Architecture and Design Atlas

How Space Is Shaped
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme
Styles and Movements

Architecture Terrible

Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical Architecture

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Architecture terrible, literally architecture which evokes terror, was a style advocated by the French architect Jacques-Francois Blondel in his nine volume treatise Cours d architecture, published between 1771 and 1777. Blondel promoted the style for the exterior of prisons, arguing that the form of a building should proclaim its function and serve as a deterrent, achieving a repulsive heaviness that would announce the confined lives held inside and the force needed to hold them. London s second Newgate Prison, built between 1768 and 1775, is an example, with reinforced walls almost without windows, deliberate inelegance, and symbolism such as carved chains over its entrances designed to instill terror in onlookers.

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.