Link up to design and architectural resources

 

Joffre Essley's House Design Coffee.  A friendly exploration of residential design, including architectural criticism and advice, building dictionary and style guide, and musings on architecture and the home.

Shannon Kyle's Ontario Architecture website.  A general architectural style guide from a Canadian perspective.  Includes an exceptional illustrated glossary of building terms.

Chuck LaChiusa's Illustrated Architectural Dictionary.  A great resource, with excellent examples taken from historic buildings in Buffalo, New York.  Part of the his Buffalo Architecture and History website.

Ann Whitehead's Dictionary of Architectural Terms.  A concise dictionary of basic architectural terms, prepared for the Utah Heritage Foundation.

The American Institute of Architects official website.  A general resource for architects and those wanting to learn more about them and the services that they provide.  Features an architect finder, industry news, educational resources, A.I.A. contract documents, publications, and more.

The Preservation Directory.  Covers historic preservation, cultural resources, heritage tourism, urban planning, and historic real estate in the United States & Canada

The Society of Architectural Historians.  Beyond being the official site for this group, this website offers some interesting architectural study tours, digital resources including brief biographies of American architects and an architectural image exchange, and more.  Based in Chicago, Illinois.

The Architectural Index.  Designed mainly for architectural research, this site is a periodical index of architectural publications.  Offers a free area covering older magazines (1982 - 1988), otherwise one must pay for the service.  You'll still need to find the magazine, since only the name of the magazine, date, and page numbers of each article are listed at the site.

Sólo Arquitectura.  One of the larger and better directories  of architecturally related websites.  In Spanish only.

The Vitruvio website.  An architectural web guide that focuses on architectural history, theory, and design. 

The Architectural Review.  An English magazine whose website offers information on architectural competitions, exhibitions, book reviews, articles, links and more.

The Old House Journal website.  An informative and entertaining magazine for old house lovers.

Slide Libraries and Architectural Databases:

The American Memories Project.  An impressive photographic database covering a broad range of American subjects, including a huge collection of historic architectural drawings and building images.

Archiguide.  Online guide to contemporary architecture and urban art from around the world.  In French and English.

The ArchInform website.  An international architectural database containing thousands of buildings indexed by architect or location.  Has a 20th century architectural emphasis.  Some pictures, but most entries just have simple building data.

The Great Buildings Online website.  A CAD software company's fairly comprehensive encyclopedia of famous architects and their buildings throughout history.  Has a searchable index of architects, buildings, and places.

The Images of England website.  An extensive photographic survey of historical buildings and monuments in England.  Affiliated with the English Heritage website.

The North American and European Architecture and Sculpture site.  Mary Ann Sullivan's very large collection of works by notable architects and sculptors throughout history.  Site indexed by artist or architect, location, or date.  Be sure to scroll down after selecting an index type to view the results, or you may think nothing happened.

The Online Archive of California.  Part of the California Digital Library.  Similar to the American Memories Project in some ways, except with a California emphasis.  Features oodles of historic building and other photos.  One of their more dramatic collections features photos of the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 (well worth the wait for the entire page to load).

La Poder de La Palabra (The Power of the Word).  A vast art and culture website, available in Spanish only.  Its architectural galleries include buildings from all over the world, categorized by architect, location, and period.

The Spiro Architectural Slide Database website.  A searchable index of slides from the University of California, Berkeley.  Offers an extensive collection of thumbnail (slide-sized) images of historically significant buildings and their descriptions.  The site is more geared toward research on a particular architect or building than general browsing.

The University of Washington's City/ Buildings Database.  An image database of historic architecture around the world.  Sorted by country, then city.  Easy to browse.  They also host a large, searchable collection of architectural images on another site.

Fantastic Places.  Tom Palmer's architectural and travel photography site includes a fine pastiche of American architecture in its architectural sampler.  Photos organized by state and city.

Recent History and Modernism:

The Pritzker Prize website.  Run by the organization that awards the architectural equivalent of the Nobel prize.  A list of former prize winners features short a biography of each architect and examples of their work.  It includes some of the most prominent names in contemporary architecture.

Hans Netten's High Rise Pages.  All about the tallest structures in the world.

The Building Big website.  An excellent architectural primer, chronicling the history and design of some of the world's biggest, tallest, most awesome structures.  WGBH of Boston produced the site to supplement their five part public television series of the same name.

Modernism and its Roots:

The American Built Environment course slides.  Eleanor Weinel, an Associate Dean at the University of Oklahoma, provides a photographic overview of American architecture.  Focuses on the shapers of modernism between 1870 and 1960.

The Arts and Crafts Home.  A commercial site specializing in Arts and Crafts, Gothic Revival, and Aesthetic Movement home furnishings.  It is an exceptional design resource on these styles.  It achieves this through its impressive research sections and product catalogue.  The site also features extensive Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Mission Style coverage as part of its ambitious International Arts and Crafts documentation project.

