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history of architecture essay
architectural history essay
architectural history essay
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Trying to define modern architecture was a problem that many architects struggled to explain. No one before had created what we now know as “modern” architecture. In the past architects were able to look into history to gain an inspiration for buildings however, this approach would not fit in this new age of the machine. Industrialization changed the way people thought. The Industrial Revolution allowed products to be produced on an industrial scale, allowing ordinary people access to goods that would have been otherwise not have been in their reach. Architecture was slow to adapt to industrialization and the industrial age brought new problems never seen before. One such of architecture’s main goals is to faithfully represent its time; this idea is known as Zeitgeist or “Spirit of the Age.” Since an age of the machine was a never before seen phenomenon, architects had to think slightly ahead of their time in order to keep up with the changes going on in society. Many architects such as Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies worked tirelessly to establish themselves as leaders in their field. They came up with ideas such as harmony between architecture and nature, and function over form. Ludwig Miles was one such architect who tried to cement his place in history through the creative use of concrete, steel and glass. Mies’s style was known to follow the saying “less is more.” One of his greatest known buildings is the Seagram Building. Built in New York City in 1958, it was one of the most expensive buildings built at that time. The Seagram building was built in 1958, during a time “when Park Avenue was transforming from an exclusive residential neighborhood to a prestigious business address, the Seagra...
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...hborhood Preservation Center. Accessed December 10, 2012. http://www.neighborhoodpreservationcenter.org/db/bb_files/Seagram-Building--Including-The-Plaza.pdf.
Scott, Felicity D. "An Army of Soldiers or a Meadow The Seagram Building and the 'Art of Modern Architecture'." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 70 (September 2011).
"Seagram Building." New York Entertainment. Accessed December 10, 2012. http://nymag.com/listings/attraction/seagram_building/.
"Seagram Building, New York." Galinsky. http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/seagram/.
Wegener, Jim. "Nocturnal Modernity." Architizer. Last modified August 12, 2010. Accessed December 10, 2012. http://www.architizer.com/en_us/blog/dyn/6365/nocturnal-modernity/#.UMkahoPs5TJ.
Whyte, William H., narr. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. N.p.: n.p., 1980. DVD. Originally released 1980.
Gehry draws his inspiration from famous paintings such as the Madonna and Child which he qualifies as a “strategy for architecture” (Friedman M. , 2003, p. 42) and which he used as an inspiration for a project in Mexico . Through his interpretation of the paintings and artwork, Gehry looked for a new kind of architecture. His search for a new type of architecture culminated in 1978 with his own house in Santa Monica. What was once a traditional Californian house would be redesigned to become one of the most important and revolutionary designs of the 20th century, giving Gehry international prestige and fame. Frank Gehry’s “Own House” uses a mixture of corrugated metal, plywood, chain link and asphalt to construct a new envelope for an existing typical Californian house. This house has been inspired by Joseph Cornell, Ed Moses and Bob Rauschenberg. Gehry comments on his house by saying that there was something “magical” (Friedman M. , 2003, p. 54) about it. He admits having “followed the end of his [my] nose” (Friedman M. , 2003, p. 54) when it came to constructing the “new” house, which led Arthur Drexler, former Director...
Using the quote by Habermas as a starting point, select up to two buildings designed in the twentieth century and examine what ‘sudden, shocking encounters’ they have encountered, or created. Analyse the building’s meanings as a demonstration of an avant-garde, or potentially arriere-garde, position.
The piece I will be discussing is Eileen Gray’s ‘Villa E1027’. The piece is hugely influential in the architecture and design world. It was one of greys first architectural projects
“In the Cause of Architecture” is an essay written by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908. In this work, Wright outlines many of his architectural values. This text goes into great detail about the philosophy behind Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, as well as many important milestones in his life, such as working for Adler and Sullivan. This text is useful because it comes straight from Frank Lloyd Wright himself. It talks about many things important to his role as a notable American, such as his influences for his architecture and his architectural
In real estate and architecture, some dreams need a lot of staying power to get realized. The Seagram Building is the realization, some three decades late, of Mies van der Rohe's dream of a glass-covered, high-rise office tower that would provide a stunning monument to the International Style's faith in simplicity and clarity.
