Above, Corbusier, Le: Villa Savoye
Villa Savoye, Poissy, France, an International Style residence by Le Corbusier, 1929–30
As we have begun to see in discussing authors such as Adolf Loos and groups such as De Stijl and the Bauhaus, architecture and the concept of the building as a whole, as a 'total' work of art (gesamtkunstwerk), is one of the central themes and concerns of modernism. In fact, it is probably not going too far to say that you really cannot understand the core or essence of modern design, unless you have at least a basic sense or understanding of modernist architecture.
This week we will focus specifically on that and will aim to introduce you to the main principles, leading architects, and important examples of the modern movement in architecture.
Reading Assignment
You should review the Course Materials section as a basic source for info on modern architecture.
You should review the Course Materials section as a basic source for info on modern architecture.
The first links in the section will give you a concise introduction to modern architecture and lead you through many of the main works and architects we will be discussing.
The middle links will refer to specific examples of modernist buildings we will discuss.
The latter links, on the Dutch modernist-inspired housing estate known as Bijlmer, will be primarily discussed later in the semester, when we review some of most interesting 'failures' of the modernist project, though if interested you can certainly take a look at them now as they do fit here as well.
Written Assignment
As there are no text readings for this week, in preparing your survey/summary of your work for the week, your writing should focus on addressing the basic principles and main proponents of modern architecture, as well as finding some interesting examples of works by these architects (as well as other, if you wish) as discussing briefly how they exemplify the modern approach to the subject.
Texts each link back to course materials found on bb.cazenovia.eduAs there are no text readings for this week, in preparing your survey/summary of your work for the week, your writing should focus on addressing the basic principles and main proponents of modern architecture, as well as finding some interesting examples of works by these architects (as well as other, if you wish) as discussing briefly how they exemplify the modern approach to the subject.
Arch Daily: AD Essentials of Modernism
A guide from ArchDaily to the essentials of modern architecture.
Modernist Architecture Guide
A guide to the principal features, main architects, and significant buildings associated wi
Congrès Internationaux Architecture Moderne > CIAM
Wiki link for the influential 1928-1955 Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne, an organization that set the modern agenda for much of architecture and urban planning in the 20th century.
Extra CIAM: Athens Charter
A reprint from The Getty Conservation Institute of the famous "Athens Charter".
The Athens Charter was the result of the fourth meetings of the CIAM group. Proclaiming the need for cities to become "functional," it applied the principles of modernism and modern architecture to urban planning at a broad scale. In the years after WWII, the charter became the essential guide to the wholesale reorganization and reconstruction (and, often, destruction) of older urban environments around the world. Seen as inspiring by some, and as rigid and dehumanizing by others, it was perhaps the single most influential architectural, design, and urban planning 'manifesto' of the 20th century.
Note: This link is labeled 'extra' as the Athens Charter is an extensive and detailed document. It would require careful attention and significant time to go through in its entirety. It is included here so you can be aware of it and have the opportunity to explore it if you wish, especially for those who might have an interest in this topic and who wished to investigate the design principles that drove modernism at a broad scale (overall urban environments).
Berlin Modernism Housing Estates > UNESCO/NHK YouTube = 2:33
A short video describing the UNESCO World Heritage designated modernist housing estates in Berlin.
The property consists of six housing estates that testify to innovative housing policies from 1910 to 1933, especially during the Weimar Republic, when the city of Berlin was particularly progressive socially, politically and culturally. The property is an outstanding example of the building reform movement that contributed to improving housing and living conditions for people with low incomes.
Siemensstadt Housing Estate
A brief account of the Siemensstadt housing estate, one of the more famous of the UNESCO-designated modernist sites in Berlin. Architect: Hans Scharoun and Walter Gropius Location: Charlottenburg, Spandau, Berlin, Germany
UNESCO: The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier
UNESCO World Heritage's page devoted to Le Corbusier, with a good short account of his contributions to the Modern movement in architecture. Contains a short video featuring several of his major works.
Arch Daily: Villa Savoye Le Corbusier
Images from ArchDaily of one of the classics of modern architecture... Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier.
5 points of architecture RE: Le Corbusier
Architectural Digest: Le Corbusier's Most Significant Projects
Arch Daily: Mies van der Rohe
A brief introduction and images of major works by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, among the most famous and recognized modernist architects.
NYC: Modernist Landmark Faces Destruction
An account of the controversy involving the fate of 270 Park Avenue, a landmark modernist skyscraper and the first such building to be designed by a woman architect in NYC. Interesting for noting the ongoing currency of the debates surrounding the issues we are discussing in class.
Revisioning Biljmer
A short history of the project to renew the Dutch modernist housing estate Bijlmer.