Decopix.  Randy Juster's sleek photo gallery of Art Deco architecture from all over the world.

The Eichler Network.  All about Eichler homes and their California Modernist connections.

The Galinsky website.  With its photo essays on selected buildings of the last century, this site provides a great overview of the modern movement in architecture.

The Julia Morgan Index.  A rather plain site, but loaded with images of Julia Morgan's work.  Morgan was among America's first woman architects.  Part of Mary Ann Sullivan's huge Digital Imaging Project site.

The San Francisco Bay Area Arts and Crafts home page.  San Francisco may be better known for its Victorian architecture, but it is also the centre of an exceptionally fine and sophisticated collection of American Arts and Crafts architecture.  This site profiles its chief practitioners.

Kilrush Design's Walter Burley Griffin site for PBS online.  A handsome site describing the life and works of an exceptionally gifted Prairie School architect, who, before a falling out, had once headed up Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park studio.

The Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park website.  Offers pictures and history of Wright designed structures in Oak Park, Illinois, where he opened his first office.  This link tends to go offline for extended periods, but when available, it offers good coverage of his Oak Park practice.

Mark Hammons' Organica website.  Covers the impressive Prairie Style legacy of Purcell and Elmslie, an early 20th century architectural firm based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Well put together, and exceptional detail.  Also, when operational, it offers a good overview of other Prairie School participants.

The Minneapolis Institute of the Arts Unified Vision website.  Beautifully crafted online exhibit on Prairie Style architecture in Minnesota, including works by Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, George Washington Maher, and the partnership of William Gray Purcell, George Grant Elmslie, and George Feick.  Includes detailed tour maps for those interested in visiting the sites in person, as well as an excellent virtual tour of the Purcell's own house in Minneapolis.

The Prairie School Traveler.  John Panning's ambitious project to locate and document every extant Prairie Style work in the United States and Canada.  The states of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin are well represented here.

The Prairie Styles website.  Offers excellent biographical material on some of the lesser known members of the Prairie School, as well as its more famous leaders, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Once you select an architect or artist, pick the "Commissions" button to view samples of their work.

The House for an Art Lover site.  Mackintosh and his wife, Margaret MacDonald, designed this handsome house for a 1901 competition.  It remained un-built until 1996, when an interpretation of their design was completed in Glasgow's Bellahouston Park.  This site has recently become quite graphics intensive and really requires a fairly speedy connection to enjoy its offerings.  It also has shown a tendency to go offline for hours at a time, so try again later if unavailable at the moment.

The Hunterian Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow.  The largest single repository of the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.  Its Mackintosh House exhibit has placed the reassembled interiors of the architect's demolished Glasgow home on permanent display. 

The Gaudi and Barcelona Club.  Covers Antoni Gaudi, the famous Art Nouveau architect from Barcelona, Spain.  Includes a Gaudi biography and a gallery of his works.  Another good resource on the architect is Pedro Uhart's Gaudi Designer site, available in French, English, and Spanish.

Le Cercle Guimard.  Celebrates the work of Hector Guimard, the architect behind the design of those exotic Paris Metro stations entrances and THE driving force behind Art Nouveau architecture in France.  In French, but an English version is in the works.  The Hector Guimard website archive offers another good view of this influential designer in English.

Frank Derville's World Wide Art Nouveau server.  Documents many of the artists and architects behind the Art Nouveau movement, with photos and links to other Art Nouveau related sites.  Wonderful collection of some Art Nouveau doors.

Jalf Flach's Rondom1900.  A marvellous photographic collection of European Art Nouveau architecture, including many fine works not often seen elsewhere.  Features architectural galleries organized by country, with accompanying commentary in both Dutch and English.

Victorians and Revivals:

David Taylor's Victorian House site.  It offers a rather nice Gallery of Victorian Homes in several North American cities that still retain some of their 19th Century charms.  These include: Galena, Illinois; Evanston, Illinois; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Port Townsend, Washington; and several others.  The site also offers a good primer on Victorian House Styles, briefly describing the most important ones and providing an example of each.  Representing the mid 19th century octagon house craze is the impressive Armour-Stiner house, a domed octagon, complete with a killer cupola, in Irvington, New York.

The Biltmore Estate official website.  The largest privately owned home ever built in America.  Designed for George Washington Vanderbilt and his family by architect Richard Morris Hunt in Chateauesque style, and landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of many of America's finest parks, including New York's Central Park.  Very nice QuickTime movie tours showing parts of the house and grounds.

Kirkbride Buildings.  Focuses on the picturesque American design of hospitals for the mentally ill in the last half of the 19th century.

