Copyright © 2015 Bert N. Langford (Images may be subject to copyright. Please send feedback)
Welcome to Our Generation USA!

Architecture
covers all man-made structures including buildings, bridges and tunnels used in pedestrian or vehicle transit, hydroelectric power stations (e.g., Hoover Dam) as well as statues/monuments (e.g., Mount Rushmore)
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Architecture of Buildings, Bridges, Tunnels, Monuments and Pedestrian Bridges
YouTube Video: Inside the New 1 World Trade Center
Pictured: L-R: The New World Trade Center, New York; Golden Gate Bridge: San Francisco; Mount Rushmore. South Dakota

​Architecture is both the process and the product of planning, designing, and constructing buildings and other physical structures.

Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols and as works of art. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements.

"Architecture" can mean:
  • A general term to describe buildings and other physical structures.
  • The art and science of designing buildings and (some) non-building structures.
  • The style of design and method of construction of buildings and other physical structures.
  • Knowledge of art, science, technology and humanity.
  • The practice of the architect, where architecture means offering or rendering professional services in connection with the design and construction of buildings, or built environments.
  • The design activity of the architect, from the macro-level (urban design, landscape architecture) to the micro-level (construction details and furniture).

​Architecture has to do with planning and designing form, space and ambience to reflect functional, technical, social, environmental and aesthetic considerations.

It requires the creative manipulation and coordination of materials and technology, and of light and shadow. Often, conflicting requirements must be resolved.

The practice of architecture also encompasses the pragmatic aspects of realizing buildings and structures, including scheduling, cost estimation and construction administration.

Documentation produced by architects, typically drawings, plans and technical specifications, defines the structure and/or behavior of a building or other kind of system that is to be or has been constructed.

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St. Louis Gateway Arch
YouTube Video: Saint Louis Gateway Arch : "A RIDE TO THE TOP" - Tour
Pictured: St. Louis Gateway Arch: LEFT: last piece being installed Oct. 28, 1965; RIGHT: framing fireworks display

​The Gateway Arch is a 630-foot (192 m) monument in St. Louis, Missouri. Built as a monument to the westward expansion of the United States, it is the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and has become an internationally famous symbol of St. Louis.

Clad in stainless steel and built in the form of an inverted, weighted catenary arch, it is the world's tallest arch, the tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere, and Missouri's tallest accessible building. 

The arch sits at the site of St. Louis' founding on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

The Gateway Arch was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen in 1947; construction began on February 12, 1963, and was completed on October 28, 1965, for $13 million (equivalent to $190 million in 2015). The monument opened to the public on June 10, 1967.

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Residential Housing including: YouTube Videos: Pictured (L-R): A ranch-style house in Salinas, California, U.S.; (R) Tiny houses on display in Portland, Oregon (courtesy of DanDavidCook)
Click here for a List of House Types

A house is a building that functions as a home, ranging from simple dwellings such as rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes and the improvised shacks in shantytowns to complex, fixed structures of wood, brick, concrete or other materials containing plumbing, ventilation and electrical systems.

Houses use a range of different roofing systems to keep precipitation such as rain from getting into the dwelling space. Houses may have doors or locks to secure the dwelling space and protect its inhabitants and contents from burglars or other trespassers.

Most conventional modern houses in Western cultures will contain one or more bedrooms and bathrooms, a kitchen or cooking area, and a living room. A house may have a separate dining room, or the eating area may be integrated into another room. Some large houses in North America have a recreation room.

In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such as chickens or larger livestock (like cattle) may share part of the house with humans. The social unit that lives in a house is known as a household.

Most commonly, a household is a family unit of some kind, although households may also be other social groups, such as roommates or, in a rooming house, unconnected individuals.

Some houses only have a dwelling space for one family or similar-sized group; larger houses called townhouses or row houses may contain numerous family dwellings in the same structure.

A house may be accompanied by outbuildings, such as a garage for vehicles or a shed for gardening equipment and tools. A house may have a backyard or front yard, which serve as additional areas where inhabitants can relax or eat.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Residential Housing: ___________________________________________________________________________

The following is a List of building materials as it applies to residential housing.

Many types of building materials are used in the building construction and construction industry to create buildings and structures.

​These categories of materials and products are used by architects and construction project managers to specify the materials and methods used for building projects.

