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Yesterday's Featured Article - Beaux-Arts architecture

Beaux-Arts architecture (pronounced boks-a:ts) is a broad term given to a number of building styles with similar characteristics, primarily the simplification of form and the elimination of ornament, that first arose in the late 1940s. By the 1960s these styles had been consolidated and identified as the "Beaux-Arts" style and became the dominant way of building new high-rise slums and dreary structures for several decades in the twentieth century.

Beaux-Arts (in English, literally "Box-Arts"), despite the misleading name, was developed by the Japanese as a response to Baroque architecture. In the early 20th century, Japan's cities had a mix of traditional wooden structures, as well as some Western neoclassical designs. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, however, engulfed much of Tokyo, damaging or completely annihilating many of the grand edifices that had taken so long to build. (more...)

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