Architecture Flashcards
Peter Behrens, AEG Turbine Factory, 1908‐09,
Berlin
Deutscher Werkbund
It is an influential and well-known example of industrial architecture. Its revolutionary design features 100m long and 15m tall glass and Steel walls on either sides. A bold move and world first that would have a durable impact on Architecture as a whole.
The site was since 1892, occupied by the electrical company founded by August Thyssen and the Thomson Houston Electric Company, the Union-Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (UEG). The company’s goal was to get into the booming electrical industry, and this site was dedicated to the production of electrical Trams. But the company quickly encountered financial difficulties, and the Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG) took over in 1904 and planned the construction of a new turbine factory, as the existing factory had become too small.
The architect Peter Behrens was commissioned with the construction of the new building. More than an architect, Behrens was employed from 1907 by AEG as an artistic consultant. and designed the company logo, and other company graphics for the building. He was also in charge of the overall image of the company. Initially influenced by the developing Art Nouveau , the architect turned soon to the Werkbund, which in turn was influenced by the British Arts and Crafts.
The Deutscher Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen) was a German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists. The Werkbund was to become an important event in the development of modern architecture and industrial design, particularly in the later creation of the Bauhaus school of design. Its initial purpose was to establish a partnership of product manufacturers with design professionals to improve the competitiveness of German companies in global markets. The Werkbund was less an artistic movement than a state-sponsored effort to integrate traditional crafts and industrial mass-production techniques, to put Germany on a competitive footing with England and the United States. Its motto Vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau (from sofa cushions to city-building) indicates its range of interest.
The other factories that AEG had at that time, mostly known as “crenellated castle-cities” were places where technology occurred in a dowdy coat of historicist design. Among the requirements and expectations of the AEG was the intent to design an impressive and sophisticated, large scale construction. Peter Behrens created an architecture for the industry that came out of the clamp of hiding behind historic facades and transformed itself into a new self-confidence.
Arata Isozaki Gallery Building,
Mito Art Tower,
view of north end Mito, Japan, 1990
Postmodern Architecture
Art Tower Mito (水戸芸術館 Mito Geijutsukan?) is an arts complex in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. It opened in 1990 as part of the centennial celebrations of the municipality of Mito. There is a concert hall that seats 680, a theater for up to 636, a contemporary art gallery, and a landmark tower. Arata Isozaki was the architect, with acoustical design by Nagata Acoustics.
In 1963 established Arata Isozaki & Associates, the base from which he has continued to work ever since. From his 1960s work such as Oita Prefectural Library, to his 1990s work in locations as far afield as Barcelona, Orlando, Kraków, Nagi in Okayama Prefecture, Kyoto, Nara, La Coruña, Akiyoshidai in Yamaguchi Prefecture and Berlin, to his 21st century work in the Middle East, China, Central Asia, and elsewhere, Isozaki has created an architecture so personal in its ideas and spaces that it defies characterization in any single school of thought. At the same time he resists the temptation to apply a signature style to his jobs, preferring instead to create architectural solutions specific to the political, social and cultural contexts of the client and site in question.
Through Isozaki it became possible that a global discourse be held at a level where individual voices can be heard. His activities, spanning over a half century, have gone beyond thought, art, design, music, film, theatre and of course architecture, and they have raised questions spanning multiple ages and multiple disciplines.
“The most important thing, I thought, was not to make the Art Tower Mito complex a sort of multi-purpose hall something that I knew from my several decades of experience. In Europe, concert halls, opera halls and art galleries are each placed in different buildings and operated under separate systems. In Japan as well, Kabuki and Noh theaters are distinct from regular theaters. Thus, it was decided to [shift away from the multiplex concept] and return to the original [concept] direction. In the end, the design was based on the concept of separate buildings the theater, concert hall, art gallery, tower, plaza, conference hall, organ hall, and parking area linked together within certain confines so that they could be used in combination. That was the basic motif of the design.
That, I think, is the most appropriate solution for developing facilities in Japan today. To add something new in cities such as Tokyo, with their plethora of concert halls and theaters, one possible solution is to make a point of integrating and combining the various arts, such as at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. However, in reality, the individual parts [of such building complexes] are usually operated independently of each other, meaning that the physical aspects inevitably tend to limit the non-physical aspects, rendering them incomplete. On the other hand, I would still like to leave some room for testing future possibilities [at such complexes].”
Le Corbusier, Assembly Building, Chandigarh,
India, 1959‐62
International Style
After the partition of Punjab, in 1947 following the independence of India, the divided Punjab required a new capital as Lahore was now in Pakistan. Thus Le Corbusier was commissioned by first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru to build a new city of Chandigarh. The brief for the design was a city “unfettered by the traditions of the past, a symbol of the nation’s faith in the future”. Subsequently Corbusier and his team built not just large assembly, and high court building, but all major buildings in the city, and down to door handles in public offices. Today many of the building are considered recognised as modernist masterpieces, though most are in state of neglect. In 2010, chairs from the assembly building were auctioned in London, when diplomatic attempt stop the sale failed, as the items were “condemned” deemed unfit for use. Le Corbusier was brought on to develop the plan of Albert Mayer.
Mies van der Rohe, Barcelona Pavilion, 1929
International Style
Was the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, Spain. This building was used for the official opening of the German section of the exhibition.
It is an important building in the history of modern architecture, known for its simple form and its spectacular use of extravagant materials, such as marble, red onyx and travertine. The same features of minimalism and spectacular can be applied to the prestigious furniture specifically designed for the building, among which the iconic Barcelona chair.
In the years following World War I, Germany started to turn around. The economy started to recover after the 1924 Dawes Plan. The pavilion for the International Exhibition was supposed to represent the new Weimar Germany: democratic, culturally progressive, prospering, and thoroughly pacifist; a self-portrait through architecture.
The pavilion was going to be bare, no trade exhibits, just the structure accompanying a single sculpture and purpose-designed furniture (the Barcelona Chair). This lack of accommodation enabled Mies to treat the Pavilion as a continuous space; blurring inside and outside.
Mies wanted this building to become “an ideal zone of tranquillity” for the weary visitor, who should be invited into the pavilion on the way to the next attraction. Since the pavilion lacked a real exhibition space, the building itself was to become the exhibit. The pavilion was designed to “block” any passage through the site, rather, one would have to go through the building. Visitors would enter by going up a few stairs, and due to the slightly sloped site, would leave at ground level in the direction of the “Spanish Village”. The visitors were not meant to be led in a straight line through the building, but to take continuous turnabouts. The walls not only created space, but also directed visitor’s movements. This was achieved by wall surfaces being displaced against each other, running past each other, and creating a space that became narrower or wider.
Because this was planned as an exhibition pavilion, it was intended to exist only temporarily. The building was torn down in early 1930, not even a year after it was completed. However, thanks to black-and-white photos and original plans, a group of Spanish architects reconstructed the pavilion permanently between 1983 and 1986.
(reconstructed 1983‐6)
Walter Gropius, Workshop Wing, Bauhaus,
1925‐26
Modern Architecture (Bauhaus)
This building was meant to epitomize the Bauhaus movement - using concrete, steel and glass - it was supposed to convey the dynamism of modern life. The glass panels wall wraps on two sides of the workshop wing proveded natural light inside.
Design school that sought solutions for the problems of housing and urban planning during postwar impoverished Germany. Training rooted in the arts and crafts movement of earlier generations, established the principles of the international style, the forms are clear and in cubic units – the epitome of classicizing purity.
Bauhaus – “House of Building”
- School was brainchild of Walter Gropius
- Sought to reconcile modern art and industry by synthesizing architecture, artists, and
designers
- 1919 – “Bauhaus Manifesto” stated “the ultimate goal of all artistic activity is the building”
- He combine’s schools of art and craft
- Developed extensive curriculum that involved design, craftsmanship, and architecture
- “There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman”
Emphasized knowledge of machine-age technologies and materials
- Synthesis of design and production
- Most innovative avant-garde artists taught at Bauhaus like Kandinsky, Klee, Moholy-
Nagy, and Josef Albers
- Curriculum influenced art education everywhere
- 1933 – Closed (after it moved to Berlin in 1932) by Hitler, a mediocre academic painter, who detested avant-garde
- Building takes an “honest attitude” towards materials
- Acknowledges the reinforced concrete, steel, and glass of which it is built
- But not strictly utilitarian
- Influenced by De Stijl, used asymmetrical balancing of three large, cubical structural
elements to convey dynamic quality of modern life
- Glass-panel wall wraps around two sides of workshop wing
- This is Gropius’s vision of “total architecture”
John Augustus Roebling,
Brooklyn Bridge, New York, 1869‐1883
Neogothic / Modern American Engineering
This is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the US - was the longest in the world when it opened and was the first steel-wire suspension bridge. It has come to symbolise new york.
Modern Technology in architecture. Great structural advance over the wrought-iron chains then used for suspension bridges. The roadbed and cables are purely functional, no decorative adornment, but the granite towers with cornices and pointed arches allude to Gothic cathedrals and Roman triumphal arches (revivalism), celebrates the triumph of modern engineering.
