Architecture Glossary

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F

Faηade – The front or face of a building, emphasized architecturally.

Westminster Abbey by Canaletto, 1749

Facing – The finishing applied to the outer surface of a building.

Fan vault - A fan vault is a form of vault used in the Perpendicular Gothic style, in which the ribs are all of the same curve and spaced equidistantly, in a manner resembling a fan.

Fan vault - Bath Abbey

Fascia – A plain horizontal band, usually in an architrave, which may consist of two or three fasciae over-sailing each other and sometimes separated by narrow mouldings.

Festoon – A carved ornament in the form of a garland of fruit and flowers, tied with ribbons and suspended at both ends in a loop, commonly used on a frieze or panel and also called a swag.

Fillet – A narrow, flat, raised band running down a shaft between the flutes in a column or along an arch or a roll moulding; also the uppermost member of a cornice, sometimes called a listel.

Finial – A formal ornament at the top of a canopy, gable, pinnacle, etc.; usually a detached foliated fleur-de-lis form.

Finial Viollet-Le-Duc

Fluting – Shallow, concave grooves running vertically on the shaft of a column, pilaster, or other surface; they may meet in an arris or be separated by fillet.

Flying buttress, or arc-boutant - a flying buttress is usually on a religious building, used to transmit the thrust of a vault across an intervening space (which might be an aisle, chapel or cloister), to a buttress outside the building. The employment of the flying buttress means that the load bearing walls can contain cut-outs, such as for large windows, that would otherwise seriously weaken the vault walls.

Foil – A lobe or leaf-shaped curve formed by the cusping of a circle or an arch.

Fret – A geometrical ornament of horizontal and vertical straight lines repeated to form a band.

Frieze – The middle division of an entablature, between the architrave and cornice; usually decorated but may be plain; or the decorated band along the upper part of an internal wall, immediately below the cornice.

Architecture Glossary

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