On September 3rd 1856, Louis Sullivan, the “Father of Skyscrapers”, was born into a nation that faced the precipice of change. Modernism had just begun to enter the minds of philosophers around America. Sullivan was attracted to the early modernist ideas over the late modernist one, believing that he could perfect the buildings that he produced into functioning storage units. This belief was undoubtedly influenced by events that were occurring in the nation during the late nineteenth century. One of the most influential events was the Great Chicago Fire. After the Great Chicago Fire, Sullivan realized two key pieces of information. The first was that his works could be destroyed at any time, therefore he didn’t attempt to spend an extensive amount of time designing his building. The second was that one of the main reasons that the buildings of the time were made out of wood which could easily burn. To fix that problem, Sullivan needed a material that was sturdy yet not flammable to replace what had previously been a city based on wood. The Industrial Revolution achieved a solution for Sullivan’s dilemma. Steel, a substance created by infusing a small percent of carbon into iron, allowed for taller, sturdier buildings with lower cost in terms of affordable housing. Urbanization took hold of Chicago as well during the eighteen eighties and nineties. As immigration grew in America, the need for more affordable housing grew correspondingly. The creation of Sullivan’s steel based skyscrapers was the answer to the problem. Although he died April 14th 1924, Sullivan influenced many architects that would complete his dream of a fully functional Chicago. Louis Sullivan’s modern style of functional architecture was molded by the same forces...
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...till maintaining the golden ratio, the Bessemer process was invented. This process blew compressed air into molten pig iron. However, the process did not remove phosphorous which caused the steel to be more brittle. The solution to this problem was found by developing an additional step to the Bessemer process. By adding a chemical base to the solution, the phosphorous could be removed from the steel. Known as the Thomas Basic Process, this way of producing steel ruled the industry until the discovery of the Open Hearth Process. Allowing for larger batches due to the open hearths in which the steel was produced, this process would take hours, allowing for the steel to be chemically molded and tested into any given prerequisites. This ability to shape the steel on a molecular level was essential to the developments of the skyscrapers that Sullivan would later build.
In his opinionated book, From Bauhaus to Our House, Tom Wolfe describes his views on the way architecture has framed our modern world. He frames his book long essay with an excerpt from America the Beautiful, "O Beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, has there ever been another place on earth where so many people of wealth and power have paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested as within thy blessed borders today? . . . Every child goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement-parts wholesale distribution warehouse . . . Every new $900,000 summer house in the north woods of Michigan or on the shore of Long Island has so many pipe railings, ramps, hob-tread metal spiral stairways, sheets of industrial plate glass, banks of tungsten-halogen lamps, and white cylindrical shapes, it looks like an insecticide refinery." (Wolfe 1) This quote, in short, is the premise of his critique. He does not like the way modern architecture
Andrew Carnegie came over to this country in 1848, with his family in the hopes of finding a better life for themselves. At age 14, Carnegie became a courier in a telegraph office. Later, he became involved with the railroad industry and soon was Superintendent of the railroad in Pittsburgh. By the age of 30 he had an annual income of $50,000. Carnegie then left the Pennsylvania Railroad and started concentrating on steel. He would eventually open the Carnegie Steel Company. He was introduced to a new process called the Bessemer process for his steel. At first Carnegie was not sure of this new process but took a chance and adopted it into his company.
He went to London in 1872, saw the new Bessemer method of producing steel, and returned to the United States to build a million-dollar steel plant. Foreign competition was kept out by a high tariff conveniently set by Congress, and by 1880 Carnegie was producing 10,000 tons of steel a month, making $1 1/2 million a year in profit. By 1900 he was making $40 million a year, and that year, at a dinner party, he agreed to sell his steel company to J. P. Morgan. He scribbled the price on a note: $492,000,000.”
