ARTH- 452E The Skyscraper Exam #2
Streetcar Suburb
a residential community whose growth and development was strongly shaped by the use of streetcar lines as a primary means of transportation.
Curtain Wall
a wall that encloses the space within a building but does not support the roof, typically on a modern high-rise.
[Walter] Gropius's scheme [for the Chicago Tribune Tower] was conceived as a mechanistic _____________________ celebrating the idea of a modern communication building.
abstraction
spandrel panel
an opaque panel in a curtain wall under a window sill on one floor and extended down to the window head of the story below
In this design [of Frank Lloyd Wright's proposed copper & glass skyscraper], architecture has been frankly, profitably and ______________________ taken from the field of the factory -standardized as might be any mechanical thing whatsoever.
artistically
This design of new [suburban] neighborhoods on the assumption that residents would have _______________________ meant that those without cars faced severe handicaps in access to jobs and shopping facilities.
automobiles
Copper is the only sheet metal that has yet entered into architecture as a ____________________,permanent material.
beautiful
The Levitt organization, which was no more culpable in this [racist] regard than any other urban or suburban firm, publicly and officially refused to sell to ________________________ for two decades after the war.
blacks
The glazed skyscraper could also be employed in non-___________________ contexts, too.
commercial
The 1950s in the United States was a period of unparalleled prosperity and relative optimism, in which scientific and technological ingenuity allowed an increasing sophistication in the _______________________, servicing and detailing of buildings.
construction
America was not without its _____________________, the most notable being Hugh Ferris, who published a book called "The Metropolis of Tomorrow" in 1929.
dreamers
A survey of the [Chicago Tribune Tower competition] entries reads like a lexicon of _____________________ and half-understood prototypes with little evidence of subtle transformation from precedent.
eclecticism
The compound message [of the Chrysler Building] was clear: it was a celebration of self-advancement within the American ______________________ system.
economic
[In Frank Lloyd Wright's proposed copper & glass skyscraper], there is no emphasis on the _____________________ units.
horizontal
By 1955, [suburban] subdivisions accounted for more than three-quarters of all new ____________________ in metropolitan areas.
housing
For more than five years [during World War 2], military necessity had taken priority over consumer goods, and by 1945 almost everyone had a long list of unfilled materials wants.______________________ was the area of most pressing need.
housing
[According to Frank Lloyd Wright], in the skyscraper as practiced at present [October 1928], the"Architecture" is expensively involved but is entirely ______________________ .
irrelevant
The construction of such a building as [Frank Lloyd Wright's proposed copper & glass skyscraper],would be at least one-third _____________________ than anything in the way of a tall building yet built-and three times stronger in any disturbance.
lighter
The actual design features [of Levittown houses] were less important than the fact that they were ____________________-produced and thus priced within reach of the middle class.
mass
In the decade after [World War 2, the US] Congress regularly approved billions of dollars worth of additional _______________________ insurance for the Federal Housing Administration.
mortgage
There can be little doubt that Mies van der Rohe was stimulated in his search for _____________________ by the more transparent frame buildings of the early Chicago School.
simplicity
The forces that brought tall buildings into being ignored the character of civic space and tended to destroy not only the street as a _____________________ realm, but the complex grain of pre-existing historical and social relationships as well.
social
By 1950, the national ______________________ growth rate was ten times that of central cities, and in 1954 the editors of Fortune estimated that 9 million people had moved to the suburbs in the previous decade.
suburban
The idea of putting the Secretariat [of the United Nations Building] in a tower . . . served to demonstrate to Americans the "____________________" urban function of the skyscraper - the liberation of the city for light, space and greenery.
true
Offering neither the urbanity and sophistication of the city nor the tranquility and repose of the farm, the suburb came to be regarded less as an intelligent compromise than a cultural, economic, and emotional ______________________ .
wasteland
Mies (van der Rohe) believed it possible to transform naked construction into the most basic underlying form. This is surely what was implied by his well-known statement,
"less is more"
Automobile Suburbs
A residential area outside the city center to which people commute by automobile.
Garden City
A self-contained planned town combining work, residential, agricultural, and recreational facilities, and surrounded by a rural belt.
Taproot Structural System
All stemming from the mail core, like a carrot. Frank Lloyd Wright, "Research Tower for Johnson Wax"
NAME three ARTISTIC "European Avant-Garde"movements and three ARCHITECTURE/DESIGN "European Avant-Garde"movements AND EXPLAIN their attitude towards "the past."
Artistic: FAUVISM, EXPRESSIONISM, CUBISM Architecture: BAUHAUS, "DE STIJL" ("THE STYLE"), "CONSTRUCTIVISM" Essentially it's art—performance art, poetry, photography, collages, and visual works—that upends conventional ideas and logic through irony, humor, and nonsensical themes and imagery. It borrowed heavily from other avant-garde artistic movements of the time, including expressionism, futurism, and cubism.