- Steel bridge
- Bridge designers pioneered use of new materials as building material
- Most famous early steel bridge
- Designed by John Augustus Roebling – German-born civil engineer who invented
twisted-wire cable –structural advance over wrought-iron chains then used for
suspension bridges
- 1867 – appointed chief engineer on Bridge
- Span was longest in the world at the time
- Died two years later and son completed project
1,600 foot-long span
- Steel-wire cables suspended from 2 massive masonry towers
- Roadbed and cables are purely functional, no decorative adornment
- Granite towers have projecting cornices over pointed-arch openings
- Gothic cathedrals and Roman triumphal arches
- Arches celebrate triumph of modern engineers
Giuseppe Terragni,
Casa del Popolo (House of the People) Como, Italy, 1936
Rationalist Style / Italian Fascist
http://www.archdaily.com/312877/ad-classics-casa-del-fascio-giuseppe-terragni/
The concrete structure was in the Rationalist style. The style dictates strict geometries used in strict repetition. This is to create ideal proportion.
Planned within a perfect square and half as high as its 110 foot width, the half cube of the Casa del Fascio established the pinnacle of strict rational geometry. Looking like a giant Rubik’s Cube, the building is a serious game of architectural logic. Each of the building’s four facades is different, hinting at the internal layout and rhythmically balancing the open and closed spaces. On every side except the south-east elevation which articulates the main stair, the windows and the external layers of the building are employed in such a way to express the internal atrium.
Slightly elevated on a masonry base, the fascist political purpose of the structure is expressed almost literally through the chain of glass doors which separates the entrance foyer from the piazza. These, when simultaneously opened by an electrical device, would have united the inner agora of the cortile to the piazza, thereby permitting the uninterrupted flow of mass demonstrations from street to interior.
William Van Alen
Chrysler Building
1928‐30
Art Deco
It is the tallest brick building in the world - with a steel skeleton. Various architectural details, esp the buildings gargoyles were modeled after Chrysler automobile products like the hood ornaments of the Plymouth. They exemplify the machine age of the 1920s. The crown of the building is a cruciform groin vault. Was tallest building for 11 months
The gargoyles reinforced the aggressive energy of modern capitalist enterprises, while also reminiscent of ancient Egyptian symbols. Building ornamented with automotive decorative motifs, like giant wheels, hubcaps, and gargoyles. Art Deco stylized forms from nature as well as borrowed from antiquity, as seen in the elevator doors of the Chrysler building, also Egyptian revival.
- Popular tastes still favored ornamentation, despite the new architectural theory associated with the Bauhaus that called for a rejection or ornamentation
- 1920s and 30s movement sought to upgrade industrial design to compete with “fine art”
- New materials worked into decorative patterns
- Art Deco produced was a “streamlined” elongated symmetrical quality
- Derived from nature, these simple forms were aerodynamic, making them technologically
efficient as well as aesthetically pleasing
- Name derived from Exposition des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes (Exposition of Decorative and Modern Industrial Arts), held in Paris in 1925
- Chrysler is masterpiece of stainless-steel spire of the Chrysler Building
- Monument to the fabulous 1920s, when American millionaires and corporations
competed with one another to raise the tallest skyscrapers
- Built up of diminishing fan shapes
- It is a crown honoring the business achievements of the great auto manufacturer
Raymond Hood
Chicago Tribune Tower
1922‐25
Neo-Gothic
n 1922 the Chicago Tribune hosted an international design competition for its new headquarters, and offered $100,000 in prize money with a $50,000 1st prize for “the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world”. The competition worked brilliantly for months as a publicity stunt, and the resulting entries still reveal a unique turning point in American architectural history. More than 260 entries were received.
The winner was a neo-Gothic design by New York architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, with buttresses near the top.
By 1922 the neo-Gothic skyscraper had become an established design tactic, with the first important so-called “American Perpendicular Style” at Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth Building of 1913. This was a late example, perhaps the last important example, and criticized for its perceived historicism. Construction on the Tribune Tower was completed in 1925 and reached a height of 462 feet (141 m) above ground. The ornate buttresses surrounding the peak of the tower are especially visible when the tower is lit at night.
As was the case with most of Hood’s projects, the sculptures and decorations were executed by the American artist Rene Paul Chambellan. The tower features carved images of Robin Hood (Hood) and a howling dog (Howells) near the main entrance to commemorate the architects. The top of the tower is designed after the Tour de beurre (″butter tower″) of the Rouen Cathedral in France, which is characteristic of the late gothic style, that is to say, without a spire but with a crown-shaped top.
Rene Paul Chambellan contributed his sculpture talents to the buildings ornamentation, gargoyles and the famous Aesops’ Screen over the main entrance doors. Rene Chambellan worked on other projects with Raymond Hood including the American Radiator Building and Rockefeller Center in New York City. Also, among the gargoyles on the Tribune Tower is one of a frog. That piece was created by Rene Chambellan to represent himself jokingly as he is of French ancestry.
Antoni Gaudí, Church of the Sagrada Família, 1883‐1926, Barcelona
Art Nouveau
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMqERP-J2tQ&list=PL6D4115FA125E542C
Art Nouveau achieved its most persona l expression in the work of t he Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi (18521926). Before becoming an architect, Gaudi had trained as an ironworker. As many young artists of his time, he longed to create a style both modern and appropriate to his country. Taking inspiration from Moorish architecture and from the simple architecture of his native Catalonia, Gaudi developed a personal aesthetic. He conceived a building as a whole and molded it a lmost as a sculptor might shape a fig ure from clay. Although work on his designs proceeded slowly under the guidance of his intuition and imagination, Gaudi was a master who invented many new structura l techniques t hat facilitated construction of his visions.
Crystal Palace, interior, view of the barrelvaulted
“transept”, 1851
Modern Architecture
This structure was significant in that it was made of cast iron-framed glass panes of the largest size that could be mass-produced at the time. It was the largest space ever enclosed at the time, built for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Most architects of the time were wedded to neoclassicism and romanticism and did not see it as legitimate architecture.
Shows the standardization and prefabrication of structural members, entirely of iron and glass. Contrasts with the romantic picturesque tradition of ancient building techniques and styles.
• Technological progress as key to human progress initiated world’s fairs that celebrated advances in industry and technology
- The first fair – London Great Exhibition of 1851, introduced new building techniques that contributed to temporary abandonment of historicism in architecture
- Undraped construction
- Gigantic greenhouse
- Even enclosed old trees growing on the site
• Was popular for conservatories (greenhouses) of English country estates
Experimental system of glass-and-metal roof construction
• Cast iron skeleton with iron-framed glass panes
- Glass panes – the largest size that could be mass produced at the time
- 1851 – hall for the Great Exhibition
- Organized to showcase “works of industry of all nations” in London
- Allowed the structure to be in only 6 months (unheard of for the time) and dismantled
• Drew on imagery of Roman and Christian basilicas
- Imperial roman architecture
- Central flat-roofed “nave” and barrel-vaulted crossing “transept”
- Re-erected at new location on outskirts of London
- 1936 – destroyed by fire
Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells,
Daily News Building, 1929‐31
Art Deco
Among the first skyscrapers to be built without an ornamental crown, can be seen as a precursor to Hood’s design of Rockefeller Center.
The lobby of the building includes a black glass domed ceiling, under which is the world’s largest indoor globe, which was kept up to date however it has now not been updated for some time. This was conceived by the Daily News as a permanent educational science exhibit.
Brown brick in the spandrels between the vertically aligned windows, and white brickwork forming the separating vertical piers. Limestone, preferred by Hood, was discarded as a too expensive material. Curiously, the size of the windows – and thus the width of the window stripes – was determined by the size of a window that could be effortlessly opened by a single office worker.
Walter Gropius and Adolph Meyer,
Design for the Chicago Tribune Tower, 1922
Bauhaus
One of the American cities most receptive to his ideas was Chicago, where Gropius already had made an impression with his losing entry in the 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower design competition. It called for a flat-roofed office building with an exposed skeleton of reinforced-concrete. The Tribune built a neo-Gothic skyscraper instead.
The third place entry was submitted by Walter Gropius, best known as the founder of the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany. Note that his design for the Tribune building shares many of the same attributes as his iconic design for the Bauhaus building.
In 1922, the Chicago Tribune hosted an international design competition for its new headquarters and offered a $50,000 prize for “the most beautiful and eye-catching building in the world”. The competition worked brilliantly as a publicity stunt, and the resulting entries still reveal a unique turning point in American architectural history. More than 260 entries were received.
Considering that the Tribune’s owner, Colonel Robert McCormack was an enemy of almost anything progressive (The Trib’s motto was “ An American Paper for Americans”), it is very surprising that the competition attracted a wide spectrum of European architechts who were quite well known for their left-wing, modernist views:
Charles and Ray Eames, Eames Residence,
Santa Monica, California, 1949
The Eames House (also known as Case Study House No. 8) is a landmark of mid-20th century modern architecture located at 203 North Chautauqua Boulevard in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. It was constructed in 1949 by husband-and-wife design pioneers Charles and Ray Eames, to serve as their home and studio.
Unusual for such an avant-garde design, the Eames Case Study No. 8 house was a thoroughly lived-in, usable, and well-loved home. Many icons of the modern movement are depicted as stark, barren spaces devoid of human use, but photographs and motion pictures of the Eames house reveal a richly decorated, almost cluttered space full of thousands of books, art objects, artifacts, and charming knick-knacks as well as dozens of projects in various states of completion. The Eames’ gracious live-work lifestyle continues to be an influential model.
