Material family
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.
What is it made of?
Sector
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.
What market does the project serve?
Application
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.
What is this product used for?
Space
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.
What room is this?
Element
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.
What part of the building fabric is this?
Typology
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.
What kind of building is this?
Style
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.
What named idiom does it follow?
Period
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.
When was it made, or when does it evoke?
Mood
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.
What does it feel like to be in?
Palette
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.
What colour is it?
Place
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.
Where is it, or where does it evoke?
Strategy
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.
What was the design trying to achieve?
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.
Density
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.
How much is going on?
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.
Form
A formal move is a geometric decision: a cantilever, a courtyard, a sawtooth roof. It is not an idiom and not a mood.
What geometric move does it make?
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.
Paint
Wall Finish
Wallcovering
Textile
Upholstery
Carpet
Wood
Stone
Tile
Terrazzo
Metal
Glass
Resilient Flooring
Composite
Concrete
Leather
Other
Hospitality
Healthcare
Workplace
Residential
Retail
Education
Civic
Mixed-Use
Transportation
Wall
Flooring
Ceiling
Bath
A room, not a surface. Read as a suitability claim: this product survives a wet room.
Kitchen
A room, not a surface. Read as a suitability claim: this product survives a kitchen.
Furniture
Lighting
Door
Window
Facade
Countertop
Fireplace
Stair & Elevator
Bedding
Decor
Vertically Hanging
Pool & Fountain
Paving & Deck
Partition
Millwork
Cabinetry
Masonry
Roof
Garage
Bar
Awning & Umbrella
Recreation & Sport
Ornamentation
Aquatic Environments
Backsplash
Upholstered Wall
Wet Wall & Shower Wall
Wet Area Flooring
Entrance & Walk-Off Flooring
Flooring for Radiant Heat Systems
Operating Rooms & Labs
Anti-Fatigue Flooring
Electrostatic Dissipative Flooring
Safety & Slip-Resistant Flooring
Raised Access Flooring
Rigid Core Flooring
Dining Area Flooring
Subject to Oil Flooring
Walk-In Freezer
Ramps & Inclines
Seating
Headboard
Slipcover
Systems Furniture
Tackboard
Throw Pillow
Firebox
Fireplace Hearth
Fireplace Mantel
Fireplace Surround
Bed Scarf
Bed Sheets
Bed Skirt
Bedspread
Box Spring Cover
Stair Riser
Stair Tread
Railing
Elevator Cladding
Drapery
Privacy Curtain
Shower Curtain
Theatrical Curtain
Window Shade
Automotive
Aviation
Marine
Pool Coping
Pool Decking
Pool Lining
Covered Areas
Patio
Toilet Partition
Structural Masonry
Veneer Masonry
Gymnasium
Playground
Weightlifting Room
Awning
Tensile Structure
Umbrella
Chemical Resistant Top
Hotel Room
A let sleeping volume in a hotel, taken together with its ensuite: the guest's whole private territory rather than the bed alone.
Deliberately NOT `broaderTermId: bedroom`. A hotel room is a bedroom plus its bathroom, desk and wardrobe let as one unit, and its surfaces answer to contract fire, cleaning and wear standards a domestic bedroom never sees. Subsuming it would make every bedroom query return hospitality specifications.
Hospitality Lobby
The arrival and waiting volume of a hotel or similar: public, staffed, and passed through rather than settled into.
Restaurant
The public dining volume of a food business, front of house only; the commercial preparation space behind it is `kitchen`.
Patient Room
An inpatient sleeping and treatment volume, where every surface answers to clinical cleaning, infection control and observation before it answers to comfort.
Deliberately NOT `broaderTermId: bedroom`. People sleep in it, which is the whole of the resemblance. The ISA test asks whether every patient room is a bedroom, and it is not: it is a clinical space that happens to contain a bed, and its material specification is closer to `operating_room` than to `bedroom`.
Clinic
An outpatient consulting and treatment volume, where people arrive and leave the same day.
Workspace
Any volume whose primary occupation is work at a desk or bench, taken generically where the plan type is unknown or mixed.
Meeting Room
An enclosed volume for scheduled group discussion; enclosure is the test, so an open meeting table sits in `open_office` and not here.
Living Room
The main shared sitting volume of a dwelling, where the household gathers rather than eats or sleeps.
sitting room
lounge
Bedroom
A private sleeping volume in a dwelling.
Bathroom
A volume containing a bath or a shower as well as sanitary fittings; strip the bathing provision out and it becomes `wc`.
`application.bath` in the published APPLICATIONS axis is a room sitting inside a surface-use vocabulary, and is superseded by this term. The edge here is `related-to` and not `suitable-for` on purpose: `suitable-for` runs from a material-suitability claim TO a space, so the correct `suitable-for` edge points the other way and belongs on the applications side, alongside the deprecation.
Corridor
A circulation volume markedly longer than it is wide, whose only purpose is passage between other spaces.
passage
Open Office
A workspace volume with no internal enclosure, where desks share one acoustic and visual field.
Private Office
An enclosed workspace volume held by one person or a small named group, with a door that shuts.
