ARCH 2340 - MA Exam II
megastructure (Fumihiko Maki)
City in the Air by Arata Isozaki, project, 1961
Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by Robert Venturi 1966
He suggests that you shouldn't limit yourself and you should combine materials.
Sigfried Giedion and Joseph Luis Sert, "Nine Points of Monumentality" 1943, published 1956
Monument, Monumentality
Urban Renewal
Program in which cities identify blighted inner-city neighborhoods, acquire the properties from private members, relocate the residents and businesses, clear the site, build new roads and utilities, and turn the land over to private developers.
Garden City Movement - Ebenezer Howard
advocated the construction of new towns separated from each other by open country with recreational areas, fresh air, and sense of community that would encourage healthy family life
BRISE SOLEIL (SUN BREAKER)
is an architectural feature of a building that reduces heat gain within that building by deflecting sunlight.
Governor's Palace (not built) Le Corbusier Chandigarh, India
parasol
Clarence Stein and Henry Wright Radburn, New Jersey 1929
"Town of the Motor Age" - American Vernacular influenced suburban development - planned to incorporate the idea of the Garden City with transportation separated by mode - pedestrian-oriented scheme encourages high transit use - planned with the intention of social reform but fell through due to the stock market crash It introduced superblocks, cul-de-sacs, and driveways It was the Regional Planning Association of America's first experiment, yet unsuccessful
Metabolism
"contemporary architecture must be changable,movable, and capable of meeting the changing requirements of the contemporary age." " In order to reflect dynamic reality, what is needed is not fixed, static, function, but rather one which is capable of undergoing metabolic changes... We must stop thinking in terms of function and form and think instead in terms of space and changable function."
General Motor's Futurama Norman Bel Geddes New York World's Fair 1939
"vision of the future" an exhibit that presented a possible model of the world 20 years into the future -introduced the general American public to the concept of a network of expressways connecting the nation from vast suburbs - adhering to the four basic principles of highway design: safety, comfort, speed, and economy - emphasized hope for the future as it served as proposed solution to traffic congestion of the day - prophesied an American utopia regulated by an assortment of cutting-edge technologies to ultimately reform society
Plaza of the Three Powers Oscar Niemeyer Brasilia 1958
- Located at the head of the abstract bird-shaped city plan by Lucio Costa {why?} - built to brand a new capital city for Brazil and enhance the nation's image, boost industry, and initiate major construction projects - Brazil's attempt to break with its colonial past and thrust the nation into the modern world, as a multi-racial, democratic country {Building} - International Style - monumental edifices combined straight lines & rounded sculptural shapes which appeared to defy gravity - Niemeyer's best known for the design of civic buildings made up of a low horizontal structure topped by a dome on one side (Senate works) and an inverted dome (State Chambers) - pair of towers house governmental office space - reflects the strong influence of Le Corbusier,while hinting at more whimsical forms -4 courts broken by lake-like lagoon element - curved incision around the perimeter of build to incorporate a reflective water element Building Complex Include: 1. Secretariat 2. State Chambers 3. Palace of Justice 4. President's Palace [importance] -
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) Mies van der Rohe Chicago 1939-46
- Mies proposal embraced Chicago's rectilinear street grid and designed two symmetrically balanced groups of buildings - campus refuses engagement with the surrounding community - sleek urbanism became a reflection of the school's technological focus and evoked the openness of the Midwestern prairie - created a plinth platform with Mies' alternative grid > lacks the continuation with the surrounding urban landscape - analogous to his handling of the German Pavilion of the International Exhibition > create a platform or podium where he sets a series of new architectural objects that have a relationship to one another seemingly independent of the surrounding context
Parkways and Highways, Southern State Parkway Robert Moses Brooklyn-Queens 1927
- forced the development of park spaces intended to relief urban pressure and lack of fresh air, green lawns, and water - parks commissioner builds roads that are parkways that bring the residents of Manhattan out of dense,congested, hot, sultry summer landscape into easily-accessible parks via automobiles -establish new land based patterns - provide justification for the lack of investment in public infrastructure
obsolescence
- interest in massive, primitive, pernmanet, heavy, and archaic through a economic lense - exploring the notion within Modernism that has inscripted it's DNA the notion of Obsolescence: a state of being that occurs when a object, service or practice is no longer wanted even though it is still in working order. - 1920s economic structure of capitalist structure - architecture's value is measure in time and money, which will inevitably decline ex: buying the new iphone makes the previous version obsolescent - state of being no longer useful or in fashion
Lincoln Center Harrison, Abramovitz, and Johnson New York 1960s
- result of the Title 1 Slum Clearance {function} cultural complex /performing arts center {material} travertine-cladding and concrete - The lobby with clear glass is set inside a loggia with tall tapered columns of travertine - buildings surround an open, user-friendly plaza, even though the buildings are generally conservative in style.
Broadacre City Project Frank Lloyd Wright 1934-35
- urban/suburban development concept - automobile and pedestrian transport - take advantage of modern technology and communications to decentralize the old city and create an environment in which the individual would flourish - proposes a decentralized city - the basic unit is a single-family house on a 1 acre track of land and connected to other homes via contemporary technologies (automobile and telephone) -creates an essence of a Jeffersonian democracy with a new meaning through technological advancement -tall buildings placed far apart in a vast countryside - houses,factories, stores, office buildings, and cultural buildings would be dispersed within the midst of farmland
Levittown William and Alfred Levitt Long Island, NY 1940s
- used mass-production techniques to build inexpensive homes in suburban New York to help relieve the postwar housing shortage for returning veterans - all single-family homes - presumes in the presence of the automobile as a way of tying residents to large centers of employment, cultural and leisure activities - community services, recreational facilities, and schools were part of the development = younger presence - a symbol of strengths and weaknesses of Post-War model of community {characteristics} -evocative of typical American house taking its cues from vernacular architecture with white-sided on exterior, a pitched roof, and chimney, and cartoon-like representation of domestic life - simple interiors with living room with adjacent kitchen at back in the house (engagement and orientation to the street) - separate bedrooms for parents and children - wet-wall accommodating both kitchen services and plumbing of bathroom fixtures - attic left unfinished for latter expansion to the changing needs of a growing family - transformation of house labor with built technological advancement like refrigerators, dishwashers, and washing machines - racial segregation in suburbanization t
Louis Kahn Travel Sketches, Egypt and Greece 1951
-expressive quality in the interest of weight, mass, light and shadow, and permance or rootness of the building -
Title 1 Slum Clearance Program (Urban Renewal) Robert Moses New York City
-federal urban renewal strategy to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development in effort to reestablish urban center - a strategy to impress the international attention in an attempt to reduce the visibility of the host city's apparent poverty and revitalize the urban core through expansive complexes
Brutalism
An early 1950s style based on Le Corbusier's crudely fabricated concrete work in which structural and mechanical elements were often featured.