Modernists longed to recreate the world through new ideas and contemporary techniques to design structurally and provide unprecedented buildings. Architecture took a turn and progressed from total works of art to industrialization during the 20th century. Advancement with technology due to the machine age brought new materials and new tools. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was one of the many architects of this time to not only envision new structural systems, but was able to apply modern style concepts to numerous designs throughout his career. Through the design of the New National Gallery, Mies van der Rohe achieved an unprecedented modern language of architecture with the focus on light, transparency and organization of space to utilize all structural qualities, as well as the relationship to nature through designing from the inside out.
(Image taken from Tranchtenberg, Marvin, Isabelle Hyman. Architecture: From Prehistory to Postmodernity. Second Edition. Prentice Hall, Inc. New Jersey: 2002.)
Architecture, the practice of building design and its resulting products, customary usage refers only to those designs and structures that are culturally significant. Today the architecture must satisfy its intended uses, must be technically sound, and must convey beautiful meaning. But the best buildings are often so well constructed that they outlast their original use. They then survive not only as beautiful objects, but as documents of history of cultures, achievements in architecture that testify to the nature of the society that produced them. These achievements are never wholly the work of individuals. Architecture is a social art, yet Frank Lloyd Wright single handily changed the history of architecture. How did Frank Lloyd Wright change architecture?
The essence of modern architecture lays in a remarkable strives to reconcile the core principles of architectural design with rapid technological advancement and the modernization of society. However, it took “the form of numerous movements, schools of design, and architectural styles, some in tension with one another, and often equally defying such classification, to establish modernism as a distinctive architectural movement” (Robinson and Foell). Although, the narrower concept of modernism in architecture is broadly characterized by simplification of form and subtraction of ornament from the structure and theme of the building, meaning that the result of design should derive directly from its purpose; the visual expression of the structure, particularly the visual importance of the horizontal and vertical lines typical for the International Style modernism, the use of industrially-produced materials and adaptation of the machine aesthetic, as well as the truth to materials concept, meaning that the true nat...
The German Pavilion, more commonly known as the Barcelona Pavilion, is one of the most recognizable buildings of the modern period during the early 20th century. It encapsulates every element of modern architecture in one structure. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the fathers of modern architecture, was the architect of this beautiful building. In this essay I will explore how Mies impacted the modern movement in architecture through his groundbreaking ideas using the Barcelona Pavilion as a case study.
In conclusion, although the development of modern architecture and the intervention of computer technology to advocate this development, the contemporary architectural outcomes have became more complex and complicated with potential formulation problems. As a result, the new architecture theories came to put boundary lines between being in the range of these problems and producing elegant modern built environment. The seduction of computer-produced form also enhances architects to involve in seeking for new theories to develop the discipline and work to combine formulization with materialization. Finally, some of these theories are accepted and some other still a controversial aspect in architecture.
Abstract: New forms in current world have been testimony to the contemporary style of postmodern architecture and are the strength of today’s generation for creating significant architectural standards. Post modernism has blurred the borders between contemporary and traditional construction classical concepts and simply in the field of art and literature. The architectural elements like domes, arches, and classical shapes have lost their identity but the post modernism tries to bridge between these historical forms and contemporary styles. The related architects not only struggled to achieve the image for the buildings but also rejected oversimplified diagrams for living. The post modernism here tries to achieve theoretical base for their designs that creates the excitement in the design program.
Meijenfeldt, E. V., and Geluk, M. 2003. Below ground level: creating new spaces for contemporary architecture. Birkhauser
Vidler, Anthony. The writing of the walls: Architectural theory in the late enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1987.
Jencks briefly explains post-modern aesthetics from their modernist predecessors’ and pinpoints the instant of modernism’s death, writing “Happily, we can date the death of Modern Architecture to a precise moment in time… Modern Architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 p.m. (or thereabouts)...” (23). Unlike Jencks, literary scholars talk about the first, most original or famous representatives of modernism, but they completely avoid pinpointing an ultimate end to the movement. Due to architecture’s visual character and Jencks’ early, authoritative, and internationally read scholarship, the differences between modern and post-modern aesthetics are often clearer in architecture than in literature. Architecture provides a helpful visual counterpoint for modern and post-modern aesthetics in literature. According to him, architectural post-modernism favours pluralism, complexity, double coding, and historical contextualism.