Some building materials like cold rolled steel framing are considered modern methods of construction, over the traditionally slower methods like blockwork and timber. Many building materials have a variety of uses, therefore it is always a good idea to consult the manufacturer to check if a product is best suited to your requirements

Click here for a List of building Materials

Industry Standards:

The Construction Specifications Institute maintains the following industry standards:
  • MasterFormat – 50 standard divisions of building materials - 2004 edition (current in 2009)
  • 16 Divisions – Original 16 divisions of building materials

See Also:
Sources: ___________________________________________________________________________

The tiny house movement (also known as the "small house movement") is a description for the architectural and social movement that advocates living simply in small homes. There is currently no set definition as to what constitutes as a tiny house; however, a residential structure under 500 square feet (46 m2) is generally accepted to be a tiny home.

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Apartments, including Rent Control in the United States
YouTube Video: How to Find an Apartment
YouTube Video: Who are Rent Control's Biggest Beneficiaries?
Pictured: Apartments Complexes as (L) Exterior; (R) Interior (with view)

An apartment is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies only part of a building, generally on a single level.

Such a building may be called an apartment building, apartment complex, flat complex, block of flats, tower block, high-rise or, occasionally, mansion block (in British English), especially if it consists of many apartments for rent. In Scotland, it is called a block of flats or, if it is a traditional sandstone building, a tenement, a term which has a pejorative connotation in the United States. Apartments may be owned by an owner/occupier, by leasehold tenure or rented by tenants(two types of housing tenure)

The term apartment is favored in North America (although in some cities flat is used for a unit which is part of a house containing two or three units, typically one to a floor.

Technically multi-story apartments sometimes referred to as mid-rise apartments and even high-rise apartments when there are many stories. Duplex description can be different depending on the part of the country but generally has two to four dwellings with a door for each and usually two front doors close together but separate - referred to as 'duplex' (or 'triplex') indicating the number of units, not the number of floors as they are usually one story at least in the Texas area.

In the United States, some apartment-dwellers own their units, either as co-ops, in which the residents own shares of a corporation that owns the building or development; or in condominiums, whose residents own their apartments and share ownership of the public spaces.

Most apartments are in buildings designed for the purpose, but large older houses are sometimes divided into apartments. The word apartment denotes a residential unit or section in a building. In some locations, particularly the United States, the word connotes a rental unit owned by the building owner, and is not typically used for a condominium.

In some countries the word "unit" is a more general term referring to both apartments and rental business suites. The word 'unit' is generally used only in the context of a specific building; e.g., "This building has three units" or "I'm going to rent a unit in this building", but not "I'm going to rent a unit somewhere". Some buildings can be characterized as 'mixed use buildings', meaning part of the building is for commercial, business, or office use, usually on the first floor or first couple of floors, and one or more apartments are found in the rest of the building, usually on the upper floors.

Click on any of the following for more about Apartments: ___________________________________________________________________________

Rent control in the United States:

Rent control in the United States refers to laws or ordinances that set price controls on the renting of American residential housing. They function as a price ceiling.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Rent Control in the United States:
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Condominiums
YouTube Video: Why great architecture should tell a story 
by Architect Ole Scheeren TED
Pictured below: Zaha Hadid Architects completes 520 West 28th Street condos in New York

​A condominium, often shortened to condo, in the United States and in most Canadian provinces, is a type of living space which is similar to an apartment but which is independently sellable and therefore regarded as real estate.

It is where the condominium building structure is divided into several units that are each separately owned, surrounded by common areas that are jointly owned. 

Residential condominiums are frequently constructed as apartment buildings, but there has been an increase in the number of "detached condominiums", which look like single-family homes but in which the yards, building exteriors, and streets are jointly owned and jointly maintained by a community association.

Unlike apartments, which are leased by their tenants, condominium units are owned outright. Additionally, the owners of the individual units also collectively own the common areas of the property, such as hallways, walkways, laundry rooms, etc.; as well as common utilities and amenities, such as the HVAC system, elevators, and so on.

Many shopping malls are industrial condominiums in which the individual retail and office spaces are owned by the businesses that occupy them while the common areas of the mall are collectively owned by all the business entities that own the individual spaces.

The common areas, amenities and utilities are managed collectively by the owners through their association, such as a homeowner association.

Scholars have traced the earliest known use of the condominium form of tenure to a document from first century Babylon. 

In the United States:

The first condominium law passed in the United States was in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in 1958.

In 1960, the first condominium in the Continental United States was built in Salt Lake City, Utah.  

Section 234 of the Housing Act of 1961 allowed the Federal Housing Administration to insure mortgages on condominiums, leading to a vast increase in the funds available for condominiums, and to condominium laws in every state by 1969.

Many Americans' first widespread awareness of condominium life came not from its largest cities but from South Florida, where developers had imported the condominium concept from Puerto Rico and used it to sell thousands of inexpensive homes to retirees arriving flush with cash from the urban Northern United States.