Beton Brut
Architectural concrete left unfinished or roughly finished after pouring and intentionally left exposed visually.
Farnsworth House Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Plano, IL 1945-51
F: Edith Farnsworth's weekend retreat [material] - white steel beams pushed out or augments a floating sensation [layout] - single-story house with [exterior] - elevated to allow the water to flow under house during seasonal flood - floor-to-ceiling windows around entire house ties the one-room residence to the tranquil surroundings -formal in character with four travertine platforms with a clearly prescribed, delineated sequence entrance along one axis - supported by eight steel pillars [interior] - completely open (minimalism) - essence of simplicity in its purest form - core given over to kitchen, bathroom/ basic service - open,flexible interior with a core that suggest how the interior will be utilized -fluidity and transparency from E to I [importance] - platonic perfection of order gently placed in secluded wooded site - achieving Mies' concept of a strong relationship between house and nature -- glass pavilion takes advantage of its natural surrounding with a complete glass facade - spatial reductionism - indecence of transparent building to client in content of acceptable
Nakagin Capsule Tower Kisho Kurokawa Tokyo 1971
F: a mixed-use residential and office tower for the growing # of office works who resided in work and lived outside of the city and needed a place to sleep after work [material] [exterior] - service core and base of communal spaces is fixed - box/pod are interchangeable - comprised of two interconnected concrete towers, one will reach 11 floors and the other 13 floors - 140 prefabricated (made in a factory and connected to the concrete core by 4 bolted high-tension bolts) capsules/modules stacked and rotated at varying angles around a central core - replaceable -each module can be plugged into the central core and replaced or exchanged when necessary [interior] - very compact, small pre-assembled rooms for one person that include a bed & bathroom on an aircraft - circular window - one wall given over to kitchen, storage, and - airport vibes - intended as bacholr-style accommodations - airlocked interior spaces - interior space of each module can be manipulated by connecting the capsule to other capsules. [importance] - a rare remaining example of Japanese Metabolism, an architectural movement emblematic of Japan's postwar cultural resurgence - the first example of capsule architecture built for permanent and practical use for urban residents -architectural modernism about change, destruction, and renewal
Jardines del Pedregal Louis Barragán Mexico City, Mexico 1945-53
F: exclusive residential suburb promote land development and open space in the natural lava landscape (point of departure in developing a residential community and counterpoint to colonial era for housing development/settlements) [layout] - landscape had a sculptural effect with rocks and vegetation left largely in place - urbanised the area and developed a project for the protection of its ecosystem -promoted the harmony between architecture and landscape - favored picturesque, meandering streets that would follow the land's natural contours - reinforced connections between buildings & the landscape as a way of finding the architectural and spatial instruction as authentically Mexican (distinctive regional landscape) - well acquainted homes set on 1 acre lots while residents could have access to shared public gardens and places, which create this mystical volcanic landscape - sought to crave and create an alternative inhabitable landscape & a park-like experience [importance] - intertwined with modernization & nationalism not only in an elite in the context of a national preoccupation - deeply invested in sense of place/ desire to tether the buildings and space to the volcanic landscape with rare plant and animal species - correlate a biological and historical landscape largely untainted by European/colonial experience
Juan O'Gorman (with Gustavo Saaverda and Juan Martinez de Velasco) University Library University City, Mexico 1950s
F: main library that has a multidisciplinary approach for all the university and its Mexican culture [material] - volcanic stone --its texture is used as an aesthetic and expressive element + give a sense of continuity to the external pavement - glass [exterior] - low, horizontal slab that's juxtaposed with a vertical slab with an arrangement - built on a platform above a terrain - decorative reliefs inspired by pre-hispanic art - extraordinary patterning and imagery reminds how the role of murals will play Mexican art/arch. during the inner-war/post-war -- mural represents the 3 fundamental historical facets of the Mexican culture - no need for windows only necessary openings for natural daylight and ventilation - mosaics draw on pre-colonial and contemporary traditions and represent the intellectual history of Mexico --in context of a language of abstraction so intimately tied to modernism is give this modernism a very precisely legible meaning being communicated to students, Mexican, citizens, and international audiences [importance] - employs the language of modernism through form and materials that is uses glass, steel, and concrete materials, horizontal glazing, roof terraces, andpilotis - unfolds as a dual visual story that points out its' international in aspirations + deeply national in its meaning - interest in situating building within a varied and layered landscape/ use of local founded material - presence of iconography draws from a precolonial past that speaks to international modern aesthetic --sensibilities reaching simultaneously into two direction -- shows Mexico like Brazil is seeking to position in the political and cultural context of a new post-war world order while communicating its' history, rich patronmy while saying "we too are modern, have technological sophistication capability and harness it for own purpose"
Enrique del Moral, Mario Pani, Carlos Lazo and others, Site Plan, University City (Cuidad Universitaria) Mexico City 1940s (1946)
F: site plan development for unified university campus - city in its own right with athletic, academic, and residential facilities - create a dialogue between Mexico's ancient and modern history achieved in a variety ways among them desire to evoke in the scale and massing of building the pre-historic broad ,open ceremonial spaces of sculpted platforms, buildings with vertical mound-like features - located in the southern part of MC nestled in surreal lava covered landscape of exotic plants, black rocks and soil - lined with its past with nationalism presence - historical conditions of Mexico's
Seagram Building Ludwig Miles van der Rohe and Philip Johnson New York City 1950s
Steel frame with glass curtain wall and bronze This building epitomizes the importation of modernist ideals from Europe to the United States. In its monumental simplicity, expressed structural frame and rational use of repeated building elements, the building embodies Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's oft-repeated aphorisms that "structure is spiritual" and "less is more." He believed that the more a building was pared to its essential structural and functional elements, and the less superfluous imagery is used, the more a building expresses its structure and form. - I-beams play between the opacity of the beam and transparency of the glass - insistence on verticality "pin-stripped suit" augments the vertical sensation > Mies looking for an expressive language tether to the material realities of the constructive process - dynamic form replaced by a stable composition that engages with concern over verticiality and vertical stress - thick black pillar anchor the building to the earth -marble,glass, and steel of cultured sophistication with his European works - elegant waiting areas
Historic Preservation
The preservation of historically significant structures and neighborhoods until such time as, and in order to facilitate, restoration and rehabilitation of the building(s) to a former condition.
