Architecture Glossary

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Perpendicular style or Perp – Historical division of English Gothic architecture from c. 1335-50 to c. 1530. The style we know as Perpendicular Gothic is the final phase of Gothic architecture in England, after the Early English and Decorated periods, and it lasted by far the longest of the three periods, stretching from the late 14th until the early 16th century. As its name suggests, the chief characteristic of Perpendicular architecture is the emphasis on strong vertical lines, seen most markedly in window tracery and wall panelling. Roof vaulting became elaborate and ornate, with a multitude of vaulting ribs spreading outwards in a fan shape, ornamented with pendants and cross-ribs that served a purely decorative function. Perhaps the finest examples of Perpendicular fan vaulting survive at King's College Chapel, Cambridge (1446-1515), and Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster Cathedral (1503-1519).

Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster Cathedral

Pharos – An ancient Roman light-house.

Martin Heemskerck - Pharos  of Alexandria

Piano nobile – The main floor of a house, containing the reception rooms. It is usually higher than the other floors, with a basement or ground floor below and one or more shallower storeys above.

Piazza – An open space, usually oblong, surrounded by buildings. In c17 and c18 England, a long covered walk or Loggia with a roof supported by columns.

Canaletto- Piazza SanMarco, 1730

Picturesque – Originally a landscape or building which looked as if it had come out of a picture in the style of Claude or Gaspar Poussin. In the late c18 it was defined in a long controversy between Payne Knight and Uvedal Price as an aesthetic quality between the Sublime and the Beautiful, characterized in the landscape garden by wild ruggedness (chasms, dark impenetrable woods, rushing streams, etc.), and in architecture by interesting asymmetrical dispositions of forms and variety of texture – as in the cottage orné and the Italianate or castellated Gothic country houses of John Nash and later in the work of Devey and the mid-c19 Domestic Revival in England. The notion of the ‘picturesque’ was the most important English aesthetic idea to have influenced architecture in Europe.

Claude Lorrain:  midday

Pilaster – A shallow pier or rectangular column projecting only slightly from a wall and, in classical architecture, conforming with one of the orders.

Pilier cantonné – In medieval architecture, the combination of a simple mono-cylindrical support and engaged colonettes rising from floor to vault.

Pillar – A free-standing upright member which, unlike a column, need not be cylindrical or conform with any of the order.

Pilotis – A French term for pillars or stilts that carry a building, thereby raising it to the first-floor level and leaving the ground floor open.

Le Corbusieur - Villa Savoye

Pinnacle – A small turret-like termination crowning spires, buttresses, the angle of parapets, etc.; usually of steep pyramidal or conical shape and ornamented.

St. Stephan Cathedral

Piscina – A stone basin in a niche near the altar for washing the Communion or Mass vessels; provided with a drain and usually set in or against the wall south of the altar. A free-standing piscine on a pillar can be called a Pillar piscine.

Plaisance – A summerhouse or pleasure-house near a mansion.

Plateresque – Literally ‘silversmith-like’, the name is given to an ornate architectural style popular in Spain during the 16th Century. It is characterized by a lavish use of ornamental motifs – Gothic, Renaissance, and even Moorish – unrelated to the structure of the building to which it is applied.

Plinth – The projecting base of a wall or column pedestal, generally chamfered or moulded at the top.

Plinth block – A block at the base of the architrave of a door, chimney-piece, etc., against which the skirting of the wall is stopped.

Podium – A continuous base or plinth supporting columns. The platform enclosing the arena in an ancient amphitheatre.

Point-block housing – A point-block is a high block in which the centre is reserved for staircase, lift, etc., and the flats fan out from that centre.

Polygonal masonry – Masonry composed of blocks of stone dressed to fit one another with irregular polygonal exposed faces, rather than rectangular ones as in ashlar masonry.

Poppyhead – An ornamental termination to the top of a bench or stall-end, usually carved with foliage and fleur-de-lis type flowers, animals, or figures. A poppyhead is in fact a finial.

Porch – The covered entrance to a building; called a portico if columned and pedimented like a temple front.

Portcullis - A gate of iron or iron-inforced wooden bars made to slide up and down in vertical grooves in the Jambs of doorway; used for defence in castle gateways.

Porte-cochère – A porch large enough for wheeled vehicles to pass through.

Portico – A roofed space, open or partly enclosed forming the entrance and centre-piece of the façade of a temple, house, or church, often with detached or attached columns and a pediment. It is called ‘prostyle’ or ‘in antis’ according to whether it projects from or recedes into a building; in the latter case the columns range with the front walls.

Post and lintel construction – An ancient and, structurally, the simplest type of construction: vertical members (columns, posts, piers or walls) support horizontal members (beams, or lintels) as in ancient Egyptian or Greek temples.

Architecture Glossary

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