In 2013, Architect Magazine, ranked MIT’s Architectural program #2 among graduate schools in the USA. As it builds up its prestigious reputation in Architecture, MIT has tried to inspire its students to be creative and fanciful in their projects through the unique buildings that they have on campus. The Stata Center, an academic complex designed by Frank Gehry , originally got a lot of attention, because of its novel appearance. Critics said it was a good act of self-expression, and its complex design was a good representation of the intellectual capacity of the scientists that were going to be working there. Likewise, Simmons Hall -a residence hall designed by Steven Holl- finally got the entire freshman class to live on campus, which was something MIT desperately needed. These buildings, among many others at the MIT campus, are built precisely as inspirations for their architectural students. As Thomas P. Hughes - a professor at MIT- once noted, MIT has celebrated their buildings as “expressing the inventiveness, energy, and excellence of the people within them.” However, it certainly seems as though the buildings were built solely focused on their appearance, as they have turned out to be neither efficient nor cheap. These two buildings have caused so many problems that they have not proven to be a good representation of the innovative minds at MIT. Even though the appearance of the buildings represents forward-thinking architecture, they nevertheless result in extra construction time, cost inefficiencies, and experiential and structural malfunctions.
Both Simmons Hall and the Stata Center took much longer to build than what was expected. This is a disgrace for MIT’s Architectural School, as they are not being good role m...
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...their Architectural school has always tried to inspire their students to be innovative through their buildings on campus. Since their start, they have filled their campus with the most creative buildings in Cambridge. They have built such imaginative and idealist buildings in hopes of inspiring their students to become visionary architects. Through the years though, they lost their spark of innovation and instead have created buildings that turned out to be not only too expensive, but also not functional. With it, they have lowered MIT’s intellectual reputation, as many critics have related the faults of these buildings towards the intellect of MIT students. If MIT plans to maintain their prestigious reputation, they should focus on teaching their students to create buildings that serve their purposes, and not focus so much on their visual aspects.
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...
Frank Lloyd Wright is widely known and is considered to be America’s greatest architect. He is considered, in the eyes of many, to be the most consequential American architect of the 20th century. “Strongly individualistic, flamboyant, and arrogant, Wright designed and built more than four hundred structures that reflect his architectural genius. Directly and indirectly, he heavily influenced twentieth century architecture with his diverse use of geometry in his designs” (Eisenman).
Dell Upton is a historian and renowned professor of architecture and Urbanism at the University of California. He has published several books on architecture; one of them is “Architecture in the United States”, published in 1998. In this book, Upton analyzes the architecture of the United States in different aspects, such as nature, money and art, thus depicting the great variety in architectural forms, and how throughout the decades, different interests have lead communities to different ways of building, different purposes and materials, thus reflecting their way of thinking and their relationship with the environment. By exploring so many different architectural styles, Upton reveals the great diversity and richness that has always, and continues to characterize American 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...
...y conceptual. But I sense that this might suffice as an initial tip and could help the multitudes who are carrying on the design procedure of these dorms. [2][5]
James F. O'Gorman, Dennis E. McGrath. ABC of Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Document. October 2013.
So rational engagement with architecture is a more effective means to comprehend and understand architectural form.
Sorkin, Michael., Mildred S. Friedman, Frank O. Gehry, Frank O.Gehry Associates. Gehry Talks: architecture + Process. New York: Universe Publishing: Distributed to the U.S trade by St. Martin’s Press, 2002.
In order to create innovative public architecture, considered to be the most civic, costly, time intensive and physical of the arts, the project holds a degree of risk, strife, and negotiation . Overcoming these tasks and creating worthy public architecture is a challenge designers try to accomplish, but are rarely successful. The people involved in a potential public building, can be larger than the building itself. Public architecture tries to please all, even the doubters and critics, but because of the all these factors, a building is closer to failing than succeeding.
True architects are needed to create architectural beauty and they do so by using “elements which are capable of affecting our senses, and of rewarding the desire of our eyes...the sight of them affects us immediately” (16). Le Corbusier’s says that we must standardize architecture with respect to function so that we can mass produce it until we perfect its aesthetic through competition and innovation. Le Corbusier believed that Architecture schools weren’t teaching students correctly and that engineers would be the ones who save architecture. Architecture is a thing of plastic emotion. “It should use elements capable of striking our senses, of satisfying our visual desires…arranging them in a way that the sight of them clearly affects
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...
of their buildings. One of the basic questions that this paper will be seeking to answer is whether architects and critics accepted ...
There are 25 major specialties in engineering that are recognized by professional societies. In any one of those 25 specialties, the goal of the engineer is the same. The goal is to be able to come up with a cost effective design that aids people in the tasks they face each day. Whether it be the coffee machine in the morning or the roads and highways we travel, or even the cars we travel in, it was all an idea that started with an engineer. Someone engineered each idea to make it the best solution to a problem. Even though engineer’s goals are similar, there are many different things that engineers do within their selected field of engineering. This paper will focus on the architectural field of engineering.
In Laugier’s book, “An Essay on Architecture,” he addresses early architects’ ignorance. Laugier explains how architects did not study nature and the set rules nature has already created for us. In his Essay, he reveals the flaws that many early buildings throughout Europe posses. Some of the more general flaws he exposes are disproportioning in architectural design, unnecessary placement, and ignoring the primitive and original purpose of a building all together. Therefore, Laugier believes appropriate and appealing architecture can only be designed and crafted when the architect behind the building has followed the rules of nature.
...But however some engineers often love to challenge themselves by making plans that balance functional value of aesthetic appeal. In communities they emphasize contemporary design structure, engineers often renovate or rebuild more creative structures where older, more traditional structures once stood.