Classification of gothic and baroque architectural elements

Architectural elements are the components and details of buildings. Their unique set, combination, design, construction technique form the architectural style of buildings. Building facade classification by architectural styles is viewed as a task of classifying separate architectural structural elements. In the scope of building facade architectural style classification the current paper targets the problem of classification of Gothic and Baroque architectural elements called tracery, pediment and balustrade. Since certain gradient directions dominate on the shape of each architectural element, discrimination between dominating gradients means classification of architectural elements and thus architectural styles. We use local features to describe gradient directions. Our approach is based on clustering and learning of local features and yields a high classification rate.