree-lined walkway in Paris completed in 1993.

Which emperor commissioned the Taj Mahal in 1631 as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, and now lies beside her?

Shah Jahan was later overthrown by his own son, who held him inside Agra Fort from 1658 until his death in 1666. The tomb he built for his wife became his resting place too.

Which palace complex in the heart of Beijing was home to 24 emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties?

The Forbidden City was built between 1406 and 1420 and stayed the seat of political power in China for over 500 years. Since 1925 it has been run as a museum, open to everyone it once kept out.

Which civilisation built Machu Picchu in the Andes about 1450, probably as a royal estate for its emperor Pachacuti?

The Inca gave it finely crafted dry-stone walls, then abandoned it roughly a century later, likely during the Spanish conquest. It reached world attention only in 1911, through American historian Hiram Bingham.

The rock-cut Treasury at Petra, carved into pink cliffs by the Nabataeans, lies in which modern country?

Jordan treats Petra as a national symbol, and no site there draws more visitors. Its Treasury was probably never a treasury at all: it may be the mausoleum of the Nabataean king Aretas IV.

Which French palace's Hall of Mirrors saw the German Empire proclaimed in 1871 and a famous peace treaty signed in 1919?

Versailles was chosen on purpose in 1919: French premier Georges Clemenceau wanted the German Empire dismantled in the very room where it had been proclaimed.

What is the name for a tall, four-sided, tapering monument with a pyramid-shaped top, like the Washington Monument?

An obelisk of the ancient world was cut from a single stone, while most modern ones are built up from many. The Washington Monument was the world's tallest structure until the Eiffel Tower passed it in 1889.

Which tiered tower with eaves at every level traces its origins to the Indian stupa?

A pagoda almost always has an odd number of tiers, usually between three and 13. As the stupa's form spread across Asia, each region gave it a shape of its own.

Which invention, made safe by a brake Elisha Otis devised in the 1850s, made tall buildings practical to use?

The elevator stopped being a gamble in 1853, when Otis invented a device that halts the car if the hoisting rope breaks. A public demonstration in New York the next year sent demand climbing.

Which traditional Chinese practice, literally 'wind-water', guides the orientation of buildings and tombs?

Feng shui has long been used to site and orient homes, public buildings and graves. An early sign of such thinking is a grave at Puyang, about 6,000 years old, laid out on a north–south axis.

The Pont du Gard, three tiers of stone arches spanning a river in southern France, is a surviving Roman example of what?

An aqueduct on this scale carried some 40,000 cubic metres of water a day to the fountains, baths and homes of Roman Nîmes. After the empire fell, it survived by serving as a toll bridge.

Which Danish architect won the 1957 competition to design the Sydney Opera House, then resigned before it was finished?

Jørn Utzon walked out in 1966 after a dispute over a supplier, closed his Sydney office and vowed never to return to Australia. He kept his word, and died in 2008 without seeing the finished building.

Which Finnish-born architect designed both Missouri's Gateway Arch and the swooping TWA Flight Center at JFK?

Eero Saarinen saw neither one finished: he died in 1961 during an operation for a brain tumour, a year before the terminal was completed. He also designed the Tulip chair.

Which Renaissance architect, famed for his villas near Vicenza, set out his ideas in The Four Books of Architecture?

Andrea Palladio was best known for country houses rather than palaces, and his book carried his ideas abroad. The style named after him reached England in the early 17th century, led by Inigo Jones.

Lina Bo Bardi lifted an entire art museum above an open plaza on four massive pillars in which Brazilian city?

São Paulo's Museum of Art, MASP, leaves 74 metres of free ground beneath its galleries. The site came with a condition that the view across the valley stay open, so she raised the whole building over it.

Marion Mahony Griffin's watercolours helped win the worldwide contest to plan which purpose-built national capital?

Canberra was planned with her husband Walter Burley Griffin, and historians credit her perspectives with securing first prize. She was one of the first licensed female architects in the world.

Mary Colter designed Hopi House and the Desert View Watchtower for visitors to which American national park?

Grand Canyon visitors still use the landmarks she designed for the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railroad. Hopi House grew out of her work on a curio shop there.

Julia Morgan, California's first licensed woman architect, was picked in 1919 to design which estate at San Simeon?

Hearst Castle stands on the spot where the publisher's family used to camp. Morgan was also the first woman admitted to the architecture programme at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

The Alhambra, a palace-fortress of the Nasrid sultans famed for its Court of the Lions, overlooks which Spanish city?

Granada fell to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, and the Alhambra became their royal court. It was there that Christopher Columbus won royal backing for his expedition.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh designed a celebrated School of Art, twice ravaged by fire since 2014, in which Scottish city?

Glasgow saw the building severely damaged by fire in May 2014 and destroyed by a second blaze in June 2018, which left only a burnt-out shell. The second fire struck about a year before repairs from the first were due to finish.

Which Paris opera house, named after its architect, is the setting of Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera?

Palais Garnier really does sit above water: an enormous cistern in its foundations, built to cope with groundwater. That fed the legend of an underground lake, which Leroux borrowed for his phantom.

