The architecture of metropolitan Detroit, Michigan continues to attract the attention of architects and preservationists alike. With one of the world's recognizable skylines, Detroit's waterfront panorama shows a variety of architectural styles. The city's historic Art Deco skyscrapers blend with the post-modern neogothic spires of One Detroit Center. Together with the Renaissance Center, they form the city's distinctive skyline.
ART DECO
An eclectic style that combines traditional craft motifs with Machine Age imagery and materials. The style is often characterized by rich colors, bold geometric shapes, and lavish ornamentation. During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour, exuberance, and faith in social and technological progress.
NEOCLASSICAL
An architectural style principally derived from the architecture of Classical Greece and Rome, the Vitruvian principles and the architecture of the Italian architect Andrea Palladio. In form, Neoclassical architecture emphasizes the wall rather than chiaroscuro and maintains separate identities to each of its parts.
ROMANESQUE
An architectural style of medieval Europe characterized by semi-circular arches. Combining features of ancient Roman and Byzantine buildings and other local traditions, Romanesque architecture is known by its massive quality, thick walls, round arches, sturdy piers, groin vaults, large towers and decorative arcading.
BEAUX-ARTS
Beaux-Arts architecture depended on sculptural decoration along conservative modern lines, employing French and Italian Baroque and Rococo formulas combined with an impressionistic finish and realism. Slightly overscaled details, bold sculptural supporting consoles, rich deep cornices, swags and sculptural enrichments figure prominently in the style.
MODERN
Modernist architecture promotes that the notion that "Form follows function", simplicity and clarity of forms and elimination of "unnecessary detail", 90 degree angles, the visual expression of structure and the related concept of "Truth to materials" which dicates that the true nature or natural appearance of a material ought to be seen rather than concealed or altered, and adopts the use of industrially-produced materials and the machine aesthetic.
POSTMODERN
Postmodernity in architecture is said to be heralded by the return of "wit, ornament and reference" to architecture in response to the formalism of the International Style of modernism. The functional and formalized shapes and spaces of the modernist style are replaced by diverse aesthetics: styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound. Perhaps most obviously, architects rediscovered the expressive and symbolic value of architectural elements and forms that had evolved through centuries of building which had been abandoned by the modern style.
INTERNATIONAL STYLE
The style places emphasis more on architectural style, form and aesthetics than the social aspects of the modern movement as emphasised in Europe. The most common characteristics of International Style buildings are said to be: i. rectilinear forms; ii. light, taut plane surfaces that have been completely stripped of applied ornamentation and decoration; iii. open interior spaces; iv. a visually weightless quality engendered by the use of cantilever construction. Glass and steel, in combination with usually less visible reinforced concrete, are the characteristic materials of the construction.
GOTHIC
The style evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture. It is characterised by use of the pointed arch. Other features common to Gothic architecture are the rib vault, buttresses, including flying buttresses; large windows which are often grouped, or have tracery; rose windows, towers, spires and pinnacles; and ornate façades. Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great cathedrals, abbeys and churches of Europe.
RENAISSANCE
The style demonstrated a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman thought and material culture. Renaissance style places emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry and the regularity of parts as they are demonstrated in the architecture of classical antiquity and in particular ancient Roman architecture, of which many examples remained. Orderly arrangements of columns, pilasters and lintels, as well as the use of semicircular arches, hemispherical domes, niches and aedicules replaced the more complex proportional systems and irregular profiles of medieval buildings.
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