SAH Archipedia uses terms from the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) to categorize and classify metadata for the entries in the database. For more information on the Getty AAT, click here

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Caddo
Refers to the culture of the confederacy of tribes of North American Indians that composed the Caddoan linguistic family.

California Modernism
Used to describe the modernist movement in architecture as it evolved in California, specifically Los Angeles and the area surrounding it, from the 1930s through the 1960s. Hallmarks of this style are attention to indoor-outdoor living, open plans, rectilinear structures often constructed with steel frames, and extensive use of glass. The term is most often used to refer to the Case Study House Program initiated by John Entenza in 1945, and to modernist residential structures in general. Architects associated with the style are Richard Neutra, Rudolf Schindler, Charles and Ray Eames, Gordon Drake, Albert Frey, John Lautner, Pierre Koenig, and Rafael Soriano. Public perception of this movement is commonly attributed to the photographs of Julius Shulman, as published in architectural and interior design magazines during the 1950s.

camp (cultural movement)
Designation applied to a taste for cultural materials that provide a knowing amusement by virtue of their being artlessly mannered and self-conscious, artificial or ostentatious. For the related concept applied to artistic or literary material, use "kitsch."

Canadian
The culture and nationality of the people in the current nation of Canada.

Carpenter Gothic
Refers to the movement in the Gothic Revival period in architecture characterized by the use of Gothic forms in domestic buildings primarily in the United States Northeast and Midwest during the mid-19th century and by the use of the scroll saw in construction. The style reveals an awkward attempt at imitation and implementation of original Gothic proportions and ornamentation such as turrets, spires, and pointed arches, with no sense of logical spatial relationship to the house.

Catawba (Native American)
Refers to the culture of the Catawba, a North American Indian tribe of Siouan language stock who inhabited the territory around the Catawba River in the Carolinas. Their main village was on the west side of the river in what is now York county, South Carolina.

Château Style
No description available for this term.

Cherokee (culture or style)
No description available for this term.

Cheyenne (culture or style)
No description available for this term.

Chicago School
In general terms, refers to the movement among architects and engineers, principally Daniel Burnham, William Le Baron Jenney, John Root, and the firm of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan,during the late 19th century that ultimately led to the development of the skyscraper and a distinct modern style of architectural design featuring steel and iron skeletons clad with masonry, simple exterior decoration often in red brick or terracotta, the rejection of historical forms, and the use of blocky geometric volumes.

Chickasaw (culture or style)
No description available for this term.

Chilkat
Style and culture of a subdivision of the Tlingit Indian people in Alaska, on the coast between Cape Fox and Yakutat Bay, known for blankets and other cultural works.

Chinese architecture styles
Architecture styles belonging to Chinese cultures.

Chinese Chippendale
Refers to English Chinoiserie furniture following the types of design published by cabinet maker Thomas Chippendale in "The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director" in 1754. Applied mostly to small cabinets and chairs, the style is characterized by lattice-work and square and angular forms.

Chinese-American
The culture or style of Americans of Chinese descent.

Chinoiserie
European and American decorative arts and architectural style that reflects fanciful and poetic notions of China influenced by travelers' tales and exports of Asian ceramics, textiles, and art objects.

Chippendale
Refers to English furniture produced in 1750s and 1760s based on the designs of cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale (1718-1779), characterized by openwork and ornamental carving in a mainly Rococo Style.

Churrigueresque
Refers to the style of art and architectural ornament seen primarily in the late 17th through late 18th centuries, principally in Spain and its American colonies. The style is named after the family of Madrid architects, particularly Jose de Churriguera, though other architects also contributed to the development and popularization of the style. The style is characterized by an abundance of ornament and detail, combining various elements from earlier Mannerist and Baroque art.

City Beautiful Movement
Refers to the movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries governed by the desire of American architects and landscape architects to boost the national standards and prestige of American urban planning and city development through municipal reform and beautification rather than through social reform. With the driving force of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893), the movement secured the active development of metropolitan park systems and the establishment of reform-motivated art societies in major cities.

civil rights
Personal liberties that belong to each individual due to his or her status as a citizen of a particular country or community.

