POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

C 2329

History of
Modern
Architecture

Lecture 04:

Post Modern Movement

High Tech
Postmodernism
de constructivism

www.shahrilkhairi.com

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

HIGH TECH

Renzo Piano (Kansai Airport Terminal, Pompidou Centre)

Richard Rogers (Pompidou Centre, Lloyds Building)
Norman Foster (HSBC Headquarters)

- An abbreviation of High Technology

- may be recognised in the engineering
architecture of the late nineteenth century (Eiffel
Tower) and Russian Constructivists.
-Also known as Structural Expressionism.
- Emerged in the 1970s.
- Incorporating elements of high-tech industry and
technology into building design
- In the 1980s, many of its themes and ideas were
absorbed into the post-modern style.
- High-tech style aimed to give building an industrial
appearance.
- consist of a glass facade, with the building's beams
exposed behind it

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : HIGH TECH

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

John Hancock Center, Chicago
(1970)
Skidmore, Owing & Merill

Bank of China, Hong Kong (1992)

By: I.M. Pei

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

(1972-1976)
Modern Art Museum
Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers

-The "Centre Georges Pompidou", or "Pompidou Center", formerly

"Centre Beaubourg". Massive structural expressionist cast
exoskeleton, "exterior" escalators enclosed in transparent tube.
-The ventilation ducts are all shown on the outside. This was a
radical design, as previous ventilation ducts would have been a
component hidden on the inside of the building.
-The means of access to the building is also on the outside, with
the large tube allowing visitors to enter the building.

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : HIGH TECH

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

Lloyds Building, London, England

(1979-1984)
Corporate headquarters, commercial
Richard Rogers

-Expressed structure and exposed services as ornamental order.

-The building is noted for its multi-storey, free-standing escalator
array within the atrium; the mechanisms within are exposed and
are punctuated in yellow.
-The external windows have triple layered solar control glass with a
ventilated cavity enabling it to refract back artificial light into the
interior. This helps to decrease the need for light after sunset.
-The atrium was influenced by Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace of
1851.
-The building takes its name from one Edward Lloyd who founded
a coffee shop on this site in 1688, from where maritime insurance
was conducted.

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : HIGH TECH

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank

Corp., China (HSBC) (1979-1986)
Bank headquarters
Norman Foster

-The headquarters of the Hong

Kong and Shanghai Banking
Corporation are reputed to have
some of the best feng shui around
the building sits on a rare
confluence of five dragon lines
and enjoys harbour views.
-Dramatic exoskeleton trusses,
interior atrium, escalator entry
through glazed atrium floor.
-Exterior trusses are expressed in the
form of giant steel 'coathangers'.

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : HIGH TECH

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

Postmodernism
Robert Venturi
Michael Graves
Richard Meier

-Origins : Failure of Modern Architecture.

(Reaction to Modernism)
- Because of focus on function and
economical building
- No ornaments = plain buildings.

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

Modernism = minimal and true use of material as well as
absence of ornament.
Postmodernism = Rejection of rules set by the early
modernists and excited in the use of building
techniques, angles, and stylistic references.
use of sculptural forms, ornaments, and materials which perform
trompe l'oeil.
(creating the illusion of space or depths where none actually
exist, as has been done by painters since the Romans)

- Postmodernists felt the buildings failed to

meet the human need for comfort both
for body and for the eye.
- Modernism did not account for the
desire for beauty. The problem worsened
when some already monotonous
apartment blocks degenerated into
slums.
-Post Modernism want to cure this by
reintroducing ornament and decoration.
Form was no longer to be defined by its
functional requirements; it could be
anything the architect pleased.

An icon of post-modernism, created for the architect's

mother, and featured in Venturi's architectural polemic
"Complexity and Contradiction".

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : POSTMODERNISM

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

Gordon Wu Hall, Princeton, New Jersey(1983)

Academic
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

- Ornamental graphic keystone with the

control joint running down the middle.
- Princeton University campus.
-The University named this building Gordon
Wu Hall in tribute to his magnanimity.
-The brick, limestone trim, and strip windows
adhere to the entrance, set off-center and
broadside in the building, is marked by a bold
marble and gray granite panel recalling early
Renaissance ornament and symbolizing the
entrance to the College as a whole as well as
to the building itself

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : POSTMODERNISM

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

Portland Public Service Building, Portland

(1980)
Government Offices
Michael Graves

- Block mass with decorated facades, criticized for unpleasant interior.

Icon of Post-Modernism

- Ornament is even more prominent.

