past exams - outline solutions Flashcards
How would you define Modernism in architecture up until the 1930s?
Illustrate its main characteristics with suitable examples.
Modernism in design may be defined by the following traits (Wilk, C. ed.Modernism 1914-1939; Designing a new world V&A 2006): it was “not a style, but a loose collection of ideas. It was a term that covered a range of movements and styles in many countries, especially those flourishing in key cities in Germany
and Holland, as well as in Moscow, Paris, Prague and, later, New York. All of these sites were stages for an espousal of the new and, often, an equally vociferous rejection of history and tradition; a utopian desire to create a better world, to reinvent the world from scratch; an almost messianic belief in the power
and potential of the machine and industrial technology; a rejection of applied ornament and decoration; an embrace of abstraction; and a belief in the unity of all the arts”, i.e., a rejection of traditional hierarchies that separated art and design,
and the arts from life.
The practice of modernism was both international and
extraterritorial, and was often associated to strong social ideas and beliefs, particularly left-leaning. In the 1930s the political aspirations of Modernism were stripped and it became a style, offered to consumers as one of many styles to choose from.
How would you characterise early modern ideas about the city, and to what extent was the work of Tony Garnier influential in their development?
A near contemporary of Perret, Tony Garnier also studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, first in his natal city of Lyons, and later in Paris. A brilliant academic career saw him win the Prix de Rome, and he spent his time there exploring the planning, and architecture of a fictitious modern city under the title Une Cité Industrielle. This project, exhibited on his return to Paris in 1904 but only published in 1917, was both to form the basis of Garnier’s career as city architect in Lyons, and to crystallise many of the modern movement’s key notions about the city.
In particular, the use of functional zoning of the city plan, where industry, housing, culture, recreation, health, etc., were all allocated different parts in the city layout. Unlike the garden city ideal, Garnier’s city attempted to encompass all aspects of the city and crucially made it dependent on industry: the modern city was to be based on an industrial economy, sited near power sources (hydroelectric, in Garnier’s study), well connected by rail and water –determining the location of industry- and orientated in such a way as to maximise the benefits of fresh air and sunlight –another trait of modern movement architecture and city planning.
Garnier designed each of the building structures of his fictitious city in great amount of detail, and a good many of their traits became fundamental for the language of the ideal cities of modernism. For his industrial buildings, the source of inspiration
was the architecture of the engineers, structures like those of Eiffel or Dutert and Contamin, which would play an important part in the expression of Russian avant garde movements. For the residential and cultural centre of the city, Garnier put forward an abstracted, unornamented reinforced concrete
language that was to provide a pedigree for the later rectangular aesthetic of modernism.
Describe and discuss an outline of the various technological utopias put forward by architects and designers in the Twentieth Century.
Answer may include the work of Saint Elia, Le Corbusier, Wright, Fuller, Archigram, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Superstudio, the Metabolists and/or others. A key point underlining thinking around technological Utopias in architecture is the tension – or fine line – existing between a technologically-infused type of ‘Eden’ and a form of technocratic dystopia. In most cases, Utopian ideas emerge in response to existing city structures –
that is, they are plans aimed at ridding actual cities of their endemic problems and ‘evils’ (e.g., to cleanse, sanitise, abolish slums, etc.).
To what extent does the category “Critical Regionalism”, put forward by Kenneth Frampton, help us understand a certain kind of architectural production taking place in the late Twentieth Century?
Frampton’s idea of ‘Critical Regionalism’ (1983) seeks to trace out a middle ground between the extremes of a total infatuation with advanced technology and a nostalgic, reactionary retreat into the architectural forms of the pre-industrial past. While sharing some common points with other Regionalist programmes, Frampton’s approach looks to consciously distance itself from all ‘sentimentalism’ and ‘historicism’. Being self-consciously ‘critical’ (in a post-modernist vein), Frampton promotes an autochthonous brand of architecture that enters into dialogue with both the local and the global – architecture, that is, with ‘the capacity to cultivate a resistant, identity-giving culture while at the same time having discreet resource to universal technique’. Rather than glibly reproducing, or returning to, existing vernacular forms, Frampton advocates a design process that generates architectural forms indirectly in response to the peculiarities of a particular place. While never very precise in its formulation, the idea of Critical Regionalism attempts to engage with conditions of globalisation, seeking out a balance of sorts between progressive ideals of modernisation and industrialisation on the on hand and, on the other, local tradition. Architectural production in the late twentieth Century increasingly struggles with such entanglements, and Frampton’s thinking provides a benchmark with which to contemplate architectural projects which seek to celebrate local, indigenous identities within the context of a global, or universal, society.