Phone Booth
A single-occupant, acoustically isolated volume for calls and short focused work, sized so that occupying it for a whole day is not the intent.
Lounge
A soft-seated volume for waiting or informal use in a commercial setting; separated from `hospitality_lobby` by being sat in rather than passed through.
Cafe / Pantry
The tea point, servery or staff cafe volume inside a workplace or institution; not a dwelling's `pantry`, and not a `restaurant`.
Operating Room
A surgical volume held under controlled air pressure and full asepsis.
operating theatre
Exam Room
A single-patient consulting and examination volume inside a clinic or practice, with no overnight provision.
Lab
A volume for bench science, where surfaces answer to chemical attack and contamination control before anything else.
Behavioral Health
A mental-health volume specified against ligature, impact and self-harm risk, which constrains every fixing, edge and fitting in it.
Classroom
A taught volume holding a fixed cohort facing a single teaching position; a lecture theatre with raked seating is `auditorium`.
Library
A volume for shelved collections and quiet reading. The room, never the institution that runs it.
Gym
A volume for exercise, where the floor takes dropped and repeated impact loading.
Auditorium
A raked or tiered volume holding an audience facing a stage or screen, where acoustics drive the surfaces.
Sales Floor
The customer-accessible selling volume of a shop; the stock and staff areas behind it are not this term.
Fitting Room
A private changing cubicle off a `sales_floor`, entered to try clothing on.
A volume for preparing and cooking food, domestic or commercial. The room, never the fitted joinery in it, which is `element.cabinetry`.
`application.kitchen` in the published APPLICATIONS axis is a room sitting inside a surface-use vocabulary, and is superseded by this term. As with `bathroom`, the edge is `related-to` rather than `suitable-for`, because the suitability claim runs from the material to the space and so belongs on the applications side.
Dining Room
A volume whose primary use is seated eating, held apart from the `kitchen` that serves it.
Entry / Foyer
The threshold volume immediately inside the front door, where arrival happens; the circulation beyond it is `hallway`.
foyer
entrance hall
vestibule
Outdoor
Any exterior volume treated as part of the scheme, taken generically where the outdoor type is unknown or mixed.
Spa / Pool
A wet leisure volume - pool hall, spa suite, steam or sauna - where standing humidity, not splashing, sets the specification.
Ballroom
A large clear-span event volume for functions, with no fixed seating and a floor laid for dancing.
The escape hatch for a space no term here reaches. Carried so the vendored dictionary round-trips exactly; never the right home for a space that deserves a term of its own.
Utility / Laundry Room
A back-of-house domestic working volume for laundry, drying, plant and overflow storage; separated from `kitchen` by not being where meals are cooked.
laundry room
utility
Laundry Room
Boot Room
A transitional volume between outside and inside where wet outdoor clothing and footwear come off and are stored; distinguished from `entry` by being the working door rather than the front one.
mudroom
mud room
Mudroom
Mud Room
`Mudroom` and `Mud Room` are both carried in `seenAs` because DesignShop spells it one way on the scheme side and the other on the product side. Neither spelling is wrong; both are observed, and a crosswalk that hid one could not clean the data.
Hallway
The internal circulation volume of a dwelling at entrance level, wider and more furnished than a `corridor` and typically the space rooms open off.
hall
Landing
The horizontal circulation volume at the head or turn of a stair, from which rooms open; the stair that arrives at it is `element.stair`.
AAT files landings as a stair component, which is the element sense. This term is the volume sense - the thing you stand on - so the match is `close` and not `exact`.
Stairwell
The vertical volume a stair occupies from floor to floor, including the void beside it; the stair itself is `element.stair`.
stair hall
Snug
A small, enclosed and deliberately low-lit sitting volume held as a retreat from the main `living_room`, rather than as a substitute for it.
den
Study / Home Office
A domestic volume given over to desk work, reading or household administration.
home office
Office
DesignShop's `Office` room type carries this term's band, not `private_office`'s. Its corpus is residential room schemes, so an office captured there is a room in a house.
Pantry
A domestic store volume off the kitchen for dry goods, small appliances and china; the workplace tea point of the same name is `cafe_pantry`.
larder
A covered volume for parking and workshop use, attached to a dwelling or standing free of it.
`application.garage` in the published APPLICATIONS axis is the same shape of leak as `application.bath` and `application.kitchen` - a room inside a surface-use vocabulary. It is recorded here for the applications-side owner to rule on, not deprecated from here.
Closet & Storage
A volume entered only to store or retrieve things - walk-in wardrobe, linen cupboard, store room - never to stay in.
walk-in wardrobe
store room
storage room
Home Exterior
The outside face of a dwelling read as one scheme: walls, roof, joinery and front door taken together as a single specifying surface.
The weakest term on this axis against the standing-in test. What it names is a set of surfaces rather than a bounded volume, and it is here because DesignShop's product-side vocabulary carries it as a targetable space and its schemes are real. Read it as the outdoor volume immediately against the building, and if a cleaner split appears, split it.
Garden
A planted exterior volume held by the plot, occupied for leisure rather than crossed to get somewhere.
yard
Terrace
A paved exterior volume at or near ground level, furnished and used as an outdoor room.
patio
deck
Balcony
A cantilevered or recessed exterior volume above ground level, reached only from the room it serves.
