Modern architecture

Modern architecture is a broad term given to a number of building styles with similar characteristics, primarily the simplification of form and the elimination of ornament, that first arose around 1900. By the 1940s these styles had been consolidated and identified as the International Style and became the dominant way of building for several decades in the twentieth century.

The exact characteristics and origins of modern architecture are still open to interpretation and debate.

Origins

Some historians see the evolution of modern architecture as a social matter, closely tied to the project of Modernity and hence to the Enlightenment, a result of social and political revolutions.

Others see modern architecture as primarily driven by technological and engineering developments, and it's plainly true that the availability of new building materials such as iron, steel, concrete and glass drove the invention of new building techniques as part of the Industrial Revolution. The Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton at the Great Exhibition of 1851 is an early example; possibly the best example is the development of the tall steel skyscraper in Chicago around 1890 by William Le Baron Jenney and Louis Sullivan. Early structures to employ concrete as the chief means of architectural expression (rather than for purely utilitarian structure) include Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple, built in 1906 near Chicago, and Rudolf Steiner's Second Goetheanum, built from 1926 near Basel, Switzerland.

Other historians regard modernism as a matter of taste, a reaction against eclecticism and the lavish stylistic excesses of Victorian Era and Edwardian Art Nouveau.

Whatever the cause, around 1900 a number of architects around the world began developing new architectural solutions to integrate traditional precedents (Gothic, for instance) with new technological possibilities. The work of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago, Victor Horta in Brussels, Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona, Otto Wagner in Vienna and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow, among many others, can be seen as a common struggle between old and new.

Modernism as dominant style

By the 1920s the most important figures in modern architecture had established their reputations. The big three are commonly recognized as Le Corbusier in France, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius in Germany. Mies van der Rohe and Gropius were both directors of the Bauhaus, one of a number of European schools and associations concerned with reconciling craft tradition and industrial technology.

Frank Lloyd Wright's career parallels and influences the work of the European modernists, particularly via the Wasmuth Portfolio, but he refused to be categorized with them. Wright was a major influence on both Gropius and van der Rohe, however, as well as on the whole of organic architecture.

In 1932 came the important MOMA exhibition, the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture, curated by Philip Johnson. Johnson and collaborator Henry-Russell Hitchcock drew together many distinct threads and trends, identified them as stylistically similar and having a common purpose, and consolidated them into the International Style.

This was an important turning point. With World War II the important figures of the Bauhaus fled to the United States, to Chicago, to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and to Black Mountain College. Modernism became the pre-eminent, and then (for leaders of the profession) the only acceptable, design solution from about 1932 to about 1984.

Architects who worked in the international style wanted to break with architectural tradition and design simple, unornamented buildings. The most commonly used materials are glass for the facade, steel for exterior support, and concrete for the floors and interior supports; floor plans were functional and logical. The style became most evident in the design of skyscrapers. Perhaps its most famous manifestations include the United Nations headquarters (Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Sir Howard Robertson), the Seagram Building (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe), and Lever House (Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill), all in New York.

Detractors of the international style claim that its stark, uncompromisingly rectangular geometry is dehumanising. Le Corbusier once described buildings as "machines for living", but people are not machines and it was suggested that they do not want to live in machines. Even Philip Johnson admitted he was "bored with the box." Since the early 1980s many architects have deliberately sought to move away from rectinlinear designs, towards more eclectic styles. During the middle of the century, some architects began experimenting in organic forms that they felt were more human and accessible. Mid-century modernism, or organic modernism, was very popular, due to its democratic and playful nature. Alvar Aalto and Eero Saarinen were two of the most prolific architects and designers in this movement, which has influenced contemporary modernism.

Although there is debate as to when and why the decline of the modern movement occurred, criticism of Modern architecture began in the 1960s on the grounds that it was universal, sterile, elitist and lacked meaning. The rise of postmodernism was attributed to disenchantment with Modern architecture. By the 1980s, postmodern architecture appeared triumphant over modernism; however, postmodern aesthetics lacked traction and by the mid-1990s, a neo-modern (or hypermodern) architecture had once again established international pre-eminence. As part of this revival, much of the criticism of the modernists has been revisited, refuted, and re-evelauated; and a modernistic idiom once again dominates contemporary practice.

Characteristics

Modern architecture is usually characterised by:

a rejection of historical styles as a source of architectural form (historicism)
an adoption of the principle that the materials and functional requirements determine the result
an adoption of the machine aesthetic
a rejection of ornament
a simplification of form and elimination of "unnecessary detail"
an adoption of expressed structure

Some catchphrases of Modern architecture

"Form follows function" - first used by sculptor Horatio Greenough, more popularly by Louis Sullivan
"Less is more" - usually attributed to Mies van der Rohe in architectural circles, but actually from the painter Andrea del Sarto and then immortalised in the poem 'Andrea del Sarto' by Robert Browning.^*
"Less is more only when more is too much" - Frank Lloyd Wright
"Less is a bore" - Robert Venturi, pioneer of Postmodern architecture; in response to the featureless International Style popularized by Mies van der Rohe

In his 1941 essay "The mischievous analogy" (collected in Heavenly Mansions) the architectural historian Sir John Summerson identified several generalizations and clichés of modern architecture:

it arises from an accurate analysis of the needs of modern society;
it represents the logical solution of the problem of shelter
achieved by the direct application of means to ends;
it expresses the spirit of the machine age;
it is the architecture of industrial living;
it is based on a study of scientific resources and an exploitation of new materials;
finally it is organic- meaning the architecture looks as if it belongs to the environment in which it is placed

Summerson found that the modernist obsession was not with architecture itself, but with its relation to other aspects of life, and investigated the results.

External links

Famous architects Biographies of well-known architects, almost all of the Modern Movement.
Mid-Century Modern Architecture in Northern California
Mid-Century Modern Architecture in Southern California
Graphic and chronological vision of modern architecture through its houses.

Architectural history | Architectural styles | Modernism | Modernist architecture

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Modern architecture

Origins

Modernism as dominant style

Characteristics

Some catchphrases of Modern architecture

See also

External links