Modern and Postmodern Architecture (art)
Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum
-Frank Lloyd Wright -1943-1959, New York City -using reinforced concrete as a sculptor might use clay, Wright designed a structure that was inspired by the spiral of a snail shell -inside the building, the shell shape expands towards the top, and a winding interior ramp spirals to connect the gallery bays -skylight strip embedded in the outer walls provides illumination to the ramp which visitors can stroll down at a leisurely pace
Guggenheim Bilbao Museo
-Frank Gehry -1997, Bilbao, Spain. limestone and titanium -closely identified with Deconstructivism -makes designs by constructing models and then cutting them up and arranging the parts until he has a satisfying composition -appears to be a collapsed or collapsing aggregate of units -mass of irregular asymmetrical and imbalanced forms whose profiles change dramatically with every shift of the viewer's position -space-age character -"metallic flower": the group of organic forms that sits on top of the museum
Kaufmann House (Fallingwater)
-Frank Lloyd Wright -1936-1939, Bear Run, Pennsylvania -masterpiece of the time period -designed as a weekend retreat -perched on a rocky hillside over a small waterfall -an icon of modernist architectural design -sought to find a way to incorporate the structure fully into its site in order to ensure a fluid, dynamic exchange between the interior of the house and the natural environment outside -built it on top of waterfall instead of overlooking so the people staying at the house would not become desensitized to the waterfall's presence -implied message is space and not mass
Seagram Building
-Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe and Philip Johnson -1956-1958, New York -"less is more" -Minimalist designs are powerful, heroic presences in the urban landscape, effectively symbolizing the giant corporations that were skyscrapers primary tenants -rectilinear glass and bronze building in Manhattan -designed as a thin shaft, leaving the front quarter of its midtown site as an open pedestrian plaza -appears to rise from the pavement on stilts -the recessed structural elements make it appear to have a glass skin, interrupted only by the thin strips of bronze
Sony Building (Formerly AT&T Building)
-Philip Johnson and John Burgee -1979-1984, New York -moving away from severe geometric formalism exemplified by the Seagram Building to a classical transformation of it -in Manhattan -influential in turning architecture taste and practice away from modernism and toward postmodernism -from organic "concrete sculpture" & rigid "glass box" to elaborate shapes, motifs, and silhouettes freely adapted from historical styles -mostly granite -classically tripartite, having an arcaded base and arched portal, & crowning pediment broken by an orbiculum (disclike opening)