Cloakroom / WC
A small volume holding a lavatory and a basin and nothing else; add a bath or a shower and it becomes `bathroom`.
cloakroom
powder room
toilet
downstairs loo
half bath
Deliberately NOT `broaderTermId: bathroom`. In American usage a WC is a bathroom and the edge would be clean; in British usage it is not, and the whole point of the term is the absence of bathing provision. Since the difference is exactly what a specifier needs to see, the two terms sit side by side rather than one inside the other.
A vertical plane of fabric that divides or encloses, wherever it sits in the building.
External Wall
A wall in the building envelope, with weather on one side and occupied space on the other.
exterior wall
Internal Wall
A wall with occupied space on both sides.
interior wall
An internal wall carrying no load but its own, so movable without touching the structure.
Cladding
The outermost weathering layer fixed to an external wall, shedding water clear of it.
No AAT mapping. AAT 300014860 `cladding` is the metal-coating process, a different thing entirely, and a plausible wrong mapping is worse than none.
Panelling
A framed timber or board lining applied to a wall face, read as joinery rather than as wall.
paneling
wainscot
AAT's nearest term, `wainscoting`, is panelling carried only to dado height; this term covers full-height panelling too, so the AAT concept is narrower.
Parapet
External wall continuing above the roof or floor it meets, standing free on its inner face.
Floor
The horizontal element you stand on, structure and deck; the layer on top is `floor_finish`.
Floor Finish
The wearing layer laid on a floor, replaceable without touching the floor beneath it.
Raised Floor
A floor on pedestals above the slab, services in the void, reached by lifting a panel.
access floor
raised access floor
The overhead surface bounding a space from within, structural underside or hung lining alike.
Suspended Ceiling
A ceiling hung clear of the structure, creating a serviceable void above it.
dropped ceiling
false ceiling
Soffit
The exposed underside of an element that overhangs or spans: eaves, balcony, stair, beam.
The uppermost weathering element of a building, covering it from above.
Flat Roof
A roof at so shallow a fall that its covering must be continuous rather than lapped.
Pitched Roof
A roof steep enough to be covered in lapped units shedding water by gravity.
Rooflight
A glazed opening in a roof plane, admitting daylight from above rather than from a wall.
skylight
roof light
The moving leaf closing a walk-through opening, taken with the frame it hangs in.
A glazed opening in a wall with its frame; the glass held in it is `glazing`.
Glazing
The transparent infill held in an opening or frame: the glass, not the opening it fills.
No AAT mapping. AAT carries `glazing` only as processes and `glass` only as a material, and neither of those is this element.
Curtain Walling
A non-loadbearing external wall hung off the structure as a continuous glazed skin.
curtain wall
Shutter
A hinged or sliding cover to a window opening, working by moving rather than by drawing.
Ironmongery
The visible metal fittings handled to work an opening: hinges, handles, locks, pulls.
door furniture
finish hardware
architectural hardware
Stair
The constructed run of steps between levels; the volume it climbs is `space.stairwell`.
staircase
stairs
The horizontal face of a step, which is the surface the foot lands on.
The vertical face between one tread and the next, absent on an open-riser stair.
Balustrade
The guarding assembly along an open edge, infill and posts; the grip rail is `handrail`.
railing
guarding
Handrail
The continuous rail sized to be gripped while moving, on a balustrade or fixed to a wall.
Newel
The post terminating or turning a balustrade, taking the load the handrail cannot.
newel post
Shop-made joinery cut to a drawing for one job and fixed in place, `cabinetry` included.
joinery
casework
Fitted carcass joinery with doors or drawers, fixed to the fabric rather than standing loose.
fitted furniture
built-in cabinets
Worktop
The working surface spanning a run of cabinetry, specified for what is done on it.
countertop
work surface
Shelving
Open horizontal storage on brackets, uprights or a frame, with nothing closing the front.
Wardrobe
Fitted cabinetry for clothing; one large enough to stand inside is `space.closet_storage`.
fitted wardrobe
closet
AAT splits `wardrobes` into a room sense and a loose-furniture sense, and a fitted wardrobe is neither, so the broader `built-in furniture` is carried instead.
Radiator
The visible heat emitter in a room, a specified object rather than concealed pipework.
The Uniclass match is `related`, not `broad`: EF_60_40_37 is the heating FUNCTION, and a radiator is not a kind of function.
Luminaire
The visible light fitting - housing, lamp and gear as one - not the light it casts.
light fitting
lighting fixture
Sanitaryware
The plumbed-in vessels of a wet room: basin, WC pan, cistern, bath, shower tray.
sanitary fittings
plumbing fixtures
Tapware
The visible outlets and controls delivering water: taps, mixers, shower heads, wastes.
brassware
taps
faucets
Socket & Switch
The visible electrical accessories on a wall face: sockets, switches, plates, data outlets.
electrical accessories
power outlet
wiring accessories
Skirting
The board closing the wall-to-floor junction, protecting the base and hiding tolerance.
baseboard
skirting board
Architrave
The moulded casing framing a door or window, covering the joint between frame and wall.
casing
door surround
AAT 300001780 `architraves (entablature)` is the classical member and not this term, despite the shared word; the broader `moldings` concept is carried instead.