The design of the house was proposed by Charles and Ray as part of the famous Case Study House program for John Entenza’s Arts & Architecture magazine. The idea of a Case Study house was to hypothesize a modern household, elaborate its functional requirements, have an esteemed architect develop a design that met those requirements using modern materials and construction processes, and then to actually build the home. The houses were documented before, during and after construction for publication in Arts & Architecture. The Eames’ proposal for the Case Study House No. 8 reflected their own household and their own needs; a young married couple wanting a place to live, work and entertain in one undemanding setting in harmony with the site.
A 1.4-acre site near the coast in Pacific Palisades, on a wooded bluff that was once part of Will Rogers’ large estate, was selected. The design was first sketched out by Charles Eames with fellow architect Eero Saarinen in 1945 as a raised steel and glass box projecting out of the slope and spanning the entrance drive before cantilevering dramatically over the front yard. The structure was to be constructed entirely from “off-the-shelf” parts available from steel fabricators catalogs. Immediately after the war, though, these parts were in very short supply. By the time the materials arrived three years later, much pre-construction time had been spent picnicking at and exploring the lot where the house would stand. After a period of intense collaboration between Charles and Ray, the scheme was radically changed to sit more quietly in the land and avoid impinging upon the pleasant meadow that fronted the house.
A view of the residence side of the house, from the top of a concrete retaining wall.
The new design tucked the house sidelong into the slope, with an 8 foot (2.4 m) tall by 200 foot (60 m) long concrete retaining wall on the uphill side. A mezzanine level was added, making use of a prefabricated spiral stair that was to have been the lower entrance. The upper level holds the bedrooms and overlooks the double-height living room. A courtyard was also introduced, separating the residence from the studio space. This revised scheme required only one additional beam. The 17 foot (5.1 m) tall facade is broken down into a rigidly geometric, almost Mondrianesque composition of brightly colored panels between thin steel columns and braces, painted black. The entry door is marked with a gold-leaf panel above. An existing row of eucalyptus trees was preserved along the exposed wall of the house, providing some shading and a visual contrast with the house’s bold facade. As for the interior design, the Eameses’ collection includes, among others, Isamu Noguchi floor lamps, Japanese kokeshi dolls, Chinese lacquered pillows, a Native American basket full of woven grass stems.
Of the twenty-five Case Study Houses built, the Eames house is considered the most successful both as an architectural statement and as a comfortable, functional living space. The brash sleekness of the design made it a favorite backdrop for fashion shoots in the 1950s and 1960s. Perhaps the proof of its success in fulfilling its program is the fact that it remained at the center of the Eames’ life and work from the time they moved in (Christmas Eve, 1949) until their deaths.
Jean‐Baptiste Krantz and Frederic Le Play
Exhibition Building and Pavilions,
1867
Second Empire
The second world’s fair to be held in Paris, from 1 April to 3 November 1867. Forty two nations were represented at the fair. Following a decree of Emperor Napoleon III, the exposition was prepared as early as 1864, in the midst of the renovation of Paris, marking the culmination of the Second French Empire.
The main building built in masonry and iron is divided into six thematic galleries concentric and radial slices country with a garden center and museum of the history of work.
This is Frédéric Le Play has the idea of this new concept of “museum of the history of labor” to tell the evolution of industrial systems. A special section is devoted to the improvement of the “moral and material situation of workers” with a presentation of household objects. The workers’ delegations are invited to report on what they observed as a function of their profession.
In the “gallery history of labor” Jacques Boucher de Perthes exposes one of the largest prehistoric tools, whose authenticity has been recognized as the accuracy of his theories. Collections of prehistoric objects from the pile dwelling villages Swiss are also presented in the form of trophies, at the behest of Gabriel Mortillet and ‘d Edward Desor , and highly successful. These objects of the Neolithic , the Bronze Age and the time of La Tene .
For the first time the colonies of French empire occupy a large space. The Morocco , the Tunisia and Algeria are shown in the central pavilion and even have their own board and their own jury for awarding prizes. Imperial organizing committee asked each colony to install a construction and an exotic that allow visitors to discover the country.
In 1864, Napoleon III decreed that an international exposition should be held in Paris in 1867. A commission was appointed with Prince Jerome Napoleon as president, under whose direction the preliminary work began. The site chosen for the Exposition Universelle of 1867 was the Champ de Mars, the great military parade ground of Paris, which covered an area of 119 acres (48 ha) and to which was added the island of Billancourt, of 52 acres (21 ha). The principal building was rectangular in shape with rounded ends, having a length of 1608 feet (490 m) and a width of 1247 feet (380 m), and in the center was a pavilion surmounted by a dome and surrounded by a garden, 545 feet (166 m) long and 184 feet (56 m) wide, with a gallery built completely around it. In addition to the main building, there were nearly 100 smaller buildings on the grounds.
Vincent van Gogh and other artists of the post-impressionism movement of the late 19th century were part of the European art craze inspired by the displays seen here, and wrote often of the Japanese woodcut prints “that one sees everywhere, landscapes and figures.” [2] Not only was Van Gogh a collector of the new art brought to Europe from a newly opened Japan, but many other French artists from the late 19th century were also influenced by the Japanese artistic world-view, to develop into Japonism.
Jules Verne visited the exhibition in 1867, his take on the newly publicized discovery of electricity inspiring him heavily in his writing of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Walter Gropius and Adolph Meyer,
Fagus Shoe Factory, 1911‐25
Deutscher Werkbund
Bauhaus founded in 1919
The Fagus Factory (German: Fagus Fabrik or Fagus Werk), a shoe last factory in Alfeld on the Leine, Lower Saxony, Germany, is an important example of early modern architecture. Commissioned by owner Carl Benscheidt who wanted a radical structure to express the company’s break from the past, the factory was designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer. It was constructed between 1911 and 1913, with additions and interiors completed in 1925.
The building that had the greater influence on the design of Fagus was AEG’s Turbine factory designed by Peter Behrens. Gropius and Meyer had both worked on the project and with Fagus they presented their interpretation and criticism of their teacher’s work. The Fagus main building can be seen as an inversion of the Turbine factory. Both have corners free of supports, and glass surfaces between piers that cover the whole height of the building. However, in the Turbine factory the corners are covered by heavy elements that slant inside. The glass surfaces also slant inside and are recessed in relation to the piers. The load-bearing elements are attenuated and the building has an image of stability and monumentality. In Fagus exactly the opposite happens; the corners are left open and the piers are recessed leaving the glass surface to the front.
Although constructed with different systems, all of the buildings on the site give a common image and appear as a unified whole. The architects achieved this by the use of some common elements in all the buildings. The first one is the use of floor-to-ceiling glass windows on steel frames that go around the corners of the buildings without a visible (most of the time without any) structural support. The other unifying element is the use of brick. All buildings have a base of about 40 cm of black brick and the rest is built of yellow bricks. The combined effect is a feeling of lightness or as Gropius called it “etherealization”.
In order to enhance this feeling of lightness, Gropius and Meyer used a series of optical refinements like greater horizontal than vertical elements on the windows, longer windows on the corners and taller windows on the last floor.
The design of the building was oriented to the railroad side. Benscheidt considered that the point of view of the passengers on the trains was the one that determined the image of the building and placed great weight on the facade on that side. It was already noted by Peter Behrens (with whom Gropius and Meyer were working one year before starting work on the Fagus factory) that architects should take account of the way the speed of modern transportation affects the way architecture is perceived. Gropius had also commented the subject in his writings.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Fallingwater, or the Kaufmann
House, Mill Run, PA
1937
American Modern
Wright’s passion for Japanese architecture is strongly reflected in the design. There’s a harmony between man and nature.
- Works in tandem with the boxlike rectalinearity of the international style, yet he integrates it different in the landscape, by accounting for the organic and working with nature. House is born out of the rocks, water runs through it, importance of the home, the roof as shelter, chimney at the heart of the home.
- “Organic” architecture, integrated building with natural surroundings
* Best expression of Wright’s conviction that buildings be in the land
* Commissioned by Edgar Kaufmann, Pittsburg department store owner, a replacement family summer cottage
Water flows around and under the house
* Large boulder built into house as hearthstone of fireplace
* Dramatic engineering move – cantilevered series of broad terraces out from Cliffside
* Echoes the great slabs of rock below
* Further tied to sight via materials
* Wood and stone are in harmony with site
* Expressionist style because does not conform to International Style
* Asserts right of individual to express personal point of view against norms of modernism
Frank O. Gehry, Gehry Residence, Santa Monica, 1978
Postmodern Architecture / Deconstructivism
http://www.archdaily.com/67321/gehry-residence-frank-gehry/
The Gehry Residence is Frank Gehry’s own house. It was originally an extension, designed by Gehry built and around an existing house. It makes use of unconventional materials such as chain link fences and corrugated steel. It is sometimes considered one of the earliest deconstructivist buildings, although Gehry himself denies that it was deconstructivism.
In 1978, he chose to wrap the outside of the house with a new exterior while still leaving the old exterior visible.
I. M. Pei
Grand Louvre Pyramid, Paris, 1988
The Louvre Pyramid (Pyramide du Louvre) is a large glass and metal pyramid, surrounded by three smaller pyramids, in the main courtyard (Cour Napoléon) of the Louvre Palace (Palais du Louvre) in Paris. The large pyramid serves as the main entrance to the Louvre Museum. Completed in 1989, it has become a landmark of the city of Paris.