Better Homes Movement
U.S embraced a nationwide campaign of home ownership, modernization, and beautification because of a critical shortage of homes in post-World War II. - market expansion of the single-family house - support from government and industry
Unité d'Habitation Le Corbusier Marseilles, France 1947-53
[FUNCTION] - multi-family residential housing complex with a range of amenities ( interior street with shops, restaurants, essential service, kindergarten and gym facilities on roof) - descendant of Maison Citrohan --large living space in double-height in character overlooking a private balcony --living in service space tucked inside in smaller dimensions [MATERIAL] - concrete framed building (steel was limited) - Raw/uncovered Concrete that's not disguised with paint or applied surface material --process of making -- surface suggest the presence of making process + different people & personalities engaged in that endeavour -- effect to bring back craft Inter-war Period in Europe 20s/30s > prodomiance of the machine + the removal the visual presence of the hand in the process of making - Presence of the hand of the maker foregrounded in a NEW WAY, which is part and partial in the way Corbusier's expresses the use concrete - archaic way Corbusier's pressed symbols and forms in the wet concrete creates a sense of antiquity and primitive -constructed from reinforced beton-brut concrete (rough cast concrete), interpreted as materialistic implementation aimed at characterizing the conditional state of life after the war - rough, worn, unforgiving [EXTERIOR] - a collection of cells like a honeycomb pattern on facade - rawness of the concrete expressed on individual apartment units - Brise-Soleil boundary walls from small exterior porches or terraces + provide shade for intense sun exposure - Double-height ceilings with small balconies on front and interlock with a central corridor every other floor - communal aspects placed on the roof -buildings large volume is supported on massive pilotis that allow for circulation, gardens, and gathering spaces below the building; the roof garden/terrace creates the largest communal space within the entire building, and the incorporated patio into the façade system minimizes the perception of the buildings height, as to create an abstract ribbon window that emphasizes the horizontality of such a large building. [SPATIAL ORGANIZATION] - a "double-stacked" corridor (a single hallway with units on either side), Le Corbusier designed the units to span from each side of the building, as well as having a double height living space reducing the number of required corridors to one every three floors. capable of efficiently placing more units in the building and creating an interlocking system of residential volumes. At each end of the unit there is a balcony protected by a brise-soleil that allows for cross ventilation throughout the unit flowing through the narrow bedrooms into the double height space; emphasizing an open volume rather than an open plan. [Importance] - provided low-cost housing for a large number of people - meet the immediate post-war needs of France + develop a replicating housing type for a variety of difference circumstances for an expansive population - serves for new architectural motifs : Brise-Soleil, Beton Brut, and the Modular (harmonic measure of source for proportional relationships) - ANALOGY: "wine bottle being put into a wine rack" organizing system of a variety of independent units could be split -focused on communal living for all the inhabitants to shop, play, live, and come together in a "vertical garden city." Save this picture! -Le Corbusier's idea of the "vertical garden city" was based on bringing the villa within a larger volume that allowed for the inhabitants to have their own private spaces, but outside of that private sector they would shop, eat, exercise, and gather together -a "city within a city" that is spatially, as well as, functionally optimized for the residents [Relationship to Site] - formal,spatial analogies between a man-made concrete building to natural, dramatic hilly surrounding landscape beyond - concrete to create massive forms - textured facade -forms increasing complex, curved profiles an organic shaped forms (no more pure, cylinders and not inspired by the machine) - serve as model as the most innovative architectural responses to a residential building
Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut Le Corbusier Ronchamp, France 1950s
[Function] - a small a Catholic church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and sits on a pre-existing pilgrimage site [Material] [Exterior] - thick masonry walls, which are curved to improve stability and provide structural support - crow of a ship -sensation of movement captured by the sweeping curves that visually suggest movement - monumental curved concrete roof is a shell structure supported by columns hidden in the walls. A gap underneath allows a sliver of light to filter into the interior - sporadic window placement is scattered across the walls. These are glazed with a mixture of clear and coloured glass. - stark white washed walls gives the walls luminous qualities punctuated by a more intense direct light [Interior] -Three thick white walls curl inwards from the outside to create smaller chapels at the sides of the main space - rough surface texture - massive sloping wall with a curved concrete roof above - planes are broad and smooth - cavernous, dark space pierced with stain glass windows that permit a soft, ambient light into interior cut through the thick wall - The stark white walls add to this purist mentality that when the light enters into the chapel there becomes this washed out, ethereal atmosphere. The effect of the light evokes expressive and emotional qualities that create heightened sensations in tune with the religious activities. [Site] - approached ascending a hill and reveals itself over the hill and walk around the side -face with a open, undifferentiated sloping grassy lawn - primary entrance next to the protruding, building bell towers --entering side not on main axis -loor follows the slope of the site towards the main altar, and is covered with a concrete surface that was poured on site and divided into a gridded pattern based on the architect's Modulor system of proportions. [Importance] - represents a key shift away from the sparse, functionalist form of Modernism that Le Corbusier displayed in his earlier projects - organic sensibility - theme of ritual devotion and spiritual engagement is the register Corbusier seeks to layout outside of the Catholic experience and employ strategies form, space, and light to evoke religious emotions - Spatial purity was one of Corbusier's main focuses by not over complicating the program and removing the typical modern aesthetic from the design - The roof is actually the only glimpse of mechanized influence in the overall design of Ronchamp; the roof's curvature mimics the curves of an airplane wing. It's aerodynamic in design and in all of its massive and heavy qualities it still appears weightless.
