+20th & 21st Century
Architecture
It is especially difficult for the architect to freehimself from theappearanceof traditionalconstructional methods.--Mies Van der Rohe
Architectural education[should be] a creative effort to integratesimultaneously design,construction, andeconomy . . . withits social ends.--Walter Gropius
“LESS IS MORE”Mies Van der Rohe
“MACHINE FOR LIVING”Le Corbusier
“FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION”Louis Sullivan
+ Frank Lloyd Wright American, Prairie School
Most famous, influential 20th-c. American architect
Apprenticed with Sullivan and Adler (Chicago School)
Strong horizontals, interplay of planes & volumes, not terribly interested in new engineering,
construction possibilities
Buildings often ‘windmill out’ from central feature, like large fireplace or, in the Guggenheim, the central axis of the helical spiral...hard to
hang paintings!
‘Organic’ approach, incorporating landscape when possible and natural materials in interiors
CANTILEVER=a long projected beam fixed only at one end
Guggenheim Museum, NY, 1964
Robie House, Chicago, 1904
Falling Waters PA, 1924
+ The Chrysler BuildingArt Deco
New York, NY 1928-1930William Van Alen
Designed to be the world’s tallest structure, the Chrysler held that distinction only until 1931, with the completion of the Empire State Building. More lasting is its
reputationas the world’s finest Art Decobuilding. It is steel-frame andmasonry construction with stainless steel cladding.
The distinctive decorative features derive from Chrysler cars.The corner ornament shown at left is based on the 1929 Chrysler radiator cap. The ‘crown’ is composed of seven radiating terraced arches, conveying the energy and dynamism of the automobile age.
+De Stijl (The Style)Netherlands, 1920sDe Stijl magazine was founded in 1917 primarily by Theo Van Doesberg, a Dutch painter, architect, typographer and theorist---and, Piet Mondrian, the well-known artist first influenced by Cubism who then moved to more abstract compositions. Mondrian’s style, emphasizing pure line and color was called Neoplasticism. The movement’s most successful architect was Gerrit Reitveld.
Throughout the 1920s, the group published books and manifestos and tried to promote its ideas throughout Europe, including efforts to affiliate with Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus. Members disagreed about the utility of various schools, like Russian Constructivism and Dadaism. The group fragmented and finally dissolved after Van Doesberg’s death in 1931. Composition in Red,
White, & YellowPiet Mondrian, 1923
Resembling Mondrian’s paintings, the house lacks fixed walls on the upper story, relying on sliding panels to create and change living spaces. One of Reitveld’s other influences was Frank Lloyd Wright.
Schröder House, 1922Utrecht, Netherlands
Gerrit Reitveld
OPEN PLAN
Neoplasticism
“Art and Life are One”Mondrian
+ Bauhaus Leading Member: Walter Gropius Dessau, Germany 1922 – pre WW II
The purpose of the Bauhaus was to unite the arts and industry in search of a revitalizing contemporary design aesthetic and functionality. It had profound kinship with the Dutch De Stijl movement, although the two groups never meshed completely. The Bauhaus leader, Walter Gropius, sought to bring together continental artists and artisans who shared these ideas. These people, who valued abstraction and anti-romanticism, included Paul Klee, Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, and L. Moholy-Nagy.
.
UTOPIANINTERNATIONAL
SOCIALIST”TOTAL ARCHITECTURE”
Breuer’s chair
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Gropius designed the new Bauhaus at Dessau (1926). It combines design labs, exhibition spaces, classrooms. dormitories ,and lecture halls. With a skeleton of reinforced concrete, overlapping planes, and continuous glass curtain, it exemplifies the Bauhaus aesthetic.
Hitler closed Bauhaus in 1933. Gropius escaped to the U.S, for a new career in academia – which included architectural projects in the private residence, university, and public sectors – some in partnership with his Bauhaus colleague Marcel Breuer.
Compare the painting by Moholy-Nagy ( and thesimultaneity principle demonstrated by the Cubists ) with a corner of the Bauhaus building (the dematerialized corners and interpenetration of outside and inside)
“There is no difference between artist and craftsman”
Gropius
Bauhaus
Simultaneity principle=two or more perspectives at the same time…REALITY is RELATIVE!