The pyramid and the underground lobby beneath it were created because of a series of problems with the Louvre’s original main entrance, which could no longer handle the enormous number of visitors on an everyday basis. Visitors entering through the pyramid descend into the spacious lobby then re-ascend into the main Louvre buildings.
For design historian Mark Pimlott, “I.M. Pei’s plan distributes people effectively from the central concourse to myriad destinations within its vast subterranean network… the architectonic framework evokes, at gigantic scale, an ancient atrium of a Pompeiian villa; the treatment of the opening above, with its tracery of engineered castings and cables, evokes the atria of corporate office buildings; the busy movement of people from all directions suggests the concourses of rail termini or international airports.”
Charles Rennie Mackintosh,
Library, Glasgow School of Art, 1907‐09
Art Nouveau
Most details of the interior design, furniture and wall painting are the products of Mackintosh and his wife Margaret.
The stripped down rectangular paritions and furniture, and the curvilinear figure designs on the walls, illustrate the contrasts that form the full spirit of Art Nouveau
The decorations are close to the developed paintings of Klimt and the Vienna Secession in 1900 and the architectual designs, furniture, glass and enamels created a sensation.
Louis Sullivan, Guaranty Building, 1894‐95,
Buffalo, NY
Considered the first masterpiece of the early skyscrapers
Frank Lloyd Wright was a junior draftsman for the building
Emphasized verticality, with the result that the pilasters separating the windows are uninterrupted through most of the building’s height.
Sullivan accentuated the individual layers with ornamental bands under the windows as well as throughout the attic story and crowned the building with a projecting cornice that brings the structure back to the horizontal.
The cornice unifies the facade while emphasizing the nature of the terracotta sheathing over the metal skeleton as a weightless, decorative surface rather than a bearing member.
Chicago was a city without architectural style or distinction and filled with hastily built balloon frame wood construction- the city needed to be rebuilt after the fire of 1871
Frank O. Gehry, Guggenheim Museum,
Bilbao, Spain, 1991‐97
Deconstructivist
Well before the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened its doors to the public on October 19, 1997, the new museum was making news. The numerous artists, architects, journalists, politicians, filmmakers, and historians that visited the building site in the mere four years of its construction anticipated the success of the venture. Frank Gehry’s limestone, glass, and titanium building was hailed by architect Philip Johnson as “the greatest building of our time” and the pioneering collaboration between the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Basque authorities was seen to challenge assumptions about art museum collecting and programming.
Located on the Bay of Biscay, Bilbao is the fourth largest city in Spain, one of the country’s most important ports, and a center for manufacturing, shipping, and commerce. In the late 1980s the Basque authorities embarked on an ambitious redevelopment program for the city. By 1991, with new designs for an airport, a subway system, and a footbridge, among other important projects by major international architects such as Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava, and Arata Isozaki, the city planned to build a first-class cultural facility. In April and May of 1991 at the invitation of the Basque Government and the Diputación Foral de Bizkaia, Thomas Krens, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, met repeatedly with officials, signing a preliminary agreement to bring a new Guggenheim Museum to Bilbao.
An architectural competition led to the selection of California-based architect Gehry, known for his use of unorthodox materials and inventive forms, and his sensitivity to the urban environment. Gehry’s proposal for the site on the Nervion River ultimately included features that embrace both the identity of the Guggenheim Museum and its new home in the Basque Country. The building’s glass atrium refers to the famous rotunda of Frank Lloyd Wright’s New York Guggenheim, and its largest gallery is traversed by Bilbao’s Puente de La Salve, a vehicular bridge serving as one of the main gateways to the city. In 1992 Juan Ignacio Vidarte, now Director General of the Guggenheim Bilbao, was formally appointed to oversee the development of the project and to supervise the construction. Groundbreaking took place in 1993 and in 1997 a gala dinner and reception, attended by an international audience and Spain’s Queen Sofia and King Juan Carlos I, celebrated the inauguration of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
Moshe Safdie, Habitat ‘67, Montreal, Canada
1967
High Modern (Brutalism)
- Safdie grew up in Israel in kibbutz or collective farms, this experience inspired his plans for Habitat, which adapts aspects of traditional communal living to the social, economic and technological realities of industrial society. By staking units that contained their own support system, Safdie eliminated the need for an external skeletal frame and allowed fro expansion of the complex simply through the addition of more units. Offers greater visual and spatial variety, increased light and air to individual apartments and a sense of community.
- • Sought fresh solutions to persistent challenge of urban housing
* Desire for economy, interest in the use of standard, prefabricated elements for the construction of both individual houses and larger residential complexes
* Israeli-born
* Spent summers on a kibbutz, a collective farm
* This experience partly inspired plans for Habitat, which adapts aspects of traditional
communal living to social, economic and technological realities of industrial society
* Built as permanent exhibit for 1967 World Exposition in Montreal
* Consists of three stepped clusters of prefabricated concrete units attached to a zigzagging concrete frame
* This provides a series of elevated streets and sheltered courtyards
* By stacking units that contained their own support system, eliminated need for external skeletal frame
* This allowed for expansion of the complex simply through the addition of more units
* An alternative to the conventional high-rise apartment block
* Greater visual and spatial variety, increased light and air to individual apartments, sense of community not often found in big city housing projects
Safdie’s design for Habitat 67 began as a thesis project for his architecture program at McGill University. It was “highly recognized” at the institution, though Safdie cites its failure to win the Pilkington Prize, an award for the best thesis at Canadian schools of architecture, as early evidence of its controversial nature.[3] After leaving to work with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, Safdie was approached by Sandy van Ginkel, his former thesis advisor, to develop the master plan for Expo 67, the world’s fair that was set to take place in Montreal during 1967. Safdie decided to propose his thesis as one of the pavilions and began developing his plan.[3] After the plans were approved in Ottawa by Mitchell Sharp, the federal cabinet minister responsible for the exhibition, and Lester B. Pearson, Safdie was given the blessing of the Expo 67 Director of Installations, Edward Churchill, to leave the planning committee in order to work on the building project as an independent architect.[3] Safdie was awarded the project in spite of his relative youth and inexperience, an opportunity he later described as “a fairy tale, an amazing fairy tale”
HABITAT ‘67
1967 - Moshe Safdie - high modern/brutalist
Montreal Canada
- Safdie grew up in Israel in kibbutz or collective farms, this experience inspired his plans for Habitat, which adapts aspects of traditional communal living to the social, economic and technological realities of industrial society. By staking units that contained their own support system, Safdie eliminated the need for an external skeletal frame and allowed fro expansion of the complex simply through the addition of more units. Offers greater visual and spatial variety, increased light and air to individual apartments and a sense of community.
- • Sought fresh solutions to persistent challenge of urban housing
* Desire for economy, interest in the use of standard, prefabricated elements for the construction of both individual houses and larger residential complexes
* Israeli-born
* Spent summers on a kibbutz, a collective farm
* This experience partly inspired plans for Habitat, which adapts aspects of traditional
communal living to social, economic and technological realities of industrial society
* Built as permanent exhibit for 1967 World Exposition in Montreal
* Consists of three stepped clusters of prefabricated concrete units attached to a zigzagging concrete frame
* This provides a series of elevated streets and sheltered courtyards
* By stacking units that contained their own support system, eliminated need for external skeletal frame
* This allowed for expansion of the complex simply through the addition of more units
* An alternative to the conventional high-rise apartment block
* Greater visual and spatial variety, increased light and air to individual apartments, sense of community not often found in big city housing projects
Safdie’s design for Habitat 67 began as a thesis project for his architecture program at McGill University. It was “highly recognized” at the institution, though Safdie cites its failure to win the Pilkington Prize, an award for the best thesis at Canadian schools of architecture, as early evidence of its controversial nature.[3] After leaving to work with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, Safdie was approached by Sandy van Ginkel, his former thesis advisor, to develop the master plan for Expo 67, the world’s fair that was set to take place in Montreal during 1967. Safdie decided to propose his thesis as one of the pavilions and began developing his plan.[3] After the plans were approved in Ottawa by Mitchell Sharp, the federal cabinet minister responsible for the exhibition, and Lester B. Pearson, Safdie was given the blessing of the Expo 67 Director of Installations, Edward Churchill, to leave the planning committee in order to work on the building project as an independent architect.[3] Safdie was awarded the project in spite of his relative youth and inexperience, an opportunity he later described as “a fairy tale, an amazing fairy tale”.[3]
The development was financed by the federal government, but is now owned by its tenants, who formed a limited partnership that purchased the building from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in 1985. Safdie still owns a penthouse apartment in the building.[4][5]
Habitat 67’s interlocking forms, connected walkways and landscaped terraces were key in achieving Safdie’s goal of a private and natural environment within the limits of a dense urban space.
Concept and design
Habitat 67 comprises 354 identical, prefabricated concrete forms arranged in various combinations, reaching up to 12 storeys in height. Together these units create 146 residences of varying sizes and configurations, each formed from one to eight linked concrete units.[6] The complex originally contained 158 apartments,[7] but several apartments have since been joined to create larger units, reducing the total number. Each unit is connected to at least one private terrace.