18th Century back to the Renaissance:

Vaux le Vicomte, the chateau that set the stage for the Palace of Versailles.

Medieval back to the Fall of Rome:

The Castles on the Web site.  Great site on castles, palaces, abbeys, and cathedrals from around the world.  Offers an impressive collection of photos and medieval links.  Includes information on heraldry, castle accommodations, castle terms, medieval legends, weapons, and more.

James Dupont's Castles of the United States website.  A fun site featuring various American castles, displaying both historically correct and campy interpretations of the medieval metaphor.

Professor Alison Stone's Medieval Art and Architecture site.  Offers an extensive collection of English and French medieval building pictures.

Edward G. Kane's Roads to Ruins.  Fine site on medieval German castles, specializing in those built mostly before 1500 A.D.

The Stave Church tour.  Pictures and descriptions of many of these exceptional medieval wooden structures.  Part of the Ancient Worlds site.

Ancient Architecture:

James Q. Jacob's Photo Galleries.  Feature some of best coverage of ancient Indian Ruins in the Americas on the Net.  Part of a larger, personal site.

David Moore's Roman Concrete website.  Discusses concrete in ancient Roman construction.  Includes a chapter on the construction and history of the Pantheon in Rome, built circa 100-125 A.D.  Its dome was unsurpassed in clear span for more than a millennium.  It still stands today, an incredible feat of ancient engineering.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World website.  I'll bet you can't name them all without a visit to this site.  Only one has survived.  In the summer 2007, The New7Wonders Foundation announced the results of their world-wide poll to name the New 7 Wonders of the World, a mix of ancient and more modern structures still standing today.

Other Historic or Regional Architectural Sites:

Geir Tandberg Steigan's handsome Arc! website.  Highlights some of the historic architecture of Oslo, Norway; Brussels, Belgium; Bordeaux, France; and a few other places.  Text in Norwegian only.

The Belarusian Architecture pages.  Documents the rich architectural history of this former Soviet state located adjacent to the Baltic States.  Part of the Virtual Guide to Belarus website.

Belgiumview.  A photographic survey of historic and contemporary architecture in Belgium.  Nice big images.  Viewable in Dutch, French, or English.

Chicago Landmarks.  Highlights the Windy City's extraordinarily rich history of late 19th and early 20th century architecture.

The Eiffel Tower.  All about the widely loved but once controversial Paris landmark, created for the Paris Exposition of 1889. 

Lowell Boileau's Fabulous Ruins of Detroit.  Beautifully photographed and compellingly narrated, this haunting site focuses on a shrinking metropolis's architectural cast offs.  The table of contents seems the best way to navigate this vast site.

Finnish Pumpkin.  Showcases Finnish architecture, focusing more on older, historic buildings than modern ones.

The Folly Fellowship.  What's an estate garden without a little architectural staging?  British towers, ruins, and other monuments built to the whims of eccentric landowners are the focus of this site.  Many on view under its Google Folly Map.

Tom Rinaldi & Rob Yasinsac's Hudson Valley Ruins.  Showcases some of the decaying architectural treasures of the "American Rhine", the Hudson River Valley in New York State.

The Images of Rome website.  A handsome site offering quality pictures and drawings of historic Roman Structures.  The St. Peter's Basilica (the Vatican) page has some excellent old drawings and good modern shots, including ones looking out from the roof and cupola.

The National Trust.  The British organization that protects and makes publicly accessible some of Great Britain's most spectacular historic buildings and gardens.  Pictures and descriptions of most of the properties are available on site.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation.  The American version of the much larger British National Trust.  They operate over 25 historic properties across the United States.  Pictures and descriptions of each are available on site.  If interested in preservation in the U.S.A., this is a great organization to join for learning more.

Portmeirion.  All about the delightful Welsh resort that provided the village setting for the Kafkaesque British TV series.

The Third Reich in Ruins.  Using historic and contemporary photos, Geoff Walden provides an extensive tour of what remains of Nazi construction in Germany.

You-are-here.com.  Great photographic coverage of Los Angeles architecture.  The site also includes another fine photo section that highlights modern architecture in selected.

Landscape Architecture:

The Enchanted Gardens of the Renaissance.  Marvelous annotated tours through three of Italy's most incredible gardens.  Not quite like being there, but they'll probably inspire you to plan a visit someday.  This is part of the excellent World Art Treasures website.  Note: this link has a history of going offline, but usually is back up within the next business day.

The History of Landscape Architecture site.  Images used in a course by professor Kenneth Helphand of the University of Oregon.  Covers landscape and garden design throughout the ages.

The Longwood Gardens site.  Take a virtual tour of Pierre S. du Pont's magnificent gardens and conservatory, located near Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.  American landscape design on a palatial scale.