Designed by a Catalan architect, can the Scottish Parliament Building be considered a symbol of Scottish Identity? Why and/or why not?
The question of identity in architecture and especially institutional or representative buildings is a hotly debated one. A great many of the local (Scottish) practices expressed their view that the designer of the new Scottish Parliament ought to be a Scots, and in the event, all 5 international practices which were short listed in the competition teamed up with some local firm; this allowed them to claim some degree of ‘Scottishness’ and to be bringing jobs to the local economy.
When compared with the other five entries, the EMBT proposals certainly appealed to the character of the site, and to an understanding of Scotland as a land. The building appeared to develop from the existing landscape of the Crags and come to nestle in a series of structures bunched closely together at the bottom of the Royal Mile, recalling to some extent the pattern of villas in gardens that had at one time been the character of the place. Massing and landscaping were overlaid with meaning through a series of almost ornamental treatments of surfaces, such as the ubiquitous abstracted map of Scotland.
On the other hand, Miralles was an architect steeped in Spanish Modernism, influenced by Le Corbusier, Aalto and Italian Rationalism, as well as the work of the Smithsons and Gaudi. An eclectic and idiosyncratic synthesis of forms and ideas borrowed from a wide variety of sources which is sometimes compared to Mackintosh, but at others criticised as foreign and ‘indigestible’, the parliament building is certainly a unique structure, and in that unique form may seek to find its meaning and identity.
“Less is a bore”. How does this statement from Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture illustrate a dissatisfaction with certain aspects of the aims, methods and consequences of Modernism, and what alternative strategies does he put forward?
Venturi’s ‘Less is a Bore’ is a knowing parody of the strict functionalist dictum ‘Less is More’ (Mies van der Rohe). For Venturi, Modern architecture had become too simplistic, too totalising and too restrictive. Venturi, in contrast, argued that there is no such thing as a ‘single’ solution, and instead, forwarded a theory of architecture that was intentionally anti-European, anti-Classical and anti-rationalist in outlook. Attempting to liberate architecture from the ‘puritanical’ and ‘moralising’ language of orthodox Modern architecture, Venturi suggested that architecture should privilege and celebrate hybridity, distortion, ambiguity and ‘messy vitality’. In response to the ‘banality’ and/or ‘prettiness’ of current architecture, Venturi outlines techniques and strategies of juxtaposition, ambiguity, mixing together conventional and exceptional elements, deploying expedient devices, contrasts between interior and exterior, suggesting that there is much to be learned from everyday landscapes, the vulgar and the disdained.
Outline the major works of Buckminster Fuller and discuss Fuller’s place in the history of Modern architecture.
Fuller’s key projects include the ‘4-D’ Towers / Houses (1927, air-deliverable by Graf Zeppelin), the ‘Dymaxion’ Deployment Unit, or DDU (1940, made from existing Butler grain bins), the Dymaxion House or Wichita House (1944, in collaboration with Beech aircraft) and the Geodesic Dome (1956). Epic visionary projects include a proposal for covering all of Manhattan Island with a Geodesic Dome and a proposal for floating, spherical cities – called ‘Clouds’ – that would be two kilometres and greater in diameter. Fuller’s only commercial success, and the ‘invention’ for which he is most famous, is the Geodesic Dome. Fuller, however, has been somewhat routinely shunned in the established history of Modern architecture. While he is gaining increasing recognition, Fuller’s work is still often seen to exist somehow outside of mainline developments in architecture – indeed, as inconsequential or irrelevant to the history of Modernism. At the same time his work and thinking, contemporary with that of Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, etc. signals a distinctly different approach to technology. Rather than pursuing a machine aesthetic, Fuller arrived at ‘pure’ technological transfers. That is, his designs for housing do not emulate the ‘look’ of airplanes – they result from the self-same technologies used in airplane manufacture. Fuller’s work may be dismissed for its naivety – his lack of drawing ‘skill’, for example, or seeming disregard for the standard conventions of architectural representation – but his own opinion was that vested interests in the building professions were often the root cause of resistance to the radically new ideas he proposed with regard to the age old problem of ‘shelter’.
