12" Wooden Ruler made in U.S.A. of American-grown basswood.

A combination of art and science, architecture affects all of us who spend time in buildings, which means pretty much everyone.

The evolution of style is more apparent in architecture than in most other disciplines, witness the evolution from Romanesque to Gothic, first encountered with Abbot Suger (1081-1151) at Saint Denis near Paris, and then on to the Renaissance in Florence, Italy, where Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) built his magnificent dome atop the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

The dates listed are the architect’s birth and death years. We also list one detail about each of them, which might be one of their buildings, their nationality or a style that they worked in.

The “head” image is of Swiss architect Le Corbusier (1887-1965), whose real name was Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, and who was as influential as an urban planner as he was as an architect.