Modern architecture
The cast plate glass process was invented in 1848, allowing the manufacture of very large windows. This innovation arrived alongside drywall and reinforced concrete to build structures that were stronger, lighter, and taller than anything before. The Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton at the Great Exhibition of 1851 stood as an early example of iron and plate glass construction. A decade later, the first glass and metal curtain wall appeared in 1864. These developments together led to the first steel-framed skyscraper, the ten-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built in 1884 by William Le Baron Jenney. French industrialist François Coignet was the first to use iron reinforced concrete as a technique for constructing buildings. In 1853 Coignet built the first iron reinforced concrete structure, a four-storey house in the suburbs of Paris. Another important technology for the new architecture was electric light, which greatly reduced the inherent danger of fires caused by gas in the 19th century. The debut of new materials and techniques inspired architects to break away from the neoclassical and eclectic models that dominated European and American architecture in the late 19th century. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc urged this break with the past in his 1872 book Entretiens sur l'architecture. He stated: "use the means and knowledge given to us by our times, without the intervening traditions which are no longer viable today." This book influenced a generation of architects, including Louis Sullivan, Victor Horta, Hector Guimard, and Antoni Gaudí.
The Glasgow School of Art designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh had a façade dominated by large vertical bays of windows between 1896 and 1899. The Art Nouveau style was launched in the 1890s by Victor Horta in Belgium and Hector Guimard in France. It introduced new styles of decoration based on vegetal and floral forms. In Barcelona, Antonio Gaudi conceived architecture as a form of sculpture. The façade of the Casa Batlló in Barcelona from 1904 to 1907 had no straight lines. It was encrusted with colorful mosaics of stone and ceramic tiles. Auguste Perret and Henri Sauvage began to use reinforced concrete to build apartment buildings in Paris between 1903 and 1904. In 1905 Perret built the first concrete parking garage on 51 rue de Ponthieu in Paris. Here the concrete was left bare, and the space between the concrete was filled with glass windows. Otto Wagner designed a stylized ornamental metro station at Karlsplatz in Vienna between 1888 and 1889. He later moved to a much more geometric and simplified style without ornament in the Austrian Postal Savings Bank from 1904 to 1906. Adolf Loos also began to refrain from using ornament in his buildings. His Steiner House in Vienna from 1910 was an example of what he called rationalist architecture. Josef Hoffmann constructed a landmark of early modernist architecture, the Stoclet Palace, in Brussels between 1906 and 1911.
The Bauhaus was a school founded in Weimar in 1920 under the direction of Walter Gropius. It was transferred from Weimar to Dessau in 1926. Gropius designed the new school and student dormitories in the new, purely functional modernist style he was encouraging. The faculty included the modernist painters Vasily Kandinsky, Joseph Albers and Paul Klee. In 1928 he was commissioned by the Siemens company to build apartment for workers in the suburbs of Berlin. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became the head of the Bauhaus from 1930 to 1933. His most famous modernist work was the German pavilion for the 1929 international exposition in Barcelona. It was a work of pure modernism with glass and concrete walls and clean horizontal lines. Though it was only a temporary structure, and was torn down in 1930, it became one of the best-known landmarks of modernist architecture. A reconstructed version now stands on the original site in Barcelona. When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they viewed the Bauhaus as a training ground for communists and closed the school in 1933. Gropius left Germany and went to England then to the United States. He and Marcel Breuer both joined the faculty of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 1937 Mies van der Rohe also moved to the United States. He became one of the most famous designers of postwar American skyscrapers.