Classic (Mesoamerican culture or period)
A period in Mesoamerica, from around 250 BCE to 900 CE, marked by widespread development of numerous cities and ceremonial centers, and by the rise of large-scale states in three regions: the Basin of Mexico in the Central Highlands, the Valley of Oaxaca in the Southern Highlands and the Maya lowlands. Each region developed unique patterns and styles.

Classical Revival (European revival style)
Refers to late 18th- to early 20th-century architecture and ornament based relatively closely on ancient classical forms. For other architecture and art of the late 18th and the 19th centuries that follow principles of classicism, use "Neoclassical."

classicism
Includes any manifestation of the material culture of classical Greece and Rome. With reference to the period of late 18th- and 19th-century art and architecture which featured a return to classical principles, use "Neoclassical." With reference to the period of architecture and ornament of the late 18th- to early 20th-century based relatively closely on ancient classical forms, use "Classical Revival."

Clovis
No description available for this term.

Coast Salish
Refers to the culture of Salish-speaking Indians of the Northwest Pacific Coast of North America, living around the Strait of Georgia, Puget Sound, southern Vancouver Island, much of the Olympic Peninsula, and most of western Washington state.

Coeur d'Alène (Native American style)
No description available for this term.

Coles Creek
No description available for this term.

Collegiate Gothic
Secular version of the Gothic style, derived from the college buildings at Oxford and Cambridge; popular in North America from the 1880s to the 1920s for academic buildings and other institutional structures.

Colonial American (pan-American style)
Styles, cultures, periods, and movements of Colonial America.

Colonial North American
Styles, periods, and culture belonging to Colonial North America. Refers to the culture and style of architecture, furniture, and domestic articles created in the area of the current United States during the period when it was colonized by Europeans, primarily during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It may be also be used to refer to the culture and styles that persisted into the early nineteenth century, after the colonies gained independence. The term generally refers specifically to the culture and styles of the British colonies on the East Coast of the United States, generally not including the French or Spanish colonies. The meaning of the term overlaps with "British Colonial," which is typically used to refer to the cultures and styles in British colonies other than those that existed in the area that is now the United States.

Colonial Revival
Refers to the movement in architecture and interior design prevalent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in countries formerly colonized by Great Britain. The style, mostly seen in domestic architecture and promoted as a picturesque 'national' style, is a direct resurrection of building styles of the early colonial periods and of the Neo-Georgian period. In United States west coast, the movement features a revival of Spanish colonial styles.

Colonial Spanish American
Spanish colonial style and period as specifically limited to the Americas.

Comanche (culture or style)
No description available for this term.

computer-aided design (process)
Refers to the process by which a computer is used as a tool in designing architecture, landscape design, cities, transportation infrastructure, engineering projects, automobiles, computer chips, or other objects of any size. The process uses a computer program to provide an interactive drawing tool, with an interface to allow simulation and analysis. In architectural design, the computer typically allows the user to virtually walk through three-dimensional spaces, to view the architecture in position on the proposed site, and to test aspects of stress and support. It is also used to reconstruct ruined buildings and cities, and to depict archaeological sites at different periods of time.

Concho (style)
No description available for this term.

Concrete Art
No description available for this term.

Concrete art
Term coined in 1930 by Theo van Doesburg to characterize a form of non-figurative painting in which the pictorial elements, planes and colors, have no significance other than themselves. He meant to distinguish between other forms of abstraction, indebted to illusionism mimicing the visible or natural world, and paintings that are products of the human mind. The definition was elaborated upon by Max Bill in 1936 in a catalog for the exhibition Zeitprobleme in der Schweizer Malerei und Plastik. In 1960 Bill organized an exhibition of work that fit his definition, and that established Concrete art as an international movement.

Constructionist
Refers especially to certain work in Britain in the 1950s; can also refer to certain American and European works of the 1930s and 1940s.

Constructivist
Refers to the art and architectural movement influenced by Cubism and Futurism and centered in Russia around 1913. The movement was announced in the publication of the Realist Manifesto in 1920, the name coming from one of its proclamations "to construct" art. The style is characterized by simple, precise abstract compositions typically of modern materials, such as steel, glass, and iron.

contemporary (generic time frame)
Belonging to the same time, age, or period as something or someone else, as when the lives of two people occurred during the same time period. Also used in reference to a thing, person, or event that lives or exists in the present time.

contemporary (generic time frame)
Belonging to the same time, age, or period as something or someone else, as when the lives of two people occurred during the same time period. Also used in reference to a thing, person, or event that lives or exists in the present time.