The primary attraction to this type of ownership is the ability to obtain affordable housing in a highly desirable area that typically is beyond economic reach. Additionally, such properties benefit from having restrictions that maintain and enhance value, providing control over blight that plagues some neighborhoods.

Over the past several decades, the residential condominium industry has been booming in all of the major metropolitan areas such as: Miami, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Austin, Los Angeles, and New York City.

However, in recent years, supply within the condo industry has caught up with demand and sales have slowed. It is now in a slowdown phase.

An alternative form of ownership, popular in parts of the United States but found also in other common law jurisdictions, is housing cooperative, also known as "company share" or "co-op". A Housing Cooperative is where the building has an associated legal company and ownership of shares gives the right to a lease for residence of a unit.

Another form is ground rent (solarium) in which a single landlord retains ownership of the land (solum) but leases the surface rights (superficies) which renew in perpetuity or over a very long term. This is comparable to a civil-law emphyteusis, except that emphyteusis shifts the duties of up-keep and making improvements onto the renter.
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In the United States, there are several different styles of condominium complexes. For example, a garden condominium complex consists of low-rise buildings built with landscaped grounds surrounding them.

A townhouse condominium complex consists of multi-floor semi-detached homes. In condominium townhouses, the purchaser owns only the interior, while the building itself is owned by a condominium corporation.

The corporation is jointly owned by all the owners, and charges them fees for general maintenance and major repairs. Freehold townhouses are exclusively owned, without any condominium aspects. In the United States this type of ownership is called fee simple.

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Mount Rushmore
YouTube Video: Mount Rushmore Was Supposed to Look Very Different
(By Smithsonian Channel)
Pictured below: Mount Rushmore National Memorial

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is centered around a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota.

Sculptor Gutzon Borglum created the sculpture's design and oversaw the project's execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son Lincoln Borglum. 

The sculptures feature the 60-foot (18 m) heads of Presidents George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). 

The memorial park covers 1,278.45 acres (2.00 sq mi; 5.17 km2) and is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level.

South Dakota historian Doane Robinson is credited with conceiving the idea of carving the likenesses of famous people into the Black Hills region of South Dakota in order to promote tourism in the region. His initial idea was to sculpt the Needles; however, Gutzon Borglum rejected the Needles because of the poor quality of the granite and strong opposition from American Indian groups.  They settled on Mount Rushmore, which also has the advantage of facing southeast for maximum sun exposure.

Robinson wanted it to feature American West heroes such as Lewis and Clark, Red Cloud, and Buffalo Bill Cody, but Borglum decided that the sculpture should have broader appeal and chose the four presidents.

Senator Peter Norbeck sponsored the project and secured federal funding; construction began in 1927, and the presidents' faces were completed between 1934 and 1939. Gutzon Borglum died in March 1941, and his son Lincoln took over as leader of the construction project. Each president was originally to be depicted from head to waist, but lack of funding forced construction to end on October 31, 1941.

Mount Rushmore attracts more than two million visitors annually.

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Architectural Digest (Magazine and Website)
YouTube Video: Inside Mandy Moore's $2.6 Million Mid-century Home in Pasadena | Open Door
Pictured below: Top 100 Architects by Architectural Digest

Architectural Digest is an American monthly magazine founded in 1920. Its principal subject is interior design, rather than architecture more generally. The magazine is published by Condé Nast, which also publishes international editions of Architectural Digest in China, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Mexico, and Latin America.

Architectural Digest is aimed at an affluent and style-conscious readership, and is subtitled "The International Design Authority". The magazine also releases the annual AD100 list, which recognizes the most influential interior designers and architects around the world.

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Architecture of the United States
YouTube Video: The History of the United States Capitol
Pictured below: The Coolest College Architecture in the United States featuring Georgetown University (by Travel & Leisure Magazine)

The architecture of the United States demonstrates a broad variety of architectural styles and built forms over the country's history of over four centuries of independence and former Spanish and British rule.

Architecture in the United States is as diverse as its multicultural society and has been shaped by many internal and external factors and regional distinctions. As a whole it represents a rich eclectic and innovative tradition.

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How to become an Architect: including, ​​YouTube Video: Building Walt Disney World | The B1M
YouTube Video: 12 of the World’s Most Insane Engineering Marvels
Pictured below: America's Top Architecture Schools 2017
Professional requirements for architects vary from place to place, but usually consist of three elements: a university degree or advanced education, a period of internship or training in an office, and examination for registration with a jurisdiction.