The development was designed to integrate the benefits of suburban homes, namely gardens, fresh air, privacy, and multilevelled environments, with the economics and density of a modern urban apartment building.[1] It was believed to illustrate the new lifestyle people would live in increasingly crowded cities around the world.[8] Safdie’s goal for the project to be affordable housing largely failed: demand for the building’s units has made them more expensive than originally envisioned.[1] In addition, the existing structure was originally meant to only be the first phase of a much larger complex, but the high per unit cost of approximately C$140,000 prevented that possibility.
The theme of Expo 67 was “Man and his World”, taken from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s memoir Terre des hommes (literally “land of men”, though it was published under the title Wind, Sand and Stars). Housing was also one of the main themes of Expo 67. Habitat 67 then became a thematic pavilion visited by thousands of visitors who came from around the world, and during the expo also served as the temporary residence of the many dignitaries visiting Montreal.
In March 2012, Habitat 67 won an online Lego Architecture poll and is a candidate to be added to the list of famous buildings that inspire a special replica Lego set. Lego blocks were actually used in the initial planning for Habitat; according to Safdie’s firm, “initial models of the project were built using legos and subsequent iterations were also built with legos”.
As one of the major symbols[11] of Expo 67, which was attended by over 50 million people during the year it was open, Habitat 67 gained world-wide acclaim as a “fantastic experiment”[4] and “architectural wonder”.[2] This experiment was and is regarded as both a success and failure—it “redefined urban living”[5] and has since become “a very successful co-op”,[1] but at the same time ultimately failed to revolutionize affordable housing or launch a wave of prefabricated, modular development as Safdie had envisioned.[1] Despite its problems, however, Habitat’s fame and success “made [Safdie’s] reputation”[11] and helped launch his career; Safdie has now designed over 75 buildings and master plans around the world.[5]
Even now, more than 40 years after Habitat, much of Safdie’s work still holds to the concepts that were so fundamental to its design, especially the themes of reimagining high-density housing and improving social integration through architecture that have become “synonymous” with his work.
Louis I. Kahn, Kimbell Art Museum,
Fort Worth, TX, 1972
International Style?
Kahn did not arrive at his distinctive architectural style until he was in his fifties. Initially working in a fairly orthodox version of the International Style, he was vitally influenced by a stay as Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in 1950, which marked a turning point in his career. After visiting the ruins of ancient buildings in Italy, Greece, and Egypt, he adopted a back-to-the-basics approach. He developed his own style as influenced by earlier modern movements, but not limited by their sometimes dogmatic ideologies.
Louis Kahn’s work infused the International style with a fastidious, highly personal taste, a poetry of light. His few projects reflect his deep personal involvement with each. Isamu Noguchi called him “a philosopher among architects.” He was known for his ability to create monumental architecture that responded to the human scale. He was also concerned with creating strong formal distinctions between served spaces and servant spaces. What he meant by servant spaces was not spaces for servants, but rather spaces that serve other spaces, such as stairwells, corridors, restrooms, or any other back-of-house function like storage space or mechanical rooms. His palette of materials tended toward heavily textured brick and bare concrete, the textures often reinforced by juxtaposition to highly refined surfaces such as travertine marble.
The Kimbell Art Museum’s original building, designed by Louis Kahn and opened to the public for the first time in 1972, has become a mecca of modern architecture.
The Board of Directors of the Kimbell Art Foundation commissioned Louis Kahn as the Museum’s architect in 1966. Working closely with the Kimbell’s first director, Richard F. (Ric) Brown, who enthusiastically supported his appointment, Kahn designed a building in which “light is the theme.” Natural light enters through narrow plexiglass skylights along the top of cycloid barrel vaults and is diffused by wing-shaped pierced-aluminum reflectors that hang below, giving a silvery gleam to the smooth concrete of the vault surfaces and providing a perfect, subtly fluctuating illumination for the works of art.
The main (west) facade of the building consists of three 100-foot bays, each fronted by an open, barrel-vaulted portico, with the central, entrance bay recessed and glazed. The porticos express on the exterior the light-filled vaulted spaces that are the defining feature of the interior, which are five deep behind each of the side porticos and three deep behind the central one. Additionally, three courtyards punctuate the interior space. Though thoroughly modern in its lack of ornament or revivalist detail, the building suggests the grand arches and vaults of Roman architecture, a source of inspiration that Kahn himself acknowledged. The principal materials are concrete, travertine, and white oak.
Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill
Lever House, 1952, New York
International Style
Lever House, designed by Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois (design coordinator) of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and located at 390 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, is a seminal glass-box skyscraper built in the International Style according to the design principles of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Completed in 1952, it was the second curtain wall skyscraper in New York City after the United Nations Secretariat Building.
The Lever House was built in 1951-1952 to be the American headquarters of the British soap company Lever Brothers.
In 1916, New York City had passed zoning laws designed to prevent new skyscrapers from overwhelming the streets with their sheer bulk. It required buildings to have setbacks as they rose, creating a sense of space and allowing sunlight to reach the street level. However, these setbacks were not required if the building occupied 25% or less of its lot, and it was this provision which allowed Lever House, and the other glass boxes which followed it, to be built in the form of a vertical slab.
The building featured a glimmering 24-story blue-green heat-resistant glass and stainless steel curtain-wall.[6] The curtain-wall was designed to reduce the cost of operating and maintaining the property. Its curtain-wall is completely sealed with no operating windows. This meant that much less dirt from the city would get into the building. The heat resistant nature of the glass also helped to keep air conditioning costs down. Additionally, the property featured a roof-top window-washing gondola that moved about the parapet wall on tracks. The curtain wall was fabricated and installed by General Bronze Corp, the same facade contractor that had recently finished the Secretariat Building curtain wall at the UN Headquarters.
The ground floor contained no tenants. Instead, it featured an open plaza with garden and pedestrian walkways. Only a small portion of the ground floor was enclosed in glass and marble. The ground floor featured space for displays and waiting visitors, a demonstration kitchen and an auditorium. The second and largest floor contained the employees’ lounge, medical suite, and general office facilities. On the third floor was the employees’ cafeteria and terrace. The offices of Lever Brothers and its subsidiaries occupied the remaining floors with the executive penthouse on the 21st floor. The top three stories contained most of the property’s mechanical space.
Lincoln Center, L‐R:
Philip Johnson, New York State Theater, 1964
Wallace K. Harrison, Metropolitan Opera House, 1966
Max Abramovitz, Philharmonic (now Avery Fisher Hall), 1962
American Post-War Urban Planning
A consortium of civic leaders and others led by (and under the initiative of) John D. Rockefeller III built Lincoln Center as part of the “Lincoln Square Renewal Project” during Robert Moses’s program of urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s.
Respected architects were contacted to design the major buildings on the site, and over the next thirty years the previously blighted area around Lincoln Center became a new cultural hub.
ockefeller was Lincoln Center’s inaugural president from 1956 and became its chairman in 1961. He is credited with raising more than half of the $184.5 million in private funds needed to build the complex, including drawing on his own funds; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund also contributed to the project.
The center’s three buildings, Avery Fisher Hall (formerly Philharmonic Hall), David H. Koch Theater (formerly the New York State Theater) and the Metropolitan Opera House were opened in 1962, 1964 and 1966, respectively.
While the center may have been named because it was located in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, it is unclear whether the area was named as a tribute to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. The name was bestowed on the area in 1906 by the New York City Board of Aldermen, but records give no reason for choosing that name.
Henry Hobson Richardson,
Marshall Field Wholesale Store, 1885‐87
Romanesque Revival
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, model for a glass
skyscraper, 1922
International Style
German architect, furniture designer and teacher, active also in the USA. With Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, he was a leading figure in the development of modern architecture. His reputation rests not only on his buildings and projects but also on his rationally based method of architectural education.
The second project, the “Glass Skyscraper” (1922) was designed to land in Berlin that the details are unknown, but apparently there was a square or circular traffic center.
This building whose height exceeds third andalusia predecessor of Friedrichstrasse, is shown in drawings and photographs of the model as a slim ray of light lens.
The geometry of crystalline skyscrapers Friedrichstrasse was transformed into this project in a biomórflca plant consisting of a core and three wings curvilinear. Like the skyscrapers of the Friedrichstrasse, we also used the idea of plants from cantilever reinforced concrete slabs arranged around two cylindrical concrete supports. Given the state of the art of the time the project was unworkable.
As in the Friedrichstrasse skyscraper, the exceptional form of the plant stems from the structure of the site and the result is due to the properties of transparent and reflective glass facade, which the architect admitted openly: “Tests on a model of glass showed me the way and soon I realized that by using the crystal is not achieving an effect of light or shadow, but rather to achieve a great game of reflections of light. “
James Stirling, Neue Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart,
Germany 1977‐84
Post-Modernism
The Neue Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, Germany, was designed by the British firm James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates, although largely accredited solely to partner James Stirling. It was constructed in the 1970s and opened to the public in 1984. The building has been claimed as the epitome of Post-modernism.
Located next-door to Stuttgart’s Alte Staatsgalerie, the design echoed the neoclassical design of the older building. Elements also alluded to Stirling’s earlier, unbuilt designs, as well as making reference to the Altes Museum in Berlin, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Pantheon in Rome.
The building incorporates warm, natural elements of travertine and sandstone in classical forms, to contrast with the industrial pieces of green steel framing system and the bright pink and blue steel handrails. The architect intended to unite the monumental with the informal.
