MODERNISM (1932-1984)

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION BROKE OUT BY AROUND 1790, AND BECAME IN FULL SWING BY THE 1830-1840.

THE NEW TECHNOLOGY LED TO USE OF NEW MATERIALS LIKE IRON, CONCRETE AND GLASS. THE CRYSTAL PALACE BY JOSEPH PAXTON FOR THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF 1851 WAS AN EARLY EXAMPLE OF STEEL AND GLASS

CONSTRUCTION. BY 1890, LOUIS SULLIVAN BUILT SKYSCRAPERS, AND BY 1900S, F.L. WRIGHT EMPLOYED CONCRETE.(U.S)

SOME HISTORIANS REGARD MODERNISM AS A BATTLE AGAINST THE LAVISHNESS OF ECLECTICISM AND ART NOUVEAU.

BY 1920S, THE THREE MOST IMPORTANT MEMBERS OF MODERNISM ESTABLISHED THEMSELVES-CORBUSIER(FRANCE), MIES AND

GROPIUS(GERMANY)-THE LATTER TWO, DIRECTORS OF BAUHAUS.

IN 1932 CAME MoMA EXHIBITION BY PHILIP JOHNSON. HIS WORK AS WELL AS HENRY-RUSSEL HITCHCOCK’S, IS CALLED INTERNATIONAL STYLE.

WITH WORLD WAR II, THE BAUHAUS FIGURES FLED TO U.S. MODERNISM NEVER BECAME PROMINENT IN CASE OF HOUSES, BUT FOR IN DUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS THAT WAS THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE SOLUTION FROM

1932 TO 1984.

CRYSTAL PALACE

SULLIVAN’S SKYSCRAPER-WAINWRIGHT BUILDING

FALLING WATER

CORBUSIER’S CITY OF TOMORROW

THE CHANGE

Detractors of the international style claim that its stark, uncompromisingly rectangular geometry is dehumanising. Le Corbusier

once described buildings as "machines for living", but people are not machines and it was suggested that they do not want to live in

machines. Even Philip Johnson admitted he was "bored with the box." (Here we have to notice that that architects like Sullivan, Wright, mies, Corbusier etc., even though they were modern architects and despised decorations and used minimalism, their buildings had a certain grace

and form, which the other so-called modern architects failed to conceive).Since the early 1980s many architects have deliberately

sought to move away from rectilinear designs, towards more eclectic styles. During the middle of the century, some architects began

experimenting in organic forms that they felt were more human and accessible. Mid-century modernism, or organic modernism, was very

popular, due to its democratic and playful nature. Alvar Aalto and Eero Saarinen were two of the most prolific architects and designers in this

movement, which has influenced contemporary modernism.

IN FACT THE DECLINE OF MODERNISM STARTED BY 1960 ITSELF, AND PEOPLE THOUGHT THE MODERN ARCHITECTURE IS NOT ACTUALLY A STYLE, BUT A PHASE

OF TRANSITION ONLY.BY 1980S POST MODERNISM TOOK OVER-BUT THE TRANSITION WAS COMPLETE

BY THE MID 1990S ONLY.

POST MODERNISM

By the mid-1990s, a neo-modern (or hypermodern) architecture had once again established international pre-eminence. As part of this revival, much of the criticism of the modernists has been revisited, refuted, and re-evaluated; and a modernistic idiom once again dominates in institutional and commercial contemporary practice, but must now compete with the revival of traditional architectural design in commercial and institutional architecture; residential design continues to be dominated by a traditional aesthetic.

POST MODERNISM-NEO ECLECTICISM

• Postmodern architecture is an international style whose first examples are generally cited as being from the 1950s, and which continues to influence present-day architecture. Postmodernity in architecture is generally thought to be heralded by the return of "wit, ornament and reference" to architecture in response to the formalism of the International Style of modernism. As with many cultural movements, some of postmodernism's most pronounced and visible ideas can be seen in architecture. The functional and formalized shapes and spaces of the modernist movement are replaced by unapologetically diverse aesthetics: styles collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of viewing familiar styles and space abound.

