CHAPTER 16: TWENTIETH-CENTURY ARCHITECTURE
CHAPTER 16 OUTLINE
“Twentieth-Century Architecture”
DISCOVERING ART HISTORY, BROMMER
Modern architecture first flourished in America, which was less entrenched in past traditions than Europe. Steel-framed structures–with gridlike patterns of vertical and horizontal beams–soared upward, punctuating the urban horizon.
ART TIMELINE (images for discussion)
1909 Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House http://www.greatbuildings.com/gbc.html
HISTORICAL TIMELINE
1909 Ford begins assembly-line automobile manufacturing
1914 – 1918 World War I
1939 – 1945 World War II
1940 Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
1961 Russian Yuri Gagarin, first man to orbit the Earth
1976 First personal computer
1990 Soviet Union dissolves
VOCABULARY
•cantilevered: (kan-tl-ee-ver) A horizontal projection, canopy, balcony, or beam balanced and supported with a fulcrum.
•geodesic: (jee-oh-des-ik) A form of geometry (solid) which forms the basis for structures built of interlocking polygons.
16.1 MODERNISM IN ARCHITECTURE
•Surge in construction at the beginning of the 20th century
•Using new technologies which incorporated steel and metal-frame construction, American architects developed the skyscraper.
•Building designs relied on internal steel structure (rather than load-bearing masonry outer walls) to support weight of the building. Thus, buildings of much greater height and radical design were possible.
•The lines of these buildings are clean, and function becomes a primary concern.
Key Architects:
Louis Sullivan (1856 – 1924) Carson, Pirie, Scott Department Store, Chicago, IL, 1899–1901
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 – 1959) Falling Water, Bear Run, PA, 1936;
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, 1956–59
Garrit Rietveld (1888 – 1964) Schroder House, Utrecht, Holland,1924
Walter Gropius (1883 – 1969) Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany, 1928
Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jenneret) (1887 – 1965) Notre-Dame-du-Haut,
Ronchamp, France, 1950–54
Wallace K. Harrison (1895 – 1981) United Nations Secretariat Building, New York, NY,
1947–1950
Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, The John Hancock Center, Chicago, IL, 1970
Eero Saarinen (1910–1961) The Gateway Arch (Jefferson National Expansion Memorial),
St. Louis, MO, 1963–1965
Louis I. Kahn (1901–1974) Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX, 1966–72
R. Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) United States Pavilion, Expo 67, Monteal, Canada, 1967
Moshe Safdie (b.1938) Habitat, Montreal, Canada, 1967
Renzo Piano (b.1937) and Richard Rogers (b.1933) Georges Pompidou National Center of Art
and Culture, Paris, France, 1977
Philip Johnson (1906–2005) The Glass House, New Caanan, CT, 1949
I.M. Pei (1917) East Building, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1978
16.2 POST-MODERNISM
•In the 1960s and 1970s, there is a reaction to the impersonality and purity of Modernism.
•Post-Modernism embraces history, symbolism, vivid ornamentation and eclecticism.
Key Architects:
Michael Graves (b.1934) Public Services Building, Portland, OR, 1980–1983
Robert Venturi (b. 1925), Denise Scott Brown (b. 1931) Vanna Venturi House, Philadelphia, PA,
1961–1964
Philip Johnson (1906 – 2005) John Burgee (b. 1933) AT&T (Sony) Building, New York, NY, 1984;
PPG Place, Pittsburg, PA, 1981–1984
Helmut Jahn (b. 1940) Kemper Arena, Kansas City, MO, 1974; United Airlines Terminal, Chicago, IL,
1987; Illinois State Office Building, Chicago, IL, 1985
Frank Gehry (b. 1929) Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain, 1997
Arata Isozaki (b. 1931) Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA, 1986
Cesar Pelli (b. 1926) World Financial Center, New York, NY, 1988
HIGHER-ORDER THINKING SKILLS
•Meis’ buildings are often characterized as being “classic modern.” Have students investigate the similarities and differences between modern and ancient Classicism by comparing one of Mies’ buildings to one from ancient Classical times.
•Wright has had a pervasive influence on twentieth-century housing. Ask the class to find buildings in your community that reflect Wright’s ideas. Students should support their choices by references to Wright’s work.
•Ask students to speculate about what it would be like to go to school in the Bauhaus building. How does it compare to their present school?
•Instruct students to compare Lever House (fig.16–12) to Chartres Cathedral (fig. 8–15), where glass also played an important role. Ask how the role of glass is similar and different in these two buildings. Students should consider practical and aesthetic concerns, as well as the “meaning” of the glass in each building.
•Ask student to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of living and working in geodesic-dome structures. Students can sketch floor plans to visualize the placement of furniture, access routes (doors and halls) and windows in both rectangular and circular spaces.
•Raise the topic of modern additions for historical structures. Do student feel that blatantly modern additions such as the one by Pei to the Louvre are appropriate or shold additions be couched in the appropriate historical style? Students should defend their positions.
•Ask students to select a Classical building to compare to one of Michael Graves’ buildings. Their writings or discussions should include their reasons for their choices.
•Historic preservation and restoration often places people on opposite sides of issues relating to development and modernization. Ask students if they feel that old buildings should be preserved. Why? Have the class create guidelines for making decisions about restoration or demolition.
•Ask students if murals and sequences of colored lights like those John did for O’Hare International Airport (fig. 16–30) would be a good addition to the halls of their school. Have students defend their opinions.
•Isozaki’s design for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angleles had to meet the requirements of the client and its neighbors. Ask students whether neighbors, either commercial or residential, should have a say in the design
of new structures.
•As an effort to keep new structures from overshadowing existing buildings and important monuments, some communities, such as Washington, DC, have restrictions on the hight of new buildings. Such laws have a side effect of raising rents because the amounts of available space in desirable areas becomes limited. Ask students whether she aesthetics of the community as a whole should be allowed to override choices for the individual builder.