“Most railroad tracks were not damaged. This allowed shipments of aid to come in from across the country and around the world.” (10) This would be a critical factor in accelerating efforts to rebuild the city. New construction of neighborhoods and businesses created thousands of jobs for unemployed workers. By October 1872, new buildings worth nearly $50 million had been erected. Between 1872 and 1879 more than ten thousand construction permits were issued. Between 1871 and 1891 amount $316,220,000 was poured into the construction of new buildings. (9) Architects began designing the world’s first skyscrapers. Construction codes and fire codes were no longer ignored. The destruction from the fire opened up a broad expanse of land to build on. “To a huge degree, the design and layout of the city of Chicago and the character of the buildings are a result of the Chicago Fire,” he says. “If the fire hadn’t happened, it would look a lot different.”(6) In less than 20 years after the fire, Chicago became a major economic and transportation hub. All of these factors attracted more and more people to the city of Chicago. Before the fire, approximately 324,000 people lived there. During the next ten years after the fire, 500,000 people lived there. By 1890, 19 years later, more than one million people lived in
Rayfield, Jo Ann. "Tragedy in the Chicago Fire and Triumph in the Architectural Response." Tragedy in the Chicago Fire and Triumph in the Architectural Response. Illinois Periodicals Online, n.d. Web. 02 May 2014. .
However, the success of the building schemes relied on the construction methods and innovations that are now attributed as bei...
James F. O'Gorman, Dennis E. McGrath. ABC of Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Document. October 2013.
The beginnings of modern processing of iron can be traced back to central Europe in the mid-14th century BC. Pure iron has limited use in today’s world. Commercial iron always contains small amounts of carbon and other impurities that change its physical properties, which are much improved by the further addition of carbon and other alloying elements. This helps to prevent oxidation, also known as rust.
According to Charles Jencks, "The modern world, compelled forward by the imperative of continuous growth, is a juggernaut with no reverse gear". To architecture, modernism is like the discovery of the American continent all over again, a territory that is not owned,...
Today technology allows us to construct structures that we would never have been able to make in the past. Some of the creations are impressive based on what they accomplish but others are masterpieces in themselves. Man’s capability to build such tall buildings, as the skyscrapers we are familiar with covering our cities today, is a major expression of the advancements we have made as a culture. The power necessary to build such tall structures inspired competition between architects to see who could build the tallest one. One skyscraper that has inspired many and served as a model, for high rise buildings that were created after, is the Chrysler Building. The Chrysler Building serves as an identifying mark to anyone that views the New York City skyline. The history surrounding the Chrysler Building is almost as intricate as the artwork and engineering of the building itself. Today it elicits a reaction from anyone who passes by just as it did when it was first created.
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...
In conclusion, the designers and builders of the tower have an undesirable job: creating a building that is functional, modern, sustainable and unique. At the same time it is honoring the memory of the people that died in and around the buildings that stood there before. While the green sustainable features have been criticized for being too expensive, they will do more than save just water, electricity and emissions. They and the grace of the building will inspire a generation of green and safe skyscrapers for the twenty-first century. This building has become one of the safest, environmentally friendly and expensive ever built, but as critics slate the building for various reasons, one cannot take away the determination through political, social and economic status that designers and workers have created such a beautiful building with great meaning.
Frank Lloyd Wright has been called “one of the greatest American architect as well as an Art dealer that produced a numerous buildings, including houses, resorts, gardens, office buildings, churches, banks and museums. Wright was the first architect that pursues a philosophy of truly organic architecture that responds to the symphonies and harmonies in human habitats to their natural world. He was the apprentice of “father of Modernism” Louis Sullivan, and he was also one of the most influential architects on 20th century in America, Wright is idealist with the use of elemental theme and nature materials (stone, wood, and water), the use of sky and prairie, as well as the use of geometrical lines in his buildings planning. He also defined a building as ‘being appropriate to place’ if it is in harmony with its natural environment, with the landscape (Larkin and Brooks, 1993).
Frank Lloyd Wright was perhaps the most influential American architect of the 20th century and one of the greatest to ever live. What was well known about Wright was that he was deeply ambivalent about cities and metropolis centers. His key criticism of large cities was that the advancing technologies had rendered the cities, which were created industry and immigration in the late 19th and early 20th Century, completely obsolete. He famously quoted that, “ The present city…has nothing to give the citizen…because centralization have no forces of regeneration”. Instead, Wright envisioned decentralized settlements (otherwise known as suburban neighborhoods) that would take advantage of the mobility offered by the automobile, telephones, and telegraphic communication. Because of the rise of the suburban complexes in the post WW2 era, this is where Wright first got the reputation has being a prophet for the architecture world.
Jencks believes “the glass-and-steel box has become the single most used form in Modern Architecture and it signifies throughout the world ‘office building’” (27). Thus, modern architecture is univalent in terms of form, in other words it is designed around one out of a few basic values using a limited number of materials and right angles. In...