Oscar Niemeyer House (Das Canoas House) Oscar Niemeyer outside of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 1953
[Function] - architect's house [Material] - glass, white concrete, industrial materials [Exterior] - rich plant life surrounding - facing curve extends out - situated on a steep slope overlooking the sea - organic, sweeping curved roof is a forceful gesture to merge the water, nature, and house in a seamless way [Interior] - crisp articulation of modernism [Importance] - shows natural and manmade elements are in dialogue with one another and complex -wood panels evokative - use of nature and local references to materials and love of the curve as a forceful architectural gesture to analogy too more organic and tropical plants - blends elements of organic and minimalist architecture It was designed to sit in shadow so there would be no need for curtains, and its sinuous exterior is surrounded by dense vegetation - which Niemeyer hoped would appear as part of his design - and topped by a curving flat roof. The house has been built into the slope of a hill which offers views across the nearby bay, and incorporates existing boulders into its interior,
La Tourette Monastery Le Corbusier Near Lyons, France 1950s
[Function] - built to be a self-contained world for a community of silent monks, and to accommodate the unique and specific lifestyle of the monks, the monastery is made of one hundred individual cells, a communal library, a refectory, a rooftop cloister, a church, and classrooms. [Material] - reinforced concrete [Site] - steeply sloping bank with powerful views [Program] - exterior expressively communicates the interior functions with the organization of small individual cells located along 2 stories that face the countryside -monastery groups around a central courtyard a U-shaped mass, and the court is closed off by the chapel at the end - horizontal stripes refer to passage that allow mov't across the complex - clean, structurally expressed cells organized - passageways with thin mullions allows mov't - roof [Exterior] - pilotis, or load-bearing columns, which line the inside walls and open the facade to long strip windows. The classic grass rooftops create an architectural promenade, relating back to the Villa Savoye - features an outward-facing balcony, with communal areas underneath and the cloister running around the roof - undulating glass surfaces located on three of the four exterior faces. - neven spacing of the vertical concrete mullions, or ondulatoires, and the similar divisions and uneven spacing of the horizontal components between them were fashioned according to the Modular system of proportions of Le Corbusier - passageways with thin mullions allows mov't - roof is given over as a landscape for contemplation and reflection [Interior] - architectural promenade is the ramp down to the church entrance: an austere, concrete corridor with uneven yet rhythmic glazing, which leads to a stern metal wall that rotates to give access to the dark, colored glow to the rest of the church. [Importance] - Ondulatoires - cellular rooms serve as accommodation for the monks who work and lived within the condition monastery - a space for study, reflection, religious and spiritual contemplation and isolated from the everyday world - Reference become complex and mystical in character - musical-influence arrangement sets symbolism embedded in Corbusier's arrangement of forms and types of patterning deployed throughout - landscape of architecture & nature
Glass House Lina Bo Bardi (Morumbi) near Sao Paulo, Brazil 1950s
[Function] - house for upper-class artistic elite couple who was culturally passionate for Brazilian culture [Material] -glass, steel, tile, concrete [Exterior] - Built into the steep terrain, the building is lifted up on blue and elegant stilts/ slim pilotis (Le Corbusier) that suspend it amid the greenery and abundant natural landscape with lushful surroundings - columns blend with the tree trunks that act like another curtain to the outside world ( part of the natural than construction landscape) [Interior] - open courtyard to entrance - local vernacular> stucco walls + green/blue shutters - blue mosaic tile flooring = bring in craft & handmade feature in altered interior for a machine-like form - eclectic array of the family's collection > virtual cultural attraction -pilotis repeated in the body of the house - curtains provide soft habitable and privacy sense - interior constitutes as a flexible art display - movable furniture to accommodate the mov't and changing in domestic lifestyle - desire for visual lushness woven for the basic human needs of comfort [Importance] - undeniably influenced by the open and pared-down architecture of the European modernists Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe - lost any resemblance to strict, glassy modernism and mimics Brazilian colonial architecture with its handmade shutters - Influences of Italian industrial materials and simple repeated forms, but the home also gives nods to the Brazilian rural vernacular in its two squat, solid volumes that support the glass structure from the back - This residence represents an attempt to arrive at a communion between nature and the natural order of things - encased entirely in glass walls evocative of the avant-garde & modernism language - "sought to create a space that would enmesh domestic living with the natural world, to engender a visible and experiential harmony between man and nature"
Baker House Dormitory (MIT) Alvar Aalto Cambridge, MA. 1940s
[Function] [Material] - use of brick was presented as a gesture to Boston and regional building traditions -- used in an unconventional way with burned, distorted, broken bricks to show their making and communicates the process of making gives a material visual, tactile sense of texture and chromatic diversity which will catch light & shadows -- liven the facade [Exterior] - curved form around a relatively long, thin site towards the Charles River and campus - student rooms organized along the curving body of the s form -- would give every student a diagonal view to the landscape, which how you look at a landscape like river flowing past at an angle - stair hung off the building [Interior] - use of brick - variety of dorm spaces - amenities tucked back in the complex - remarkable dining hall occupies a rectilinear pavilion set into a garden that services as a buffer from the street and dormitory itself - series of skylight or "moonlights" provide soft ambient light during the day and at night turn on an electric light - designed all interior furnishing of interior space [Importance] - a new attitude toward building material that is used in expressive ways in regular, raw ways - addressing new political and social environments in new expansive ways and growing concerns
Hunstandton School Alice and Peter Smithson UK 1949-5
[Function] [Material] -pre-welded steel - floors and roofs made from prefabricated concrete slabs - yellowish bricks with a thin whitish layer to reduce their porosity in the solid panels of both the façade and the main hall [Exterior] - boasts clear and defined edges and a closed symmetry in the composition of its main façades. - It shows a formalist planimetry ordered by axes of symmetry - has a biaxial symmetry that is easily perceived from the outside The structure is defined by the double-height, steel profile porticoes [Interior] - formal legibility of the floors, a clear display of the structure and a valuation of the inherent qualities of the materials as "they are found". - double-height hall is topped by large skylights which, according to Peter Smithson, act as the "heart and expression of the scholastic community and its relationship with the city". [Importance] - a manifestation of the new Brutalist movement - stands out for its extraordinary austerity, strict budget, and formal clarity -expressed the desire of the architects to reveal the essentials of the structure and the materials used - stated their intent to find a relationship between culture, industry, and society - stated their intention to renounce the system of large standardized elements and to opt instead for components produced industrially
Yale Art and Architecture Building Paul Rudolph New Haven, Connecticut 1963
[Function] [Material] - covered & corrugated concrete with rocks, coral, - the notion is to create an extraordinarily varied texture surface that light will catch, the human hand will touch for a tactile, but abrasive experience - concrete was cast in place using corrugated wooden molds and bush-hammered to expose the aggregate [Exterior] - an imposing, fortress-like building that juxtaposes masses of textured concrete with layers of steel-framed glazing. - formed of intersecting volumes of bush-hammered concrete. Smooth concrete and glass horizontal elements are supported by a sequence of towers that protrude above the roof in a series of turrets [Interior] - main entrance is set back from the street, accessed through a chute and stairwell between two concrete columns - Massive piers of concrete rise - Projections are over-emphasized throughout. Heavy slabs are crossed by thin slabs - Spaces inside cross too and offer sequences of most dramatic effects by unexpected vistas inside the building and even out of it, [Importance] - earliest known examples of Brutalist architecture in America - 1st large-scale experiment of a highly textured surface - materiality direct upfront of the abstract, monochromic wall panels defining American urban centers >> towards Mies - expressing architectural sensibility in the context of Modernism as an increasingly complex varied architectural approach -- intent to concern how Modern Arch. is becoming dangerous in alienating and dehumanizing and desire to find an individualist and expressive architectural language that engages with the human subject - Rudolph's neglect of the functional style - terraced levels, an open plan core and plays on light and shadow - although externally it features the raw concrete of Brutalist architecture.