Cornice
The moulded band at the wall-to-ceiling junction; a plain quadrant in that position is coving.
coving
crown moulding
Dado Rail
The horizontal moulding at chair-back height, splitting the wall into dado and field.
chair rail
Picture Rail
The high horizontal moulding profiled to take hanging hooks, so pictures move undrilled.
Column
A vertical structural member carrying load in compression, listed for when it is exposed.
pillar
post
The Uniclass match is `related`: a column is a component of a framed structure, not a kind of one. The same holds for `beam` and `truss`.
Beam
A horizontal structural member spanning between supports and carrying load in bending.
joist
girder
Truss
A triangulated frame spanning as one member, the triangulation carrying the load.
The built opening and hearth holding a fire, taken with the flue it discharges into.
Chimneypiece
The surround and shelf framing a fireplace opening, replaceable without touching it.
mantelpiece
fire surround
mantel
House
A whole dwelling occupying its own building from ground to roof, with its own door to the outside. The door and the verticality are the test: a bungalow is a house, a maisonette over a shop is not.
private house
single-family house
Single family
Living small
Cottage
A small rural house of one or one-and-a-half storeys, whose smallness reads as characterful rather than as a constraint - low ceilings and small windows taken as the point, not as a defect to be corrected.
Country/ Cottage
Farmhouse
The dwelling of a working holding, sited among its outbuildings and planned around a kitchen that was the working room of the farm rather than a room off the hall.
Modern farmhouse
The clearest case of typology used as reference rather than classification: the Farmhouse schemes in the DesignShop corpus are overwhelmingly suburban rooms evoking one, not dwellings on farms. See the header on the two predicates.
Barn
A large single-volume agricultural building for crop or stock, unheated and top-lit or unlit by design, with the roof structure exposed because nothing was ever fixed below it.
NOT parented to `house`. A barn is an agricultural building; the residential barn everyone means is a conversion, which is a change of use and not a change of what the building is. The dwelling in it is a house that happens to be in a barn.
Villa
A detached house standing in its own grounds and built for retreat rather than for work on the land - the Roman country-house lineage that both the Palladian villa and the holiday villa descend from.
The leisure premise is the line against `farmhouse`, which is otherwise the same thing in the same landscape. British estate-agent usage for a Victorian semi is a separate and weaker sense, not carried here.
Manor
The principal house of a landed estate, from which the surrounding land was administered: large, old and rural, but built to be lived in rather than defended.
manor house
country house
Chateau
The French country seat: a large house with the symmetry, steep roofline and axial approach of the French tradition, whether or not it retains defensive fabric.
château
Parented to `house` rather than `castle` on a judgement call. The French word covers both and some châteaux are genuinely fortified, but the term as the trade uses it means a grand house; where the fabric is actually defensive, `castle` is the better term.
Terraced House
A house in a continuous row, sharing both side walls with its neighbours and taking all its light from the front and back only, which is what governs the plan.
townhouse
row house
brownstone
rowhouse
terrace
Apartment
A self-contained dwelling occupying part of a larger building, reached through circulation shared with other dwellings. The tenancy, not the block that holds it.
flat
condominium
condo
Multi-unit housing
Affordable housing
Architizer's `Multi-unit housing` and `Affordable housing` actually name the containing building, for which this axis has no term - they are in `seenAs` because that is where a crosswalk will land them today, not because they are correct. See the header's gap list.
Loft
A dwelling occupying part of a building put up for another purpose, keeping that building's structure, volume and window pattern instead of being replanned to domestic scale.
loft apartment
warehouse conversion
NOT the attic sense of the word, which is a room and belongs on SPACE. Heavily used as an aesthetic reference by people who live nowhere near a converted warehouse - the same double duty as `farmhouse`, and the reason there is no `style.loft`.
Cabin
A small timber dwelling, rural and usually seasonal, built simply enough that the construction is the finish.
log cabin
Warehouse
A building for holding goods in bulk: long clear spans, doors at vehicle height, and floors loaded for weight rather than for occupation.
Industrial
Architizer's single `Industrial` subtype covers this term and `factory` both, so a crosswalk from it is ambiguous and must decline rather than pick one.
Factory
A building where goods are made, planned around a process or a line - the sequence of the work sets the plan, where a warehouse's is set by storage and access.
works
plant
Mill
A multi-storey industrial building organised around one shared power source, with the column grid and the floor-to-floor heights set by the drive rather than by the work.
NOT parented to `factory`, deliberately. The textile mill is a factory and the water-driven corn mill is not, and one term has to cover both because the trade and the conversion market use the word for both. Forcing the parent would make the ISA false half the time.
Church
A building for Christian worship, whose plan - nave, orientation, a single focus at one end - is given by the liturgy rather than chosen by the designer.
cathedral
parish church
Religious & memorial
Christian, explicitly. Architizer's `Religious & memorial` covers every faith and memorials besides, so it is a `seenAs` and not an equivalence.