The building’s most prominent feature is a central open-top rotunda. This outdoor, enclosed space houses the sculpture garden. It is circumvented by a public footpath and ramp that leads pedestrians through the site. This feature allows the public to reach the higher elevation behind the museum from the lower front of the building’s main face.
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, National
Gallery of Art, London Sainsbury Wing, 1987‐91
Post-Modern Architecture
The Sainsbury Wing, an extension to the west by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, is a notable example of Postmodernist architecture in Britain to house the collection of Renaissance paintings
In contrast with the rich ornamentation of the main building, the galleries in the Sainsbury Wing are pared-down and intimate, to suit the smaller scale of many of the paintings. The main inspirations for these rooms are Sir John Soane’s toplit galleries for the Dulwich Picture Gallery and the church interiors of Filippo Brunelleschi (the stone dressing is in pietra serena, the grey stone local to Florence). The northernmost galleries align with Barry’s central axis, so that there is a single vista down the whole length of the Gallery. This axis is exaggerated by the use of false perspective, as the columns flanking each opening gradually diminish in size until the visitor reaches the focal point of (as of 2009), an altarpiece by Cima of The Incredulity of St Thomas.
Venturi’s postmodernist approach to architecture is in full evidence at the Sainsbury Wing, with its stylistic quotations from buildings as disparate as the clubhouses on Pall Mall, the Scala Regia in the Vatican, Victorian warehouses and Ancient Egyptian temples.
Oscar Niemeyer, Palace of the Dawn, Brasília,
Brazil, 1959
Brazilian Modernism
The official residence of the President of Brazil.
Niemeyer was best known for his design of civic buildings for Brasília, a planned city that became Brazil’s capital in 1960, as well as his collaboration with other architects on the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. His exploration of the aesthetic possibilities of reinforced concrete was highly influential in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
The building has an area of 7,000 square metres (75,000 sq ft) distributed along three floors: basement, landing and second floor. Located in adjacent buildings within palace grounds are the chapel and the heliport. The basement level houses the movie theater, game room, kitchen, laundry, medical center, and the building’s administration.
n the space of a few months, Niemeyer designed residential, commercial and government buildings. Among them were the residence of the President (Palácio da Alvorada), the chamber of deputies, the National Congress of Brazil, the Cathedral of Brasília (a hyperboloid structure), diverse ministries. Viewed from above, the city can be seen to have elements that repeat themselves in every building, achieving a formal unity.
Behind the construction of Brasília lay a monumental campaign to construct an entire city in the barren center of the country, hundreds of kilometers from any major city. The brainchild of Kubitschek, Niemeyer had as aims included stimulating industry, integrating the country’s distant areas, populating inhospitable regions and bringing progress to a region where only cattle ranching then existed. Niemeyer and Costa used it to test new concepts of city planning: streets without transit, buildings floating off the ground supported by columns and allowing the space underneath to be free and integrated with nature.
The project adopted a socialist ideology: in Brasília all the apartments would be owned by the government and rented to employees. Brasília did not have “nobler” regions, meaning that top ministers and common laborers would share the same building. Many of these concepts were ignored or changed by other presidents with different visions in later years. Brasília was designed, constructed, and inaugurated within four years. After its completion, Niemeyer was named chief of the college of architecture of the University of Brasília. In 1963, he became an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects in the United States; the same year, he received the Lenin Peace Prize from the USSR.
Jules Hardouin‐Mansart
Gallery of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles
1678‐84, Versailles, France
Charles Garnier, The Opera, Paris, 1861‐74
Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson House (The Glass House)
New Canaan, CT, 1948‐1949
International Style
http://theglasshouse.org/history/buildings/glasshouse/
Richard Neutra,
Philip Lovell House, Los Angeles, CA, 1928
The Lovell House or Lovell Health House is an International style modernist residence designed and built by Richard Neutra between 1927 and 1929. The home, located at 4616 Dundee Drive in Los Angeles, California, was built for the physician and naturopath Philip Lovell. It is considered a major monument in architectural history, and was a turning point in Neutra’s career.
It is often described as the first steel frame house in the United States, and also an early example of the use of gunite (sprayed-on concrete). Neutra was familiar with steel construction due to his earlier work with the Chicago firm Holabird & Roche. Neutra served as the contractor for the project in order to manage the cost and quality.
In essence the house reflects Neutra’s interest in industrial production, and this is most evident in the repetitive use of factory-made window assemblies. In fact, Neutra’s apprentice Harwell Hamilton Harris suggested that Neutra was drawn to America because of Henry Ford.
The interior reflects Neutra’s interest in Cubism, transparency, and hygiene. The “minimal” detailing shows the influence of Irving Gill. In another nod to industrial production, Neutra installed two Ford Model-A headlights in the main stairwell. (The headlights were provided by Neutra apprentice Gregory Ain.)[4] The Historic American Buildings Survey described the Lovell House as “a prime example of residential architecture where technology creates the environment”.
An Austrian American architect. Living and building for the majority of his career in Southern California, he came to be considered among the most important modernist architects.
Charles Moore with U. I. G. and Perez Associates
Piazza D’Italia, New Orleans, 1975‐80
Post-modernism
The Piazza d’Italia is an urban public plaza located at Lafayette and Commerce Streets in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana. It is controlled by the Piazza d’Italia Development Corporation, a subdivision of New Orleans city government. Completed in 1978 according to a design by noted post-modernist Charles Moore and Perez Architects[1] of New Orleans, the Piazza d’Italia debuted to widespread acclaim on the part of artists and architects. Deemed an architectural masterpiece even prior to its completion, the Piazza in fact began to rapidly deteriorate as the development surrounding it was never realized. By the turn of the new millennium, the Piazza d’Italia was largely unfrequented by and unknown to New Orleanians, and was sometimes referred to as the first “postmodern ruin”.
Though New Orleans received tens of thousands of Italian immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that ethnic group’s role in the city’s cultural mix went largely unacknowledged, typically overshadowed by the seminal contributions of French and Spanish culture. In the early 1970s, leaders of New Orleans’ Italian-American community conceived of a permanent public commemoration of the Italian immigrant experience in the city. New Orleans’ downtown, despite receiving some prominent new investment (e.g., One Shell Square, the Superdome) was by this time suffering from many of the same ills infecting most American downtowns in the post-World War II era of suburbanization, white flight and urban disinvestment. New Orleans Mayor Moon Landrieu was committed to the improvement and revitalization of the city’s struggling downtown and greeted with approval suggestions that the project be sited to encourage investment in the city center.
In 1974, Charles Moore, a prominent contemporary architect, former dean of the Yale School of Architecture and a proponent of a witty, exuberant design language later termed postmodern architecture was approached to help realize the vision of New Orleans’ Italian-American community. In close collaboration with three young architects then practicing with the Perez firm in New Orleans - Malcolm Heard, Ronald Filson and Allen Eskew - Moore conceived of a public fountain in the shape of the Italian peninsula, surrounded by multiple hemicyclical colonnades, a clock tower, and a campanile and Roman temple - the latter two expressed in abstract, minimalist, space frame fashion. The central fountain, located in the middle of a city block, was accessed in two directions: via a tapering, keyhole-shaped passage extending from Poydras Street, or through an arched opening in the clock tower sited where Commerce Street terminates at Lafayette Street. The fountain and its surrounding colonnades playfully appropriated classical forms and orders, executing them in modern materials (e.g., stainless steel, neon) or kinetically (e.g., suggesting the acanthus leaves of traditional Corinthian capitals through the use of water jets).
The location ultimately chosen for the Piazza d’Italia was a city block sited in the semi-derelict upriver edge of downtown, four blocks from Canal Street and the edge of the French Quarter and three blocks from the Mississippi River. By the mid-1970s, this area had already endured several decades of disfavor and was littered with abandoned or barely utilized mid-19th-century commercial row houses, early-20th-century industrial architecture and obsolete port infrastructure. Talking a cue from Boston, Baltimore and other aging port cities who had, starting in the late 1960s, moved to redevelop their historic waterfronts, by the 1970s New Orleans sought to spur investment in what later became known as the Warehouse District. The Piazza d’Italia, it was hoped, would trigger a wave of investment in the Warehouse District and along New Orleans’ downtown riverfront, and more generally ignite interest in downtown.
Essential to the Piazza’s design was the full realization of its intended surroundings, which were to have included a rehabilitated historic row of 19th-century buildings facing Tchoupitoulas Street (buildings whose rear abutted the edge of the Piazza). The Perez team designed infill buildings to complement this anticipated historic restoration. The mixture of restored architecture and new construction was to have fully brought into being the context envisioned for the Piazza, such that it would function as a “surprise plaza” in the mode of the urban Mediterranean, wherein the pedestrian is proceeding unawares along a narrow passage or alley, only to suddenly emerge into a sunlit plaza ringed by cafes and shops. This intended effect was responsible for the placement of the Piazza d’Italia at the heart of a city block, set back from the surrounding streets.
Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, Centre National d’Art et de Culture
Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1971‐78
Hector Guimard
Entrance to the Porte Dauphine Metropolitan
Station, Paris, 1901
Art Nouveau
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sazsDYOXVis
Michael Graves, The Portland Building
1980‐1982
Minoru Yamasaki, Pruitt‐Igoe public housing
project, St. Louis, at the moment of its
demolition on July 15, 1972
Built 1952‐53
Pruitt–Igoe was a large urban housing project first occupied in 1954[2] in the U.S. city of St. Louis, Missouri. Living conditions in Pruitt–Igoe began to decline soon after its completion in 1956.[3] By the late 1960s, the complex had become internationally infamous for its poverty, crime, and segregation. Its 33 buildings were demolished with explosives in the mid-1970s,[4] and the project has become an icon of urban renewal and public-policy planning failure.
The complex was designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki, who also designed the World Trade Center towers and the Lambert-St. Louis International Airport main terminal.
In 1947, Saint Louis planners proposed to replace DeSoto-Carr, a run-down black neighborhood, with new two- and three-story residential blocks and a public park.[7] The plan did not materialize; instead, Democratic mayor Joseph Darst, elected in 1949, and Republican state leaders favored clearing the slums and replacing them with high-rise, high-density public housing. They reasoned that the new projects would help the city through increased revenues, new parks, playgrounds and shopping space.
In 1950, the city commissioned the firm of Leinweber, Yamasaki & Hellmuth to design Pruitt–Igoe, a new complex named for St. Louisans Wendell O. Pruitt, an African-American fighter pilot in World War II, and William L. Igoe, a former U.S. Congressman. Originally, the city planned two partitions: Captain W. O. Pruitt Homes for the black residents, and William L. Igoe Apartments for whites.[11] The site was bound by Cass Avenue on the north, North Jefferson Avenue on the west, Carr Street on the south, and North 20th Street on the east.[6]
The project was designed by architect Minoru Yamasaki who would later design New York’s World Trade Center. It was Yamasaki’s first large independent job, performed under supervision and constraints imposed by the federal Public Housing Authority. The initial proposal provided a mix of high-rise, mid-rise and walk-up buildings. It was acceptable to St. Louis authorities, but exceeded the federal cost limits imposed by the PHA; the agency intervened and imposed a uniform building height at 11 floors.[9][11] Shortages of materials caused by the Korean War and tensions in the Congress further tightened PHA controls.
Despite decay of the public areas and gang violence, Pruitt–Igoe contained isolated pockets of relative well-being throughout its worst years. Apartments clustered around small, two-family landings with tenants working to maintain and clear their common areas were often relatively successful. When corridors were shared by 20 families and staircases by hundreds, public spaces immediately fell into disrepair.[18] When the number of residents per public space rose above a certain level, none would identify with these “no man’s land[s]” – places where it was “impossible to feel … to tell resident from intruder”.[18] The inhabitants of Pruitt–Igoe organized an active tenant association, bringing about community enterprises. One such example was the creation of craft rooms; these rooms allowed the women of the Pruitt–Igoe to congregate, socialize, and create ornaments, quilts, and statues for sale.
Explanations for the failure of Pruitt–Igoe are complex. It is often presented as an architectural failure;[21] other critics cite social factors including economic decline of St. Louis, white flight into suburbs, lack of tenants who were employed, and politicized local opposition to government housing projects as factors playing a role in the project’s decline. Pruitt–Igoe has become a frequently used textbook case in architecture, sociology and politics, “a truism of the environment and behavior literature”
One of the first demolitions of modern architecture.
Paul Abadie and others, Church of the Sacred
Heart (Sacré Coeur)
1876‐1914, Paris
Frank Lloyd Wright
S.C. Johnson Wax Administration Building, Racine WI, 1936‐1939
Art Moderne
In 1936, third generation SC Johnson leader H.F. Johnson, Jr. sought out the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Designs were in development for the company’s new Administration Building, but H.F. wanted a new, more modern approach, even though ground had already been broken and construction was set to start. He later explained, “Anybody can build a typical building. I wanted to build the best office building in the world, and the only way to do that was to get the greatest architect in the world.”
The Johnson Wax Headquarters were set in an industrial zone and Wright decided to create a sealed environment lit from above, as he had done with the Larkin Administration Building. The building features Wright’s interpretation of the streamlined Art Moderne style popular in the 1930s. In a break with Wright’s earlier Prairie School structures, the building features many curvilinear forms and subsequently required over 200 different curved “Cherokee red” bricks to create the sweeping curves of the interior and exterior. The mortar between the bricks is raked in traditional Wright-style to accentuate the horizontality of the building. The warm, reddish hue of the bricks was used in the polished concrete floor slab as well; the white stone trim and white dendriform columns create a subtle yet striking contrast. All of the furniture, manufactured by Steelcase, was designed for the building by Wright and it mirrored many of the building’s unique design features.
The entrance is within the structure, penetrating the building on one side with a covered carport on the other. The carport is supported by short versions of the steel-reinforced dendriform (tree-like) concrete columns that appear in the Great Workroom.[3] The low carport ceiling creates a compression of space that later expands when entering the main building where the dendriform columns rise over two stories tall. This rise in height as one enters the administration building creates a release of spatial compression making the space seem much larger than it is. Compression and release of space were concepts that Wright used in many of his designs, including the playroom in his Oak Park Home and Studio, the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and many others.
Among the building’s special features are the Great Workroom’s more than one-half acre of open workspace and the “bird cage” circular elevators that run from the basement to the Penthouse level, giving a panoramic view of the building. The glass tubing “windows” of the building were designed by Wright to refract light and cut glare. If laid end to end, the original Pyrex tubes would have extended more than 43 miles.
Perhaps the most recognized feature of the Great Workroom is its columns. Wright called them “dendriform,” meaning tree-shaped, but many also refer to them as lily pads because of the unique shape of their top supporting pads. The column tops are 18 1/2 feet in diameter and the bases are only 9 inches in diameter.
Wright designed more than 40 different pieces of furniture for the Administration Building, each created to reflect aspects of the building’s overall design. The primary color used throughout the building is an earthy maroon-orange tint, which Wright called “Cherokee Red.”
Gerrit Rietvald, Living and dining area,
Schröder House, 1924‐25
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Seagram Building
1954‐1958, NYC
Strawberry Hill
Remodeled for Horace Walpole by Richard Bentley, John Chute, Robert
Adam, James Essex, Thomas Pitt, and others, 1753‐76
Twickenham, Middlesex
Victor Horta, Stairwell of Interior, Tassel House,
1892‐93, Brussels
Art Nouveau
A town house built by Victor Horta in Brussels for the Belgian scientist and professor Emile Tassel in 1893-1894. It is generally considered as the first true Art Nouveau building, because of its highly innovative plan and its ground breaking use of materials and decoration.
He designed every single detail; doorhandles, woodwork, panels and windows in stained glass, mosaic flooring and the furnishing. Horta succeeded in integrating the lavish decoration without masking the general architectural structures.
Stairway of Tassel House, Brussels
The innovations made in the Hôtel Tassel would mark the style and approach for most of Horta’s later town houses, including the Hôtel van Eetvelde, the Hôtel Solvay and the architects own house and ‘atelier’. It might be superfluous to mention that these houses were very expensive and only affordable for the rich ‘bourgeoisie’ with an ‘Avant-Garde’ taste. For this reason the pure architectural innovations were not largely followed by other architects. Most other Art Nouveau dwellings in Belgium and other European countries were inspired by Horta’s ‘whiplash’ decorative style which is mostly applied to a more traditional building.
Eero Saarinen,
Interior, TWA Terminal, John F. Kennedy International Airport
New York, 1962
Le Corbusier, Unite d’Habitation, Marseilles, France
1947‐52
International Style / Brutalism
After World War II, Le Corbusier attempted to realize his urban planning schemes on a small scale by constructing a series of “unités” (the housing block unit of the Radiant City) around France. The most famous of these was the Unité d’Habitation of Marseilles (1946–52).
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.
The first and most famous of these buildings, also known as Cité radieuse (radiant city) and, informally, as La Maison du Fada (French – Provençal, “The Nutter’s House”), is located in Marseille, France, and was built between 1947 and 1952. One of Le Corbusiers’s most famous works, it proved enormously influential and is often cited as the initial inspiration of the Brutalist architectural style and philosophy.
The English architects Alison and Peter Smithson coined the term in 1953, from the French béton brut, or “raw concrete”, a phrase used by Le Corbusier to describe the poured board-marked concrete with which he constructed many of his post-World War II buildings.
The Marseille building, developed with Corbusier’s designers Shadrach Woods, George Candilis, comprises 337 apartments arranged over twelve stories, all suspended on large piloti. The building also incorporates shops with architectural bookshop, sporting, medical and educational facilities, a hotel which is open to the public, and a gastronomic restaurant, Le Ventre de l’Architecte (“The Architect’s Belly”).
In the block’s planning, the architect drew on his study of the Soviet Communal housing project, the Narkomfin Building. Le Corbusier’s utopian city living design was repeated in four more buildings with this name and a very similar design. The other Unités were built in Nantes-Rezé called Unité d’Habitation of Nantes-Rezé in 1955, Berlin-Westend in 1957, Briey in 1963, and Firminy in 1965.
Wallace K. Harrison, United Nations
Headquarters, New York, 1947‐50
International Style
Two years after the largest international peacekeeping organization was founded, the United Nations began searching for the location of their world headquarters. After numerous offers from cities around North America, the United Nations settled on a 17 acre plot of land on the banks of the East River in New York City after John D. Rockefeller donated the land. With the effects of World War II still looming throughout the world, the United Nations decided to invited prominent architects from the founding nations to work in collaborative, peaceful manner rather than holding a competition.
