Identifying feature
Modular repetition A facade built from one identical unit, such as a window and its frame, repeated in a regular grid. It is common on postwar buildings made of precast (factory-made) concrete panels.
a sign of these styles Brutalism c. 1950–1980 Monumental raw concrete: repeated modular units, deep-set windows, and fortress-like massing. Cast Iron c. 1850–1880 Prefabricated iron facades: slender columns, huge windows, and identical arched bays repeating by the dozen. Chicago School c. 1880–1910 The first skyscrapers: steel frames shown as honest grids, huge three-part windows, ornament saved for base and top. Developer Modern c. 1990–present Plain developer-built houses and apartment blocks: flat or low roofs, rendered or panel walls, identical windows in a grid, no ornament. Italian Rationalism c. 1926–1943 White or stone-clad geometric blocks with regular grids of square windows, sometimes with plain repeated arches. Metabolism c. 1958–1975 Japanese megastructures of plug-in capsules on permanent service cores, designed to grow like organisms. Parametricism c. 2000–present Computer-generated fluidity: continuous curved surfaces and patterns that no hand would draw. Socialist Panel Housing c. 1956–1991 Long flat-roofed apartment blocks made of identical precast concrete panels and windows in a regular grid, with balconies. Southeast Asian Shophouse c. 1840–1960 Narrow terraced rows of two or three stories, shops at street level, with a continuous covered walkway in front. Structuralism / High-Tech c. 1960–1990 The building turned inside out: exposed frames, ducts and elevators on the outside, painted in bright colors. Tropical Modernism c. 1950–1990 Concrete buildings with deep overhangs, sun-shading screens, perforated breeze blocks, open corridors and flat roofs. 