Chapel
A small building for Christian worship that is either subsidiary to a parish church or non-conformist; the smallness together with the absence of parish status is what makes it one.
Parented to `church` because the ISA holds as defined - a chapel building is a building for Christian worship. The chapel WITHIN a cathedral or a house is a room, not a building, and belongs on SPACE; the word covers both and this term covers only the first.
Monastery
An enclosed group of buildings where a religious community both lives and worships, planned around a cloister with the daily offices setting the circulation.
abbey
priory
convent
NOT parented to `church`, though it contains one. The defining programme is residential and enclosed; a monastery is not a kind of church any more than a college is a kind of library.
Castle
A fortified residence: thick walls, restricted openings and a controlled approach, built for a household to live behind rather than for a garrison alone - which is the line against a fort.
Hotel
Premises letting rooms by the night with staffed reception and service. The building; the rooms inside it are `space.hotel_room` and `space.lobby`.
resort
inn
Hotel & resort
boutique
Premises whose business is cooked meals served at table, with the kitchen sized and serviced for that rather than for reheating.
Premises whose business is drink, with any food subordinate to it and the counter as the organising element of the plan.
pub
winery
taproom
Bar & winery
Collides by id with `application.bar`, which is the piece of millwork. Different axes, different things; the prefix disambiguates.
Cafe
Premises serving drinks and light food across a counter, trading in daylight hours with a short average stay - the counter service and the hours are the line against a restaurant.
café
coffee shop
Spa
Premises whose programme is bathing and treatment, with the servicing - humidity, drainage, heat - that wet rooms need. The premises; the wet room inside is `space.spa_pool`.
wellness centre
bathhouse
Spa & wellness
Nightclub
Premises for late-night drinking and dancing, planned around a floor and a sound system and lit for darkness rather than for daylight.
club
Gallery
Premises showing art in changing exhibitions, generally without a permanent collection and often selling what is shown - the selling and the turnover are the line against a museum.
Exhibition
Museum
Premises holding and displaying a permanent collection it does not sell, with the storage, conservation and environmental control that keeping one requires.
Premises holding a collection for reading and lending, planned around both dense storage and long uninterrupted occupation of the reading floor.
Theatre
Premises with a fixed auditorium addressing a stage or platform, planned around sightlines and acoustics before anything else.
theater
concert hall
auditorium
Theater & concert hall
Performing arts
Pavilion
A small, largely single-volume building standing free in a landscape or a public space, often temporary, whose programme is to be occupied and looked at rather than to house a settled function.
Pavillion
Pop-up & temporary
Premises for desk work, planned around floorplate depth, daylight and servicing rather than around a product or a process.
workplace
coworking
co-working
workspace
Shop
Premises selling goods to the public from stock held on site and carried away by the buyer.
store
retail unit
Shopping
Showroom
Premises displaying goods that are ordered rather than carried away, frequently trade-only; the absence of stock and of a till is the line against a shop.
Architizer folds this into `Retail` with `shop`, so a crosswalk from that label is ambiguous between the two and should decline.
School
Premises for teaching, nursery through university, planned around repeated teaching rooms and circulation that can be supervised.
college
university
Kindergarten
University & research
Higher education
Deliberately coarse, and coarser than the evidence supports: architizer distinguishes kindergarten, school and university. One term until something needs the split.
Hospital
Premises admitting patients to beds overnight, with the clinical servicing - medical gases, isolation, theatres - that inpatient care requires.
Premises treating patients who arrive and leave the same day. No beds overnight, and that is the whole of the line against a hospital.
surgery
medical centre
dental practice
Civic Building
Premises housing a public authority and the public's dealings with it - town hall, courthouse, register office - where addressing the street as a public institution is part of the brief.
town hall
courthouse
Civic & government
Community center
Municipal
Premises for training indoors, planned around equipment, floor loading and the ventilation rate that hard exercise needs.
fitness centre
sports centre
Gym & recreation
Recreation center
Stadium
Premises whose entire plan is tiered seating around a field of play, sized for a crowd that arrives and leaves all at once.
arena
Stadium & arena
Station
Premises where passengers board scheduled transport: concourse, platforms, and a plan governed by flow that runs one way at a time.
railway station
transit station
bus station
Transit
Rail, bus and transit. Airports have no term here - the scale, security and airside planning make them a different building, and nothing in the estate asks for one.
Minimalism
Reduction to the fewest elements that will do the job, with the reduction itself legible as the design decision.
minimalist
pared back
serene-minimal
minimal_warm
minimal_cool
gallery_minimal
Warm Minimalism
Modernism
The early-to-mid twentieth century movement: form led by function, structure left legible, ornament refused on principle.
modernist
international style
DesignShop tags a dominant share of its room schemes `Modern`, but that is the crosswalk row that declines: `Modern` reads as either this term or `style.contemporary`, and the source never recorded which. Attributing the usage here would smuggle in the guess the crosswalk refused to make.
NOT the consumer sense of "modern". A consumer calling a room modern usually means it is current and clean-lined, which is `contemporary` here. The two are separate terms and the crosswalk from an ambiguous source label declines rather than guessing. See ADR 0001.
