Modern architecture

Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was based upon new and innovative
technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel and reinforced concrete; the
idea that form should follow function (functionalism); an embrace of minimalism; and a
rejection of ornament. It emerged in the first half of the 20th century .
Modern architecture emerged at the end of the 19th century from revolutions in technology,
engineering and building materials, and from a desire to break away from historical
architectural styles and to invent something that was purely functional and new.
The revolution in materials came first, with the use of cast iron, plate glass, and reinforced
concrete, to build structures that were stronger, lighter and taller. The cast plate glass process
was invented in 1848, allowing the manufacture of very large windows. The Crystal
Palace by Joseph Paxton at the Great Exhibition of 1851 was an early example of iron and
plate glass construction, followed in 1864 by the first glass and metal curtain wall. These
developments together led to the first steel-framed skyscraper, the ten-story Home Insurance
Building in Chicago, built in 1884 by William Le Baron Jenney. The iron frame construction
of the Eiffel Tower, then the tallest structure in the world, captured the imagination of
millions of visitors to the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition.
• Frank Lloyd Wright was a highly original and independent American architect who
refused to be categorized in any one architectural movement. Like Le
Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, he had no formal architectural training. In
1887–93 he worked in the Chicago office of Louis Sullivan, who pioneered the first
tall steel-frame office buildings in Chicago, and who famously stated "form follows
function".Wright set out to break all the traditional rules. He was particularly famous
for his Prairie Houses, including the Winslow House in River Forest, Illinois (1893–
94); Arthur Heurtley House (1902) and Robie House (1909); sprawling, geometric
residences without decoration, with strong horizontal lines which seemed to grow out
of the earth, and which echoed the wide flat spaces of the American prairie.
His Larkin Building (1904–1906) in Buffalo, New York, Unity Temple (1905) in Oak
Park, Illinois and Unity Temple had highly original forms and no connection with
historical precedents.
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Guggenheim Museum

The Pfeiffer Chapel at Florida Southern College by Frank Lloyd Wright (1941–1958)
 • The tower of the Johnson Wax Headquarters and Research Centre (1944–50)

The Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma (1956)

Solomon Guggenheim Museum, by Frank Lloyd Wright (1946–1959)

• Frank Lloyd Wright was eighty years old in 1947; he had been present at the
beginning of American modernism, and though he refused to accept that he belonged
to any movement, continued to play a leading role almost to its end. One of his most
original late projects was the campus of Florida Southern College in Lakeland,
Florida, begun in 1941 and completed in 1943. He designed nine new buildings in a
style that he described as "The Child of the Sun". He wrote that he wanted the campus
to "grow out of the ground and into the light, a child of the sun."
He completed several notable projects in the 1940s, including the Johnson Wax
Headquarters and the Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma (1956). The building is unusual
that it is supported by its central core of four elevator shafts; the rest of the building is
cantilevered to this core, like the branches of a tree. Wright originally planned the structure
for an apartment building in New York City. That project was cancelled because of the Great
Depression, and he adapted the design for an oil pipeline and equipment company in
Oklahoma. He wrote that in New York City his building would have been lost in a forest of
tall buildings, but that in Oklahoma it stood alone. The design is asymmetrical; each side is
different.
In 1943 he was commissioned by the art collector Solomon R. Guggenheim to design a
museum for his collection of modern art. His design was entirely original; a bowl-shaped
building with a spiral ramp inside that led museum visitors on an upward tour of the art of the
20th century. Work began in 1946 but it was not completed until 1959, the year that he died.

• Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, moved to England in 1934 and spent
three years there before being invited to the United States by Walter Hudnut of
the Harvard Graduate School of Design; Gropius became the head of the architecture
faculty. Marcel Breuer, who had worked with him at the Bauhaus, joined him and
opened an office in Cambridge. The fame of Gropius and Breuer attracted many
students, who themselves became famous architects, including Ieoh Ming
Pei and Philip Johnson. They did not receive an important commission until 1941,
when they designed housing for workers in Kensington, Pennsylvania, near
Pittsburgh., In 1945 Gropius and Breuer associated with a group of younger architects
under the name TAC (The Architects Collaborative). Their notable works included
the building of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the U.S. Embassy in Athens
(1956–57), and the headquarters of Pan American Airways in New York (1958–63).
• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe described his architecture with the famous saying, "Less
is more". As the director of the school of architecture of what is now called
the Illinois Institute of Technology from 1939 to 1956, Mies (as he was commonly
known) made Chicago the leading city for American modernism in the post war years.
He constructed new buildings for the Institute in modernist style, two high-rise
apartment buildings on Lakeshore Drive (1948–51), which became models for high-
rises across the country. Other major works included Farnsworth House in Plano,
Illinois (1945–1951), a simple horizontal glass box that had an enormous influence on
American residential architecture. The Chicago Convention Center (1952–54)
and Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology (1950–56), and The Seagram
Building in New York City (1954–58) also set a new standard for purity and elegance.
Based on granite pillars, the smooth glass and steel walls were given a touch of colour
by the use of bronze-toned I-beams in the structure. He returned to Germany in 1962-
68 to build the new National gallery in Berlin. His students and followers
included Philip Johnson, and Eero Saarinen, whose work was substantially influenced
by his ideas.
 •