Documenting the Myths of Modernism
Bijlmer City of the Future Part 1 Podcast
Bijlmer Reputation
A brief account of how the Bijlmer project came to be seen as one of the prime examples of modernism's failures.
CIAM : 1928 - 1956 Rethinking Architecture > An Overview
Arch Daily: Unite d'Habitation by Le Corbusier
A Le Corbusier 'masterpiece' from 1952, and among the most famous housing projects of the 20th century.
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Artists/Designers,
Movements & Styles 1870 - 1930
*International
*WWII
1930s - 1960s Modernist Style
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| Berthold Lubetkin, exhibition display panel illustrating features of the design of Finsbury Health Centre, London 1938 |
Overarching principles of modernism was that 'form follows function’ a phrase coined by American architect Louis Sullivan.
Design should derive directly from its purpose.
Thus, architecture should exhibit simplicity and clarity, having an analytical viewpoint.
Exhibit a rational use of materials, nothing more, nothing less.
Eliminate all unnecessary detail (Recall: Adolf Loos’ Ornament & Crime: decoration = inefficient and wasteful.
Rejected ornament and embracing minimalism
Modernism became the single most important new style of the 20th century. Takes an analytical approach to the function of buildings - rational use of materials, incorporating new materials
Also known as International Modernism or International Style after the exhibition of the modernist architect in US 1932 Philip C. Johnson. In Britain, the style is known as Modern Movement.
The Glass House, 1948-49, designed by Philip C. Johnson, New Canaan, CT
The style is influenced enormous changes in technology, advances in materials and new ways of thinking in society.
- Reinforced concrete
- steel frames
- curtain glass walls
- ribbon windows
These ideas spread throughout all artistic design fields as a response to urbanization, new technologies, and automation.
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| Le Corbrusier Pavillon in Zurich |
Characteristics:
- Architectural components positioned at 90-degree angles to each other
- Strong emphasis on the vertical and horizontal axis (recall DeStijl/Aesthetic Movement/Bauhaus)
- Rectilinear, cylindric and cube forms throughout
- Forms appear to be stacking, accumulating, growing - symbolic of the collective whole?
- Asymmetrical compositions
- Large windows set in horizontal bands
- Open plan interiors, thus providing a “flow” within neutral space
- Often exterior color = white / cream
- Use of concrete - ‘adaptable,’ forgiving material
- Reinforced steel within buildings
- The visual expression of building components instead of camouflaging them
- Use materials that were machine-produced rather than human-made
- Modernist architecture became globally adopted, until the 1970s and 1980s when Postmodernism becomes the dominant style.
German Work Federation = The Deutscher Werkbund group of designers and industrialists founded in Munich in 1907 that attempted to integrate traditional craft with high-quality mass production of the machine age. This period is thought to be the beginning of industrial design.
The Social Housing Project > Horseshoe or Hufeisensiedlung 1925 - 1933
As a result of the huge housing shortage which had plagued Germany since the end of the World War I, numerous cooperatives, public associations and syndicates were created with the objective of building affordable homes in Berlin.
The Hufeisensiedlung horseshoe-shaped building was derived fromTaut's desire to fulfill the needs of its inhabitants for socialization.
Their intention was that the inhabitants of the estate would have contact with nature and enjoy the fresh air, light, and sun, hence the wide balconies and windows which opened out onto the landscape.
This project is considered historically as one of the first to humanize high-density housing.
1. The Hufeisensiedlung Britz Residential Project is one of six social housing buildings designed in the modernist style of Berlin.
2. The other five are the Falkenberg Garden City in the district of Treptow (B.Taut, 1913-1916),
3. The White City in Reinickendorf (Otto Rudolf Salvisberg, Wilhelm Büning, and Bruno Ahrends, 1929-1931)
4. The Carl Legien Project in Prenzlauer Berg (B.Taut, 1928-1930)
5. Siemensstadt in Charlottenburg (H. Scharoun and W. Gropuis 1929-1934)
6. The Schillerpark Project in Wedding (B.Taut 1924-1930, extended between 1953 to 1957). In the 1990s, the housing complex was restored.
Modernism was synonymous with the Bauhaus school (founded by Gropuis 1919, shut down with the rise of power from Nazis WWII) many designers emigrating to the USA.
1930’s America attracted many Modernists from Europe to emigrate, especially to urban centers; New York, Chicago, St. Louis, etc.
Modernism in the USA becomes synonymous with America’s rise as the world’s new super-power, with large expanses of land and highways to be built on it, connecting city to city, large urban landscapes, skyscrapers rising up t/o urban centers.
