High Culture Architectural Styles

File:House.gif

A rather typical scanderan house, the lower part is built in gothic style while the upper is built using timberframing

There are three distinct styles of architecture commonly employed in Scandera and Imerian inspired buildings in the realms, the old style, timber framing house and Scanderan Gothic architecture.

A common feature is also to include all styles or mix them in some way, traditionally does this mean that the lower section of the house is made out of gothic or timberframing styles while the upper can be made out of either old style or timberframing. However due to support problems and weight so is it rare to see gothic over either timberframing or old style.

Scanderan gothic architecture

The city style as it is also known as is the Scanderan gothic architecture is the newest and the style reserved for larger and more important buildings like castles, living towers, temples, shrines and similar constructions. The style is divided into two distinct styles in itself, "san-gotisk" or "True-Gothic" and "tegel-gotisk" or "brick Gothic".

Brick gothic is common in Southern Scandera and Erathia due to the distance between sandbergen and that region and is distinctive in the use of bricks rather than sandstone as the main building material making the buildings red rather than gold which have also given it the name "Blot gotisk" or "blood gothic". The second substyle is true gothic that is common in northern Imeriata and Vedian where proper stones and sandstone is used as the building material making large golden or grey structures.

Both styles of course have a lot of similarities with neogothic and gothic architecture in europe with large pointy arches, flying buttress and rib vaults and is often decorated by gargoyles and statues but also in scanderan fashion also decorated by paintings and relieves.

Old style

House in the old style in Vedian

The old style is the longhouses that used to exist in old scandera. They are characterised by either being built with stones or wood and having very short walls but the majority of the house height composing of the steep and tall roofs that stretches up high into the heavens.

The houses made in this style is often called "longhouses" as they are often built to be narrow but long and high.

The houses themselves tends to be rather simple even if two "Vakt totem" or "Guard totems" are often placed in each of the ends of the roof carved to resemble an animal or a hero while the walls often have paintings of them to spice themselves up a bit. The roof however are often made out of either wooden bricks, hay or simple have green roofs where the owners let grass grow high and tall.

Timberframing

The last style is the famous timberframing that is built for smaller houses both on the countryside and in the cities and it is often combined with both the old style and the gothic one. Building materials include wood used as frames and bricks that are either left as they are or painted over with white limestone to give them a flat white surface.