COMPARE or CONTRAST Ebenezer Howard's "Garden City" Concept (1898) with Frank Lloyd Wright's "Broadacre City" Concept (1932) in terms of: GEOMETRIES and TRANSPORTATION.
Broadacre: A society of free individuals living in a rural democracy. TRANSPORTATION-done by automobile and the pedestrian GEO-each U.S. family would be given a one acre of land, Square Geometry. Garden City: Reacting to the crowding, congestion GEO- self-contained planned communities surrounded by greenbelts, with carefully balanced areas of residences, industry, and agriculture. Radial Geometry. TRANSPORTATION- Pedestrian Paths provided.
COMPARE or CONTRAST William Van Alen's "Chrysler Building" (New York, 1931) and Gordon Bunshaft's "Lever House"(New York, 1950)with in terms of MATERIALS and DECORATION.
DECORATION-Lever House is the epitome of "less is more". No dec., modern. Put tower on a base MATERIALS-It is totally glass and square, steel structure. Transparent and opaque material so you cant see floor, called a Spandrel Pane DECORATION- Chrysler building, which is an art deco style skyscraper. Sunburst, looks like sun rising, "gargols" hood ornaments on top, Diagonal motif, Polished sleak luxury MATERIAL-Masonry with a steel frame and stainless-steel cladding
COMPARE or CONTRAST Raymond Hood's "Daily News Building" (New York, 1930) with Frank Lloyd Wright's "St. Mark's Tower in the Bouwerie" (PROJECT, New York, 1929) in terms of :VERTICALITY and INNOVATIVE STRUCTURAL SYSTEM.
Daily News VERTICALITY- Played fully on vertical aspect INNOVATIVE-no horizontal spandrel panels St. Marks VERTICALITY- Horizontal balconies INNOVATIVE- all glass and copper building, no steel structure). floors concrete and structure concrete with glass and copper on outside going across, intending on using tap root structure.
[Architectural] competitions are a useful gauge of the true outlook of a period because they give evidence of a wide variety of ______________________ responses to the same constraints.
Different
IDENTIFY and EXPLAIN two different usages of steel I-beams that can be seen in these two details from Mies van der Rohe:
I-Beams glued on to showcase structure were used as decoration. It was also used to separate the large glass windows on buildings
[New corporations of unprecedented size] needed tall buildings which could also project persuasive _____________________ of themselves and their products.
Images
Walter Gropius with Emery Roth & Sons, "Pan American Airways Building," New York, 1958-63
Is now the Metlife Building
LIST and EXPLAIN three characteristics of post-World-War-2 suburbs in the United States.
LOW DENSITY average of 10,500 people per square mile (1/4 of downtowns) ARCHITECTURAL SIMILARITY sometimes referred to as "cookie cutter houses", due to a MASS PRODUCTION in the parts for the house EASY AVAILABILITY financially within reach of most people since people were making more money after the war. higher wages.
COMPARE or CONTRAST Mie van der Rohe's "Friedrichstrasse Skyscraper" (project, Berlin ,1921) with his "Lake Shore Drive Apartments" (Chicago, 1948-51) in terms of FORMS and MATERIALS.
MATERIAL-Friedrichstrasse made from steel structure and glass and as FORM-an office building, surface more translucent than solid, . FORM- Lake shore Apartments made from concrete structure and residential. Very modern looking, MATERIAL- Steel has concrete (fireproof) around it, glued on steel I-beams as decoration glass paneling.
EXPLAIN the difference between most AMERICAN and EUROPEAN architects' 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower Competition entries (That is, as explained in the text book, not in Christopher's lecture).
Most of the European entries were getting away from the style over in Europe. Everything there is old, they want something new, so they used a more modern architecture. While in America, we want everything to look old, to give it a more persuasive image to the building.
FLW, "Century of Progress Skyscraper for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair" (PROJECT), 1931
Not this image. It looks like a blueprint plan of ART-DECO-STYLED BUILDINGS.
COMPARE or CONTRAST Le Corbusier's "Plan Voisin for Paris," (project, 1925) with Harrison and Abramovitz's "United Nations Complex (New York, 1950) in terms of FORM and OPEN SPACE.
OPEN SPACE-Both allow spaces for parkways and nature to live within the region of city space. FORM-UN building is not too tall to provide sunlight to the spaces FORM- Plan Voisin for Paris where there are even spaces and equally tall buildings, provide sunlight
IDENTIFY and EXPLAIN three different styles/cladding/exteriors used by early 20th-century architects in designing skyscrapers.