Walter Gropius (1883-1969)
Dessau Germany Bauhaus School
Siemensstadt Housing, Berlin, DE
HANS SCHAROUN & WALTER GROPIUS
YEAR:
1929-1934
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Walter Gropius (1883-1969), the leader of the Bauhaus = reject historical models and adopt innovation of new ideologies of modern industry.
Above: Gropius House / The Wood House, the private residence of Gropius at 68 Baker Bridge Road, Lincoln, MA
Built in 1938
Mixes up building materials: concrete, stone, brick, steel, and wood
"The swelling house should no longer resemble something like a fortress, like a monument of walls with medieval thickness and an expensive front intended for showy representation. Instead, it is to be of light construction, full of bright daylight and sunshine, alterable, time-saving, economical and useful in the last degree to its occupants whose life functions it is intended to serve." > Gropius
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| Designed by Gropius, notice the same type of vertical and horizotal stacking you find in his archtiectural forms. |
Alongside Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier were the pioneers of the Modernist movement.
Le Corbusier had an enormous impact on many British public housing projects.
Birth name = Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris
Le Corbusier's concept of The Modular = he used the Golden Ratio for scale in all of his architectural plans. It is based on the height of an Englishman with his arm raised.
Golden Ratio = In mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities.
Le Corbusier's architecture and urban designing gain inspiration from modern engineering developments such as: grain silos, passenger jets, automobiles, cruise liners.
Mid-1950's Modernism inspires Le Corbusier's New Brutalism forms: rigid / harsh concrete surfaces and lines.
Brutalism becomes the style of choice for urban centers, especially commercial buildings such as shopping centers.
NOTE: We will be looking at Brutalist architecture and design in the coming weeks.
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| Le Corbusier's Lounge / leather and metal Design period 1920 to 1949 |
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| Le Corbusier Chair, leather and metal, 1928-1930 |
His famous book: “Towards a New Architecture” he states that “a house is a machine for living in.” Published in 1928.
Link to information on this extremely important read:
Wiki: Toward a New Architecture . Le Corbusier
Link to information on this extremely important read:
Wiki: Toward a New Architecture . Le Corbusier
Palace of Assembly, Chandigarh, India, 1951 is a legislative assembly within the Capitol Complex, that comprised of three buildings — Legislative Assembly, Secretariat and High Court
The Cité Radieuse > The Radiant City, Marseille, France, 1947 - 1952 The Unité d'habitation is a modernist residential housing design principle developed by Le Corbusier, with the collaboration of painter-architect Nadir Afonso. The concept formed the basis of several housing developments designed by him throughout Europe with this name. Brutualist - although early will discuss down the road...
Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France, 1954
Interior of Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp,France, 1954
The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 1959 concrete
Pavillon Le Corbusier - museum dedicated to the architect
Zurich, Switerzerland
Museum 1964
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (together with Gropius) create the Chicago School of Architecture, educating young architects much the same way as they did earlier in the Bauhaus years.
Film on Mies van der Rohe Regular or Super: Views on Mies van Der Rohe, Director Patrick Demers, Joseph Hillel, 2004
REGULAR OR SUPER is a fascinating and informative introduction to the work of Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969), one of the 20th century's most influential architects, and a thought-provoking demonstration of the social and artistic contributions that architecture at its best can make to our urban environments.
Here is the link Regular or Super: Views on Mies van der Rohe . 2004
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (together with Gropius) create the Chicago School of Architecture, educating young architects much the same way as they did earlier in the Bauhaus years. 40 of his buildings are in Chicago, 1 in NYC.
Above Seagram Building located in Manhattan, NYC
1958
- The international style that is characterized by sleek metal and glass instead of heavy brick and stone
- One of the first buildings to use reinforced concrete > to structurally stiffen the core structure > widely adopted following
- Engineering consultants say that it is the first building to use high-strength bolted connections
- 38 stories high skyscraper
- Originally offices for Joseph E. Seagram's & Sons
- Mies van der Rohe's first tall office building
- Show it's construction rather than hide it under ornamentation
- Mies van der Rohe intended for the steel frame to be visible, but American building codes state that all structural steel must be covered by concrete or another fire-retardant material
- The building serves to influence many other architects in the future
MvdR. Crown Hall, Institute of Technology, 1956 Chicago
Gordon Bunshaft
The Lever House Gordon Bunshaft
The buildings aesthetic rejects its Classical and Gothic surroundings. It is new. 1952
390 Park Avenue, Midtown - open plan / court yards
International Style
Below: 510 Fifth Avenue in NYC, Manufacturers Trust Company,
Below: 510 Fifth Avenue in NYC, Manufacturers Trust Company,
c. 1955 Gordon Bunshaft
c. 1955 Gordon Bunshaft