All crafts and architecture taught as well as designed under one roof
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INTERNATIONAL STYLE
** “International Style” dubbed from Philip Johnson’s 1932 exhibition at MoMA (included buildings from 1922 on up)•**Ornament is a crime•**Truth to materials•**Form follows function•**machine aesthetic and use of modern materials
Bauhaus, Gropius, Le Corbusier, Van der Rohe, Johnson
Van der Rohe in Illinois
Gropius at Harvard
+
MODULAR-INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
Purism (1920s) – Cubist principles, but rejection of decorative elements ; return to clearforms and colors, hard edge-- representative ofthe modern machine age.
Villas: simple forms, aesthetically spare interiors, modern materials. His Five Points of Architecture:--raised structure on reinforced concrete stilts--free façade--open floor plan--lots of windows--roof garden/terrace
Influential in city planning and high-density housing . . . Advocated high-rises set in green space. Spaces must have: sun, space, ventilation, insulation, vegetation, human-scale
Le Corbusier -- French (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret)
“Machine for Living”Housing Project, Marseilles, France, 1947-52
Villa Savoy, 1928, Poissy-sur-Seine, France
INTERNATIONAL STYLE
+The chapel of Notre-Dame-du-Haut Ronchamp, France, 1955
a departure from earlier work – more organic relationship to site and history, sculptural form, concrete and stone, curved thick walls.
Le Corbusier
+ Mies Van Der RoheInternational Style High Modernism
--With Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, considered pioneering master of
international modernist architecture
--attracted to avant garde movements like De Stijl and Constructivism; joined
the Bauhaus
--Emigrated from Germany to U.S. in 1937, settled in Chicago
--Sought to establish 20th-c style that would reflect its era just as Gothic or Classical styles reflected theirs; used modern materials like industrial steel
and plate glass
--An aesthetic of extreme simplicity, rationality
--called his buildings ‘skin and bones’ architecture
other aphorisms attributed to him
include ‘less is more’ and
‘God is in the details’ Seagram Building, 1958 New York Citywith Philip Johnson
Lake Shore DriveApartments, 1951Chicago
+ Philip Johnson
International Style and
High ModernismtoPost-Modernism
Johnson,AT&T Building (now the Sony Building),1984, NYCWith its fanciful Chippendale pediment, may be the most iconic Postmodern building in the United States
Johnson,Glass House, 1949New Canaan CT
His own private residence
+Post Modernism, 1960s-present•Form doesn’t always follow function•Incorporates decorative elements•Suggests playful historical references
Pioneer: Robert Venturi“Less is a Bore”
Built the Vanna VenturiHouse for his mother,1961-64; disorienting asymmetries, playfulclassical references.
Michael Graves Portland Building, 1982
What asymmetrical elements do you see?
What elements are not necessary for the building’s function?
+ Postmodern Architecture
Pompidou Center,Paris, 1977Piano & Rogers
DECONSTRUCTIVISTPompidou notable for exposed Skeleton of brightly colored tubes for mechanical elements(plumbing, electrical, etc.)
+Two Cool Buildings
TWA Flight CenterJFK Airport, NY 1962Eero SaarinenThis building was designed
to evoke wings in flight; Saarinen’s earlier Dulles Terminal gives a similar soaring impression.
Sydney Opera HouseSydney, Australia, 1957-73Jorn UtzonThe building’s distinctive roof is a series of interlocking vaulted shells of precastrib segments faced in glazed off-white tiles. Its base, a large terraced platform,
serves as a pedestrian concourse.
+Frank GehryCanadian-American
The ‘Dancing House’ (Prague, 1994-96) is actually an office building; Gehry collaborated with the Czech architect Vlado Milunic on the project.
New material: COMPUTER SOFTWARE… how you can successfully engineer an outrageous building
Often called a ‘Deconstructivist’Architect and a ‘starchitect,’ Gehry may be the most famous and sought-after architect currently practicing. Like postmodernist architects, he does not think form has to follow function; unlike architects of 25 years ago, he relies on advanced design software, often developed by his own firm, to make previously unbuildable designs actualities.
The Guggenheim Museum inBilbao, Spain (1996) remainsGehry’s signature building. It features sculpted, organiccontours, and its brilliantly reflective titanium panels resemble fish-scales (fishare one of Gehry’s favoritemotifs). The building was finished on time and on budget!