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Minimalism
Truthfulness of Form, Material & Expression
- Dr. Sangeeta Bagga, Assistant Professor, Chandigarh College of Architecture, Chandigarh EDUSAT LECTURE- 1 1
Modern ArchitectureOrigins
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the socio economic and cultural conditions of the times. It began in the United Kingdom, and then subsequently spread throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world. In the two centuries following 1800, the world's average per capita income increased over 10-fold, while the world's population increased over 6-fold.
A Watt steam engine, the steam engine fuelled primarily by coal that propelled the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and the world.
"For the first time in history, the living standards of the masses of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth. ... Nothing remotely like this economic behaviour has happened before. It started with the mechanisation of the textile industries, the development of iron-making techniques and the increased use of refined coal. Trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads and railways.
The only surviving example of a Spinning mule built by the inventor Samuel Crompton
Model of the spinning jenny in a museum in Wuppertal, Germany. The spinning jenny was one of the innovations that started the revolution 3
A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery (ca. 1766) Informal philosophical societies spread scientific advances
Since iron was becoming cheaper and more plentiful, it also became a major structural material following the building of the innovative The Iron Bridge in 1778 by Abraham Darby III.
Masonry walls were gradually relieved of their structural role, eventually becoming a cosmetic skin over an iron skeleton of columns and arches. Iron bridges and iron-and-glass buildings (e.g. greenhouses, train stations, markets) were also constructed.
The 1698 Savery Engine the world's first commercially useful steam engine: built by Thomas Savery. Also called Miners friend
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Canals Canals were the first technology to allow bulk materials to be easily transported across the country. By the 1820s, a national network was in existence. Canal construction served as a model for the organization and methods later used to construct the railways. Roads & Railways
Railways helped Britain's trade enormously, providing a quick and easy way of to transport mail and news.
Puffing Billy, an early railway steam locomotive, constructed in 1813-1814 for colliery work.
Chicago school: skyscrapers, functionalism Louis Sullivan)international style (Gropius, Corbusier, Mies), Wright (organic architecture) Total aesthetic freedom
The Thames Tunnel (opened 1843). Portland Cement was used in the world's first underwater tunnel
Over London by Rail Gustave Dor c.1870.Shows the densely populated and polluted environments created in the new industrial cities.
A cast iron frame must use arched construction. The alternative, post-and-beam construction, is not feasible due to the brittleness of cast iron. (The term brittle is equivalent to lacking in tensile strength)
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The familiar post-and-beam metal frames of todays architecture only became possible with the mass-production of steel , which has immense tensile strength. During the steel and electricity phase of the industrial age, which could also be called the age of steel-frame architecture, steel and reinforced concrete became the predominant structural materials of large-scale architecture. Reinforced concrete which is simply concrete filled with reinforcing steel bars, or rebars, is thus combining the tensile strength of steel with the compressive strength of concrete.
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Abraham Darby commissioned this painting by William Williams in 1780 to promote the Bridge. There are 482 main castings, but with the deck facings and railings the number rises to 1,736. There were no injuries during the construction process, which took three months during the summer of 1779, although work on the approach roads continued for another two years. The Bridge was opened to traffic on 1st January 1781. Movement in the south abutment was severe and it had to be demolished in 1802 and replaced by two timber side arches, which in turn were replaced in cast iron in 1821 and remain to this day. In 1934 the Bridge was closed to vehicles and scheduled as an ancient monument, but pedestrian tolls continued until 1950. Universally recognised as the symbol of the Industrial Revolution, Severn the Iron Bridge stands at the heart of the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site.
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The Severn Bridge- An aerial View. It is still used as a foot over bridge
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All the large castings were made individually as they all were slightly different. The joints would all be familiar to a carpenter - mortise and tenons, dovetails and wedges - but this was the traditional way in which iron structures were joined at the time.
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Iron-and-glass architecture culminated in the mid-nineteenth century, with Londons Crystal Palace (destroyed), designed by Joseph Paxton (a renowned architect of greenhouses) as the main pavilion of the first Worlds Fair. The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and plate-glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's 990,000 square feet (92,000 m2) of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in the Industrial Revolution.
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The Great Exhibition building was 1,851 feet (564 m) long, with an interior height of 128 feet (39 m).Because of the recent invention of the cast plate glass method in 1848, which allowed for large sheets of cheap but strong glass, it was at the time the largest amount of glass ever seen in a building and astonished visitors with its clear walls and ceilings that did not require interior lights, thus a "Crystal Palace".
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The Eiffel Tower, designed by Gustave Eiffel. The fierce controversy provoked by the towers modern aesthetic illustrates the eras lack of mainstream acceptance for plain, unornamented construction. The Eiffel Tower is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris, named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower.
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The next step in the development of modern architecture was the shift from iron-frame to steel-frame construction. Steel-frame architecture emerged in Chicago, among a circle of architects known as the Chicago school, which flourished ca. 1880-1900. At this point in history, architects faced growing pressure to extend buildings upward, as cities grew and property values soared. In response, the Chicago school built the worlds first skyscrapers. (A good definition of skyscraper, for the purposes of architectural history, is a metal-frame building at least one hundred feet tall.) The Home Insurance Building (1884; demolished), by William Le Baron Jenney (a member of the Chicago school), is usually considered the very first skyscraper.
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Functionalism provided the modern aesthetic with a theoretical foundation; consequently, Sullivan is often referred to as the father of modern architecture. Sullivans masterpiece is the Wainwright Building. The exterior of this building reflects its three-part internal plan (a two-story base, a middle section with seven floors of offices, and a service floor at the top), and a brick pier indicates each column in the steel frame.
