John Soane (1753 – 1837), is one of the most original English architects. Soane’s personal style is superficially Neo-Classical, but with his interest in death and ruins Soane was also very much at the forefront of the picturesque design. Whilst Gottfried Semper (1803 -79), a German architect, took up Neo-Renaissance design as well as a belief that in the expression of the function of a building in its exterior, including any decorative. This paper will concentrate upon examine the difference and similarities of those two prominent architects in the 19th century. More specifically arguing that both architects are vastly different in employing revivalism in their work and thus indicates the values and idea is of each nation is also different. This will be done through examine the education path they went through, their idea of primitivism and classical architecture as well as how some of their major architectural work such as Dulwich picture gallery, Bank of England for Soane and Dresden Art Gallery, Art History Museum and Dresden Opera House for Semper to reflect their design style.
Soane and Semper underwent dissimilar educational path in becoming architects. Soane become an apprentice of architect George Dance at the age of fifteen. Three years later he was accepted into the Royal Academy in London to be trained as a classical architect. Like many others, Soane partake in the Grand Tour and was able study, draw and measure monumental buildings first hand. Soane began his architectural career after his return to England. Many of his early design such as the Dairy, Hammels Park in figure 1 demonstrate exploration of classical themes he witnessed during the Grand Tour. As we will see later in Soane’s design. He learns from anti...
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...oane express architecture in the interdependence of form structure, and light in buildings such as Lincoln Fields Inns. His ability to abstract the classical architectural element and modify with his own style made him a versatile and imaginative designer in the history of English architecture. Semper on the other hand is dominated architectural theories to much greater extend than Soane did within their cultural and national context. Mallgrave claims that “it is impossible to understand the impulse of German modernism at the turn of the century without recourse to his idea.” 3 In a sense Samper renewal architecture in the 19th century from the bottom up, that is through reexamining the history and theory based on new ideology and observation of historical architectural. As a result, the use of decoration and polychromy is apparent in much modern architecture.
It is the new decade after the end of world war two and modernism is a well-established practice. Its pioneers and spearheads are prevalent figures looming over the new architects and designers who are trying to make their mark in the shadows of such historically influential people. With new technologies and materials emerging from the world wars the next era of modernism had started to evolved, bringing with it philosophies and ideas which seemed far removed from those of the pioneers of modernism “What emerged in the late 1940s and 1950s was an expanding synthesis of questions utterly removed from the confident statements of the pioneers.”(Spade 1971,10) Two significant buildings were designed in the 50's, both of them for educational institutes and to house students of architecture, there were both designed in completely different styles and methods. The first is Ludwig Mies van der Rohes' Crown Hall, finished in 1956 and designed as a part of a campus master plan for the Illinois Institute of technology in Chicago. Mies' design for Crown Hall is one of his most realised expressio...
In 1834, when a fire nearly completely demolished the old Palace of Westminster, Britain had a chance to redefine what British architecture was (Richardson p. 111-112). Although throughout Europe Classicism and the Greek and Roman Revival had had a stronghold on secular buildings, by the early 1800 Neo-Gothic was starting to be seen as a nationalistic style of architecture, something that should, together with language, be national (Barry, p.114). While in France the Gothic Revival was mainly used for secular buildings, in Britain it was mainly used for ecclesiastical buildings (Barry, p. 110). It was into this world that August Welby Nothmore Pugin (1812-52) was born.
Such like the House at Regensburg; aestheticism played a part but here it is interpreted in a different sense. Eames created an aesthetic effect that arose from the ‘careful juxtapositions of ready-made structural elements’. This can be seen from the webbed trusses, which are formed from reflections and transparencies. Where selected objects are a part of the architecture itself, as much as the building. The eucalyptus trees filter the light entering the house, only selecting judicious objects, which creates a unique effect for the interior of the house. The design of the house achieved a ‘poetry of form’, that were in a state of difference with the ‘absolution of Mies’.
“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
Mies' well known theory of “less is more” is apparent by the spaciousness and functional quality of the Seagram building; everything serves a purpose, either for aesthetic appeal or functionality. “Less is more” is a concept used throughout the architectural world today. “Mies van der Rohe stands as a great moral force of the International Style. The essence of architecture, to Mies, lies in the expression of structure. And his precise, sophisticated, and consistent style of architecture sets an exam...
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, later addressed as Mies, was born in the German town of Aix La Chapelle. At a young age he gained fundamental experience in the craftsman’s tradition and skills, later after commissioning his first project as an independent architect, Mies “executed in the then popular traditional style of steep roofs, gables and dormer windows with precision and careful attention to detail.” Next, he had the opportunity to train under Peter Behrens, where Mies learned to appreciate order and fine detail, as well as new ideas on proportion, simplicity, and the use of steel and glass. Mies acquired a romantic language from Behrens that derived from “ his domestic architecture from Karl Friedrich Schinkel. It was characterized by a unique sense of rhythm and proportion, a purity of form, and a nobility that stemmed from the practice of placing structures on wide platforms or pedestals.” T...
(Image taken from Tranchtenberg, Marvin, Isabelle Hyman. Architecture: From Prehistory to Postmodernity. Second Edition. Prentice Hall, Inc. New Jersey: 2002.)
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.
The reason for this piece is to attempt a comparison between two architectural examples that employ classical design from different stylistic eras of architectural history. The two styles I've chosen to discuss are the Renaissance and Baroque periods. An understanding of classical architecture needs to be made, as it is the fundamental style of any period that developed architecturally
...s considered modern at that time, it still contained references to Classicism and neo-Renaissance. This resulted in his modern architecture arguments not to be completely distinct and leave the traditional architecture of the past. John Ruskin decried the type of restorations employed by Viollet-le-Duc stating that it is “a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered, a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed” (Viollet-le-Duc 35). Because Viollet-le-Duc refuted the challenge of his own ideas, he continued to design buildings in eclectic styles. Both Wagner and Viollet-le-Duc did not succeed to completely avoid using traditional architecture as reference to modern architecture. The preservation movement widely rejected Viollet’s methods because it threatened the autonomy of the observed historical past.
Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier are two very prominent names in the field of architecture. Both architects had different ideas concerning the relationship between humans and the environment. Their architectural styles were a reflection of how each could facilitate the person and the physical environment. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, is considered one of the most important buildings in the history of American architecture and Le Corbusier s Villa Savoye helped define the progression that modern architecture was to take in the 20th Century. Both men are very fascinating and have strongly influenced my personal taste for modern architecture. Although Wright and Corbusier each had different views on how to design a house, they also had similar beliefs. This paper is a comparison of Frank Lloyd Wright‘s and Le Corbusier ‘s viewpoints exhibited through their two prominent houses, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye.
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.
Holt, Elizabeth G. From the Classicist to the Impressionists: Art and Architecture in the 19th Century. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966.