ARCHITECTURE IN THE MODERN ERA

The Industrial Revolution (1768s)

directed toward the relevant and applied use of structures

The Arts and Crafts Movement (early 19th Century)

movement for aesthetic and moral crusade
escape from the Industrial World
John Ruskin(1819-1900) and William Morris(1834-1896) were
the key figures

Eclecticism
architecture of the borrowing and of free selection

Joseph Paxton (1851) designed the Crystal Palace

Elisha Graves Otis (1870, New York) developed the first safe
passenger elevator. In addition to this, was the development of
techniques for manufacturing rolled steel.

The Great Chicago Fire (1870)

Montauk Building by Daniel Burnham (1881)
Home Insurance Company Building by William Le Baron
Jenney (1883) (first skyscraper free of the limitations of masonry)
Auditorium Building by Adler and Sullivan (1889)
Wainwright Building by Adler and Sullivan (1890)
Guarranty Building by Adler and Sullivan (1894)
Reliance Building by Burnham and Root (1894)

The Chicago School (1880s)

concentration on high structures were built in Chicago
William Le Baron Jenney
Louis Sullivan

born in Boston, 1856

studied at Institute of Technology in Massachusetts

Worked in the Chicago office of Jenney

Studied 6 months at the Ecole des Beaux Arts

Returned to Chicago after the great fire

Form Follows Function
Daniel Burnham

Born in New York, 1846

Educated at Chicago and also had his apprentiship at

Loring and Jenney office
Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir
mens blood.
The World Columbian Exposition (1890)
Jackson Park, Chicago
Burnham was the chief of construction
John W. Root was the consulting architect
Frederick Law Olmsted was the landscape architect
Birth of the Modern American City Planning
Reversal of the direction in Sullivans vision. He had hardly any
commissions and died in 1924 a lonely and neglected figure.
European Developments (1900s)
Otto Wagner

Viennese architect

Began eliminating Renaissance trappings from his

buildings and pursued the more essential
architecture
Adolf Loos
Reacted against the excesses of Art Nuveau
Published Ornament and Verbrechen
Ornament is a Crime
H.P. Berlage

Dutch Architect

Publicized the works of Frank Lloyd Wright in Europe

And thus in architecture, decoration and

ornament are quite essential while space-creation
and the relationships of masses are its true
essentials.
Wright vs. Sullivan
Frank Lloyd Wright began his architects career as an apprentice
at Louis Sullivans office

Sullivans architecture was urban, restrained in character, and

classic in organization
Sullivan wrote, It is the very essence of every problem that it
contains and suggests its own solutions. Thus Form follows
Function.
Wrights architecture developed into the expression of
asymmetrically
composed
masses
and
subtly
interpenetrating spaces more suited to stand alone,
preferably in a natural rather than an urban context.
Wright wrote, .as a physical raw materialism instead of the
spiritual thing it really is: the idea of Life itself, bodily and
spiritually, intrinsic organism. Form and Function as one.
The Office of Peter Behrens(1910s)
office at Berlin was the center of search and expression for new
principles
Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe
(1908) Spent 3 years in this office
Less is More
Formulated Cubism and Futurism
Walter Gropius
Behrens chief designer
The Creation of Space
Lao Tze, a Chinese Philosopher, said, The reality of the
building does not consist in the roof and walls, but in the
space within to be lived in.
Space has 3 Stages:
Outer space - interplay and visual tension created in
the relationship of static volumes
Inner Space - emphasis on the hollowed interior
volume and the continuity of interior space, where the
exterior form was the result of the defined space within
Interpenetration of Space - the to former phases
were intermingled when a new period was initiated by
the discovery that sight is an organic process, one in
which motion initiates a way of seeing and recording
phenomena that is more than a passive transfer of
images.
By motion, time (the 4th dimension) was introduced

The BAUHAUS (1920s)

Germany was the center of development and study
Art and Technology, the New Unity
Established by Walter Gropius
Functionalism

The International Style (1930s)

Frank Lloyd Wright (America)
Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe (Germany)
Walter Gropius (Germany)
Le Corbusier (France)
Functional, Nontraditional, Nonregional

Reassessment
Universalism
Mies Van Der Rohes work is more classical formal
architectural expression
Functions are resolved within a minimum of larger
elements
Function is subject to an external order or discipline.
Personalism
Wright used the functional complexities of a building as
the integral means of form and expression.
Brutalism

Derived from beton brut (naked concrete)

Postmodernism
A trend away from the functional aesthetic of the International
Style and the severity of Brutalism.
Favored the return to the historical references
Robert Venturi

Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture

Less is Bore