Characteristics:

Postal Savings Bank

Good example of the modernist approach towards cladding:  artistic reflection of construction, practicality, and functionality.

Front Façade: 

• faced with white marble in shingle-like panels 

• panels attached to primary structure by means of bolts covered with aluminum caps 

• caps create ornamental language for façade 

 technologically very innovative façade system 

Entrance: 

• Canopy in aluminum 

Banking Room: 

• light brought in through a glass-vaulted ceiling (originally intended to be supported by cables) 

• glass brick floor to illuminate rooms below 

• aluminum faced steel columns create “basilica plan” 

• cylindrical aluminum air-supply outlets around the perimeter

Characteristics:

Larkin Office Building

- offices for soap company

- vertical, 6-story brick building

- sky-lit atrium in middle

- rows of filing cabinets

- massed plantings --> natural element

- custom-designed metal furniture

- stairs in corners --> distinct "towers"

- ventilation - first airconditioning

- employee recreation

Characteristics:

Unity Temple

- turned inwards to reduce noise from streets

- worship space and unity house connected by common vestibule

- worship space ("auditorium")

    - articulated cube

    - rich, glowing interior

    - lead glass windows and amber skylights

    - balconies

- unity house = classrooms, kitchen

- exterior = concrete

    - discrete geometric ornament

Characteristics:

Robie House

- privacy from street and separation from noise of kids

- 3 stories:

    - ground level = garage/play/service

    - 2nd level = living and dining

    - 3rd level = bedrooms

- low wall shielding ground floor

- horizontal emphasis - cantilevered roof

- first use of welded steel in residential construction

- custom bricks for horizontal emphasis

- organized around chimney

Characteristics:

Steiner House

- total lack of ornamentation

- exterior = public, smooth, bare

- interior = private, more personal

- white cubical mass with modest window openings

- straightforward, symmetrical plan

- "radical architectural proposals"

- front elevation --> concessions to surrounding residential context

- raumplan is being developed, but not yet fully expressed in the Steiner House

Raumplan: A method of spatial composition for interior spaces of a building. It consists of multiple ceiling and room heights that could be described in the credo: “To each room its own height” The Raumplan allows for bold openings between spaces and potentially allows for spatial fluidity between rooms.

Characteristics:

Fagus Shoe Factory

- glass corners (where you would usually have masonry) - possible with steel

- new materials like reinforced concrete

- spatially, most advanced building

- similarities to Bauhaus

- landmark in modern architecture --> characteristics of international style

- glass curtain walls, steel supports

- rectangular massing with flat roof

- symmetry

- separation of office block and manufacturing plant

- most daring and complex design of time

Characteristics:

Glass Pavilion

- display at Werkbund exhibition

- German expressionism

- physical reality of Sheerbart's glass

- rationality, pass production vs. self expression of handicrafts

- circular, concrete base with central axial stair

- rotunda and dome

- "walk-in prism"

- technologic and mystical

- new materials - intent to dramatize glass as a building material

A method of spatial composition for interior spaces of a building. 

It consists of multiple ceiling and room heights that could be described in the credo: “To each room its own height” 

The Raumplan allows for bold openings between spaces and potentially allows for spatial fluidity between rooms.

Elements of the

Prairie Style

An open ground-plan contained within a horizontal format

vertical chimneys and internal double-height volumes

low profile - contrast to vertical elements

 - low-pitched roofs

 - low-bounding walls

Architecture for the

"Art and Craft of the Machine"

Broadacre City Project

“Usonia”: an egalitarian culture that would spontaneously emerge in 

the USA advocating “the gradual abolition of the distinction between 

town and country by more equable distribution of the population over 

the land.” 

--> Guggenheim Museum, NYC

Influences for “Usonia”: 

“Organic”: Vitalist metaphor of the “Seed Germ” (Sullivan) 

“Vitalism”: Doctrine that the life in living organisms is caused and sustained by a vital force that is distinct from all physical and chemical forces and that life is, in part, self-determing and self-evolving” 

Aristotle: Counters Democritus’ notion of the “world as the mechanic play of atoms” with the notion that the “living does possess a special formal life-source, ENTELECHY.“ With the term entelechy [gr.,entelecheia; actuality], Aristotle points to the immanent force that controls and directs life and its development.

The Grammar

in Architecture

the shape-relationship between the various elements that enter into a constitution of the thing. The “grammar” of the house is its manifest articulation of all its parts. This will be the “speech” it uses. To be achieved, construction must be grammatical. 

The Three "Masters" of

20th Century Architecture

1.  Frank Lloyd Wright

2.  Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe

3.  Charles Edward-Jeanneret (Le Corbusier)

aesthetic mentality with concern for functionalism and new technology.  

rejection of ornamentation

asymmetrical compositions, unrelieved cubic shapes, white stucco, large glass windows in horizontal band, and fluid open compositions in plan layout. 

• Vitalism > Romanticism 

• Owen Jones, ‘Grammar of Ornament’ (1856); Examples are of Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, Assyrian, Celtic, Islamic origin 

• Chicago World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893 

> in particular ‘Ho-o-den Temple’ (Japan) > tokonama

Characteristics:

Einstein Tower

- brick covered with stucco

- streamlined forms

--> Werkbund Theater

- graphic sketches

- dynamism - exploring space and time

Characteristics:

Russian Pavilion

- out of constructivism art movement

- clear attempt to show construction

- temporary building exhibition

Characteristics:

Bauhaus

- reinforced concrete-frame structures (4 major elements)

- arranged such that there is no true "front"

- glass curtain walls

- road through site to justify enclosed bridge

- low dining/auditorium hall with movable walls

- asymmetrical, sprawling composition - not typical, monumental fashion

- distinct articulation for each separate element --> abstract, sculptural treatment for the whole

- road and bridge --> free moving space

- unity of architecture and related crafts

- no ornamentation, circulation expressed

- 7 dwelling units, 3 different designs

Characteristics:

Row Houses

Characteristics:

Weissenhof Housing

- modulor

- 5 points

- limited budget

- postwar design challenge

Characteristics:

Lovell House

Characteristics:

German Pavilion

Characteristics:

Villa Savoie

Characteristics:

Casa del Fascio

Characteristics:

Farnsworth House

Characteristics:

Unite d'Habitation

Characteristics:

Lake Shore Drive Apartments

- first glass/steel high rise residential construction

- technology had finally caught up with design

- steel and masonry casing

- increased verticality through windows/mullions

- expressed structure (additional, non structural steel)

Characteristics:

Notre Dame du Haut

- sculptural to the max

- abandoned 5 points, rationalism of previous architecture

- famous south wall - light sculpture

- "floating" roof

- metal frame that looks like massive masonry

- chapels with unseen light source

Characteristics:

Engineering Building

Characteristics:

Guggenheim Museum

- "ultimate object" has nothing to do with surrounding city

- not necessarily effective as museum... is the exhibition itself

- elevator up, spiral ramp downwards

- structural ingenuity

- from usonian concept

Characteristics:

Neue Nationalgalerie