Axes
Thirteen axes, each answering one question. The boundary statement is the useful part: it says where an axis ends and which criterion decides it, so the next person who wants to file something ambiguous has an answer rather than an argument.
Two of the thirteen carry no terms. They are listed anyway. An axis that appears only once somebody gets round to it cannot tell you what the vocabulary does not cover.
| Axis | Question | Terms | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Material family | What is it made of? | 17 | Published in @instruments/taxonomy 0.1.0 |
| Sector | What market does the project serve? | 10 | Published in @instruments/taxonomy 0.1.0 |
| Application | What is this product used for? | 88 | Published in @instruments/taxonomy 0.1.0 |
| Space | What room is this? | 48 | Authored, not yet released |
| Element | What part of the building fabric is this? | 49 | Authored, not yet released |
| Typology | What kind of building is this? | 39 | Authored, not yet released |
| Style | What named idiom does it follow? | 25 | Authored, not yet released |
| Period | When was it made, or when does it evoke? | 11 | Authored, not yet released |
| Mood | What does it feel like to be in? | 17 | Authored, not yet released |
| Palette | What colour is it? | 27 | Authored, not yet released |
| Place | Where is it, or where does it evoke? | 21 | Authored, not yet released |
| Strategy | What was the design trying to achieve? | 0 | Declared, not yet authored |
| Density | How much is going on? | 0 | Declared, not yet authored |
| Form | What geometric move does it make? | 0 | Declared, not yet authored |
Boundaries
Material family17
Material family is what a thing is made of. It is not what the thing is for, which is Application, and not what part of a building it becomes, which is Element.
Sector10
Sector classifies whom the building serves; Typology classifies what the building is. A converted warehouse full of flats is sector residential and typology warehouse plus apartment. Sector moves when the tenant moves; typology does not.
Application88
Application is a product-facing claim about what a material may be specified for. Element is a building-facing claim about a thing that exists in a building. A porcelain slab carries application countertop; the worktop it becomes is element worktop.
Space48
A space is a bounded volume a person occupies. The test is whether you can stand in it. A stairwell is a space; a staircase is an element. A shower room is a space; a shower enclosure is an element.
Element49
An element is a constructed part of the building fabric, aligned to Uniclass EF. It is not Application, which is about suitability rather than existence.
Typology39
Typology is a whole building or premises, never a room inside one. A hotel is a typology; its lobby and its bedrooms are spaces. Typology terms also do double duty: a building IS a farmhouse, or a suburban living room EVOKES one.
Style25
A style is a named idiom with formal rules and a literature. The test: could a designer execute it deliberately from a set of moves, and could you write those moves down? Minimalism passes. Cosy fails, because it is an outcome rather than a method.
Period11
Period is a date. Style is a set of moves. Periods here are named by date range or dynastic label, never by the style that flourished in them, so an Art Deco bar built in 2024 is style art-deco in period contemporary.
Mood17
Mood is affective and reader-relative; style is formal and rule-bound. A style can be executed deliberately from a set of moves; a mood can only be achieved. Two rooms in the same style routinely carry different moods.
Palette27
Three facets rather than one flat list, because a flat list cannot say warm green or faded blue. Temperature in particular is the most-welded-in property in the estate: warm minimalism had to be minted twice because no vocabulary could compose it.
Place21
One vocabulary, two predicates. A project is LOCATED IN a place; a room EVOKES one. Both are true and neither is derivable from the other, which is why there is no separate place-as-idiom vocabulary here.
Strategy0
A strategy is something a design sets out to achieve, not an idiom it follows. Biophilic design and passive design are strategies. They are not styles and were refused entry to Style rather than widening it.
Identified by the crosswalk-residue test (TAX-14) from architizer's Biophilic value. architizer's own SUSTAINABILITY enum is the obvious starting point. Not yet authored.
Density0
How much is going on on the surface: pattern incidence, applied ornament, layering, and the restraint-to-maximalism range. It is not PALETTE, which carries how colour behaves rather than how much incident there is, and it is not STYLE, though several style terms are largely density claims wearing an idiom's name.
Identified after the fact, by the axis critique of 21 August 2026, and it is the one real gap that review found. The source vocabularies keep asking this question and no axis here answers it: materia's `patterned`, materialgraph's `playful_graphic` and `decorative_traditional`, designshop's `Eclectic`, and designround's `Modern Maximalism` against `Warm Minimalism` - a pair that differs chiefly on density and barely on anything else. materialgraph already carries `ms_pattern_density` at MATERIAL scale, which is the obvious seed, but the room-scale question is not the same one: a room of quiet materials can still be dense with incident. Until this exists, `maximalism` is filed as a style, which flatters it.
Form0
A formal move is a geometric decision: a cantilever, a courtyard, a sawtooth roof. It is not an idiom and not a mood.
Identified by the crosswalk-residue test (TAX-14) from architizer's Sculptural value. architizer's own FORMAL_MOVE_EXAMPLES is the obvious starting point. Not yet authored.