Louis, Kahn, Richards Medical Research Laboratories, Philadelphia, USA 1957-65
[function] -research laboratory for Unversity of Philadelphia [exterior] - horizontal concrete slabs open and adaptable for a variety of laboratory equipment and setups - vertical structural expression of circulatory and functional systems of the building [interior] [importance] -formal similarities to Metabolist - the effort to distinguished architecturally and formally the served (primary spaces being used/ change over time vs. serving spaces ( fixed and unchangeable) --ex: laboratories vs. stairs (heat/cooling ducts) -----flexible and adaptable is given over to the glass -----fixed, unchanging are in reinforced concrete and covered in brick (different material expression) Kahn's design approach to fixed and unchanging - expressive rebuttable to the sleek glass box of Mies Seagram building --vertical repetitive office spaces/critique of the International-styled corporate Modernism and argument for a more robust, expressive thicker Modernism --reappraisal of Le Corbusier - Metabolist interested in the perfect fixedness of its forms bc it can not be added to or subtracted from/possibility of it decaying or growing completely out of its architectural sensibility -elements that are permanent and consistent
Sky House, Kiyonori Kikutake, 1953
[function] a single-family dwelling can be ideologically recursive and strategic [exterior] - 4 wide columns that lift the house off the earth - the upper story is connected to the ground level by an exposed exterior space - living in the upper story if their family needs changed the exposed below could be adaptable to accommodate growth and development for alternate uses - continuous and broken by storage units and bathrooms -intended to be adaptable and updated if needed [interior] [importance] -the initial demonstration of his ideas about metabolism and how they might be applied architecturally - speaks the ways architects investigate their thinking within the single-family context (manageable, affordable, and e -largely impactful as an architectural approach to large, collaborative living building types - understanding how buildings might respond organically to growth & decay - the project was an exploration into changeable systems. Kikutake designed 'permanent spaces' - where changes are not needed - and 'temporary spaces' that allow for 'subspaces with the possibility of removal' - children's rooms, kitchen, and bathroom, for instance, were designed as units that can be moved, enlarged or decreased in size, to facilitate future needs or change; interchangeability of space
Master Plan for Brasilia Lucio Costa term-34 Brazil 1957
[layout] "bird in flight" : movement forward & natural/biomorphic reference - urban city plan in the form of a cross/gliding plane/ bird with residential axial curves following the topography and an artificial lake - monumental axis runs west to east with government buildings lining views down a wide grassy esplanade that culminates in the eastern end in the Square of the Three Powers - all linked to major highway system [Importance] - symbol of modern nation & support of democratic political processes - modern infrastructure of transportation, housing, & government - expansive effort towards the automotive industry and all economic levels - formal duties overrides the interior -communicates Brazil's renewal in democracy which suggest architecture to part of that imagery -civic expression using modern arch.
Parliament Building (Assembly) Le Corbusier Chandigarh, India 1951-63
[layout] - a circular assembly chamber, a forum for conversation and transactions, and stair-free circulation symbols that could be depicted on the entrance door that could symbolize the new India and its modern vision [exterior] - concrete is left unfinished and raw and captures the weathering in part or parcel of the natural element ( quality of a ruin) - a rectilinear frame, features a pyramidal roof at the top. The assemblies are linked by a foyer. The tower is reflective of the industrial cooling towers seen in factories - sombre shades of the exposed reinforced concrete exterior give it a solemn aura befitting the serious function of the building. - Le Corbusier's play with bright primary colors, shapes, and forms burst forth in the skylight and window cut-outs of different shapes. S - Staircases, lifts, and ramps provide access to the different levels in the building, adding to the efficiency of ventilation and the illusion of height. brise soleil', which are featured on lateral walls for protection against the glare of the sun. Le Corbusier: brightly colored façades, the trough-like element for rainwater conservation, the use of thin pier-like columns, and the mathematical shapes that tower over the buildings, standing as a symbol of nature, cultural elements and Le Corbusier's obsession with geometrical shapes -funnel-shaped form brings in light and air + function as a dome and gives the building a symbolic presence within the landscape of a ceremonial civic complex and a visual point of reference [interior] - the main circular assembly hall is embedded in a columnar landscape in a different fashion (fascination of the grid and columns) - expresses the celebrates the roughness and rawness on the exterior but the concrete is smooth and high polish = a space of refinement + sophisticated incommensurate of the gov't [importance] - sense of monumentality of permanence in materials, scale, and fixedness - sene of endurance over time> monumentality
Project for Tokyo Bay Kenzo Tange begun 1960, presented to public 1961
[layout] - moving off settlement off the island into a new landscape of water - using infrastructure of fixed highways and road systems -residential, office, commercial, leisure structures will be added [importance] - Tokyo becomes tremendously dense and how to accommodate the city's growing population and needs for every expanded serve - the notion of a fixed infrastructure against a variety of where different programs can be added at the scale of the city -provide a model of a system approach to urban planning> the design of urban spaces that are shaped by spatial organization than zoning w/ technological optimism and infrastructure, architecture, public space - urban growth and distinction might be handled - utopian in character -metabolism carries a notion of utopian social transformation
Case Study House Raphael Soriano Los Angeles, CA 1950
[material] - lightweight steel construction (bring arch. into relationship with the machine) - glass [exterior] - 8 x 10 bays with a repeatable pattern with a flat horizontal roof that is pierced by a series of openings to allow light to penetrate the interior -oriented to the landscape to take advantage of the ocean views [interior] - 30' x 44' rectangular plan with a solid rectangular core housing utilities -flexible interior with partition walls to make an fast, adaptable space -- thinking about particular domestic usages - compression is achieved by opaque, steel decking walls blocking the unattractive views towards the "scrubby" hillside -- adaption to achieve greater privacy within a dense population - fostering new relationships with interior/exterior spaces - defiant simplicity [importance] - concentrated effort to design houses that could serve as industrial prototypes that are visually alluring -rapidly industrial use