The horizontal dividers are recessed behind the piers, which emphasizes the buildings verticality: an aesthetic choice that illustrates the creative freedom within the bounds of functionalism.5 Most surfaces are plain, although the horizontal dividers feature stucco decoration.
The intricate frieze along the top of the building along with the bull's-eye windows
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Art Nouveau
In the meantime, a rival aesthetic emerged: Art Nouveau, a style that flourished in Europe and America at the turn of the century (ca. 1890-1910).7 Like functionalism, Art Nouveau was purposely developed as an all-new aesthetic, free of traditional ornamentation. Yet this was an exuberantly decorative style, defined by organic, curving, asymmetrical lines inspired by natural forms (e.g. stems, flowers, vines, insect wings).
The intricate frieze along the top of the building along with the bull's-eye windows
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Art Nouveau
The most overt architectural expression of Art Nouveau is found in the growing buildings of Antonio Gaudi, whose masterpiece is the Sagrada Familia, a cathedral in Barcelona. Casa Mila, also in Barcelona, is his foremost residential work.
The intricate frieze along the top of the building along with the bull's-eye The Sagrada Familia, a cathedral in windows
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Art Deco
GE Building
The Chrisler
During the period ca. 1920-40 (i.e. the interwar period), another short-lived rival to mainstream modernism flourished: Art Deco. Like the modern aesthetic, Art Deco shuns traditional decoration in favor of plain geometric forms. The main difference is that, compared with the light minimalism of the modern aesthetic, Art Deco works typically look heavy and contrived. Distinctive features of Art Deco architecture include setbacks (inward steps), as well as narrow strips of windows (with strips of concrete/masonry between them, which gives the building a sense of heavy construction). Although Art Deco was primarily a French style, it culminated architecturally in the United States. The foremost examples are found in New York: the GE Building(the centerpiece of Rockefeller Centre), the Chrysler Building, and the 28 Empire State Building.
ca. 1900-1960
In the early twentieth century, the modern aesthetic (simple, unadorned geometric forms) finally matured, becoming the mainstream aesthetic of architecture and design across the world. This was achieved primarily by the Bauhaus, a German school of design that operated for most of the interwar period. The school was closed when the Nazi government came to power, forcing many of its scholars to emigrate to the United States, where they continued to serve as leaders of the architecture/design world (such that the Bauhaus age actually stretched decades beyond the closure of the school).
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The international styles three most influential pioneers were Gropius, Corbusier, and Mies. Walter Gropius, founder and first director of the Bauhaus, designed the buildings of the schools second campus. Plain walls (white and grey) and screens of glass, sometimes several stories in height, predominate. Gropius balconies showcase an impressive new structural possibility of steel-frame construction: cantilevering (platforms fixed only at one end), which further contributes to a sense of architectural weightlessness.
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The 5 points of Architecture in the Villa Savoye: 1.Ribbon Window, 2.Roof gardens, 3.Pilotis, 4.free plan,5.free facade
The Swiss architect Le Corbusier, though not a member of the Bauhaus, absorbed and became a leading figure of the international style. He preferred smooth expanses of white reinforced concrete pierced with horizontal strip windows, as well as a degree of curvilinear geometry . Le Corbusiers masterpiece is the Villa Savoye.
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While Gropius and Le Corbusier made ample use of reinforced concrete, pure glass-and-steel construction in the international style was perfected by Mies van der Rohe (another director of the Bauhaus), who believed so firmly in eliminating all embellishment that his guiding principle was simply less is more. Mies brought the international style to the height of its influence, as descendants of his glass-and-steel skyscrapers appeared in every corner of the globe. The Seagram Building in New York, essentially a steel frame sheathed in curtains of glass, is often considered his masterpiece. The Lake Shore drive apartments brought in a revolution in high-rise residential lifestyle.
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Contemporary with the Bauhaus age was the career of the greatest American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, who focused primarily on residential designs. Wright sought to make his buildings organic; that is, to adjust their layouts and features until they merge with their natural surroundings, rather than simply imposing a rectangular box of a house on any given locale. Wright felt that a house should not be located on a site, but rather be a natural extension of the site.The exterior walls of a Wright house are articulated in a relatively complex, asymmetrical manner (so as to avoid a stiff, boxy appearance), and the house is often visually united with the earth via broad, flat surfaces parallel with the ground (e.g. eaves, cantilevered balconies). Interiors are open and flowing (rather than mechanically subdivided into small rooms), and ample windows (including windows that bend around corners) throughout the house merge the interior with the world outside. A mixture of building materials (e.g. brick, wood, stone, concrete) further contributes to the sense of the house as an organic feature of the landscape.
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Postmodern Architecture
Postmodern Architecture ca. 1960-present As advances in building materials and engineering opened up incredible new possibilities for architectural design, it was only a matter of time until the severe international style was rejected in favor of total aesthetic freedom. (Given its timeless appeal, construction in the international style has continued since ca. 1960, albeit to a more limited extent.) Consequently, it is difficult to generalize postmodern architecture beyond the observation that anything goes.
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Nonetheless, postmodern architecture does exhibit a range of common features, such as complex geometry (including curvilinear geometry), blending of modern and traditional elements, colorfulness, and playfulness. Many postmodern buildings have a sleek, futuristic appearance; these are often described as high-tech or space-age architecture.
Thankyou
The Gherkin Building
EDUSAT LECTURE- 1 38