What is modern architecture?
The A-Z of Modern Architecture. Excerpt from the introduction by Peter Gössel.
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By 1927, modernism had asserted itself on the architectural scene, with flat roofs, white stucco façades, straight lines, open plans, steel frameworks and horizontal strip windows becoming for a time the standard must-have features of every modern building. Its architects were united in their rejection of architecture as fine art, and of traditional architectural teaching, and strived to form their own theories and create new schools such as the Bauhaus in Germany and VKhUTEMAS in the Soviet Union. The 1928 CIAM conference, under the leadership of Sigfried Giedion and Le Corbusier, set out what has become known as the Declaration of La Sarraz, which had a great influence on the idealistic teaching of modern architecture. Even Le Corbusier, who, with his radical urban planning designs, was often misunderstood, realized that all the pamphlets and declarations remained unsatisfactory in the face of reality: "For me the word architecture denotes something more mysterious than the rational or functional, something that predominates, imposes itself... it is without doubt a human need to have warm feet and yet my sensibility rather responds to a need that is based on harmony and that is worth more than an American Hummer, a glass of champagne or a fresh salad...".
When Julien Offray de La Mettrie extended René Descartes' mechanistic world view into the exaggerated notion of "l'homme machine", it was also in the end machines that cure man of his suffering and free him from his diseases. This did not work, this outlook has proved untenable and neither has the functionalist approach proved to be the last word in architecture. Space will not allow itself to be mechanically defined. Attempts to capture it in modules and Modulors have remained experiments. The failure of Le Corbusier's urban planning at Chandigarh is just as much proof of this as the blowing up of the social housing system at Pritt-Igoe and, ultimately, the discomfiture of every individual with the simplified forms of modern architecture that impinge on him at every turn. These are often imposed by purely commercial dictates and are deliberate intrusions on the artistic independence of architects capable of designing space beyond rationalistic calculation and with so much more to offer than what is found in a construction cost calculation.
Julius Posener has insisted on the error and the danger of wanting to define modernism from one's own historically limited perspective. And because it is not appropriate to seek a mould when we do not as yet know the final form, we can indeed regard modernism only as a project and, like the individual architects working with awareness of this problem, treat it as such. Modernism's differences are often more remarkable and take us further than the similarities. They point to the special characteristics of the individual building in its environment, its historical situation, its users, but the similarities indicate only categories that have been created by art or architectural historians and in general barely lead any further.
Page [1] [2] [3]
Page [1] [2] [3]
By 1927, modernism had asserted itself on the architectural scene, with flat roofs, white stucco façades, straight lines, open plans, steel frameworks and horizontal strip windows becoming for a time the standard must-have features of every modern building. Its architects were united in their rejection of architecture as fine art, and of traditional architectural teaching, and strived to form their own theories and create new schools such as the Bauhaus in Germany and VKhUTEMAS in the Soviet Union. The 1928 CIAM conference, under the leadership of Sigfried Giedion and Le Corbusier, set out what has become known as the Declaration of La Sarraz, which had a great influence on the idealistic teaching of modern architecture. Even Le Corbusier, who, with his radical urban planning designs, was often misunderstood, realized that all the pamphlets and declarations remained unsatisfactory in the face of reality: "For me the word architecture denotes something more mysterious than the rational or functional, something that predominates, imposes itself... it is without doubt a human need to have warm feet and yet my sensibility rather responds to a need that is based on harmony and that is worth more than an American Hummer, a glass of champagne or a fresh salad...".
When Julien Offray de La Mettrie extended René Descartes' mechanistic world view into the exaggerated notion of "l'homme machine", it was also in the end machines that cure man of his suffering and free him from his diseases. This did not work, this outlook has proved untenable and neither has the functionalist approach proved to be the last word in architecture. Space will not allow itself to be mechanically defined. Attempts to capture it in modules and Modulors have remained experiments. The failure of Le Corbusier's urban planning at Chandigarh is just as much proof of this as the blowing up of the social housing system at Pritt-Igoe and, ultimately, the discomfiture of every individual with the simplified forms of modern architecture that impinge on him at every turn. These are often imposed by purely commercial dictates and are deliberate intrusions on the artistic independence of architects capable of designing space beyond rationalistic calculation and with so much more to offer than what is found in a construction cost calculation.
Julius Posener has insisted on the error and the danger of wanting to define modernism from one's own historically limited perspective. And because it is not appropriate to seek a mould when we do not as yet know the final form, we can indeed regard modernism only as a project and, like the individual architects working with awareness of this problem, treat it as such. Modernism's differences are often more remarkable and take us further than the similarities. They point to the special characteristics of the individual building in its environment, its historical situation, its users, but the similarities indicate only categories that have been created by art or architectural historians and in general barely lead any further.
Page [1] [2] [3]
The A-Z of Modern Architecture
Hardcover, 2 Vol. in Box, 29.2 x 36.5 cm (11.5 x 14.4 in.), 1072 pages
$ 300.00
$ 300.00
An unprecedented architecture encyclopedia
Bernard Judge, Judge Residence ("The Dome"), Hollywood Hills, California, USA, 1960. (c) Julius Shulman.