Week 12 - Contextualising exemples of designs

The modernism is an art movement that has influenced a lot of artists in the 19th century in different fields such as art, literature, painting, sculpture, architecture... However, the rise of the modernism period in architecture is linked to many reasons but the main reason is the industrialisation of the world that lied to the development of the technology, allowing the creation of a lot of materials that could be used for the evolution of the different fields of art (Guillen M. F. , 2006) . With regards to architecture, the modernist architects rejected all the historical representation of past forms and explored new forms, technics and ideas of the industrial age (Rots Architects, 2019). They tried to attend perfection through beauty but in a new form. For them, everything is about destroying rules and applying freedom, with the ethic that form follows functions. That's why they don't find it useful to have beautiful or useful objects as the functionality is the most important point for them. (William Moris, 1880, p.68)

EARLY MODERNIST PERIOD (1850-1900)

Image 1: Philip Webb - The Red House (1860)

• The Red House was in the past the meeting place for a lot of artists of the art and crafts movement (Stacknond, n.d). It is all made of red bricks and multiple triangular and traditional roofs. While looking at it, it can seem to be a group of different rectangular houses but in reality, it is one house with different rooms size, angle and configurations.
  

• It also reflect the financial situation of the owner because the more you have money, the more you can add different sizes to your building as it is a way to ignore or emulate the industrialisation of design.
  

• One thing to identify the decision during the process of the design is the design of the roofs, which look like a series of different roofs that have been made in different times. (Designing buildings, 2023)
  

• Rejecting the past ideas was for all the artists a duty. For instance, looking at other architects as Richard Norman Shaw with his Cragside House (See image 2), prove that this process of design was really present in this period and was adopted by a lot of architects.

Image 2: Richard Norman Shaw - The Cragside House (1863)

LATE MODERNIST PERIOD (1900 - 1950)

Image 3: Mies Van Der Rohe - Farnsworth House (1929)

• The Farnsworth House is an historical house that was designed to have the function of a refuge with a single room (Adeline Perez, 2010)
  

• It is a white simple house that is only surrounded by nature and is on pilotis with a first slab on pilotis, accessible by a range of stairs, and a second slab that form the floor of the house, is on stilts too over the first slab.
  

• The house has a simple rectangular shape and is fully made of long sheets of glass from the floor to the ceiling and separed by a vertical piece of steel, all placed in a vertical position. The use of the glass is allowing the house to be opened to the surrounding aera and so, receive the light of the sun.
  

• The simplicity of the house's shape is related to the modernist ethic, which was the resaon why Mies Van Der Rohe said "Less is more" (Mies Van Der Rohe, 1929). During this period, things were simplified to the point where rectangular shape with clean lines, large curtain glasses and a connection between the interior and the exterior were some specific characteristics of the late modernist period. (McLaughlin, 2023)
  

• The use of geometrical shape on buildings surrounded by nature is Something that Mies Van Der Rohe did a lot in this period but he was one of many other architects to do that. For instance, if we look at The House on the River (see image 4) made by William Amancio, it has the same characteristics where this simple geometric shape can be noticed again, with a house also surrounded by nature.

Image 4: Amancio Williams - House on the River (1943)

POST-MODERNIST PERIOD (1950-2000)

Post-modernist artists rejected or minimalised the use of organic forms. They started with organic shapes and reduced it down by using geometry.

Image 5: Mies Van Der Rohe & Philip Johnson - Seagram Building (1954)

• The Seagram building is a massive rectangular skyscraper with clean lines and 38 floors. The base of this skyscraper is including a flat roof as a spacious plaza in complementarity with the position of the structure. The façade shows that the building is fully made of frame steel and hung glasses, using the notion of floor to ceiling glass windows (Mariathuroczy, 2017) They are all agented in a vertical position and each sheet of glass is separated to the next one by the framed steel.
  

• A lot of skyscrapers showed up in the USA, represented as the "International Style" and That's how James Chakraborty claims that in the United States, the skyscrapers has became the prominent architectural symbol, (James Chakraborty, 2014) and with the same characteristics as the monolithic skyscraper, the rectangular shape and the use of the glass.
  

• The use of glass was common in this period as it is a modernist material that has been developed with the evolution of the industrialisation (James Chakraborty, 2014) and effectively, with regard to other skyscrapers such as The Hancock Tower, in the United States made by Henry N. Cobb, we can see the same characteristics cited above.

Image 6: Henry N. Cobb - Hancock Tower (1976)

Image list

Image 1: Philip Webb - The Red House (1860)

Image 2: Richard Norman Shaw - The Cragside House (1863)

Image 3: Mies Van Der Rohe - Farnsworth House (1929)

Image 4: Amancio Williams - House on the River (1943)

Image 5: Mies Van Der Rohe & Philip Johnson - Seagram Building (1954)

Image 6: Henry N. Cobb - Hancock Tower (1976)

Reference list

1. Guillen M. F. (2006). The Taylorized Beauty of The Mechanical. Princeton: Princeton University Press

2. Roost Architects (2019) A brief history of the beginning of Modern Architecture Retrieved from: https://www.rostarchitects.com/articles/2019/1/2/a-brief-history-of-modern-architecture [Accessed 28 January 2024]

3. Mackmail J. W. (1950) The Life of William Morris, New York: Haskell House Publishers

4. Webb P. (1860). The Red House. [House] Bexleyheat, England

5. Designing Buildings. (n.d), Arts and Craft Movement [Online] Retrieved from: https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Arts_and_craft_movement [Accessed 31 January 2023]

6. Shaw R. N. (1863). Cragside House. [House] Northumberland, England

7. Rohe M. V. D. (1929), Fransworth House , [House], Illinois, USA

8. Perez A. (2010). AD Classics : The Farnsworth House / Mies Van Der Rohe [Online] Retrieved from: https://www.archdaily.com/59719/ad-classics-the-farnsworth-house-mies-van-der-rohe [Accessed 28 January 2024]

9. Lubbe T. V. D (2020). Less is more: What organizations can learn from Mies Van Der Rohe. Retrieved from: https://www.corporate-rebels.com/blog/mies-van-der-rohe [Accessed 28 January 2024]

10. MacLaughlin K. (2023). Modern Architecture: Everything you need to know. Retrieved from: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/modern-architecture-101 [Accessed 28 January 2024]

11. Williams A. (1943). House on the River. [House] Mar Del Plata, Argentina

12. Rohe L. M. V. D. R. & Johnson P. (1954) Seagram Building [Building] Retrieved from: https://marketplace.vts.com/building/seagram-building-new-york-ny [Accessed 31 January 2024]

13. Thuroczy M. (2017). Seagram Building. [Online]. Retrieved from: https://architectuul.com/architecture/seagram-building [Accessed 31 January 2024]

14. Chakraborky J. (1960). Architecture since 1400. [Online Book]. Retrieved from: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ntuuk/reader.action?docID=1791428# [Accessed 31 January 2024]

15. Cobb H. N. (1968). Hancock Tower. [Skyscraper] Illinois, USA