How Well Do You Know Modern Architecture?

Modern Architecture: A Summary

• Modern architecture emerged in the first half of the 20th century based on new technologies of construction, minimalism, and a rejection of ornament.

• The revolution in materials came first, with the use of cast iron, drywall, plate glass, and reinforced concrete, to build stronger, lighter, and taller structures.

• Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, an architectural theorist and historian, urged architects to break away from the neoclassical and eclectic models that dominated European and American architecture in the late 19th century.

• Early modernism in Europe saw architects experimenting with new materials and techniques, including reinforced concrete and electric light.

• Frank Lloyd Wright was a highly original and independent American architect who refused to be categorized in any one architectural movement.

• Early skyscrapers appeared in the United States at the end of the 19th century, a response to the shortage of land and high cost of real estate in the center of the fast-growing American cities.

• After World War I, a prolonged struggle began between architects who favored traditional styles and the modernists.

• Charles-Édouard Jeanerette, known as Le Corbusier, was the dominant figure in the rise of modernism in France, promoting architecture that was functional, pure, and free of any decoration or historical associations.

• Bauhaus was a school founded Weimar in 1919 under the direction of Walter Gropius.

• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe led the modernist architectural movement in Germany.

• The International Style, introduced in the 1920s, was characterized by functionalist design, a lack of ornamentation, and the use of modern materials.

• Postmodern architecture gradually replaced modern architecture as the principal style for institutional and corporate buildings in the 1980s.Overview of Modernist Architecture in Europe and the United States

• Modernist architecture emerged in Europe in the early 20th century, characterized by the use of new materials and a rejection of traditional styles.

• Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school, was a prominent figure in modernist architecture, proposing a wide variety of modernist plans for urban reconstruction and designing the German pavilion for the 1929 international exposition in Barcelona.

• Expressionist architecture emerged in Germany as a counter-movement against the strictly functional architecture of the Bauhaus and Werkbund, focusing on poetic and optimistic designs. Notable architects of this style include Erich Mendelsohn, Fritz Höger, and Bruno Taut.

• Constructivist architecture emerged in Russia after the Revolution, with architects seeking a new Soviet style to replace traditional neoclassicism. Tower designs by Vladimir Tatlin and the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station were notable examples of the style.

• The Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) was founded in 1928, with leading modernist architects in Europe meeting to establish a common style and doctrine which helped define modern architecture in Europe and the United States after World War II.

• Art Deco architecture emerged in France and spread throughout Europe and the world, characterized by modern materials and technology, but also making lavish use of decoration and color.

• American Art Deco emerged in the late 1920s and early 1930s, with iconic skyscrapers like the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building in New York City featuring Art Deco geometry and stylized designs.

• The Great Depression brought an end to Art Deco architecture and a temporary halt to the construction of new skyscrapers, leading to the emergence of the Streamline Moderne style, characterized by sleek, aerodynamic lines and the use of chrome and glass.A Brief History of Modern Architecture

• Modern architecture emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a response to new technology and changing social conditions.

• Art Deco, a popular modernist style in the 1920s and 1930s, was associated with transportation and often used for new airport terminals, train and bus stations, and for gas stations and diners built along the growing American highway system.

• The Great Depression led to a new style for government buildings, sometimes called PWA Moderne, stripped of ornament and employed in state and federal buildings.

• Frank Lloyd Wright experimented with modular mass-produced housing and identified his architecture as "Usonian."

• The Austrian architect Rudolph Schindler designed the first house in the modern style in 1922, the Schindler house.

• The rise of nationalism in the 1930s was reflected in the Fascist architecture of Italy, and Nazi architecture of Germany, based on classical styles and designed to express power and grandeur.

• The 1939 New York World's Fair marked a turning point in architecture between Art Deco and modern architecture.

• World War II and its aftermath was a major factor in driving innovation in building technology and architectural possibilities.

• Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation in Marseille became a prototype for similar buildings in other cities, both in France and Germany.

• The late modernist style is characterized by bold shapes and sharp corners, slightly more defined than Brutalist architecture.

• Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum was an entirely original design, a bowl-shaped building with a spiral ramp inside that led museum visitors on an upward tour of the art of the 20th century.

• Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer founded a famous architectural office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and attracted many students, including Ieoh Ming Pei and Philip Johnson.Notable American Architects of the Postwar Period

• The postwar period in America saw the rise of modernist architecture, which was characterized by a focus on simplicity, functionality, and the use of new materials and technologies.

• Architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer were among the pioneers of modernist architecture in the United States, designing housing for workers in Kensington, Pennsylvania, and later associating with a group of younger architects under the name TAC (The Architects Collaborative).

• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the director of the school of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, made Chicago the leading city for American modernism in the postwar years. He constructed new buildings for the Institute in modernist style, including high-rise apartment buildings on Lakeshore Drive, Farnsworth House in Plano, and the Seagram Building in New York City.

• Richard Neutra and Charles and Ray Eames were influential residential architects in the new style in the United States. The most celebrated work of the Eames was Eames House in Pacific Palisades, California, while Neutra continued to build influential houses in Los Angeles, many of which erased the line distinction between indoor and outdoor spaces with walls of plate glass.

• The firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill was founded in Chicago in 1936 and became one of the most important architectural mega-agencies of the postwar period, producing many notable modern buildings, including the Manhattan House, Lever House, and the Manufacturers Trust Company Building in New York City, Beinecke Library at Yale University, and the Willis Tower.

• Wallace Harrison played a major part in the modern architectural history of New York, helping design Rockefeller Center, the United Nations headquarters, the Metropolitan Opera House, the master plan for Lincoln Center, and John F. Kennedy International Airport.

• Philip Johnson was one of the youngest and last major figures in American modern architecture, who trained at Harvard with Walter Gropius and moved gradually toward expressionism with designs that increasingly departed from the orthodoxies of modern architecture. His final and decisive break with modern architecture was the AT&T Building, an essentially modernist skyscraper completely altered by the addition of broken pediment with a circular opening.

• Eero Saarinen's architectural designs were more like enormous pieces of sculpture than traditional modern buildings; he broke away from the elegant boxes inspired by Mies van der Rohe and used instead sweeping curves and parabolas, like the wings of birds. His famous works include the General Motors Technical Center, the IBM Research Center, the Ingalls Rink, and the TWA Terminal at JFK airport.

• Louis Kahn borrowed from a wide variety of styles and idioms, including neoclassicism, and made his buildings look monumental and solid. Notable buildings by Kahn in the United States include the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, New York, and the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, while his most famous work was the Jatiyo Sangshad Bhaban (National Assembly Building) in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

• I. M. Pei was a major figure in late modernism and the debut of Post-modern architecture, who established himself with his design for the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University and the new East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, completed in 1978, and to another of Pei's most famous projects, the pyramid at the entrance of