Once the frame was formulated, the exterior details could be borrowed from Romanesque or Baroque architecture, or neoclassical architecture, or any one of a number of other historical styles. In his 1913 article for the Architectural Record on "The Towers of Manhattan," he praised the Gothic architecture style of the Woolworth Building, designed by Cass Gilbert (1859-1934) and kind words for the Beaux-Arts Singer Building, by Ernest Flagg, and for Napoleon Le Brun & Sons' Metropolitan Tower, which was inspired by the early Renaissance art of the Piazza San Marco in Venice.
Organic Architecture
Organic Architecture is a term that American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) used to describe his environmentally integrated approach to architectural design.
In the first two decades of the twentieth century . . . architectural history was often treated like a used-clothes store and raided for its garments with little thought for their ______________________ purpose and still less for the new body they were to clothe.
Original
EXPLAIN what Venturi, Scott-Brown and Izenour "learned from Las Vegas" in terms of:SPACE, SCALE, SPEED and SYMBOL.
SPACE- SCALE- SPEED- SYMBOL- Venturi and Scott Brown created a taxonomy for the forms, signs, and symbols they encountered.[3] The two were inspired by the emphasis on sign and symbol they found on the Las Vegas strip. The result was a critique of Modern architecture, demonstrated most famously in the comparison between the "duck" and "decorated shed." The "duck" represents a large part of modernist architecture, which was expressive in form and volume. In contrast, the "decorated shed" relies on imagery and sign. Virtually all architecture before the Modern Movement used decoration to convey meaning, often profound but sometimes simply perfunctory, such as the signage on medieval shop fronts. Only Modernist architecture eschewed such ornament, relying only on corporeal or structural elements to convey meaning. As such, argued the authors, Modern buildings became mute and vacuous, especially when built for corporate or government clients
COMPARE or CONTRAST Cass Gilbert's"Woolworth Building" (New York, 1912) with Frank Lloyd Wright's "Press Building/Reinforced Concrete Skyscraper" (PROJECT, San Francisco, 1912) in terms of:HISTORICAL REFERENCING (STYLE)and VERTICALITY.
STYLE- The "Woolworth Building" used a gothic style architecture. Trying to make everything fancy and ornate. VERTICALITY-Pointed arc and different visual greater flexibility to form STYLE- FLW used primarily glass, copper, and reinforced concrete. The building was very minimal, center re-inforced concrete. VERTICALITY-flat top, no pointed, 90 degree angles
COMPARE or CONTRAST Howells and Hood's "Chicago Tribune Tower," (Chicago, 1923) with Frank Lloyd Wright's "National Life Insurance Company Office Building" (PROJECT, Chicago, 1924) in terms of: HISTORICAL REFERENCING (STYLE)and INNOVATIVE MATERIAL USE.
STYLE-The Tribune Tower is a neo-Gothic skyscraper. MATERIAL-used limestone for lower part and has horizontal spandrels frame steel fireproof concrete STYEL- Modern, not eclectic, practical solution of skyscraper problem MATERIAL- copper bound glass panels on outside and 4 towers connected to the back
COMPARE or CONTRAST the American "Streetcar Suburb" (1888-1930s) with the American "Automobile Suburb" (1945-1960s) in terms of DENSITY and LAYOUT.
Streetcar: designed for residents to commute into the city via streetcar. DENSITY-dense enough to keep houses within walking distance of streetcar stops LAYOUT-built mainly for pedestrian travel, almost always have sidewalks. There are often small "main street" style stores near the streetcar stops. Automobile: commute into the city via automobile. DENSITY-Spread out, destinations put in separate areas so everything isn't on top of each other. LAYOUT-no sidewalks because they are built with the assumption that people will not walk along the streets. offices, shopping and other destinations will often be in separate areas that are difficult to access without a car.
EXPLAIN why Cass Gilbert's "Woolworth Building" (New York, 1912) was nicknamed a "Cathedral of Commerce."
The Woolworth Building used many characteristics and influence of Gothic Architecture and design. It had multiple motifs and personal gargoyles of the owner and architect in the lobby. Everywhere there were vaulted ceilings, stained glass, mosaics, and bronze fittings.
Cape Cod Cottage
The façade of the Cape Cod style house combines simple design elements to create a symmetrical appearance. Its rectangular shape coordinates with other features to form smooth geometric lines. The paneled door is centered and multi-paned, double-hung windows are positioned equal distances apart on each side.
Art Deco
The style is characterized by abstract motifs composed of diagonal lines and angular shapes, often inspired from natural sources (lightning, starbursts, trees, clouds), but also historical cultures like Ancient Egypt, Greece/Rome, and Meso-America.
Decorated Shed
Venturi's term for an appropriate solution to a building on a highway. Signage and planar surface ornament address the scale and speed of the street, while the back of the building is permitted to be cheap, neutral space (a shed). Usually opposed to a "duck".
