PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: architecture
Italian artist, engineer, and scientist
Leonardo da Vinci, (Italian: “Leonardo from Vinci”) Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose skill and intelligence, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the...
Italian artist
Michelangelo, Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Michelangelo was considered the greatest living artist...
English architect
Christopher Wren, designer, astronomer, geometrician, and the greatest English architect of his time. Wren designed 53 London churches, including St. Paul’s Cathedral, as well as many secular buildings...
American architect
Louis Sullivan, American architect, regarded as the spiritual father of modern American architecture and identified with the aesthetics of early skyscraper design. His more than 100 works in collaboration...
Italian architect
Andrea Palladio, Italian architect, regarded as the greatest architect of 16th-century northern Italy. His designs for palaces (palazzi) and villas, notably the Villa Rotonda (1550–51) near Vicenza, and...
Italian architect
Donato Bramante, architect who introduced the High Renaissance style in architecture. His early works in Milan included the rectory of Sant’Ambrogio and the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. In Rome,...
American architect
Daniel Burnham, American architect and urban planner whose impact on the American city was substantial. He was instrumental in the development of the skyscraper and was noted for his highly successful...
Swiss architect
Le Corbusier, internationally influential Swiss architect and city planner, whose designs combine the functionalism of the modern movement with a bold sculptural expressionism. He belonged to the first...
Italian painter and architect
Raphael, master painter and architect of the Italian High Renaissance. Raphael is best known for his Madonnas and for his large figure compositions in the Vatican. His work is admired for its clarity of...
Italian artist
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Italian artist who was perhaps the greatest sculptor of the 17th century and an outstanding architect as well. Bernini created the Baroque style of sculpture and developed it to such...
Italian architect
Francesco Borromini, Italian architect who was a chief formulator of Baroque architectural style. Borromini (he changed his name from Castelli about 1627) secured a reputation throughout Europe with his...
American architect
Frank Lloyd Wright, architect and writer, an abundantly creative master of American architecture. His “Prairie style” became the basis of 20th-century residential design in the United States. Wright’s...
Italian architect and author
Leon Battista Alberti, Italian humanist, architect, and principal initiator of Renaissance art theory. In his personality, works, and breadth of learning, he is considered the prototype of the Renaissance...
Italian architect
Filippo Brunelleschi, architect and engineer who was one of the pioneers of early Renaissance architecture in Italy. His major work is the dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (the Duomo) in...
Scottish architect
Robert Adam, Scottish architect and designer who, with his brother James (1730–94), transformed Palladian Neoclassicism in England into the airy, light, elegant style that bears their name. His major architectural...
American architect
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, German-born American architect whose rectilinear forms, crafted in elegant simplicity, epitomized the International Style of architecture. Ludwig Mies (he added his mother’s surname,...
German-American architect
Walter Gropius, German American architect and educator who, particularly as director of the Bauhaus (1919–28), exerted a major influence on the development of modern architecture. His works, many executed...
Austrian architect
Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, Austrian architect, sculptor, and architectural historian whose Baroque style, a synthesis of classical, Renaissance, and southern Baroque elements, shaped the tastes...
American architect
Eero Saarinen, Finnish-born American architect who was one of the leaders in a trend toward exploration and experiment in American architectural design during the 1950s. Eero was the son of the noted architect...
Finnish architect
Alvar Aalto, Finnish architect, city planner, and furniture designer whose international reputation rests on a distinctive blend of modernist refinement, indigenous materials, and personal expression in...
English architect and artist
Inigo Jones, British painter, architect, and designer who founded the English classical tradition of architecture. The Queen’s House (1616–19) at Greenwich, London, his first major work, became a part...
French architect
François Mansart, architect important for establishing classicism in Baroque architecture in mid-17th-century France. His buildings are notable for their subtlety, elegance, and harmony. His most complete...
American architect and designer
Michael Graves, American architect and designer, one of the principal figures in the postmodernist movement. Graves earned a bachelor’s degree in 1958 from the College of Design at the University of Cincinnati,...
Italian engineer and architect
Pier Luigi Nervi, Italian engineer and architect, internationally renowned for his technical ingenuity and dramatic sense of design, especially as applied to large-span structures built of reinforced concrete....
American engineer, architect, and futurist
R. Buckminster Fuller, American engineer, architect, and futurist who developed the geodesic dome—the only large dome that can be set directly on the ground as a complete structure and the only practical...
