27-year-old Thomas Jefferson begins constructing a mansion on a hilltop in Charlottesville, calling it Monticello ('little mountain')

Charlotte Square in Edinburgh begins to be built to the design of Robert Adam

US president John Adams moves into the newly completed White House, named for its light grey limestone

With advice from Thomas Daniell, Samuel Pepys Cockerell builds himself a house, Sezincote, with a roof line of fanciful Indian domes

English architect John Nash designs the exotic Royal Pavilion in Brighton for the Prince Regent

Walter Scott begins to transform Abbotsford into a romantic house that he refers to as his 'conundrum castle'

English architect and designer Augustus Welby Pugin plays a major part in the second stage of the Gothic Revival

Work begins on Charles Barry's spectacular design for London's new Houses of Parliament

Thomas Cubitt completes Osborne House, designed as a quiet retreat for Victoria and Albert on the Isle of Wight

Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace, built in London in six months, is the world's first example of prefabricated architecture

Queen Victoria opens the new Houses of Parliament, designed by Charles Barry and Augustus Welby Pugin

The Crystal Palace is dismantled in Hyde Park, to be re-erected south of the river Thames at Sydenham

Victoria and Albert complete their fairy-tale castle at Balmoral, adding greatly to the nation's romantic view of Scotland

A 13-ton bell is installed above London's Houses of Parliament, soon giving its name (Big Ben) to both the clock and the clock-tower

British architect George Gilbert Scott designs a memorial for Prince Albert in Kensington Gardens

The Chicago architects Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan set up a partnership

Antoni Gaudí begins a life-long commitment to the building of a modern cathedral in Barcelona, El Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia

English town-planner Ebenezer Howard puts forward a Utopian scheme in Tomorrow a Peaceful Path to Real Reform

Charles Voysey completes a house for himself, The Orchard, at Chorley Wood in Hertfordshire

Frank Lloyd Wright designs low residential buildings, suitable for the plains around Chicago, and calls them Prairie Houses

Finnish architect Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen wins the competition to build Helsinki's railway station

The publisher Walter Blackie moves into Hill House at Helensburgh, designed for him by Charles Rennie Mackintosh

US architect Louis Sullivan completes the Schlesinger & Meyer Store (later known as the Carson, Pirie & Scott Store) in Chicago

The first part of the Post Office Savings Bank in Vienna is completed, to the designs of Otto Wagner

Cardiff's new Civic Centre is launched with the completion of the City Hall and Law Courts, designed by Lanchester, Stewart and Rickards