Yale University Art Gallery Louis Kahn New Haven, CT 1951-53
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance] - critque of the glass steel box
Glass House Philip Johnson New Canaan, CT 1950
[material] - steel, black and red brick cylinder [orientation] - located around a barrier wall of trees [exterior] - one-story house enclosed in 18 ft wide floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass between the black steel piers and stock H-beam that anchored the glass in place [interior] - 32' x 56' feet rectangular plan - divided by cabinets & a low brick cylinder containing the bathroom - red brick laid out in herringbone pattern core [importance] - expresses Mies architectural principles "less is more" - taken from the Farnsworth house - quest for transparency & flexibility of European modernity - transparency allow the landscape element to be virtually built the image inside the house -challenged the conventional definition of domesticity
Yamanashi Press and Broadcasting Center Kenzo Tange Kofu 1960s
[material] [exterior] - fixed: cylinders - changeable: corridor slabs that are slotted between the vertical cylinders are meant to be added or subtracted from [interior] - printing press located at the bottom of the building for fluid and fast process and shipping - horizontal beams have given over to studios and offices - cylindrical shafts contain the service units (stairs, lifts, primary structural system) - triangular site inspired Tange to design a vertical structure, consisting of a main infrastructural core, which could develop into an urban megastructure [importance] -inspired by Kahn's Medical Laboratories - Tange's Metabolist ideas of organically-inspired structural growth - perpetual adaptable and flexible - a new urban typology that could self perpetuate in an organic, vernacular, "metabolic" manner.
Kagawa Prefectural Office Kenzo Tange Kagawa 1955-58
[material] - exposed,raw reinforced concrete [exterior] - the structure forms an L-shape around a central courtyard with a connecting eight-story administrative office tower and low-rise assembly hall - vertical "office box" tower arch. arrangement, tower box is set next to a low-rise rectangular box given over to more communal functions (a place of gathering & community) -- Vertical axis: regularize office spaces - evocative of traditional post-and-beam construction Public Components are prioritize -entrance lobby use of tile, bold color and mural art which makes it an expressive and accessible, open space incorporated in the context of a gov't building Raised Horizontal Slabs evocative of Le Corbusier & timber wood construction becomes a way of making this center of government activity + more fluidity+ more populated shelter for gathering cupped in an L intersection of forms - courtyard as a primary feature, garden-inspired from Japanese landscape arch. that accompanied temples -- effort to incorporate Japanese traditions formal ways in a new political and material reality [interior] [importance] - explore the intersection of Western informed Modernism + shaped by Japanese traditions - incorporation of public spaces seeking to understand how progress democracy might be expressed in a Japanese context - intentionally used as a way of integrating the two traditions and creating a new Japanese architecture
Case Study House #22/ Stahl House Pierre koenig Los Angeles, CA 1958
[material] - extensive use glass offered panoramic views of LA and strategically used to blend exterior/interior spaces -steel frame construction broken up by the inhabitants - expressive use of industrial materials [exterior] - L-shaped plan to establish a linear progression from carport and entry through the living space and out to the garden -visually blocked off from the road but the private space has completely open with glass - modest in scale -carport - smooth transition between e/i - only part of the house that has a solid wall, which backs up to the carport and the street. - understood to be one large viewing box - fireplace at the core as a symbol to American domesticity /presence of an architectural motif [interior] -private area (living dining) room look out to the landscape adjacent to swimming pool [importance] - introduce new ways of life both in a stylistic sense represented the lifestyles of the modern age - takes the public and private aspects of the house into great consideration - juxtaposition of program and organization are important design principles that evoke utilitarian characteristics - intention to connect the grid layout of house in relation to the gridded landscape of LA glowing underneath it (american optimism) - new global identity
National Assembly Building Louis Kahn Dacca, Bangladesh 1962-75
[material] - simplistic local materials that were readily available and could be implemented in distinctly similar ways that would protect against the harsh desert climate integrating a modern building -brick fanning out from the political core - use of brick intensely juxtaposed with concrete broken by marble bands to communicate/replicate the formal palette of the Taj Mahl (light-colored, creamy, smooth marble) -marble [layout] - a clear sense of hierarchy with a ceremonial, visual central core and additional spaces extend from it - has a quality of a fortification = brings a defensive character [exterior] - utilitarian, sleek, and most of all without context - geometric shapes found on the different faces of the façade add a dramatic impact to the overall composition of the building - the geometric deep sheltering openings will allow air to filter in and allow light (abstracted forms found in traditional Bangali culture that are meant to create a marriage of old and new cultural identities & serve as light wells and a natural environmental control system for the interior) For Kahn, light was an important aspect in the design of a building, not just as a way to illuminate a space, but rather conceptualizing light as a creator of space - raised on a platform set apart from the life of the city and mosque set aside for worship - artificial lake surrounds three sides of the main building [interior] - interior circulation -the center of the complex is divided into three parts -enclosed city streets with large geometric cut-outs are voids are rooms, and the column is the maker of light and can take on complex shapes and be the supporter of spaces and give light to spaces. -nestled spaces for governance, civic assembly, and private intellectual contemplation [importance] -Western Architect in the creation of a monumental civic landscape for a country undergoing a tremendously cultural, political, and social change - example of modern architecture being transcribed as a part of Bangali vernacular architecture - tended to make a building of monumental presence + a symbol of democracy and pride for the Bangali people - intended to be a more expansive capital complex - large geometric form
Post Modernism
a late-20th-century style and concept in the arts, architecture, and criticism that represents a departure from modernism and has at its heart a general distrust of grand theories and ideologies as well as a problematical relationship with any notion of "art." Mixing fantasy with non-fiction, rise of popular culture, blurred lines of reality for the reader. Narratives, Insists values are not permanent, but local or historical.