• Classic examples of modern architecture are the Lever House and the Seagram Building in commercial space, and the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright or the Bauhaus movement in private or communal spaces. Transitional examples of postmodern architecture are the Portland Building in Portland, Oregon and the Sony Building (New York City) (originally AT&T Building) in New York City, which borrows elements and references from the past and reintroduces color and symbolism to architecture. A prime example of inspiration for postmodern architecture lies along the Las Vegas Strip, which was studied by Robert Venturi in his 1977 book Learning from Las Vegas celebrating the strip's ordinary and common architecture.

PORTLAND BUILDING-SONY BUILDING-LAS VEGAS STRIP

Modernist architects regard post-modern buildings as vulgar and cluttered with "gew-gaws". Postmodern architects often regard modern spaces as soulless and bland. The divergence in opinions comes down to a difference in goals: modernism is rooted in minimal and true use of material as well as absence of ornament, while postmodernism is a rejection of strict rules set by the early modernists and seeks exuberance in the use of building techniques, angles, and stylistic references.

The postmodernist movement began in America around the 1960’s/70’s and then it spread to Europe and the rest of the world, to remain right through to the present. The aims of postmodernism or Late-modernism begin with its reaction to Modernism; it tries to address the limitations of its predecessor. The list of aims is extended to include communicating ideas with the public often in a then humorous or witty way. Often, the communication is done by quoting extensively from past architectural styles, often many at once. In breaking away from modernism, it also strives to produce buildings that are sensitive to the context within which they are built.

EXERCISE 1

Suppose you have to design a portico for your college.

Draw the front view of the portico in the following three cases-1. you designed it in the Classical period

2. You designed it during the Modern movement3. You are designing it in Post-modern style?

Robert Venturi was at the forefront of instantiating this movement. His book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (published in

1966), was instrumental in the postmodernist movement in architecture and was fiercely critical of the dominant Functional

Modernism. The move away from Modernism’s functionalism is well illustrated by Venturi’s witty adaptation of Mies van der Rohe’s

famous maxim “Less is more”. Venturi instead said “less is a bore”. Along with the rest of the Postmodernists, he sought to bring back

ornament because of its necessity. He explains this and his criticism of Modernism in his Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by

saying that:Architects can bemoan or try to ignore them (referring to the

ornamental and decorative elements in buildings) or even try to abolish them, but they will not go away. Or they will not go away for

a long time, because architects do not have the power to replace them (nor do they know what to replace them with).

Robert Venturi was possibly the foremost campaigner of the rebellion against Modernist Architecture which became known as Postmodern. His two books Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966)

and Learning from Las Vegas (1972) (although not actual manifestos of Post Modern Architecture) do well to express many of the aims embodied in Postmodernism. The latter book he co-authored with

Steven Izenour and his wife, Denise Scott Brown.

PHILIP JOHNSON (July 8, 1906– January 25, 2005) was an influential American architect.in 1928 Johnson met the Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who was at the time designing the German Pavilion for the Barcelona exhibition of 1929. The meeting was a revelation for Johnson and formed the basis for a lifelong relationship of both collaboration and competition. The pupil had finally found the master. Johnson continued to work as a proponent of modern architecture, using the Museum of Modern Art.His early influence as a practicing architect was his use of glass; his masterpiece

was a "Glass House" he designed as his own residence. After completing several houses in the idiom of Mies and Breuer, Johnson joined Mies in the design of the 39 story Seagram Building (1956). This collaboration resulted in the remarkable bronze and glass tower on Park Avenue. Completing the Seagram Building with Mies marked a shift in Johnson's career, his practice enlarged with projects from the public realm -- such as coordinating the master plan of Lincoln Center and designing the New York State Theater of that complex. Meanwhile, Johnson began to grow impatient with the orthodoxies of the International Style he had championed. The glass and steel tower had by the 1960's become commonplace the world over. He eventually rejected much of the metallic appearance of earlier International Style buildings, and began designing spectacular, crystalline structures uniformly sheathed in glass. Johnson's architectural work is a balancing act between two dominant trends in post-war American art: the more "serious" movement of Minimalism, and the more populist movement of Pop art. His best work has aspects of both movements. His work was seen by purists of either side as always too contaminated or influenced by the other.

MoMA EXHIBITION

Philip Johnson, with his friends Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and Henry-Russell Hitchcock examined recent trends in architecture, and the three

assembled their discoveries as the landmark show "The International Style: Architecture Since 1922" at the Museum of Modern Art, in

1932. The show was profoundly influential and is seen as the introduction of modern architecture to the American public. It

introduced such pivotal architects as Le Corbusier, Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe. The exhibition was also notable for a controversy: architect Frank Lloyd Wright withdrew his entries in pique that he

was not more prominently featured.