Mid-Century Modern
The postwar domestic reading of modernism: organic curves, teak and walnut, tapered legs, warm rather than austere.
mcm
architizer, designround, designshop, materialgraph
Style, not period. A reproduction built in 2024 is `style.mid-century-modern` in the `period.contemporary` period, which is why the two axes cannot be one.
Contemporary
The prevailing current idiom: clean-lined, unornamented, neither period-referencing nor doctrinally modernist.
DELIBERATELY TIME-RELATIVE, and the only term here that is. What it denotes moves; the id does not. Consumers distinguish it from `modern` in practice - designshop's corpus carries both at similar volume - without anyone having written down how. `period.contemporary` is a different thing on a different axis; the prefix disambiguates.
Traditional
Pre-modern decorative conventions carried forward without irony: mouldings, pattern, symmetry, furniture with a period lineage.
Classic/ Traditional
warm-traditional
decorative_traditional
classic_tailored
Neoclassical
The classical orders applied with archaeological seriousness: proportion systems, columns, entablature, strict symmetry.
Classical & Grand
Gothic
Pointed arch, rib vault, verticality, tracery, structure expressed as ornament.
Art Deco
Stepped and faceted geometry, lacquer, brass and mirror, luxury materials worked into machine-age forms.
art-deco-luxe
Art Deco & Glamour
architizer, designround, designshop, materia
Structure and services left exposed, ex-utility fabric kept rather than concealed, finishes that read as unfinished.
Industrial & Raw
industrial_refined
materia, architizer, designshop, materialgraph
Brutalism
Mass concrete left as struck, monumental massing, the construction method visible as the finish.
Maximalism
Deliberate accumulation: pattern on pattern, colour on colour, more held together on purpose rather than by accident.
Modern Maximalism
maximalism, maximalist, Maximalist Style
Eclectic
Periods and idioms mixed by intent, with the mixing itself as the method. Distinct from maximalism, which is about quantity rather than provenance.
Transitional
The deliberate midpoint between traditional and contemporary: period silhouettes stripped of ornament, or contemporary forms softened with classical proportion.
transitional, transitional style, Transitional Style
Defined only relative to two other terms, which is unusual and was nearly grounds to refuse it. It stays because it is heavily used in the US consumer market and because the relative definition is the honest one - the term genuinely means "between those two" and pretending otherwise would invent content nobody intends.
Rustic
Rough-hewn construction shown rather than hidden: sawn timber, undressed stone, hand tools legible in the surface.
Rustic & Artisan
Vernacular
Built in the local traditional manner, using what the place supplies. Carries no content on its own - it needs a place to be a style, which is why it composes with PLACE rather than duplicating it.
local idiom
Critical Regionalism
Modernism deliberately inflected by local climate, material and craft, as a resistance to placelessness. Distinct from vernacular: it is a modernist position about place, not the local tradition itself.
regionalism
Wabi-Sabi
Imperfection, asymmetry and age treated as the value rather than tolerated. Distinct from rustic: rustic is about roughness of making, wabi-sabi is about acceptance of decay.
Bohemian
Layered, collected and informal, drawing pattern and object from many cultures without resolving them into one scheme.
boho
Postmodernism
Historical quotation used knowingly and often ironically; ornament readmitted as commentary.
Deconstructivism
Fragmented geometry and apparent instability, with the disruption as the subject.
Parametricism
Form generated by rule systems and continuously varied rather than composed element by element.
parametric
Parametricism, parametric, parametric design
High-Tech
Structure and services celebrated as the architecture, expressed with industrial precision.
Rationalism
Geometric order and typological clarity taken as first principles, especially the Italian interwar and Tendenza readings.
Constructivism
Early Soviet avant-garde: dynamic diagonal composition, exposed structural drama, architecture as social instrument.
Organic Modernism
Modernism whose forms derive from natural growth and site rather than from the grid: continuous curves, building and ground treated as one.
Organic
quiet_organic
Medieval
Roughly 1100 to 1500 for anything with surviving fabric: load-bearing masonry, timber frames, and openings sized by what the structure would allow rather than by the room.
Middle Ages
mediaeval
The historical Middle Ages start far earlier, around 500, but almost nothing standing predates 1100, so the useful bracket for a building or an interior starts there.
Renaissance
Roughly 1400 to 1600 in Italy and 1500 to 1620 north of the Alps; the bracket is dated from when classical proportion arrived locally, so it moves by a century across Europe.
Tudor
Elizabethan
Tudor (1485-1603) and Elizabethan (1558-1603) are the British dynastic labels for the same span and are the ones the UK trade uses; neither covers the continental early Renaissance. Also a style name - see the header on the STYLE asymmetry.
Baroque
Roughly 1600 to 1750, between the Renaissance and the neoclassical turn.
Stuart
Jacobean
Stuart (1603-1714) is the British dynastic label for nearly the same span, and by this axis's own rule would be the better id; `baroque` is kept because it is what the English-language trade says of a building of this date anywhere in Europe. Jacobean (1603-1625) is a sub-span, not a synonym. Also a style name - see the header.
Georgian
1714 to 1830, the four Georges: classical proportion applied to ordinary building, sash windows, and the terrace and square as the unit of urban development.
