Skye Carroll's slide show:
"The father of modernism in architecture, " Adolf Loos - example: the Steiner house, 1910 (Vienna, Austria). (_Crime and Ornament_, a manifesto condemning all previous architecture for excessive concern with ornament - e.g., Baroque, Rococo, the palaces of Louis XIV. The architecture itself should be the ornamentation.)
Walter Gropius, Shoe Factory (1911). Shows Bauhaus connection - out of the same style as Loos.
[European exhibition in 1889: main exhibition hall, "The Crystal Palace" - first steel and glass building, starting a minimalist, more purist approach to architecture. With the strength of steel, new efficiencies in building - expand the use of glass. While this made more light available - the intention was not so much bring light in as to free up what happens inside the building. Previously, the whole form of the building was more dependent on the structure (more dense)
[Modernists will care less about what happens outside the building vis-a-vis what happens inside the building: buildings were more of an object in the landscape, rather as an element fitting in the landscape.]
Corbusier, Steinen Villa (1926, Paris, France). One of the most well-known of the Modernists. Corbusier (usually refered to as "Corb" by architects) developed his own set of five principles of architecture, his own manifesto: for example, the building is always painted white (reminiscent of Classical forms from Greece, Athens - although we know they were originally painted in bright, lavish colors), etc.
[It is raining blankets outside...]
Other principles: very specific about the use of windows in a building - always horizontal bands; very intent about the use of Platonic forms - the cube, cylinder. "Most of his pieces are deconstructed boxes." He uses a very rectilinear geometry; the building is always cube-like, at least in his early work. [some connection with Cubists who share same interest in basic geometrical forms.]
There is a problem with making any sort of generalizations about architects - they change, like artists, over time.
Mies van der Rohe, Tugendhat Haus. Not necessarily his most important work, but shows where he starts out - quite similar to the Corbusier example in use of long horizontal forms, geometrical shapes.
Corbusier, Villa Savoye (France, 1929). Carryover of use of geometric forms - still horizontal windows - but a hovering block by elevating the main living area. Reflects orientation towards, optimism regarding "the machine": the house is a machine designed to interact with the automobile as a machine, with a drop-off on the first level.
The buildings were fairly universal - it didn't matter where the building was placed.
Mies van der Rohe, Crown Hall (1946-70), on the campus of Illinois Institute of Technology. Known for utilizing technology in its most simple and efficient ways. This example exemplifies keeping the structure and glass on the exterior, allowing the inside to be completely free.
Looks like a convention hall: no interior walls - interior space is flexible, can be used in different ways.
Mies van der Rohe, the Lakeshore Drive apartments, Chicago, 1950 (the forerunner of every single office building we have today). The use of geometry and technology in its most efficient sense. Unfortunately, this set the precedent for almost other skyscrapers afterwards - development into essentially glass boxes. What was important to Mies was the articulation of the surface - a large 3-dimensional grid. You get an idea of the steel structural grid as it runs throughout the building - you get a notion of how the building was built from the way it looks.
Modernists were not so concerned about the looks of a building in terms of style - but their shared guidelines (including buildings are always painted white) issues in a style from which not much deviation is allowed.
Alvar Aalto (Finnish) example: Tuberculosis sanitorium. Held up as more in turn with the landscape in the way he arranges his buildings in the site (_not_ characteristically Modernist in this way).
Corbusier, Notre Dame de Haut, Ronchamp, France, 1955: a considerable departure from basic geometrical forms...
Not too long after WWII, a change in architectural attitudes. A lot of Modernists get related to Fascism - shared principles stressing efficient, calculated, use of material and form - and as their architetecture is appropriated by Fascists in Italy, Germany. Strong association between the architecture and the political motives of Fascism - hence the effort to move from earlier Modernist architecture.
[Ess's comment: there is also the view that it is not so much the Modernist notions of a Cartesian calculative/instrumental reationality that leads us to Fascism - as it is the Romantic reaction against Enlightenment rationalism, especially in Germany.]
Louis Kahn, 1963, Parliament Building, Dakka, Bangladesh. Owes a lot to Corbusier in his use of geometric form: this building is a series of triangular, circular, and square towers surrounding a central square.
Louis Kahn, Kimball Art Museum, Ft. Worth Texas, 1972. Half-cylinders, repeated in a regular pattern.
Minoru Yamasaki, Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex in St. Louis, 1958-1972. This is the post-modernists showcase example of why Modernism does not work - an inhuman approach to design. And one that does not pay attention to social contexts.