As critic Pater Blake has stated, the importance of this show in shaping American architecture in the century "cannot be overstated."

In the book accompanying the show, coauthored with Hitchcock, Johnson argued that the new modern style maintained three formal

principles: 1. an emphasis on architectural volume over mass (planes rather than solidity) 2. a rejection of symmetry and 3. rejection of

applied decoration. The definition of the movement as a "style" with distinct formal characteristics has been seen by some critics as

downplaying the social and political bent that many of the European practitioners shared.

SONY BUILDING

The AT&T Building in Manhattan, now the Sony Building, was completed in 1984 and was immediately controversial for its neo-Georgian pediment (Chippendale top). At the time, it was seen as provocation on a grand scale: crowning a Manhattan skyscraper with a shape echoing a historical wardrobe top defied every precept of the modernist aesthetic: historical pattern had been effectively outlawed among architects for years. In retrospect other critics have seen the AT&T Building as the first Postmodernist statement, necessary in the context of modernism's aesthetic cul-de-sac.

CHARLES MOORE (October 31, 1925 in Benton Harbor, Michigan – December 16, 1993 in Austin, Texas) was an American architect, educator, writer, and winner of the AIA Gold Medal in 1991.

Moore preferred conspicuous design features, including loud color combinations, supergraphics, stylistic collisions, the re-use of esoteric historical-design solutions, and the use of non-traditional materals such as plastic, (aluminized) PET film, platinum tiles, and neon signs, As a result, his work provokes arousal, demands attention. His mid-1960s New Haven residence, published in Playboy, featured an open, freestanding shower in the middle of the room, its water nozzled through a giant sunflower. Such design features (historical detail, ornament, fictional treatments, ironic significations) have made Moore one of the very first postmodern innovators, along with Robert Venturi and a few others.

"Body, Memory, and Architecture," written with Kent Bloomer during the Yale years, is a plea for architects to design structures for three-dimensional user experience instead of two-dimensional visual appearance. "The City Observed: Los Angeles" remains an excellent guide to Los Angeles' significant architecture.

PIAZZA D ITALIA

Michael Graves (b. July 9, 1934) is an American architect. Identified as one of The New York Five, Graves has achieved his greatest fame

with his designs for domestic household items sold at Target stores in the United States.

Graves was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. He attended Broad Ripple High School, receiving his diploma in 1950. He earned a bachelor's

degree from the University of Cincinnati and a master's degree from Harvard University.

An architect in public practice in Princeton, New Jersey, since 1964, Graves is also the Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture,

Emeritus at Princeton University. He directs the firm Michael Graves & Associates, which has offices in Princeton and in New York City. In addition to his popular line of household items, Graves and his firm

have earned acclaim for a wide variety of commercial and residential buildings and interior design. In 1999 Graves was awarded the

National Medal of Arts and in 2001 the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects.

In 2003, an infection of unknown origin (possible bacterial meningitis) left Graves paralyzed from the waist down. He is still active in his

practice, which is currently involved in a number of projects; including an addition to the Detroit Institute of Arts, and a large

Integrated Resort in Singapore

PORTLAND BUILDINGThe Portland Building is a 15-story municipal office building located at 1120 SW 5th Avenue in downtown Portland, Oregon. It opened in 1982.Michael Graves' building, with its distinctive block-like design and square windows, has become an icon of postmodern architecture. In 1985, the building was adorned by addition of the hammered-copper statue Portlandia above the front entrance.The building remains controversial among Portlanders as well as the entire architecture field for its revolutionary design which was a rejection of the Modernist principles established in the early 20th century. The design was selected as the winning design in a large scale design competition with Philip Johnson as one of the three members of the selection committee.Many structural flaws, said to be due to a lack of funds, came to light shortly after the building's completion.The building's failings are the subject of much humor and contempt by the civil servants who work there.

RICARDO BOFILL

• Ricardo Bofill (born December 5, 1939) is a Catalan architect of Jewish descent.

• He was born in Barcelona and studied at the Architectural School in Barcelona, and later in Geneva.