Georgian Colonial
Federal
Colonial
Georgian is used in the US market too, usually as Georgian Colonial. Federal (roughly 1780-1830) is the US label for the later half only, not for the whole span - it starts after independence, so nothing before 1776 is Federal.
Regency
The last Georgian phase, roughly 1795 to 1837: stucco over brick, cast iron balconies, and classical detail thinned and stretched.
Subsumed under `georgian` because it genuinely is one - a Regency interior IS a Georgian-era interior, which is what `broaderTermId` asserts and what makes this one of the few legitimate parents on this axis. The Regency proper is only 1811-1820; the trade uses the wider bracket, and this term follows the trade.
Victorian
1837 to 1901: industrial production of building components, the bay window, pattern everywhere it could be printed or woven, and the first mass suburbs.
Antebellum
Gilded Age
Neither US label covers the span. Antebellum runs to 1861 and is regional to the American South; the Gilded Age runs roughly 1877 to 1900 and is the later half only. Between them they overlap most of the Victorian bracket and match none of it, which is why they are `altLabels` with this caveat rather than a clean crosswalk.
Edwardian
1901 to 1914 in trade usage: lighter, plainer and better-lit than late Victorian, with wider plots and less pattern.
The reign ends in 1910 but the building manner runs to the outbreak of war, and the trade dates it that way. NO US EQUIVALENT EXISTS and none is invented here - the American labels reached for at this date (Craftsman, Arts and Crafts, Prairie) are all styles, and putting one of them here would be the exact error this axis was built to stop.
Interwar
1918 to 1939: the semi-detached suburb, the cinema and the lido, and the point at which modernism and revivalism were being built side by side on the same street.
between the wars
The one bracket in this axis that travels without adjustment, because the dates are the same everywhere the wars were. The US decade labels - Jazz Age, Depression era - are sub-spans and are not carried as equivalents. This is where an Art Deco building of the period sits; the style claim is separate and lives on STYLE.
Mid-Century
1945 to 1970: postwar reconstruction, system building, and the first interiors designed around mass-produced furniture rather than inherited pieces.
postwar
mid-century
midcentury
mid_century_modern
`Mid-Century Modern` is a STYLE and appears in `seenAs` only because sources routinely write it when they mean the date. The two come apart in both directions: a 1958 local authority housing block is mid-century and not Mid-Century Modern, and a 2023 walnut sideboard is Mid-Century Modern and not mid-century.
Late Twentieth Century
1970 to 1999: the bracket after mid-century and before the millennium, covering the postmodern turn, the high-tech buildings and the first wave of warehouse conversion.
late twentieth century
THE WEAKEST TERM ON THIS AXIS, and flagged rather than dressed up. The trade has no settled label for these thirty years - it dates by decade, or reaches for a style name instead - so this is a bucket the axis needs for completeness rather than a period anyone asks for by name. Expect it to be split or renamed once there is usage evidence to split it on.
2000 onwards: built or made in the present century, whatever it looks like.
present day
twenty-first century
modern
new build
DELIBERATELY OPEN-ENDED, and it will need a successor bracket eventually. Collides by name with `style.contemporary`, which means the prevailing current idiom rather than a date; the axis prefix disambiguates. A 2024 building in full Georgian pastiche is `period.contemporary` and is emphatically not `style.contemporary`, which is the case that shows why the two cannot be merged.
Grounded
Weighted and settled; the room reads as resting on the earth rather than floating.
Calm
Low stimulus; nothing in the room asks for attention.
serene
tranquil
Soft
Edges, light and contrast all diffused rather than sharp.
Crisp
Sharp edges and clean contrast; the opposite reading to soft.
Moody
Dark, low-lit and enclosing, without necessarily being theatrical.
moody-saturated
Dramatic
Staged and theatrical: strong contrast, deliberate focal points, a room that performs.
Authored here. materialgraph's `moody` conflates darkness with theatricality; a pale, high-contrast gallery is dramatic and not moody, and a dim snug is moody and not dramatic.
Airy
Light, open and uncrowded; volume reads as generous relative to what fills it.
Sensual
Tactile and bodily; the room invites touch.
Serious
Sober and unplayful; the room signals that consequential things happen in it.
Austere
Deliberately without comfort or ornament, where the absence is the point rather than a shortage of budget.
ascetic
Authored here. Two estate vocabularies carry a monastic register (materia `tactile-monastic`, materialgraph `monastic`) that no ms_mood term reaches: `calm` and `serious` both understate it, and neither carries the renunciation.
Playful
Light-hearted and unserious; wit is visible in the choices.
Sheltering
Enclosing and protective; the room holds you rather than exposing you.
cosy
snug
cozy
Quiet Luxury
Expense legible only in material and execution, never in ornament or branding.
Luxurious
Expense legible and intended to be read as expense; the declared opposite of quiet luxury.
Authored here. materialgraph carries only the quiet register, but four estate terms (`art-deco-luxe`, `Contemporary Luxury`, `residential_luxury`, `hospitality_luxury`) mean the loud one, and collapsing them into `quiet_luxury` would invert their sense.
Editorial
Composed to be photographed; the room reads as an image before a place.