Spanish architect
Antoni Gaudí, Catalan architect, whose distinctive style is characterized by freedom of form, voluptuous colour and texture, and organic unity. Gaudí worked almost entirely in or near Barcelona. Much of...
Chinese activist and artist
Ai Weiwei, Chinese artist and activist who produced a multifaceted array of creative work, including sculptural installations, architectural projects, photographs, and videos. While Ai’s art was lauded...
American architect
H.H. Richardson, American architect, the initiator of the Romanesque revival in the United States and a pioneer figure in the development of an indigenous, modern American style of architecture. Richardson...
prime minister of Iran
Mir Hossein Mousavi, Iranian architect, painter, intellectual, and politician who served as Iran’s prime minister (1981–89) and as a presidential adviser (1989–2005). Mousavi was raised in Khāmeneh, near...
Canadian American architect
Frank Gehry, Canadian American architect and designer whose original, sculptural, often audacious work won him worldwide renown. In 1947 Gehry and his family immigrated to Los Angeles, where he soon began...
British architect
Zaha Hadid, Iraqi-born British architect known for her radical deconstructivist designs. In 2004 she became the first woman to be awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Hadid began her studies at the...
British dramatist and architect
Sir John Vanbrugh, British architect who brought the English Baroque style to its culmination in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. He was also one of the dramatists of the Restoration comedy of manners. Vanbrugh’s...
American sculptor and architect
Maya Lin, American architect and sculptor concerned with environmental themes who is best known for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The daughter of intellectuals who had...
Dutch architect
Rem Koolhaas, Dutch architect known for buildings and writings that embrace the energy of modernity. Koolhaas worked as a journalist before becoming an architect. Changing his focus to architecture, from...
Spanish architect
Santiago Calatrava, Spanish architect widely known for his sculptural bridges and buildings. Calatrava studied architecture at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, from which he graduated in...
American architect
Daniel Libeskind, Polish American architect known for introducing complex ideas and emotions into his designs. Libeskind first studied music at the Łódź Conservatory, and in 1960 he moved to New York City...
French architect
Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, French Gothic Revival architect, restorer of French medieval buildings, and writer whose theories of rational architectural design linked the revivalism of the Romantic...
American architect
I.M. Pei, Chinese-born American architect noted for his large, elegantly designed urban buildings and complexes. Pei went to the United States in 1935, enrolling initially at the University of Pennsylvania,...
Italian architect
Aldo Rossi, Italian architect and theoretician who advocated the use of a limited range of building types and concern for the context in which a building is constructed. This postmodern approach, known...
Italian architect
Renzo Piano, Italian architect best known for his high-tech public spaces, particularly his design (with Richard Rogers) for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Born into a family of builders, Piano...
American architect
Robert A.M. Stern, American postmodern architect whose buildings incorporate a variety of historical styles. Stern studied at Columbia University (B.A., 1960) in New York City and Yale University (M.A.,...
American architect
Richard Meier, American architect noted for his refinements of and variations on classic Modernist principles: pure geometry, open space, and an emphasis on light. Meier graduated from Cornell University...
Ottoman architect
Sinan, most celebrated of all Ottoman architects, whose ideas, perfected in the construction of mosques and other buildings, served as the basic themes for virtually all later Turkish religious and civic...
Italian artist and author
Giorgio Vasari, Italian painter, architect, and writer who is best known for his important biographies of Italian Renaissance artists. When still a child, Vasari was the pupil of Guglielmo de Marcillat,...
Japanese architect
Toyo Ito, Japanese architect known for his innovative designs and for taking a fresh approach to each of his projects. Ito held that architecture should consider the senses as well as physical needs, and...
Russian architect
Konstantin Melnikov, Russian architect who is usually associated with Constructivism (an art movement that combined an appreciation of technology and the machine with the use of modern industrial materials),...
Portuguese architect
Álvaro Siza, Portuguese architect and designer whose structures, ranging from swimming pools to public housing developments, were characterized by a quiet clarity of form and function, a sensitive integration...
architect
David Adjaye, British-based architect of Ghanaian descent who won international acclaim for his diverse designs and innovative use of materials and light. Adjaye was born to Ghanaian parents in Tanzania,...
Brazilian architect
Oscar Niemeyer, Brazilian architect, an early exponent of modern architecture in Latin America, particularly noted for his work on Brasília, the new capital of Brazil. Niemeyer studied architecture at...
British architect
Norman Foster, British architect known for his sleek modern buildings made of steel and glass. Foster was trained at the University of Manchester (1956–61) in England and Yale University (1961–62) in New...