Architecture History Final-Terms
High Tech Modernism
An architectural style that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high-tech industry and technology into building design.
Heimatstil
"Homeland Style"- a term used by Tessenow
Athens Charter
A document about urban planning published by the Swiss architect, Le Corbusier in 1943. The work was based upon Le Corbusier's Ville Radieuse (Radiant City) book of 1935 and urban studies undertaken by the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in the early 1930s.
Futurist Manifesto
A manifesto written by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and published in 1909. Marinetti expresses an artistic philosophy, Futurism, that was a rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, youth and industry; it also advocated the modernization and cultural rejuvenation of Italy
Starchitect
A portmanteau used to describe architects whose celebrity and critical acclaim have transformed them into idols of the architecture world and may even have given them some degree of fame amongst the general public.
Bauhaus
A school that changed the way art school taught their students art, design, and architecture. Led by Walter Gropius in 1919 and pushed towards making all art one entity rather than having a separation between craftsman and artists
Post Moderism
A style or movement which emerged in the 1960s as a reaction against the austerity, formality, and lack of variety of modern architecture, particularly in the international style advocated by Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The movement was given a doctrine by the architect and architectural theorist Robert Venturi in his 1966 book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.
New Monumentality
A term which was first introduced to architectural discourse by Sigfried Giedion, Jose Luis Sert, and Fernand Léger right after the post-World War II in the early 40s- shows an effort to determine the ethics of the post war modern architecture regarding: historicism, functionalism, and representation
Landscape Urbanism
A theory of urban planning arguing that the best way to organize cities is through the design of the city's landscape, rather than the design of its buildings.
Rationalism
An architectural current that mostly developed form Italy in the 1920s-30s. Vitruvius had claimed in his work De Architectura that architecture is a science that can be comprehended rationally.
Public Art
Art in any media that has been planned and executed with the intention of being staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all
Vorkurs
Bauhaus' concept of fundamental courses that should be taught in art and design before students move up into higher education. This is important to architecture because it made the students studying architecture learn the fundamentals of design prior to learning architecture, as well as the fact that most art schools today still follow this structure.
Design with Nature
Book written by Ian McHarg that is a kickstarter for Green Architecture and Landscape Urbanism.
Complexity and Contradiction
Book written by Venturi, it expresses the post modern rebellion against the purism of modernism
Constructivism
Concept created by Vladamir Tatlin in Russia in 1913. An architectural philosophy that rejected autonomous and decided rather to construct it. This style was highly connected to the social ideals of the communist party and thus many buildings for this party were created in the constructivist style, such as the Russakov workers club and the USSR Pavilion
Promenade Architecture
Concept that derived from Le Corbusier which explains the use of a free floor plan that indicated the more important areas within a space and downplays the unnecessary. This promotes circulation and is part of the 5 points of architecture. This influenced many architects to use free plans and to begin thinking of circulation
De Stijl
Dutch for "The Style", also known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic movement founded in 1917 in Amsterdam. The De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a narrower sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931 in the Netherlands. Advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour; they simplified visual compositions to vertical and horizontal, using only black, white and primary colors. De Stijl is also the name of a journal that was published by the Dutch painter, designer, writer, and critic Theo van Doesburg
Purism
Founded in 1918 after WWI by Ozenfant and Le Corbusier as a backlash to the chaos of the war and the over decoration of the prior architectural movements. The purist movement led to clean lines embraced in the later modernist movement, as well as the 5 points of architecture. The goal of the purist movement was to embrace the ideals of industrialism while keeping a balance by simplifying in order to create a stronger nation after the war.
La Sarraz Declaration
Many of the modernist architects (Le Corbusier, Berlage, Meyer, Reietveld) signed this declaration that would highly influence the way modernists viewed architecture. These men unified together to state that architecture need not be an entity from the past because if so, architecture would not continue to move forward.
Vers une Arch
Means towards an architecture. A collection of essays written by Le Corbusier, advocating for and exploring the concept of modern architecture.
New Urbanism
Movement that arose in America in the late 1980s and was the idea of introducing a new way to look at city planning in order to make more walkable and safe neighborhoods that promote a better way of life.