• Bofill is one of the main representatives of postmodernism in architecture.In 1963 he gathered a group of architects, engineers, planners, sociologist,

writers, movie makers and philosophers: The Taller de Arquitectura was founded, an international team which for more than 40 years, has gathered

great experience in urban planning, architecture, landscaping, interior, furniture and product design.

Today, hundreds of projects around the world validate our capacity to design in harmony with specific, different local cultures.

www.bofill.com

Robert Arthur Morton Stern, usually credited as Robert A. M. Stern, (born May 23, 1939) is an American architect and Dean of the

Yale University School of Architecture. Before taking that post, he was professor of architecture at Columbia and director of Columbia's Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.

He received a bachelor's degree from Columbia in 1960 and a master's degree in architecture from Yale in 1965. After graduating

from Yale, Stern worked as a designer in the office of Richard Meier in 1966, prior to forming the firm of Stern & Hagmann with a fellow

student from his days at Yale, John S. Hagmann, in 1969. In 1977 he founded the successor firm, Robert A. M. Stern Architects.

His work is generally classified as postmodern, though a more useful classification would be a particular emphasis on context and the

continuity of traditions. He may have been the first architect to use the term "postmodernism“, but more recently he has used the phrase

"modern traditionalist" to describe his work.

RICHARD MEIR

• Richard Meier (born October 12, 1934 in Newark, New Jersey) is an influential, contemporary American architect known for his rationalist designs and the use of the colour white.

• He earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Cornell University in 1957, worked for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill briefly in 1959, and then for Marcel Breuer for three years, prior to starting his own practice in New York in 1963. Identified as one of The New York Five in 1972, his commission of the Getty Center Museum in Los Angeles, California catapulted his popularity among the mainstream.

• Much of Meier's work builds on the work of the architectural masters of the early to mid-20th century- especially that of Le Corbusier and, in particular, Le Corbusier's early phase. In fact, it might be said that Meier has probably built more using Corbusier's ideas than anyone, including Le Corbusier himself[citation needed]. Meier expanded many ideas evident in Le Corbusier's work, particularly the Villa Savoye and the Swiss Pavilion.

• His work also reflects the influences of other master designers such as Mies Van der Rohe and, in some instances, Frank Lloyd Wright and Luis Barragán (without the colour)[citation needed]. White has been used in many architectural landmark buildings throughout history, including Cathedrals and the white-washed villages of the mediterranean region--in Spain, southern Italy and Greece.

• In 1984, Meier was awarded the Pritzker Prize. He also consulted on the design of several buildings that appear in the 2003 city building computer game SimCity 4,[citation needed] making him perhaps the first professional architect ever commissioned to participate in building design for a computer game.

JAMES STIRLING

• If Frank Lloyd Wright was the most important architect of the first half of the twentieth century, Sir James Frazer Stirling (22 April 1926 in Glasgow – 25 June 1992 in London) was surely the most important and influential architect of the second half, admired by all the other architects of the time and now, in the XXI century, by a new generation. He is perhaps best known as one of a number of young architects in various countries who from the 1950s on, questioned and subverted the compositional and theoretical precepts of the first Modern Movement. Stirling's development of an agitated, mannered reinterpretation of those precepts - much influenced by his friend and teacher, the important architectural theorist and urbanist Colin Rowe - introduced an eclectic spirit that allowed him to plunder the whole sweep of architectural history as a source of compositional inspiration, from ancient Rome and the Baroque, to the many manifestations of the modern period, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Alvar Aalto. His secret lay in his ability to incorporate these encyclopedaic references subtly, within a strong and muscular, very decisive architecture of strong, confident gestures that aimed to remake urban form.

STATE GALLERY STUTTGART

Peter Eisenman (born August 11, 1932 in Newark, New Jersey) is one of the foremost practitioners of deconstructivism in American architecture. Eisenman's fragmented forms are identified with an eclectic group of architects that have been, at times unwillingly,

labelled deconstructivists. Although Eisenman shuns the label, he has had a history of controversy aimed at keeping him in the public

(academic) eye. His theories on architecture pursue the emancipation and autonomy of the discipline and his work represents a continued attempt to liberate form from all meaning, a struggle that most find difficult to understand. He always had strong cultural relationships with European intellectuals like his English mentor Colin Rowe and

the Italian historian Manfredo Tafuri. The work of philosopher Jacques Derrida is a key influence in Eisenman's architecture. He is often seen

in a bowtie and a black sweater with a small hole.