Saynatsalo Town Hall Alvar Aalto Saynatsalo, Finland 1949-52
[material] - wood, brick, glass - natural earth-toned, rugged palette [exterior] - use of layering stratification, irregular silhouettes, and sloping roofs - the layering of platforms and steps - entrance to gov't space is up a sloping set of steps with raises set far apart seeded with grass that becomes a natural landscape one travels up to a central courtyard that majority of the spaces are organized --a sense of continuity and fluidity between e/i spaces --heaters surrounded around the perimeter to soften and mute the intense effect of long and intense winter - dramatic, diagonal roofline to glass gives away to solid brick to announce itself in the landscape - stairs defined by all sides with brick [interior] - courtyard with a four-sided building ( a spatial organization found in vernacular and monumental construction = basic organizational pattern for human society) - programmatic changes in the four-sided made evidently such as the glass base library as an expanse of glass windows that are broken by vertical wooden elements allowing light to penetrate light into the interior ( Aalto's importance of light to the relative access to light in the winter months) - shops along the ground floor - apartments, residential on second level - ceiling> expressive structural florals in the articulation in the bracing wooden elements (rough and raw expressed brick that speaks to craft and evocative to the wooden landscape of forests that the complex is set in) [importance] - The town hall is a study in opposition: elements of classicism and the monumental blended with modernity and intimacy to form a cohesive new center-point for the community. - interested in understanding buildings as intermediaries between human life and the natural landscape - period of rapid construction and urbanization and consider how MA might be integrated into the rural landscape which we're rapidly disappearing - integration of a variety of programmatic needs all of which attuned to the contour of the landscape and direction/angle of sunlight + cultural vision that embraces urbanity and rusticity -understanding of the human body and how it interacts with the architecture and creating forms and materials in response to the ways bodies move in space >> cupping hand railing for stairs - explored a different palette of references of forms and materials as they seek to give architectural expression to civic importance
Eames House Charles and Ray Eames Santa Monica, CA 1940s
[material] -glass, steel residence [site] - 1st best-known house built on [exterior] -yellow, red, and blue flat panel -large portions given over to glass - articulated as a horizontal slab with clearly demarcated public and private space - courtyard splits the private (dining room, kitchen, bedrooms above, double-height living room) then opens up to the terraces over a downward sweeping lawn - embraced the indoor-outdoor living trend of the time - Its colored panels contrast the surrounding greenery, while a two-storey atrium welcomes visitors inside. [interior] - quality as structure fabricated from existing factory-style elements put together as they come - infused industrial styled space with industrially fabricated materials left unvarnished in their raw state with an aesthetic of their own that was drew from a different sensibility (analogous to the Bo Bardi House) - equally personal and expressive whipped around the sleek, cosmopolitan sophistication furnsining favored by Mies - decorated with a growing collection of their memories from voyages and fascination in hand-crafted objects brought into an industrially-inspired interior that's deeply personal rather than abstract/possible for all solution [importance] 'monolithic Mondrian canvases springing from the ground' - architectural language & color palette tied to interwar Russian avant-garde constructivist initiatives - industrial aesthetic - highly personable home - inclusion of abundant tropical plants in domestic interiors>> (North American fascination for lush tropical plants as a relief and escape from the rectilinear severity, hard lines, cool forms of Northern European inspired Modernism -- legacy of the narrative but intentionally pushing against it - bringing back personal, craft-based clutter and promoting intentional ethical orientation
Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum Kenzo Tange Hiroshima, Japan 1955
[material] -reinforced concrete (echoes of Corbusier) -- evokes the lightness of Japanese timber-framed construction & sliding frames in traditional Japanese arch. [site] - Part of a larger memorial complex w/ large facing plaza for large crowd ceremonies, reflecting pool with a saddle-shaped memorial -- concludes at the end of central axis w/ visual endpoints with shattered fragments of the only surviving structure after the bombing - classical monumental ceremonial landscapes along an axis that reaches a monumental concrete figurine to memorialize/commemorate those who lost their lives in the atomic bombing in the conflict of war [exterior] - Reminiscent of Corbusier 1. horizontality (windows/facade) 2. Rectilinear 3. Pilotis 4. Use of the undercroft [interior] [importance] - completed during the political and financial crisis subside -influenced by Le Corbusier + architectural discourse is shaped by the circulation in a series of plans, sections, and diagrams - reconstruction of Japan & symbolically prominent that serves as a marker for the epicenter of the 1st nuclear bomb drop in Japan - Tange loved what Le Corbusier represented and was convinced that Japanese architecture would become enormous in scale - a reminder of the lives lost and the city destroy - a city of resurgent that meets with international acclaim
Charles Jencks, The Language of Postmodern Architecture, 1978
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Gehry House Frank Gehry Santa Monica, California 1970s (1977)
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Guild House Robert Venturi Philadelphia, PA 1960-63
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
High Court (Palace of Justice) Le Corbusier Chandigarh, India 1950s
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities 1961
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Kimbell Art Museum Louis Kahn Fort Worth, Texas 1966-72
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Learning from Los Vegas by Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour, and Denise Scott Brown 1972
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Library at Philips Exeter Academy Louis Kahn New Hampshire 1956-72
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Philip Johnson (with John Burgee), AT&T Building, New York, 1979
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Portland Building Michael Graves Portland Oregon, 1980-83
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Pruitt-Igoe House Minoru Yamasaki St. Louis 1950-54, demolished 1972
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Salk Institute for Biological Sciences Louis Kahn La Jolla, California 1959-65
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Trenton Bath House Louis Kahn Ewing Township, NJ 1955
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Vanna Venturi House Robert Venturi Chestnut Hill, PA 1962
[material] [exterior] [interior] [importance]
Carl Mackley Houses Kastner & Stonorov North Philadelphia 1935
series of low-rise apartment construction projects offered both employment & low-cost housing (factory workers) - buildings to contain a large number of apartments, while providing open exterior spaces between each building. {Characteristics} - brick - respecting the typography of the site and incorporating it into the multi-family dwelling - underground garages for private automobile - intentionally small apartment to reinforce the notion that apartments were for the most family-centered and intimate aspects of domestic life - public spaces of community roof tops and ground common spaces were larger for socializing and engaging with neighbors and focusing on community life
Master Plan for Chandigarh Le Corbusier India 1951-65
to stand as a symbol of the emergence of a modern, unfettered India, into a new era.