- The two obtruding triangular forms are largely ornamental. They exist
for aesthetic or their own purpose.
Example of trompe l'oeil:

- Pillars represented on the side of the building that to some extent

appear to be real, yet they are not

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : POSTMODERNISM

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia

(1983)
Art museum
Richard Meier

concrete frame, enameled steel cladding

curved facade to sunny atrium

The extended ramp is a symbolic gesture reaching out to

the street and city, and a foil to the interior ramp that is
the buildings chief formal and circulatory element.
At the end of the ramp is the main entry and reception
area, from which one passes into the four-story atrium.

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : POSTMODERNISM

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

Philip Johnson
-Attempted to deconstruct architecture by
exploding the building, its elements, or the
design idea from within to without, resulting in
a style that is non-systematic and unorthodox.

Chainlink Garden Pavilion

Johnson intended Da Monsta, which he named in a

nod to hip-hop idiom, as a future visitors' center.
(New Canaan rejected the idea, and plans are
under way for an off-site center.)
The building is composed of a three-dimensional wire
grid with concrete on the outside, Styrofoam in the
middle, and plaster on the interior.

Da Monsta - Gate House, New Canaan,

Connecticut

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : DECONSTRUCTIVISM

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

Coop Himmelb(l)au (Blue-Sky Cons. Coorporative)

Group of Viennese Architects

Vienna,Austria

COOP HIMMELB(L)AU was founded in 1968 in Vienna, Austria, by Wolf

D. Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky and continues to work since then in the
fields of ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN and ART. Consists of exciting, heady
architectural projects that present aggressive alternatives to the
standard approach to urban design. Turn sketches to fully form model
from the initial sketch phase.
asymmetrical structures are often generated to strive freedom from
a given formal style. they create open plan, open minded and open
endedmade up of complex, undefined spaces. every building
project became autonomous, left to the unbridled fantasy of its
designer.
Law office in
Falkenstrabe(Vienna. 1988.
Coop Himmelblau) This roof
office with an overhanging
framework combines and
reinterprets the Postmodern
and High Tech approaches.

BMW Headquarters in Munich, 2007

UFA CINEMA CENTER, Dresden Germany 1998

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : DECONSTRUCTIVISM

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

Frank OGehry
Characteristics:

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

Nationale Nederlanden Head Office,
Czech Republic, 1996
Frank.O. Gehry.

-Disjointed angles.
- Unbalanced appearance of its whole
composition.
- Disharmonious abstract form.
- Sharp angles, shards and pointed forms.
- Irregularity is real.

Characteristics:
- Altered massing, spatial
envelopes, planes and other
expectations in a playful
subversion.

Vitra Design Museum (Germany. 2006. Frank O.

Gehry.)takes the typical unadorned white cube of modernist
art galleries and deconstructs it, using geometries
reminiscent of cubism and abstract expressionism.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain, 199398

Frank.O. Gehry

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : DECONSTRUCTIVISM

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

Rem Koolhass
-Attempted to deconstruct architecture by exploding the building,
its elements, or the design idea from within to without, resulting in a
style that is non-systematic and unorthodox.
- deconstructivist buildings thus appear as a metaphor for the
contemporary world and implicitly criticize the view of the
International style. wild pieces of decontextualised egotism.
The Casa da Musica, 2001
Portugal

Seattle Public Library,2004

Washington, USA
CCTV building , Beijing,
China

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : DECONSTRUCTIVISM

Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

Zaha Hadid
- Approach to building design
that view architecture in bits and pieces.
- The basic elements of architecture are
dismantled.
- Deconstructivist buildings may seem to
have no visual logic.
- May appear to be made up of unrelated,
disharmonious abstract forms.
- Deconstructive ideas are borrowed from
the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.

Pierres Vives Building, France, Zaha Hadid, 2006.

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : DECONSTRUCTIVISM

The Peak Competition, Hong Kong, Zaha Hadid,

1982.
Zaha Hadid, Vitra Firestation design study,
1990:

Vitra Fire Station. Germany, 1994

Zaha Hadid
Prepared by SKA

POLITEKNIK SULTAN IDRIS SHAH

Architecture Unit, Department of Civil Engineering

C 2329 History of Modern Architecture

Bernard Tschumi form follows fiction

Swiss architect

Principles of showing off, with concept of disturb

perfection through its development to create a new
structural form which might be different from others.
an elegant designer of buildings that result in smooth,
precise structures on the outside, and warmth and
familiarity on the inside. He creates spaces that do not
impose on their occupants; believing in the simplicity
fine architecture.

a specific aim: to prove that

it is possible to construct a
complex architectural
organization without
resorting to traditional rules
of composition, hierarchy
and order

Parc de la Villette
Paris, 1982-1998

BLUE RESIDENTIAL TOWER

New York City

POST MODERN MOVEMENT : DECONSTRUCTIVISM

Prepared by SKA