The Penguin Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

Some sample entries:

CLEAT

A batten, brace or clamp of wood or metal fixed to a rafter or other surface to strengthen or support it. It may also be a wedge-shaped piece of wood or metal attached to a surface to prevent it slipping or to act as a support, e.g. for a bracket. In metalwork it is a supporting bracket.

PALISADE

A fence of pales or stakes fixed deeply in the ground in a close row to form a defensive barrier, also a hedge of trees or shrubs. The French spelling palissade is sometimes used to distinguish a hedge clipped to form a green wall, sometimes with arched openings, or a row of trees with bare trunks and the branches pleached to make a dense leafy screen, often found in formal gardens.

EIFFEL, GUSTAV

(1832 - 1923) The French engineer, famous chiefly for the Eiffel Tower, built for the Paris Exhibition of 1889. At 308 m. (1,010 ft), the tower was the highest building in the world until the Chrysler and then the Empire State buildings were erected in New York. The Eiffel Tower in its immensely prominent position in the centre of Paris marks the final acceptance of metal, in this case iron, as an architectural medium. Eiffel's iron bridges are technically and visually as important as the Eiffel Tower (Douro, 1876 - 7; Garabit Viaduct, 1880 - 84). He was also engineer to the Bon Marché store in Paris (1876), and to the Statue of Liberty in New York, both of which have remarkable iron interiors.

About the Author

Nikolaus Pevsner is best known as the author of many of the Buildings of England series and the editor of the Pelican History of Art and Architecture series. He died in 1983. Hugh Honour and John Fleming have collaborated on many books, includingthe Penguin Dictionary of Decorative Arts and A World History of Art. They live in Italy.