MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Since 20th century

• Architecture in olden days was a commodity of rich and powerful

• Religious buildings • Palaces • Castles• Monuments

• Modern architecture was developed to suit the masses

• It had no influences of geological, geographical, climatic, social and religious customs

• Modern architecture developed to cater the functional needs of the society

• Shopping centres• Mass housing facility• Factories• Office buildings• Bus terminals• Airports

Modern materials & new techniques

• Steel: most suitabe structural material for framing huge cellular buildings

• Helped to produce uninterrupted spans over openings

• Trusses and frames• Use of steel produced a fundamental change

in architectural design

Modern materials & new techniques

• Use of RCC produced a new breed of buildings ie sky scrapers

• RCC curtain walls replaced massive stone walls producing larger interior space

• Pre stressed : Bridges• Glass transparent to Ultra violet but opaque

to infra red rays came to be extensively used instead of shades, blinds and curtains

Architects of 20th century

• Mies van der Rohe• Le Corbusier• Frank Loyd Wright• Louis Sullivan• Walter Gropious• Peter Behrens

Le Corbusier

• French• architect• urban planner• painter• sculptor • Writer (Vers une Architecture)

• He defines house as a “Machine to live in, with walls as smooth as

sheet iron with windows like a tool”by this he meant the building should be built with utmost care and precision as that for manufacturing a machine

Design strategy

• used sensible systems that were functional in living with the use of simple modules and spaces

• Incorporated industrial forms in housing and apartment schemes

• man was the center of his design principles.• architecture is to support the functions of the

person whether working, relaxing, or partaking in other activity.

Five points to A new Architecture( Vers une Architecture)

• 1. pilotis • 2. free plan • 3. free facade• 4.long horizontal sliding window • 5. roof garden

Pilotis or pillars

• raised the building off the ground on pilotis, which 'free' the ground for multiple uses

• Garden can be created below it• Can be used for parking cars

• The rooms are thereby removed from the dampness of the soil

• they have light and air

Free plan

• Pilotis extend to the roof and they carry the intermediate celings

• interior walls may be placed wherever required each floor being entirely independent of the rest

• no longer any supporting walls but only membranes of any thickness.

• Free facade-Exterior walls are no longer load bearing

-Can be designed freely

• Roof gardens– Flat roofs with

garden at top– replace land lost

underneath the building

Ribbon or horizontal windows

• Together with the intermediate ceilings the supports form rectangular openings in the facade through which light and air enter copiously.

• The window extends from support to support becoming a horizontal window

• Provided uniform and maximum illumination to the rooms

Villa Savoye, Poissy, France

Citrohan House

Swiss Dormitory Paris

Other outstanding Works

• Ozenfant house, Paris• Union of Co-operatives, Moscow• The United Nations Headquarters• The carpenter centre, Harvard University• Villa ‘Les Terraces’, Paris