Contemporary (style of art)
Period and styles of painting, sculpture, graphic arts, and architecture dating from the recent past and present. It differs from modern art in that the term 'Contemporary art' does not carry the implication of a non-traditional style, but instead refers only to the time period in which the work was created. 'Modern' and 'Contemporary' are inherently fluid terms. The term 'Contemporary' is sometimes more narrowly used to refer to art from ca. 1960 or 1970 up to the present. To refer to the current time period without reference to style of art, use "contemporary (generic time frame)".

Cottage Style (decorative arts style)
Mid-19th-century furniture style, characterized by simplicity of design with natural woods, unpolished or painted in pale colors.

cottages ornés
Certain picturesque, small rustic houses, primarily of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in England, with an asymmetrical plan and wood siding.

Counter-Reformation
Refers to the period of the movement toward internal renewal in the Roman Catholic Church following and in opposition to the Protestant Reformation in the 16th and early 17th centuries in Europe, beginning from the pontificate of Paul III (1534-49) and the first Council of Trent (1545). Its style is dictated by an intense authoritarian religiosity, and characterized by a sense of gloom and foreboding.

Coushatta
Style and culture of a Native American people living primarily in the U.S. state of Louisiana and speaking Coushatta language, in the Muskogean family.

Craftsman (style)
Refers to the style of architecture, interior design, and decorative arts that prevailed in the United States, ca. 1870 to ca. 1925. As a result of the ever widening influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England, the Craftsman style was also based on the rejection of historical styles in favor of a traditional simplicity. Many of the same types of people were involved, such as social reformers, teachers and women's organizations, architects, and designers, as well as the prophets of the movement, John Ruskin and William Morris. In architecture, the style is characterized by modest homes, such as the bungalow, and simple treatment of materials.

Cree (culture or style)
Refers to the culture and style of the Cree, a major Algonquian-speaking North American Indian tribe, whose domain included a large area from east of the Hudson and James bays to as far west as Alberta and the Great Slave Lake in what is now Canada. Originally inhabiting a smaller area, they expanded rapidly in the 17th and 18th centuries acquiring firearms through the fur trade, although wars with the Dakota Sioux and Blackfoot, and a severe smallpox epidemic, greatly reduced their numbers. The name Cree is a truncated form of Kristineaux, a French adaptation of the self-name of the James Bay band.

Creole (North American culture)
In general, the term usually refers to a culture or style produced by people who were born in the Americas or nearby islands, but who were descended from colonists or slaves, as distinguished from people who arrived directly from Europe or Africa, or who were descended from aboriginal populations. It is used to refer to the cultures of different populations in the context of different regions; its usage is often contradictory from region to region. It refers to the culture and styles produced by white people who had Spanish parents and were born in the Spanish territories of North and South America in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries; their culture and social position were distinguished from residents who had been born in Spain. In modern usage in the context of Latin America, it may refer to the culture of people born locally but of pure Spanish extraction or specifically to traditions of old-line families of predominantly Spanish descent. The term may also refer to the culture of early South American blacks born in America, as distinguished from blacks brought directly from Africa. In Louisiana in the United States it refers to the culture of either French-speaking white descendants of early French and Spanish settlers or of mulattos speaking a form of French and Spanish patois. It may also refer to the culture of people in the West Indies who were born and naturalized there, but were of Spanish, French, or African descent; in modern usage in the context of the Caribbean, it is often used to refer to Caribbean culture in general, including elements from European, African, Asian, and Amerindian sources.

critical regionalism
Theory or method that seeks to humanize modern architecture by moving away from global uniformity and unquestioning reliance on technology, favoring instead solutions drawing on regional traditions and materials, while at the same time maintaining awareness of the universal nature of contemporary culture.

Crow (Native American style)
No description available for this term.

Cuban
No description available for this term.

Cubist
Refers to the international art movement with origins attributed to Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso ca. 1908. It developed in phases and lasted until the early 1920s. The style is characterized by an emphasis on the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, the rejection of traditional methods of representation, and the dissolution of objects by making several sides visible simultaneously.

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