Barcelona Pavilion, by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was the German Pavilion for the 1929
Barcelona International Exposition

The Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois (1945–51)

Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago (1956)

The Seagram Building, New York City, 1958, by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

• Louis Kahn (1901–74) was another American architect who moved away from the
Mies van der Rohe model of the glass box, and other dogmas of the prevailing
international style. He borrowed from a wide variety of styles, and idioms, including
neoclassicism. He was professor of architecture at Yale University from 1947 to 1957,
where his students included Eero Saarinen. From 1957 until his death he was
professor of architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. His work and ideas
influenced Philip Johnson, Minoru Yamasaki, and Edward Durell Stone as they
moved toward a more neoclassical style. Unlike Mies , he did not try to make his
buildings look light; he constructed mainly with concrete and brick, and made his
buildings look monumental and solid. He drew from a wide variety of different
sources; the towers of Richards Medical Research Laboratories were inspired by the
architecture of the Renaissance towns he had seen in Italy as a resident architect at
the American Academy in Rome in 1950. Notable buildings by Kahn in the United
States include the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York (1962); and
the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas (1966–72). Following the example
of Le Corbusier and his design of the government buildings in Chandigarh, the capital
city of the Haryana & Punjab State of India, Kahn designed the Jatiyo Sangshad
Bhaban (National Assembly Building) in Dhaka, Bangladesh (1962–74), when that
country won independence from Pakistan. It was Kahn's last work.
•

The First Unitarian Church of Rochester by Louis Kahn (1962)

The Salk Institute by Louis Kahn (1962–63)

Richards Medical Research Laboratories by Louis Kahn (1957–61)

 •

The Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas (1966–72)

The National Parliament Building in Dhaka, Bangladesh (1962–74)

• De Stijl: The evolution and dissolution of Neoplasticism

Although 'De Stijl' was made up of many members, Theo Van Doesburg was the
'ambassador' of the movement, promoting it across Europe. In 1915 Doesburg saw some of
Mondrian’s work while reviewing a show for a magazine he worked for, and thought of his
paintings as ‘ideal’. Mondrian had evolved a non-representational form, which he called Neo-
Plasticism. This was made up of a white background, on which was painted a grid of vertical
and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors. This “complete abstraction of reality”
lead Van Doesburg to search out Piet Mondrian, and together they, along with some other
related artists, promoted the De Stijl movement.
Essential Elements:
• Abstraction
• Rectilinear Geometry
• Use of primary colors
The tenets of Neoplasticism
• Coloration must be in the primary colors of red, blue and yellow or the non-colors of
black, gray and white.
• Surfaces must rectangular planes or prisms.
• Aesthetic balance must be achieved and this is done through the use of opposition.
• Compositional elements must be straight lines or rectangular areas.
• Symmetry is to be avoided.
• Balance and rhythm are enhanced by relationships of proportion and location.
Introduction:
• Founded in 1917
• Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Gerrit Reitveld.
• Published a journal ‘De Stijl’ from 1917 – 32.
• Other members were Georges Vantongerloo , Jacobus-Johannes-Pieter Oud, Bart van der
Leck and more.
• “Pure plastic vision should build a new society, in the same way that in art it has built a
new plasticism”. – Piet Mondrian
• An expression of absolutes of life.
• Only absolutes of life were vertical and horizontal lines and the primary colors.
• Art as a collective approach

➢ Read about Alvar Alto also.

➢ Make a report about the aforesaid Architects about their theories and
implemented in the buildings (3 buildings of each Architect) and submit on
5.05.20 till 5:00 pm .