Brutalism
Originates from the french word meaning "raw"- used by Le Corbusier to describe his choice of material, beton brut (raw concrate). Many architects after him used this idea-which shows how influential Le Corbusier was on later architects. This can be seen in the Salk Biological Institute by Louis Kahn.
Deconstructivism
Philosophy that uses the theories of Derrida to combine the Russian Avant Garde communist architecture with the language and theories of post modernism. This concept is shown in Eisenman's IBA Social Housing where he excavated the land behind the building to get a full understanding of the site. Architects using this philosophy often looked within the structure to see the turmoil within-a key idea within the deconstructivists.
Stripped Classicism
Primarily a 20th-century classicist architectural style stripped of most or all ornamentation, frequently employed by governments while designing official buildings. It was adapted by both totalitarian and democratic regimes
Futurism
Social Movement around 1914 that was started by Marinetti that glorified war and violence as well as the age of the machine. This translated into architecture because, although they produced hardly any actual buildings, their futuristic ideas lead to many drawing which later went on to influence high tech buildings such as the Giaccomo Matte- Fiat factory that had a track on the roof to test drive cars.
C.I.A.M
The Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (Internation Congresses of Modern Architecture. An organization founded in 1928 and disbanded in 1959, it was responsible for a series of events and congresses arranged across Europe by the most prominent architects of the time, with the objective of spreading the principles of the Modern Movement, focusing in all the main domains of architecture (landscape, urbanism, industrial design, etc.
Avant Garde
The concept of people using unusual and experimental ideas to create the newest trends, which is influential towards architecture due to the change in people's thoughts-which in turn changed the way they look at architecture. This is demonstrated clearly through constructivism, futurism, and De Stijl or neoplasticism.
L' Espirit Nouveau
The french journal L' Espirit Nouveau (1920-25) epitomizes the tensions and exchanges between Avant-Gardism, "return to order," and classicism of modernist art in the decade after WWI. Ozenfant and Le Corbusier used the journal to promote the development of a "rational," technological, and formalist modernity.
Urban Renewal
The redevelopment of areas within a large city, typically involving the clearance of slums. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s.
Brise Soleil
The use of technology to change the way light is shaded into buildings. This becomes more popular in the late turn of the 21st century and is seen in buildings like the New York Times building and the Kimbell Art Museum. It shows a push towards more energy efficient buildings which becomes a fundamental principle in cutting edge architecture in the early 2000s and onward.
Neoplasticism
This concept is known as the De Stijl- the style began in 1917 and advocated pure abstraction and universitality by the reduction to the essential form and color. This art movement greatly influenced architecture as many of the modernists mimicked the simplicity of the forms and the simple primary colors which can be seen in Rietveld's Schroder House.
International Style
This style came to fruition when Philip Johnson and Henry R. Hitchcock wrote a book in 1932 explaining the style that had been emerging through the 20s and 30s, which could be seen around the world and is characterized by a white rectilinear, basic shaped building, stripped of ornamentation and appears weightless due to the catalever construction. This style became even more popular after the MOMA Exhibition that was curated by Johnson and Hitchcock.
Learning from Las Vegas
Written by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour in 1972. Calls for architects to be more receptive to the tastes and values of "common" people and less immodest in their erections of "heroic," self-aggrandizing monuments.
5 Points of Architecture
concept derived form Le Corbusier, which lead up to ideal modern building. Points are: Pilotis, Free Ground Plan, Free Facade Horizontal Windows, and Roof Gardens. This is influential to the following modernists architects who embrace some of these features in their own work. Later to become a part of what is thought of when "modernist architecture" is mentioned
N.Y 5 Architects
refers to a group of five New York City architects (Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk and Richard Meier) whose photographed work was the subject of a CASE (Committee of Architects for the Study of the Environment) meeting at the Museum of Modern Art, organized by Arthur Drexler and Colin Rowe in 1969, and featured in the subsequent book Five Architects, published by Wittenborn in 1972, then more famously by Oxford Press in 1975. These five had a common allegiance to a pure form of architectural modernism, harking back to the work of Le Corbusier in the 1920s and 1930s, although on closer examination their work was far more individual. The grouping may have had more to do with social and academic allegiances, particularly the mentoring role of Philip Johnson.