The Pritzker family, who fund the so-called Nobel Prize of architecture, built their fortune on which hotel chain?

Hyatt began as a single motel beside Los Angeles airport, which Jay Pritzker bought in 1957 for $2.2 million. He and his wife Cindy founded the prize in 1979, and the chain's foundation still sponsors it.

Which central part of a cathedral, where the congregation gathers, takes its name from the Latin word for a ship?

The nave comes from navis, the Latin that also gave us navy. Why a ship is debated: it was an early Christian symbol, and a vaulted ceiling can look like an upturned keel.

What is the term for a long row of evenly spaced pillars, like Bernini's sweep around St. Peter's Square?

A colonnade on this scale had never been tried: Bernini's stands four columns deep. He meant its two curving arms to embrace visitors like the arms of a mother.

Which window, set upright in a sloping roof, takes its name from an old French word for a sleeping room?

A dormer does more than let in light: it adds usable room, which is why it is a mainstay of loft conversions. The name goes back to the French dormir, to sleep.

Which sunken ditch-and-wall boundary lets an English country estate keep cattle off the lawn without a visible fence?

A ha-ha is invisible until you are almost upon it, and the name is said to echo a walker's cry of surprise. It keeps grazing animals out while the view from the house runs on unbroken.

Which nicknamed London skyscraper by Norman Foster stands at 30 St Mary Axe, on the site of the bombed Baltic Exchange?

The Gherkin looks like one smooth curve, yet only a single piece of its glass is actually curved: the lens-shaped cap at the very top. Every other pane is flat.

Which term names a sculpted female figure used as a pillar, like the six on the Erechtheion's porch in Athens?

A caryatid has a male counterpart, called an atlas or telamon. One of the Erechtheion's original six was removed by Lord Elgin and is now in the British Museum.

Which Chicago architect's studio designed Aqua, an 82-storey tower wrapped in undulating, irregular balconies?

Jeanne Gang took her cue from the layered limestone outcrops of the Great Lakes region, and the balconies also shade the flats in summer. On completion, Aqua was the world's tallest building designed by a woman.

Which Irish designer built the modernist seaside villa E-1027 at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin with her partner Jean Badovici?

Eileen Gray hid the couple in the villa's name: E for Eileen, 10 for J, 2 for B and 7 for G, by their places in the alphabet. It is counted as her first major work.

Which upright element divides a window into separate units and is often confused with the horizontal transom?

A mullion mainly stiffens the glazing on either side of it, and it can also help hold up the masonry above the opening. Paired windows split by one were common across Europe by the early Middle Ages.

What are the prominent masonry blocks that mark the outer corners of a building, sometimes purely for show, called?

Quoins may be structural, strengthening a wall built of rubble or inferior stone, or mere decoration. The word, which first meant a cornerstone, is simply a variant spelling of coin.

What is the entrance hall at the west end of an early Christian basilica, once the place for penitents, called?

The narthex let people not yet admitted to the full congregation, such as penitents and those preparing for baptism, hear the service and take part from the threshold.

Tokyo's Nakagin Capsule Tower was a rare built example of which post-war Japanese movement, launched in 1960?

Metabolism fused giant megastructures with ideas of organic growth, so buildings could renew themselves part by part. In practice none of the tower's capsules was ever replaced, and it was demolished in 2022.

Which 19th-century French architect restored Notre-Dame de Paris and added the slender spire that later fell in flames?

Viollet-le-Duc put himself into the work: he was the model for the apostle at the spire's base who is the patron saint of architects. The other apostles looked out over Paris, while his gazed up at the spire.

Which designer gave the Palace of Westminster, rebuilt after the fire of 1834, its Gothic interiors and clock tower?

Augustus Pugin was hired by the architect Charles Barry, whose winning entry, number 64 of 97, he had helped to draw. His work ran from furniture and stained glass down to wallpaper and floor tiles.

Which Seattle-born architect, fond of narrow vertical windows, designed the Twin Towers of the first World Trade Center?

Minoru Yamasaki had a fear of heights, so the towers' office windows were only 18 inches wide, to help the people inside feel secure. Critics complained that the pillars cut the view into slots.

Which engineer's tube-frame designs made possible Chicago's John Hancock Center and the Sears Tower?

Fazlur Rahman Khan, born in Dhaka, has been called the Einstein of structural engineering, and his systems remain fundamental to skyscraper design. He was also a pioneer of computer-aided design.

Which projecting upper-floor window, enclosed by carved wooden latticework, is typical of old houses in Cairo?

A mashrabiya lets people watch the street without being seen while it catches the breeze. Jars of water were set in it to cool by evaporation, and the name is usually traced to an Arabic root for drinking.

Which heavy latticed grille slid down grooves in a medieval castle's gateway to seal it against attackers?

A portcullis could be dropped in moments by one guard, using chains or ropes on a winch. Entrances often had two, so that attackers could be trapped between them and bombarded from above.

Which vast glasshouse did gardener Joseph Paxton design to house London's Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park?

Crystal Palace held the greatest area of glass ever seen in a building. After the exhibition it was rebuilt in south London, where it stood from 1854 until fire destroyed it in 1936.