Case Study House Program John Entenza, editor of Arts and Architecture Begun 1945-1960
were experiments in American residential architecture sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, which commissioned major architects - talk about new ideas in residential design & construction that could only be talked about bc of wartime service and restriction - "good design" should be accessible to all - make use of modern industrial materials and processes - housing prototypes that took the social conscious interwar European architecture & American understanding and combine with a modern aesthetic designed appropriate homes for a small middle-class family -standardization and choice - carries a strong social conscious that is a legacy in the idealism of the Great Depression and WWII - architecture understood as a social art Requirements: (levittown style) 1. small with 2-3 bedrooms and two bathrooms 2. no servants 3. presumed automobile 3. exterior space like gardens/backyards 4. lightweight furnishings 5. well equipped kitchens 6. cool/heating systems installed -market-based capitalism would be the engine to make the projects accessible to a broad public and cultivate a taste + advance the proliferation of project
General Motors Technical Center Eliel and Eero Saarinen Warren, Michigan 1948-56
{Function} center of the company's engineering effort - offers an advanced technology business atmosphere emphasizing flexibility, efficiency, innovation, quality, safety, and security - design aesthetic of the buildings and furnishings built around automobiles - stylish, progressive imaged wrapped up in the notion of automotive transportation - features glass curtain walls, rectilinear furniture, and reflective surfaces = demonstrates the technical prowess of GM - International style - influential suburban corporate campus that set the design standard for an important post-WWII landscape and architectural type that represented a sea change in American business facilities
Alumni Memorial Hall (IIT) Mies van der Rohe Chicago 1940s
{Function} - dedicated to students who lost their lives in WWI {Material} - Mies thinks about the relationship between the structure and infill with restrained material in character - yellow brick, expressed exposed steel beam, glass infill > to articulate what is structure/infill to create a visual language or regularity & repetition that is govern by proportion and rhythm {Exterior} - steel beam coated with concrete fireproofing covered with veneer of steel while it looks like as a raw, untreated material. it is handled in a precise and intentional way to suggest the cutting away of corner of a 3D solid> adovation of stone carving in the tradition of austerautomy {Importance} - influential forerunner of Brutalism - set up the architectural typology for corporate architecture - re-imagination/ reappraisal of Gropius Fragus Shoe-Last Factory > classicism in German Modernism carried to American context with a similar material palette
Rockefeller Center Raymond Hood & Associates New York 1931-40
{Function} - mixed use complex that housed the Metropolitan Opera , RCA,and assorted retail establishments {Materiality} - cloaked with a limestone facade - aluminum spandrels create a vertical pattern of lines that emphasize the building's height - glass {Interior} - demanded daylight and ventilation in office spaces placed around the perimeter {Exterior} - exudes a cool, unfussy elegance - rooftop gardens - stepped ziggurat profiles {Importance} - bold symbol of capitalism -monument to technological achievement -suggestive of the ways architect
Lever House Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill New York 1950s
{Function} - office building for Lever Soap Company - speaks a kind of cleanliness, sharpness, and clarity {Materiality} - pristine clear, green glass facade (1st glass curtain wall office building) - aluminum trim -white marble ground amplifies the sense of modernity and an industrial nature {Exterior} - strict in geometry with one horizontal and vertical forms - courtyard allow - lifted horizontal base by pilotis provides public plaza and a threshold between the exterior/interior of building {Importance} - iconic post-war international style in glass - reflectivity & light - shows how American Architects have an interest into putting European ideas
Philadelphia Savings Fund Society Building (PSFS) Howe and Lescaze Philadelphia 1929-32
{Function} - office space devoted to business and the functions of a bank {Materiality} - polished marble give an honorific quality to public spaces {Interior} - escalators (novel forms of mov't + represent the conveyor factory belt in the assembly production line = seamlessly moving products/bodies through the city > how the machine and mov't might transform the spatial experience and labor) {Exterior} - strongly expressive vertical shaft - sleek, ornament-free - curved base interacts with its surrounding landscape - curved form defines and articulates the placements of shops and public services at ground level to attract customers and enliven the street level + access to underground subway - effort to bestow a sense of magnificence of decorum to a commercial activity while creating a functionally conceived space evocative of modern modes of living and commercial/financial transactions - As the building rises up from the board case, its stunted T-shaped form expresses uniformity sense of repetition > reflects the interior office spaces that stacks on one on top of each other - deviated top part reverses the hierarchy of the building making the most desirable locations at top places the executive office space {Importance} - consistent with the abstraction and modern sensibility with the International style - expressively identifies the functional units of the building - linking a modern commercial symbol of capitalism and modern forms of transportation and movement - PSFS suspended sign announces the building's function > major phonographic feature
Crown Hall (IIT) Mies Van Der Rohe Chicago 1950s
{Function} - two-level pure rectangular building in form that consist of compartmentalized rooms and one large, open classroom. {Material} - steel and travertine platform to entrance - glass perimeter walls allow abundant natural daylight to penetrate the interior {Exterior} - formal, honorific, and classically inspired architectural sensibility - formal entry sequence on axis established with a fairly minimal architectural gesture - symmetrical - black spines/girders suspend the roof in a single plane to form a primary structure - monumental aspect evocative of symmetrical and axial like classic Greek temples, government buildings> honorific & prestigious - forced circulation path and pace/break in cadence (rhythmic flow) {interior} - four massive gridders of weddled steel support the ceiling to create an uninterrupted interior space (120 x 120) for the architecture studio -infinite flexibility of space allows for the reconfiguration in studio space - a sense of flexibility and openness - suspended roof without interior columns created universal space that could be endlessly adapted to new uses - economical to construct with standard glass panes and steel I-beams - seems to float delicately above lawn {Importance} - different material palette and architectural aesthetic -spatial possibilities of modern arch. & ways modern materials allow for new fundamentally kinds of enclosures - holds Mid-Century Modernism characteristics: clean lines, no applied ornamentation, innovative uses of glass - appreciate minimalism - Mies sought to create a style reflected the mechanical spirit of the age
Chrysler Building William Van Allen New York 1928-30
{function} - office building {materiality} - steel and brick {Interior} - lavishly decorated with marble and metal-lined interiors - paint murals on the ceiling {Exterior} - streamlined American eagle heads as gargoyles stare out over the city - decorate metal cladding - sky-piercing spire - distinctive ornamentation based on features found on Chrysler automobiles - 7 layers of crescent setback inset with triangular windows --modeled after the radiator caps {Importance} - example of the Art Deco style - epitomizes its time in an era of concentrated wealth, automotive industrial power, and large-scale city building - a symbol of urban modernity + imagery of national pride