Naming things helps us understand and keep track of them, so it should be no surprise that people regularly ask architects what “style” buildings fall into. Often there is no simple answer, but here are a few graphic design projects that can help you put architecture into its historical context and start to tease out stylistic influences.




First, this poster from Pop Chart Labbegan as an ambitious attempt to document vernacular architecture around the world. “After diving into the research,” say the poster’s creators, “it quickly became apparent that this wasn’t going to be feasible due to the volume of data.”


Instead, they ended up focusing on single-family homes in the United States, settling on 121 hand-drawn houses representing urban and rural residential styles, including: Colonial, Romantic, Victorian, Eclectic, Modern, Neo-Eclectic with subsections such as Italian Renaissance Revival and Ranch.




Next, an infographic from Part Select narrows the scope even further, featuring an array of popular European and American typologies. Their graphic goes in depth, too, listing off key details that help define and distinguish different styles like Tudor, Victorian and Craftsman.


Originally writen by 99percentinvisible and most pictures collected from pinterest