Large parts of major cities from Berlin Tokyo and Dresden to Rotterdam and east London had been destroyed by bombing. The port cities of France particularly Le Havre Brest Marseille Cherbourg had been destroyed by bombing. One of the largest reconstruction projects was that of the city center of Le Havre destroyed by the Germans and by Allied bombing in 1944. 133 hectares of buildings in the center were flattened destroying 12500 buildings and leaving 40000 persons homeless. The architect Auguste Perret designed and built an entirely new center to the city with apartment blocks cultural commercial and government buildings. He restored historic monuments when possible and built a new church St Joseph with a lighthouse-like tower in the center to inspire hope. His rebuilt city was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2005. Shortly after the War the French architect Le Corbusier who was nearly sixty years old and had not constructed a building in ten years was commissioned by the French government to construct a new apartment block in Marseille. He called it Unité d'Habitation in Marseille but it more popularly took the name of the Cité Radieuse. It contained 337 duplex apartment units fit into the framework like pieces of a puzzle. Each unit had two levels and a small terrace. Interior streets had shops a nursery school and other serves and the flat terrace roof had a running track ventilation ducts and a small theater.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe described his architecture with the famous saying Less is more. As the director of the school of architecture of what is now called the Illinois Institute of Technology from 1939 to 1956 Mies made Chicago the leading city for American modernism in the postwar years. He constructed new buildings for the Institute in modernist style including two high-rise apartment buildings on Lakeshore Drive from 1948 to 1951 which became models for high-rises across the country. The Seagram Building in New York City from 1954 to 1958 set a new standard for purity and elegance. Based on granite pillars the smooth glass and steel walls were given a touch of color by the use of bronze-toned I-beams in the structure. He returned to Germany in 1962 to 1968 to build the new Nationalgallerie in Berlin. His students and followers included Philip Johnson and Eero Saarinen whose work was substantially influenced by his ideas. Fazlur Rahman Khan worked side by side with Architect Bruce Graham at Skidmore Owings & Merrill. During the 1960s and 1970s he became noted for his designs for Chicago's 100-story John Hancock Center which was the first building to use the trussed-tube design. He also designed the 110-story Sears Tower since renamed Willis Tower the tallest building in the world from 1973 until 1998.
Philip Johnson designed his own residence the Glass House in New Canaan Connecticut in 1953 in a style modeled after Mies's Farnsworth House. Beginning in 1955 he began to go in his own direction moving 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 later known as the Sony Tower and now the 550 Madison Avenue in New York City from 1979. This building is generally considered to mark the beginning of Postmodern architecture in the United States. It was an essentially modernist skyscraper completely altered by the addition of broken pediment with a circular opening. I.M. Pei designed the pyramid at the entrance of Louvre Museum in Paris between 1983 and 1989. Pei chose the pyramid as the form that best harmonized with the Renaissance and neoclassical forms of the historic Louvre. Each face of the pyramid is supported by 128 beams of stainless steel supporting 675 panels of glass. Minoru Yamasaki created a number of office buildings which led to his innovative design of the towers of the World Trade Center in 1964 which began construction on the 21st of March 1966. The first of the towers was finished in 1970. Many of his buildings feature superficial details inspired by the pointed arches of Gothic architecture and make use of extremely narrow vertical windows.
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Common questions
When was the cast plate glass process invented and how did it impact modern architecture?
The cast plate glass process was invented in 1848, allowing the manufacture of very large windows. This innovation arrived alongside drywall and reinforced concrete to build structures that were stronger, lighter, and taller than anything before.
Who designed the first steel-framed skyscraper and when was it built?
William Le Baron Jenney built the ten-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago in 1884. This structure stands as the first steel-framed skyscraper following developments like the Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
What year did the Bauhaus school open and who directed its founding?
The Bauhaus was a school founded in Weimar in 1920 under the direction of Walter Gropius. It was transferred from Weimar to Dessau in 1926 and later closed by the Nazis in 1933 after Ludwig Mies van der Rohe became head from 1930 to 1933.
Which city center reconstruction project led to Auguste Perret receiving UNESCO World Heritage status in 2005?
Auguste Perret designed and built an entirely new center for the city of Le Havre which had been destroyed by bombing in 1944. His rebuilt city was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2005.
When did Philip Johnson design his Glass House and what building marked his break with modern architecture?
Philip Johnson designed his own residence the Glass House in New Canaan Connecticut in 1953. His final and decisive break with modern architecture was the AT&T Building later known as the Sony Tower and now the 550 Madison Avenue in New York City from 1979.