Discuss the work of August Perret and point out its influence on Le Corbusier’s thinking and production.
Influenced by the École des Beaux-Arts, in particular the teachings of theorist Guadet and historian August Choisy, and animated by the desire both to build in a manner comparable to the Doric Order or the Gothic Cathedral and to employ modern materials and construction methods, Perret developed Hennebique’s reinforced concrete frame system, to produce works of great architectural and constructional clarity. (Some of these works: Apartment building on 25 bis Rue Franklin 1903, Garage on Rue de Ponthieu , Notre Dame du Raincy 1924, Théâtre des Champs Elysées 1911 etc.)
The work of Perret Freres became the most advanced expression in reinforced concrete, and the lat6er work tended towards developing a National French Concrete Classicism, perhaps less successful than the early work.
The influence on Le Corbusier can be seen in his Maison Dom-ino project, which took the idea of a free concrete structure supporting a rectangular slab. This was to allow the rapid construction of the walls of dwellings, using rubble from the bombed Belgian quarters. Only later would Le Corbusier realise the aesthetic potential of a structure moved back from, and totally independent of the enclosing walls, with his “fenetre en longueur”.
Also apparent in Le Corbusier is the preference for the rational and even the Classical, as was evident in his discussions of the Parthenon and the Acropolis at Athens. He related this idea to the object type, and to a process by which industrial processes could attain a kind of mechanical perfection of designed objects.
What is Post-Modernism? Define and discuss this term in particular relation to architectural theory and built production.
While Post-modernism is a notoriously difficult term to define or locate precisely, it is usefully understood in relationship to Modernism – at a basic / literal level, then, Post-modernism is something which occurred ‘after’ Modernism. More importantly, the term implies a conscious departure away from the established orthodoxies (social forms, hierarchies, forms of knowledge, etc.) of Modernism. Post-modernism can be said to be suspicious of authoritative, fixed definitions – truth, methodology, theory and objectivity are routinely questioned; singular, or ‘grand’, narratives are approached with scepticism. Globalisation is key to Post-modern thinking – intersections of local and global knowledge produce hybrid, multivalent conditions that challenge, disrupt and subvert the established ‘rules’ of Modernism. (Related names/terms: Postcolonialism, Poststructuralism, Baudrillard, Derrida, Lyotard, Jameson, Foucault, etc.)
In architecture Post-modernism may be described as a late 20th-century ‘style’ developed as a reaction to, or critique of, Modernism – in particular, the International Style. Here, Post-
modernism is characterised by the self-conscious use, or mixing, of previous styles and conventions – ‘borrowing’ from sources as diverse as Modernism, classicism and even vernacular domestic architecture. Post-modernists turn to pastiche, parody, bricolage and irony in their work, celebrating (rather than lamenting) fragmentation, eclecticism, discontinuity, ambiguity, simultaneity, plurality and even, incoherence. (Key figures: Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, James Stirling, Terry Farrell, Charles Moore, Hans Hollein, Arata Isozaki, Aldo Rossi, Charles Jencks, etc.)
With reference to the work of architects such as Hans Hollein, Constant Nieuwenhuys, Lebbeus Woods, Archigram, Superstudio and Antfarm, discuss the function, value, and impact of so-called Experimental, Visionary, Radical, Avant-garde or ‘Paper’ projects with regard to ‘mainline’ architectural practice and thinking?
While Experimental architects can sometimes be written-off for ‘never having built anything real’, the value of intentionally avant-garde, critical, subversive or even transgressive architectural propositions should not be underestimated. The suggestive imagery favoured by groups like Archigram and Superstudio, for example, not only challenged the conventions of architectural practice in the 1960s, it eventually set new standards and conventions for architectural representation. While quite radical at the time, the visual methods and techniques advanced by some experimentalists often tended to disseminate through much broader and more mainstream international networks, sometimes becoming commonplace tools in architectural practice. There is also an element of prediction in the work of many experimentalists in the post-war period – the work of Constant Nieuwenhuys and others, for example, can be seen to envision the world of wireless technologies and internet based services which are increasingly a part of urban environments and lifestyles today.
