What is Rationalism?

• Ration was what defined humans as a species and separated us from animals.

• A building committed to a logical, mathematically ordered design.

• Rationalism as a movement implied the complete devotion to logical, functional, and mathematically ordered architecture.

• Rationalism has often been proposed as a way to create an environment perfect for rational beings.

• 20th century rationalism derived less from a special, unified theoretical work than from a common belief that the most varied problems posed by the real world could be resolved by reason. In that respect it represented a reaction to historicism and a contrast to Art Nouveau and Expressionism.

RATIONALISM

- Neo rationalism( late 20th century)

- Early 20th century rationalism (early 20th century)

- Enlightenment rationalism(17TH century)

Early Rationalist Architecture

• The concept of rational architecture first emerged with the ancient Greeks. rational architecture was defined by its function as much as its form.

• Vitruvius, the first person to codify architecture into a consistent discipline, formally

asserted that architectural

forms could be rationally

deduced. From there,

rationalism as a formal

ideology began.

Rationalism in the Enlightenment

• The Enlightenment was defined by the idea that nothing should be trusted that could not be proven.

• Focused on simple geometric shapes like circles, squares, and triangles, breaking complex forms into basic

units. This movement was largely a rejection of the extremely fancy and ornate Baroque movement.

• All excess was stripped away,

revealing the structure in

terms of basic shapes,

elements, and materials.

HENRILABROUSTE

AUGUSTE PERRET

Rationalism in the Early 20th Century

• The 19th century had seen the rise of several styles

defined by high amounts of decoration, and 20th

century architects began reconsidering the aesthetic of a structure without ornamentation. The building was the design, composed of basic geometric shapes, functional space, and a logical aesthetic.

• Architects such as Henri Labrouste and AugustePerret incorporated the virtues of structural

rationalism throughout the 19th century in their

buildings.

One of the first rationalist buildings was the Palazzo Gualino in Turin, built for the financier

Riccardo Gualino by the architects Gino Levi-Montalcini and Giuseppe Pagano.

Neo-rationalism

• In the late 1960s, a new rationalist movement emerged in architecture, claiming inspiration from both the Enlightenment and early-20th-century rationalists.

• Rossi's great cemetery at Modena is

the movement's most celebrated

work (1971–85).

The Krier brothers Kleihues,

Reichlin and Reinhart, and

Ungers have been associated

with Neo-Rationalism.

MATERIAL

• They are using industrialized materials, especially concrete.Concrete advantages are:

- It’s a cheep material, easy to adapt, incombustible,

non-corrosive and that offers the possibility of

building the skeleton, leaving the plan free.- It permits pre-manufacturing series.- It can be combined with other materials

such as still, glass, brick.

BUILDING ELEMENTS

• The wall is not a support any longer, and it is reduced to a light skin for closing, with a huge number of windows that allows light and air entering inside the building.

• The supports are pillars with different sections, made of steel and concrete.

• The covers, in general, are lintels standing on the support and forming with them the skeleton, giving to the construction a light and non-weighty aspects of great construction audacity.

DECORATIVE ELEMNTS

• The decorative elements disappear in favor of the straight and nude form.

• There is a worry about proportion, simplicity and asymmetry.

• The internal sapce is based of the free plan with interior walld that curve and move freely, adaptig to the different functions.

• In the exterior the projecting, the free low level and the

terrace in horizontal desfine new image.

BUILDING TYPOLOGY

• There is a great interest about urbanism because they aim at accommodating people to the new leaving standards and organize their groups, proposing new formulas as the garden city or industrial city.

• The representative buildings are - social houses- skyscrapers- industrial buildings- administrative constructions- theatres- concert halls and stadiums.

Mies van der Rohe

• Mies van der Rohe,was linked to the

Bauhaus and is one of the best

representativas of Rational architecture.

• His work was revolutionary from the very beginning, when he started designing an office building in Berlin (1919).

• After that he designed houses and in 1929 he built the German Pavilion for Barcelona’s Universal Exhibition.

• In this building he demonstrated the

right use of modern materials, with

clear volumes and the wall as a

curtain instead of the traditional wall

• He emigrated to the US where he

built numerous skyscrapers that

look to be enormous glass boxes,

in which it can be seen the devotion

of the architect for the purity of

the forms.

• The use of new materials is

essential for his work.

• The Seagram Building is one

of his most representative

skyscrapers.

Le Corbusier

• Le Corbusier was born in Switzerland

even if a majority of his work was

developed in France.

• He learnt the use of concrete and soon he began with the series production.

• He also designed cities for a concrete

number of inhabitants

(about three million).

• In 1926 he made one of his mostrepresentative works Ville Savoye,

that consists of a concrete structure of Mediterraneaninspiration.

• In Ville Savoye he put into practice his five poinys of architecture:

- Use of “pilotis”, a kind of pillar to sustain the structure and separate it from the floor, not cutting the space,

- Free façade- Garden terrace, thanks to flat roofs- Multiplication of windows; continuous windows with

metallic sticks- Free plans because now it is not the support of wall

• He theorised but it was not an utopian because his projects were realised

• One of his popular work was the unite d habitation at marseile, where he build houses for working class families

• In these buildings he applied some of his architectonical points too

• At the end of his career he modifiedhis Rationalism and was closer to the Organicism as in the case of one of his master works: Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp.

Other works are:

Chandigarh in India

UN Headquarters in New York

Bagdad Stadium

Presented by:-Siddhi Pande

Mayur Waghulde

Siddhika Chichani

Sphurti Ramekar

Guided by:-Prof. J.B. Deshmukh

THANK YOU!!!