+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.

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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

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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!