Questions about Modern architecture
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What is modern architecture and when did it emerge?
Modern architecture, also called modernist architecture or the modern movement, is an architectural movement that was prominent in the 20th century, positioned between the earlier Art Deco and later postmodern movements. It emerged at the end of the 19th century from revolutions in technology, engineering, and building materials, became dominant after World War II, and was gradually replaced as the principal style for institutional and corporate buildings by postmodern architecture through the 1980s.
What are the core principles of modern architecture?
Modern architecture was based on new technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and concrete; the principle of functionalism, meaning form should follow function; an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament. Louis Sullivan popularized the axiom "form follows function" to emphasize utilitarian simplicity.
Who were the most influential figures in modern architecture?
Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Frank Lloyd Wright are among the most influential figures. Le Corbusier coined the phrase "a house is a machine for living in" in his 1923 book "Toward an Architecture". Mies van der Rohe described his approach with the phrase "Less is more". Gropius founded the Bauhaus school in Weimar in 1919.
What is the Bauhaus and why was it closed?
The Bauhaus was a school founded in Weimar in 1919 by Walter Gropius as a fusion of the prewar Academy of Arts and a school of technology. Its faculty included painters Vasily Kandinsky, Joseph Albers, and Paul Klee, and designer Marcel Breuer. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, they viewed the Bauhaus as a training ground for communists and closed the school.
What is the Villa Savoye and why is it significant in modern architecture?
The Villa Savoye is a house built by Le Corbusier in 1928-1931 in the Paris suburb of Poissy. It is a white box raised on pylons and wrapped with a ribbon of glass windows, built on a system of reinforced concrete with open floor plans and no ornament inside or out. It became one of the most recognized icons of modernist architecture.
How did Fazlur Rahman Khan change skyscraper design?
Fazlur Rahman Khan, who worked at the firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in Chicago from 1955, introduced the tube structure concept, in which a building's external envelope serves as the structure itself. His 110-story Sears Tower, completed in 1973 and later renamed Willis Tower, used the framed-tube design and was the tallest building in the world from 1973 until 1998. Tube structures he developed have since been used in the World Trade Center, Petronas Towers, and the Burj Khalifa.