In 1947, the UN commissioned Wallace K. Harrison to lead the international design team to create their new world headquarters to be a symbol of the bright, peaceful future ahead that did not dwell upon the past.
One of the most impressive feats by the United Nations after having just successfully created an international peacekeeping organization was the group of architects that they were able to assemble together to design their headquarters. After commissioning Wallace K. Harrison – private architectural advisor to the Rockefeller family, architects from each of the founding nations came to New York to take part in the design of the United Nations.
The architects in attendance were: N.D. Bassov [Soviet Union], Gaston Brunfaut [Belgium], Ernest Cormier[Canada], Le Corbusier [France/Switzerland], Liang Ssu-cheng [China], Sven Markelius [Sweden], Anne-Claus Messager [France/United States], Oscar Niemeyer [Brazil], Howard Robertson [United Kingdom], G.A. Soilleux [Australia], Garrett Gruber [United States], and Julio Villamajo [Uruguay].
http://www.archdaily.com/119581/ad-classics-united-nations-wallace-k-harrison/
Robert Venturi
Vanna Venturi House, Philadelphia, PA, 1962
Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer,
Walter Gropius House, Lincoln, MA, 1937
Bauhaus
Walter Gropius, founder of the German design school known as the Bauhaus, was one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century. He designed Gropius House as his family home when he came to Massachusetts to teach architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
Modest in scale, the house was revolutionary in impact. It combined the traditional elements of New England architecture—wood, brick, and fieldstone—with innovative materials rarely used in domestic settings at that time, including glass block, acoustical plaster, chrome banisters, and the latest technology in fixtures.
In keeping with Bauhaus philosophy, every aspect of the house and its surrounding landscape was planned for maximum efficiency and simplicity of design. The house contains a significant collection of furniture designed by Marcel Breuer and fabricated in the Bauhaus workshops. With the family’s possessions still in place, Gropius House has a sense of immediacy and intimacy.
Peter Eisenman, Wexner Center for the Visual
and Performing Arts, Ohio State University,
Columbus, 1983‐89
Deconstructivism
The Wexner Center for the Arts is The Ohio State University’s multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art. Through exhibitions, screenings, performances, artist residencies, and educational programs, the Wexner Center acts as a forum where established and emerging artists can test ideas and where diverse audiences can participate in cultural experiences that enhance understanding of the art of our time.
The Wexner Center was the first major public building to be designed by Eisenman, previously known primarily as a teacher and theorist. He has gone on to design and build a number of other major projects including the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
The design includes a large, white metal grid meant to suggest scaffolding, to give the building a sense of incompleteness in tune with the architect’s deconstructivist tastes. Eisenman also took note of the mismatched street grids of the OSU campus and the city of Columbus, which vary by 12.25 degrees, and designed the Wexner Center to alternate which grids it followed. The result was a building of sometimes questionable functionality, but admitted architectural interest.
Marcel Breuer
Whitney Museum of American Art
1964‐1966
NYC
Brutalism
The Whitney Museum of American Art owes its striking granite presence at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue and 75th Street to the Hungarian-born, Bauhaus-trained architect Marcel Breuer (1902–1981). To design a third home for the Museum—which had gradually migrated northward from its original location on West Eighth Street to West 54th Street—Breuer worked with Hamilton Smith, creating a strong modernist statement in a neighborhood of traditional limestone, brownstone, and brick row houses and postwar apartment buildings. Considered somber, heavy, and even brutal at the time of its completion in 1966 (“an inverted Babylonian ziggurat,” according to one critic), Breuer’s building is now recognized as daring, strong, and innovative. It has come to be regarded as one of New York City’s most notable buildings and identified with the Whitney’s approach to art.
“What should a museum look like, a museum in Manhattan? Surely it should work, it should fulfill its requirements, but what is its relationship to the New York landscape? What does it express, what is its architectural message?
“It is easier to say first what it should not look like. It should not look like a business or office building, nor should it look like a place of light entertainment. Its form and its material should have identity and weight in the neighborhood of 50-story skyscrapers, of mile long bridges, in the midst of the dynamic jungle of our colorful city. It should be an independent and self- relying unit, exposed to history, and at the same time it should transform the vitality of the street into the sincerity and profundity of art.”
Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, 1928‐30
Dominikus and Johann Baptist Zimmerman
Wieskirche, 1745‐54
Pfaffenwinkel (Bavaria), Germany
German Rococo (Wessobrunner School)
Influenced by Borromini (San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane); tears of the Scourged Savior
The Wessobrunner School is the name for a group of Baroque stucco-workers that, beginning at the end of the 17th century, developed in the Benedictine Wessobrunn Abbey in Bavaria, Germany.
The names of more than 600 stucco-workers who emerged from this school are known. The Wessobrunner stucco-workers exerted a decisive influence on, and at times even dominated, the art of stucco in south Germany in the 18th century.
The concept of the Wessobrunner School goes back to the art historians Gustav von Bezold and Georg Hacker, who in 1888 first used the name to designate this group of artists and craftsmen.
In Bavaria an alliance between native bricklayers and stonemasons and Italian stucco-workers developed at the end of the 16th century. In the 17th century Wessobrunn developed into the most important center for stucco-work in Europe, and its craftsmen received commissions, not only in south Germany, but also in France, Poland, Hungary, and Russia. Their Italian competitors were unable to keep up.
Around 1750, a general decrease in building activity set in, as most of the great Rococo and pilgrimage churches had been completed. In addition, a new wave of neo-classical architecture between 1775 and 1790 lessened the prestige of the stucco-artist. The “Society of Stucco-workers”, founded in 1783, still had 68 members; in 1798 there were 27, and by 1864 only 9.
The masterpiece of the Wessobrunner School is the pilgrimage church in Wies (from 1744), built and stuccoed by Dominikus Zimmermann and frescoed by his brother, Johann Baptist. In this building, even architectural elements become, as it were, ornament. The arches of the choir arcade are in fact monumental bisected rocaille-cartouches. To be sure, only Dominikus Zimmermann made the leap to this uncompromising architectural application of the rocaille.
McKim, Meade, and White, William G. Low
House, Bristol, R.I., 1886‐87
American Colonial Revival / Shingle Style
In his domestic architectyrem Stanford White realized the quality of American Colonial building and was able to select with taste the historic or geographic style that best suited the particular site. The Low House is revolutionary in contrast to the customary enormous, fashionable and eclectic monstrosities familiar to Rhode Island.
An essential lack of historical association.
The extensive porch and the many-windowed facade give it an effect of openness, and the all-encompassing pitched roof serves as a unifying factor.
Cass Gilbert, Woolworth Building, 1911‐13
Daniel Burnham (chief architect)
Richard Morris Hunt; McKim, Mead & White;
Burnham and Root, et al.
World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893
Beaux Arts
A highly organized example of quasi-Roman city planning
The gleaming white colonnades of the World’s Fair buildings affected a generation of architects and undoubtably retarded the progress of experimental architecture in America (Aranson)
To celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World in 1492.
It was the prototype of what Burnham and his colleagues thought a city should be. It was designed to follow Beaux Arts principles of design, namely French neoclassical architecture principles based on symmetry, balance, and splendor. The buildings were clad in white stucco, which, in comparison to the tenements of Chicago, seemed illuminated. It was also called the White City because of the extensive use of street lights, which made the boulevards and buildings usable at night.
The fair ended with the city in shock, as popular mayor Carter Harrison, Sr. was assassinated by Patrick Eugene Prendergast two days before the fair’s closing. Closing ceremonies were canceled in favor of a public memorial service. Jackson Park was returned to its status as a public park, in much better shape than its original swampy form. The lagoon was reshaped to give it a more natural appearance, except for the straight-line northern end where it still laps up against the steps on the south side of the Palace of Fine Arts/Museum of Science & Industry building. The Midway Plaisance, a park-like boulevard which extends west from Jackson Park, once formed the southern boundary of the University of Chicago, which was being built as the fair was closing (the university has since developed south of the Midway).
The White City is largely credited for ushering in the City Beautiful movement and planting the seeds of modern city planning. The highly integrated design of the landscapes, promenades, and structures provided a vision of what is possible when planners, landscape architects, and architects work together on a comprehensive design scheme. The White City inspired cities to focus on the beautification of the components of the city in which municipal government had control; streets, municipal art, public buildings and public spaces. The designs of the City Beautiful Movement (closely tied with the municipal art movement) are identifiable by their classical architecture, plan symmetry, picturesque views, axial plans, as well as their magnificent scale. Where the municipal art movement focused on beautifying one feature in a City, the City Beautiful movement began to make improvements on the scale of the district. The White City of the World’s Columbian Exposition inspired the Merchant’s Club of Chicago to commission Daniel Burnham to create the Plan of Chicago in 1909, which became the first modern comprehensive city plan in America.
The exposition covered more than 600 acres (2.4 km2), featuring nearly 200 new (but purposely temporary) buildings of predominantly neoclassical architecture, canals and lagoons, and people and cultures from 46 countries.[2] More than 27 million people attended the exposition during its six-month run. Its scale and grandeur far exceeded the other world fairs, and it became a symbol of the emerging American Exceptionalism, much in the same way that the Great Exhibition became a symbol of the Victorian era United Kingdom.
