Modern Architecture - This style of architecture evolved at the start of the twentieth century.
Define the characteristics of Modern Architecture – Research Essay
This style of architecture evolved at the start of the twentieth century, and was chiefly started by a group of influential figures, such as the German architect Peter Behrens, who felt it was necessary to begin the new century afresh to suit the “modern man” that it had given birth to. They aimed to rid themselves of the preoccupations with style and ornament, or the “stylistic pluralism” of the past, and to create buildings that created a new, more functional sense of space, free of historic or traditional style, using modern materials.
This fresh approach made itself most felt not in Europe, where most of the avant-garde innovations in art had taken place over the last 100 years or so, but in America, where the technological progress of the modern style was not weighed down by tradition and history as was the case in Europe. One of the most innovative and certainly most successful architects to make his mark on the scene was the American Frank Lloyd Wright, who accomplished the difficult task of convincing his clients to accept an entirely unorthodox and untested design for their houses and buildings. He first demonstrated his ability to do so, as well as his originality in a series of houses in Chicago, the most famous of which is Robie House, built in 1909. This large residential house exhibits what Wright referred to as his aim of ‘organic architecture’, which meant that “a house must grow out of the needs of the people and character of the country like a living organism” – the ‘prairie style’ of this house reflects in its ground hugging, horizontal design the long and low-lying far horizons of the great plains of the Mid-West of America, and in his own words “develops from within outwards in harmony with the conditions of its being”. This style of architecture was designed to work from inside the building outwards to its façade, replacing the search for strict axial symmetry by one for logical and ‘functional’ planning, and in doing so it also eliminates the need for arbitrary decoration that was the norm before the movement. In 1914 Wright lost his wife and several members of his household when a servant burned down Taliesin, his home and studio in Wisconsin, built by himself, but following the tragedy he immediately re-directed his architecture toward more solid, protective and most importantly more monumental forms. Although he produced few works during the 1920s, Wright theoretically began moving in a new direction that would lead to some of his greatest works. Walter Burley Griffin was among the many prominent architects to emerge from the Wright studios as one of his students. Durin the 30s, however, he designed and built both Fallingwater, with the interlocking geometry of the planes and the flat, textureless surface of the main shelves that are characteristic of the International Style, and the Johnson Administration Building - designs which re-invigorated Wright's career and led to a steady flow of commissions, particularly for lower middle income housing. Wright responded to the need for low income housing with the Usonian house, a development from his earlier prairie house.