Post-modern examples
Philip Johnson, AT&T Corporate Headquarters in New York City. Takes a modernist building, slaps a Chippendale top on it.
Postmodernism - architecture about architecture. People try to achieve more open-minded, contextual approaches - others toy with modernist pieces, flipping them on their heads, poking fun at them, etc.
Richard Meyer, Athenaeum, New Harmony, IN - perhaps more of a neo-Modernist than a post-modernist. This work contains references to Corbusier and Mies - but his geometries are more complex, and he incorporates curvilinear shapes; tries to make more of a gesture to the landscape. (Museum/visitors' center)
Norman Foster, The Shanghai Bank, Hong Kong, 1979-1984. "Hi-tech/slick tech" architecture - looks like something out of Blade Runner. Incredibly expensive - an extremist version of what Mies van der Rohe started with technology, now made absurd - e.g., using non-functioning air ducts on the outside of the building
Bernard Tschumi, 1983, "Folie" - serves no purpose at all. Parc de la Villette, Paris.
Morphosis/Tom Mayne, Model of Performing Arts Pavillion, Los Angeles, 1989.
More into fragmentation, deconstructing grids. The geometries they use are pulled from a variety of things - different forces on the site (a main thoroughfare that cuts through it, a line of site which needs to be kept open, implied grid of surrounding buildings; recreation of pieces which existed before on the site - art museum by Peter Eisenmann, which recreates a 19th ct. armory which existed on the site previously, but now deconstructed and pulled apart, used in different ways).
Zaha Hadid, Fire Station, Well am Rhein (89-93). More artistic approaches to architecture - use of metaphor: an abstract representation of excitement, panic, etc. of a fire.
Lebbeus Woods, drawing, theme for Berlin Free Zone project, 1990. Writes about destruction of hierarchies, creating heterarchies in which a two-dimensional grid is the symbol of organization, vs. a 3-dimensional structure as characteristic of hierarchy. Projects are to be built by the people, made with found materials
Frank Gehry, Chiat de Nojo, 1991, Venice, CA. Freely use obvious, not-so-obvious metaphors in their work - in this case, the obvious one of giant binoculars as entrance to building. They take themselves a lot less seriously than the Modernists did, not pretending to have the answer that will olve all the problems.
Gehry, Art museum, U. of Minnesota Campus, 1991-93. Uses a specially-designed computer system to develop the complex geometries at work.
Ren Koolhaas, Lisle Grande Palais Congress Center, 1984, Lisle, France. Very difficult to categorize: gone through everything, doesn't put much faith in anything.
Richard Rogers, entrance to Channel 4 Offices, London, 1994. Hi-tech/slick tech.
Recommended: Charles Jencks, _The New Moderns
Class discussion:
Q: where is architecture going now?
A: Everybody's inventing their own thing. It seems that things used to be a lot simpler in the 1920's, following Corbusier's rules. Today, everybody has their own theory about what architecture should be and where it's going.
Q: what do you want to do with your architecture?
A; I'm interested in expanding the envelope. E.g., the structure and glass wall of Mies van der Rohe - dissolve the fine barrier represented by the wall. In a lot of cases, the building is supposed to be a somewhat overwhelming structure - I want to play with the subtlety of the transition from the outside to inside.
Q: where does Frank Lloyd Wright fit in?
A: The Arts and Crafts tradition - this would have happened with or without the Industrial Revolution, while modernism would never have happened without the Industrial Revolution.
A very encompassing approach - more about the stained glass that goes into the building, the beams being sanded by hand, use of skilled labor - more of a craft, while the Modernists come out of the Industrial Revolution: anyone can assemble these pieces of steel - anyone can put the bolt through the hole.
Very much still alive (e.g., Fay Jones) - part of the enormous spectrum of contemporary architecture.
A postmodern [relativist] approach would say of all this: you don't who's right, one isn't more right than another - so do whatever you please.
Rebecca Blazer's suggestions for our Belsey reading:
The first chapter is really important for understanding the common-sense interpretation of literature which developed as criticism developed (which didn't emerge until after Shakespeare). There's a spectrum here as well - also chronological - from common-sense perspective to realizing that there's more at stake, leading to diverse rules and forms for interpretation.
Ch. 2: people after Saussure break with earlier approaches, because they began to uncover hidden assumptions in earlier view - assumptions affected by the roots of language.
Focus on the switch from common-sense/Realistic style (characteristic of most contemporary movies) into New Criticism, which looks at how ideology affects our language - lead to better understanding of what different kinds of language can do.