Professionals engaged in the design and supervision of construction projects prior to the late 19th century were not necessarily trained in a separate architecture program in an academic setting. Instead, they usually carried the title of Master Builder, or surveyor, after serving a number of years as an apprentice (such as Sir Christopher Wren).

The formal study of architecture in academic institutions played a pivotal role in the development of the profession as a whole, serving as a focal point for advances in architectural technology and theory.

In the United States, people wishing to become licensed architects are required to meet the requirements of their respective state. Each state has a registration board to oversee that state's licensure laws. 

National Council of Architectural Registration Boards is a non-profit professional association created in 1919 to help ensure parity between the states' often conflicting rules.

The registration boards of each of the 50 states (and 5 territories), member boards. NCARB issues a national certificate to qualified licensed architects. The NCARB certificate is recognized in most licensing jurisdictions for the purpose of granting licensure by endorsement or reciprocity.

Requirements vary among jurisdictions, and there are three common requirements for registration: education, experience and examination. About half of the States require a professional degree from a school accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) to satisfy their education requirement; this would be either a B.Arch or M.Arch degree.

The experience requirement for degreed candidates is typically the Architectural Experience Program (AXP), a joint program of and the American Institute of Architects (AIA). AXP creates a framework to identify for the intern architect base skills and core-competencies.

The intern architect needs to earn roughly three years worth of experience across six specified divisions (Practice Management, Project Management, Programming & Analysis, Project Planning & Design, Project Development & Documentation, and Construction & Evaluation) all while working under the direct supervision of a licensed Architect.

The states that waive the degree requirement typically require a full 10 years' experience in combination with the AXP diversification requirements before the candidate is eligible to sit for the examination. California requires C-IDP (Comprehensive Intern Development Program), which builds upon the seat time requirement of IDP with the need to document learning having occurred. All jurisdictions use the Architect Registration Examination (ARE), a series of six (formerly seven) computerized exams administered by NCARB.

The NCARB also has a certification for those architects meeting NCARB's model standard: NAAB degree, AXP and ARE passage. This certificate facilitates reciprocity between the member boards should an architect desire registration in a different jurisdiction. All architects licensed by their respective states have professional status as Registered Architects (RA).

Depending on the policies of the registration board for the state in question, it is sometimes possible to become licensed as an Architect in other ways: reciprocal licensure for over-seas architects and working under an architect as an intern for an extended period of time.

Length of the typical licensure process depends on the particular combination of education, experience and pace of examination of a candidate. It is typical that the entire licensure process takes at least 7 to 11 years to complete; including five years of study (5 years for B.Arch, 3 years for M.Arch, 6 years for a "four-plus-two" program), three-plus years of experience (meeting exact IDP requirements in each category), and often a year or more to take and pass the seven ARE 4.0 exams.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Professional Requirements for becoming an Architect: ___________________________________________________________________________

Architecture schools in the United States:

Architecture school in the United States refers to university schools and colleges with the purpose of educating students in the field of architecture.

Professional Degrees:
There are three types of professional degrees in architecture in the United States:
Non-professional degrees include (require a Master of Architecture for licensure):
  • Bachelor of Arts in Architecture (BA)
  • Bachelor of Science in Architecture (BS)
  • Bachelor of Fine Arts in Architecture (BFA Arch)
  • Bachelor of Environmental Design (B.Envd or B.E.D.)

A non-professional degree typically takes four years to complete and may be part of the later completion of professional degree (A "4+2" plan comprises a 4-year BA or BS in Architecture followed by a 2-year Master of Architecture).

The 5-year BArch and 6-year MArch are regarded as virtual equals in the registration and accreditation processes.

A professional Bachelor of Architecture degree takes five years to complete. (There is a 3-year B.Arch program offered by Florida Atlantic University articulated with an AA degree in architecture.) There are also M.Arch programs for those with undergraduate degrees in areas outside architecture; these program typically take six or seven semester (3 or 3-1/2 years) to complete.

Other programs (such as those offered at Drexel University, Boston Architectural College and New School of Architecture and Design) combine the required educational courses with the work component necessary to sit for the professional licensing exams.

Programs such as this often afford students the ability to immediately test for licensure upon graduation, as opposed to having to put in several years working in the field after graduation before being able to get licensed, as is common in more traditional programs.

Some architecture schools, such as Florida International University, offer the Master of Architecture degree in an accelerated five-year or six-year format without the need of a bachelor's degree. There is currently an ongoing debate to upgrade the 3.5 year M.Arch title to D.Arch both for current students and retroactively for 3.5 year M.Arch graduates.

Rankings:
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Each year, the journal DesignIntelligence ranks both undergraduate and graduate architecture programs that are accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board.

