Online Study Guide

The Art World's Focus Shifts West :: Postwar Expressionism in Europe :: Modernist Formalism :: Alternatives to Modernist Formalism :: Art for the Public :: New Models for Architecture: Modernism to Postmodernism :: Postmodernism In Painting, Sculpture, And New Media :: Into The 21st Century

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NEW MODELS FOR ARCHITECTURE: MODERNISM TO POSTMODERNISM

Modernism

Modernist architects turned more to a formalism that stressed simplicity.

Sculpting a concrete spiral:

Frank Lloyd Wright's design for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City used reinforced concrete to create a structure inspired by the spiral of a snail's shell.

34-40: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (exterior view from the north), New York, 1943-1959 (photo 1962).

34-41: Interior of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1943-1959.

Sculptural architecture:

Le Corbusier's organic design for the small chapel of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp, France, fuses architecture and sculpture. The structure is based on an underlying mathematical system.

34-42: LE CORBUSIER, Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France, 1950-1955.

34-43: Interior of Notre Dame-du-Haut, Ronchamp, France, 1950-1955.

A metaphorical building:

Joern Utzon's organic design for the opera house in Sydney, Australia, incorporates two clusters of immense concrete shells that rise from massive platforms and soar to delicate peaks.

34-44: JOERN UTZON, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia, 1959-1972. Reinforced concrete; height of highest shell, 200'.

Capturing motion in concrete:

Eero Saarinen's sleek design of the Trans World Airlines terminal at the Kennedy Airport in New York consists of two immense curvilinear, concrete shells split down the middle and slightly rotated.

34-45: EERO SAARINEN, TWA terminal, Kennedy Airport, New York, 1956-1962.

A glass tower:

Philip Johnson designed a rectilinear glass and bronze tower for the Seagram Company in Manhattan. The front quarter of the site is an open pedestrian plaza.

34-46: LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE and PHILIP JOHNSON, Seagram Building, New York, 1956-1958.

Once the tallest in the world:

The Sears Tower in Chicago consists of nine clustered vertical rectilinear shapes of varying height. The tower has smoked glass and is sheathed with black aluminum.

34-47: SKIDMORE, OWINGS AND MERRILL, Sears Tower, Chicago, 1974 (photo 1975).

Postmodernism

Postmodern architecture is pluralistic, complex, eclectic, expansive, and inclusive. Many postmodern architects consciously selected past architectural elements or references and juxtaposed them to contemporary elements or fashioned them of high-tech materials. Postmodern architecture incorporated both traditional architectural features and references to mass culture and popular imagery.

Juxtaposing past and present:

Charles Moore's Piazza d'Italia in New Orleans is a complex conglomeration of symbolic, historical, and geographic allusions. The open plaza is accessed on foot from three sides through gateways of varied design that lead to an open circular area partially formed by short segments of colonnades arranged in staggered concentric arcs.

34-48: CHARLES MOORE, Piazza d'Italia, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1976-1980.

Classical and colonial elements:

Philip Johnson and John Burgee's classicizing postmodern design for the AT&T in New York City incorporates elaborate shapes, motifs, and silhouettes freely adapted from historical styles. The design is crowned by a pediment broken by an orbiculum.

34-49: PHILIP JOHNSON and JOHN BURGEE with Simmons Architects, associated architects, a model of the AT&T Building, New York, 1978-1984.

An "Enlarged Jukebox"?:

In Michael Graves's postmodernist design for The Portland (Oregon) Building, the wall, the miniature square windows, and the painted polychromy define the surfaces as predominately mural. The wall's horizontality is asserted against the verticality of the tall, fenestrated shaft.

34-50: MICHAEL GRAVES, The Portland Building, Portland, 1980.

Architectural populism:

Robert Venturi, John Rauch, and Denise Scott Brown's design for a house in Delaware respects the countryside setting and its eighteenth-century history by recalling the stone-based barn-like, low-profile farm dwellings. The design asserts that form should be separate from the function and structure and that decorative and symbolic forms of everyday life should enwrap the structural core.

34-51: ROBERT VENTURI, JOHN RAUCH and DENISE SCOTT BROWN, house in Delaware (west elevation), 1978-1983.

BROWN house in Delaware

Making "metabolism" visible:

Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano's design for the Georges Pompidou National Center of Art and Culture (the "Beaubourg") shows the six-level building with fully exposed pipes, ducts, tubes, and corridors color coded according to function.

34-52: RICHARD ROGERS and RENZO PIANO, Georges Pompidou National Center of Art and Culture (the "Beaubourg"), Paris, 1977.

Deconstructivist Architecture

The analytical strategy called deconstruction considers all cultural constructs as "texts" that can be read in a variety of ways but from which cannot be derived any fixed or uniform meanings. Analysis of these texts seeks to reveal the suppressed or concealed cultural premises that permit a more substantial understanding of artworks, buildings, books, and the overall culture. Also revealed are the values of those politically in control and the way cultural products serve in an ideological capacity to obscure such things as racist or sexist attitudes. Deconstruction reveals the contradictions and instabilities of cultural language, both written or visual. Its ultimate goal is to effect political and social change. Deconstructivist architecture destabilizies by deliberately introducing disorder, dissonance, imbalance, asymmetry, unconformity, and irregularity in designs and through the haphazard presentation of volumes, masses, planes, borders, lighting, locations, directions, and spatial relations. Disguised structural facts deliberately challenge the viewer's assumptions about architectural form as it relates to function.

An architecture of chaos:

In Günther Behnisch's disordered and apparently chaotic design for the Hysolar Institute Building at the University of Stuttgart, the possibility of spatial enclosure is denied as the shapes of the roof, walls, and windows avoid any suggestion of clear, stable masses.

34-53: GÜNTER BEHNISCH, Hysolar Institute Building, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany, 1987.

Disorder and disequilibrium:

Frank Gehry's compelling and dramatic design for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, appears as a seeming random mass of asymmetrical and imbalanced forms. The irregularity of the main masses have the appearance of a collapsed or collapsing aggregate of units. The scaled limestone- and titanium-clad exterior serves to highlight the unique cluster effect of the many forms. The interior includes an enormous glass-walled atrium.

34-54: FRANK GEHRY, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, 1997.