Domestic
Lived-in and unstaged; evidence of ordinary use is present and welcome.
Monumental
Scaled past the body; the room addresses an institution rather than a person.
White
pure white
cool white
soft white
@instruments/colorscope COLOR_FAMILIES, via materialgraph colour_family
Cream
ivory
warm white
off-white
Grey
neutral grey
grey
Gray
Black
near-black
ink black
coal
Beige
warm neutral
sand
linen
Taupe
greige
mushroom
putty
Brown
earth brown
wood brown
russet
Red
crimson
scarlet
carmine
Orange
terracotta
rust
Yellow
gold
mustard
ochre
Green
sage
olive
Teal
aqua
turquoise
Blue
navy
indigo
Purple
violet
mauve
Pink
rose
blush
Warm
Dominant colour casts to the warm side of the OKLab warmth axis.
Cool
Dominant colour casts to the cool side of the OKLab warmth axis.
Neutral
No decisive cast either way.
Vibrant
High chroma; colour is the loudest thing in the scheme.
Muted
Chroma held low by design, with the colours still fully present.
Faded
Chroma reduced as if by age, wear or light, rather than chosen low. Distinct from muted: faded implies a stronger original.
sun-bleached
washed
Authored here. Two estate vocabularies need it (materia's `faded` keyword and `sun-bleached-mediterranean`) and colorscope's palette moods do not reach it.
Mid
Mid-range lightness across the scheme: neither pale nor deep. The midpoint that `light` and `dark` imply and neither states.
medium
Medium
normal
@instruments/colorscope COLOR_LIGHTNESS_LEVELS
NOT authored here, and the first draft of this term was the exact mistake this package exists to stop. Samplize bands every sample as light, medium or dark and the midpoint is its largest band, so a `medium` term was minted for it - without checking that colorscope already governs a five-level lightness scale with `mid` in the middle. An eighth vocabulary coining a word a governed vocabulary already had. Corrected to colorscope's id, with Samplize's spelling recorded in `seenAs` where it belongs.
Dark
Low overall lightness across the scheme.
Light
High overall lightness across the scheme.
Monochrome
One hue, or none; the scheme varies by lightness rather than by colour.
Polychrome
Many hues held together deliberately.
polychrome
colourful
Saturated
Deep and fully-loaded colour, jewel-toned rather than bright. Vibrant is loud; saturated is rich, and a dark saturated scheme is ordinary while a dark vibrant one is not.
jewel-toned
@instruments/colorscope COLOR_CHROMA_LEVELS
NOT authored here, and the second time this file made that claim. It was written as authored because colorscope's PaletteMood was checked and its COLOR_CHROMA_LEVELS was not - and the chroma scale is muted, soft, vivid, SATURATED. The same failure as `mid`, in the same file, found by an adversarial pass rather than by the check that should have caught it.
Mediterranean
Lime-rendered mass walls, small deep openings, terracotta, shade as a planning move, and an indoor-outdoor threshold treated as habitable.
Tuscan
The central-Italian reading of the Mediterranean idiom: stone, ochre render, cypress.
Moroccan
Zellige, carved plaster, courtyard planning, saturated pigment on lime.
maghrebi
Nordic
Pale softwood, white walls, functional furniture and daylight treated as scarce and precious. The idiom, not the five countries.
scandinavian
Nordic modern
nordic_warm
Scandinavian
Japanese
Modular proportion, timber frame legible as structure, paper-diffused light, floor-level occupation, and emptiness as a positive value.
Japanese contemporary
English Country
Layered pattern, inherited furniture, faded chintz and rugs, and rooms that read as accumulated rather than designed.
Country
Cotswolds
The oolitic-limestone reading of the English country idiom: honey stone, steep stone-slate roofs, mullioned windows, low ceilings.
French Provincial
Limewashed stone, painted and waxed timber, restrained classical joinery.
provencal
Mexican
Saturated pigment on mass walls, volcanic stone, deep shade, and colour used architecturally rather than decoratively.
American Southwest
Adobe mass, vigas, earth-pigment render, deep-set openings.
santa fe
pueblo revival
New England
Painted clapboard, shingle, panelled rooms, restrained colonial joinery.
Californian
Indoor-outdoor living taken as the plan's premise, low-slung volumes, canyon and beach informality.
Coastal
The seaside setting and its conventions: bleached and salted surfaces, blue and white, rattan and rope, light treated as reflected off water.
architizer CONTEXTS, designshop, designround, materia, materialgraph
Waterfront
On water that is not the sea: river, lake, dock, canal.
Tropical
Cross-ventilation, deep overhangs, screens instead of glass, planting as enclosure.
Tropical modernism
Desert
Thermal mass, minimal openings to the sun, earth-toned ground and building as one.
Mountain
Heavy timber, stone plinths, steep roofs, enclosure against weather.
alpine
Forest
Timber, filtered green light, building read against a canopy.
Rural
Open agricultural land; the working countryside rather than a scenic one.
pastoral
Suburban
Low-density detached and semi-detached settlement around a city.
Urban
Dense city fabric; the building is one of a continuous run.
inner city
metropolitan
Dense urban
Urban infill
downtown