These rankings, collectively called "America's Best Architecture & Design Schools" are obtained by surveying hundreds of practicing architecture leaders with direct and recent experience hiring and supervising architects. They are asked what programs they consider to be best preparing students for professional success overall. They are also asked to cite the programs they consider to be the best in educating and training for specific skills. These skills rankings are also published in "America's Best Architecture & Design Schools."

Founded in 1912 to advance the quality of architectural education, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) represents all accredited programs and their faculty across the United States and Canada, as well as non-accredited and international affiliate members around the world.

The ACSA collects detailed information from these schools for its "Guide to Architecture Schools," which exists both as a book and as a free online searchable database at archschools.org. These publications are the only complete directories of all accredited professional architecture programs in North America and are used as a reference for prospective students, graduate students, educators, administrators, counselors, and practitioners.

The ACSA Guide to Architecture Schools features detailed program descriptions, an index of specialized and related degree programs, an overview of the profession of architecture and the education process, advice on how to select the right school, and scholarship and financial aid information.

In addition, "America's Best Architecture & Design Schools" each year presents Architect Registration Examination pass rates by school, a historical review of top architecture schools, how current architecture students rank their schools, and a directory of accredited programs.

These particular alphabetical lists do not compute with a DI.net average of the past decade, leaving out a series of other brilliant institutions and including others that have just recently made the lists.

The following schools have consistently been ranked within the top 17 of all undergraduate architecture schools in the nation. In alphabetical order, the top 17 schools are: 
  1. Auburn University, 
  2. Boston Architectural College, 
  3. California Polytechnic State University, 
  4. Carnegie Mellon University,
  5. Cooper Union, 
  6. Cornell University, 
  7. Iowa State University, 
  8. Pratt Institute, 
  9. Rhode Island School of Design, 
  10. Rice University, 
  11. Southern California Institute of Architecture, 
  12. Syracuse University, 
  13. University of Notre Dame, 
  14. University of Oregon,
  15. University of Southern California, 
  16. University of Texas at Austin,
  17. and Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

The following schools are top 10 graduate schools, in order, according to "America's Best Architecture & Design Schools 2014":
  1. Harvard University,
  2. Yale University,
  3. Columbia University,
  4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
  5. Cornell University tied with
  6. Rice University,
  7. University of Michigan,
  8. Kansas State University,
  9. University of California, Berkeley,
  10. University of Texas at Austin.

Click here for an Alphabetical List of Architectural Schools by State.







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Architectural Style, including a List of Architectural Styles
YouTube Video: The Incredible Homes of The Top 10 Richest People
YouTube Video: Top 10 Most Expensive Homes In America
Pictured below: 32 Types of Architectural Styles for the Home (Modern, Craftsman, Country, etc.)

​An architectural style is characterized by the features that make a building or other structure notable or historically identifiable.

A style may include such elements as form, method of construction, building materials, and regional character.

Most architecture can be classified within a chronology of styles which changes over time reflecting changing fashions, beliefs and religions, or the emergence of new ideas, technology, or materials which make new styles possible.

Styles therefore emerge from the history of a society. They are documented in the subject of architectural history. At any time several styles may be fashionable, and when a style changes it usually does so gradually, as architects learn and adapt to new ideas. The new style is sometimes only a rebellion against an existing style, such as post-modernism (meaning "after modernism"), which has in recent years found its own language and split into a number of styles which have acquired other names.

Styles often spread to other places, so that the style at its source continues to develop in new ways while other countries follow with their own twist. For instance, Renaissance ideas emerged in Italy around 1425 and spread to all of Europe over the next 200 years, with the French, Belgian, German, English, and Spanish Renaissances showing recognisably the same style, but with unique characteristics.

A style may also spread through colonialism, either by foreign colonies learning from their home country, or by settlers moving to a new land. One example is the Spanish missions in California, brought by Spanish priests in the late 18th century and built in a unique style.

After a style has gone out of fashion, revivals and re-interpretations may occur. For instance, classicism has been revived many times and found new life as neoclassicism. Each time it is revived, it is different.

The Spanish mission style was revived 100 years later as the Mission Revival, and that soon evolved into the Spanish Colonial Revival.

Vernacular architecture works slightly differently and is listed separately. It is the native method of construction used by local people, usually using labor-intensive methods and local materials, and usually for small structures such as rural cottages. It varies from region to region even within a country, and takes mini account of national styles or technology. As western society has developed, vernacular styles have mostly become outmoded due to new technology and to national building standards.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Architectural Style: ___________________________________________________________________________

List of Architectural Styles:​

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the List of Architectural Styles:







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