Fantasy Guide to Architecture

This post has been waiting on the back burner for weeks and during this time of quarantine, I have decided to tackle it. This is probably the longest post I have ever done. I is very tired and hope that I have covered everything from Ancient times to the 19th Century, that will help you guys with your worldbuilding.Materials:What you build with can be determined by the project you intend, the terrain you build on and the availability of the material. It is one characteristic that we writers can take some some liberties with.Granite: Granite is an stone formed of Igneous activity near a fissure of the earth or a volcano. Granites come in a wide range of colour, most commonly white, pink, or grey depending on the minerals present. Granite is hard and a durable material to build with. It can be built with without being smoothed but it looks bitchin' and shiny all polished up.Marble: Probably everyone's go to materials for building grand palaces and temples. Marble is formed when great pressure is placed on limestone. Marble can be easily damaged over time by rain as the calcium in the rock dissolves with the chemicals found in rain. Marble comes in blue, white, green, black, white, red, gray and yellow. Marble is an expensive material to build with, highly sought after for the most important buildings. Marble is easy to carve and shape and polishes to a high gleam. Marble is found at converging plate boundaries.Obsidian: Obsidian is probably one of the most popular stones mentioned in fantasy works. Obsidian is an igneous rock formed of lava cooling quickly on the earth's surfaces. Obsidian is a very brittle and shiny stone, easy to polish but not quite a good building material but a decorative one. Limestone: Limestone is made of fragments of marine fossils. Limestone is one of the oldest building materials. Limestone is an easy material to shape but it is easily eroded by rain which leads most limestone monuments looking weathered. Concrete: Concrete has been around since the Romans. Concrete is formed when aggregate (crushed limstone, gravel or granite mixed with fine dust and sand) is mixed with water. Concrete can be poured into the desired shape making it a cheap and easy building material.Brick: Brick was one of history's most expensive materials because they took so long to make. Bricks were formed of clay, soil, sand, and lime or concrete and joined together with mortar. The facade of Hampton Court Palace is all of red brick, a statement of wealth in the times.Glass: Glass is formed of sand heated until it hardens. Glass is an expensive material and for many years, glass could not be found in most buildings as having glass made was very expensive.Plaster: Plaster is made from gypsum and lime mixed with water. It was used for decoration purposes and to seal walls. A little known fact, children. Castle walls were likely painted with plaster or white render on the interior. Wattle and Daub: Wattle and daub is a building material formed of woven sticks cemented with a mixture of mud, one of the most common and popular materials throughout time.Building terms:Arcade: An arcade is a row of arches, supported by columns.Arch: An arch is a curved feature built to support weight often used for a window or doorway. Mosaic: Mosaics are a design element that involves using pieces of coloured glass and fitted them together upon the floor or wall to form images.Frescos: A design element of painting images upon wet plaster. Buttress: A structure built to reinforce and support a wall.Column: A column is a pillar of stone or wood built to support a ceiling. We will see more of columns later on.  Eave: Eaves are the edges of overhanging roofs built to allow eater to run off. Vaulted Ceiling: The vaulted ceilings is a self-supporting arched ceiling, than spans over a chamber or a corridor. Colonnade: A colonnade is a row of columns joined the entablature.Entablature: a succession of bands laying atop the tops of columns.Bay Window: The Bay Window is a window projecting outward from a building.Courtyard/ Atrium/ Court: The courtyard is an open area surrounded by buildings on all sides Dome: The dome resembles a hollow half of a sphere set atop walls as a ceiling.Façade: the exterior side of a buildingGable: The gable is a triangular part of a roof when two intersecting roof slabs meet in the middle. Hyphen: The hyphen is a smaller building connecting between two larger structures.Now, let's look at some historical building styles and their characteristics of each Architectural movement.