LOUIS I. KAHN, 1966-1972, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, USA When the Kimbell Art Museum was officially opened to the public in 1972, it marked another aesthetic achievement in the oeuvre of Louis I. Kahn and introduced a new institution with a considerable presence in Texas, and indeed, the art world at large. Situated in a park setting, the museum's nine-and-a-half-acre trapezoidal site is adjacent to other prominent museums, most notably the Amon Carter Museum, designed by Philip Johnson, which opened in 1961.

Mr. and Mrs. Kay Kimbell, after whom the institution is named, established a foundation to erect an art museum to house their growing collection. The board of the Kimbell Art Foundation-which had been established as early as 1936-hired Richard F. Brown as director of the museum in 1965 to realize the vision of and conceive a pro- gram for the institution as well as augment its collection. Brown selected Kahn for the commission; however, the contract required that the architect collaborate with Preston M. Geren & Associates, a local architectural firm. As with many institutions that realize their first building, the program took into account the future goals of the museum, allocating vast space to the expanding art collection, which would put the institution on the map and make it one of the city's major attractions.

Kahn, who never settled for easy or first solutions, took three years to produce four design proposals for the museum. The one leitmotif running through all his proposals was the employment of horizontal cycloid roofs/ceilings. As with most of his buildings, Kahn managed to come up with features that contextualized and lent unique character to the project. The signature roofs/ceilings are just such examples, firmly associating the structure with the once rural setting of Fort Worth. Specifically, in the distance and at one time visible from the site-was a grain silo (which has since been torn down). Ideologically, one can see and better understand how the overall form of a grain silo (which is comprised of a series of vaulted forms separated by a flat surface) conceptually deplaced from its vertical condition and resituated horizontally in the landscape, becomes the framework for the roof/ceiling configuration. These cycloid forms-be they employed vertically or horizontally-are the very elements that char- acterize and contextualize the Kimbell Art Museum in its Texas landscape. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/KAHN%202/OBJECTS/1966-1972,%20Kimbell%20Art%20Museum,%20Fort%20Worth,%20USA.html

CONSTRUCTIVISM For the 15 or so years of its existence, from the first years of Soviet power to the early 1930s, Constructivism endeavored to alter conceptions of architectural space, to create an environment that would inculcate new social values, and at the same time to use advanced structural and technological principles. Paradoxically, the poverty and social chaos of the early revolutionary years propelled architects toward radical ideas of design, many of which were related to an already thriving modernist movement in the visual arts. For example, El Lissitzky’s concepts of space and form, along with those of Kazimir Malevich (1878–1935) and Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953), played a major part in the development of an architecture expressed in “stereometric forms,” purified of the decorative elements of the eclectic past.

The experiments of Lissitzky, Vasily Kandinsky, and Malevich in painting and of Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko (1891–1956) in sculpture had created the possibility of a new architectural movement, defined by Lissitzky as a synthesis with painting and sculpture. http://architecture-history.org/schools/CONSTRUCTIVISM.html

RENZO PIANO, 1991-1997, BEYELER FOUNDATION MUSEUM, RIEHEN, SWITZERLAND After working with Mme. de Menil, my experience with collectors was enriched by my collaboration with Ernst Beyeler. In some ways, they are alike, and they have helped me understand the spirit that motivates these present-day artistic patrons. The artist creates a work, but the collector creates a collection; it is their work of art, their way to express sensitivity and love of beauty. By creating museums, collectors provide homes for their creations, protecting them against the risks of the world forever, and at the same time giving them a second identity. A picture will be remembered not just as a Picasso or a Kandinsky but also as a piece in the Beyeler collection. Ernst Beyeler is a very demanding man, it must be said, especially of himself. He is a perfectionist who does not like surprises. Before giving me the job, he wanted to see all my previous works. He is a watchful and hands-on client who wanted to create a close collaboration. I always had to take great care to understand and interpret his desires, as well as to be very forceful, to stop myself from being dragged down the wrong road. Piano, Renzo, The Renzo Piano logbook, Monacelli Press, 1997 http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/PIANO/OBJ/1991-1997,%20BEYELER%20FOUNDATION%20MUSEUM,%20RIEHEN,%C2%A0SWITZERLAND.html

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS Although not the seat of government, Amsterdam, in the province of North Holland, is the acknowledged capital (hoofdstad) of the Netherlands and, until World War II, was its architectural leader. Its local professional groups—Architectura et Amicitia, De 8, and Groep 32—were successively at the forefront of innovation, and despite the subsequent evaporation of regional hierarchies, the city has retained its prominence. Its inclusive and diversified buildings, especially those from the first third of the century as well as from its final decade, are endowed with a specifically local flavor, even when responding to more global design trends. Amsterdam’s watery foundations (many of the buildings rest on wooden pilings) and extensive network of canals and islands, no less than its distribution into distinctive quarters, ensure its unique character. Although 20th-century structures are interspersed among the picturesque remnants of the older city, the majority of these buildings were planted in an encircling girdle that extends dramatically but deliberately from the historic core. In Amsterdam, chronology and geography After the Golden Age of the 17th century, the cosmopolitan and prosperous harbor city became a somnolent town with a declining population until belated industrialization and the construction of international canals and railways commenced in the late 19th century and Amsterdam awoke to an expansive future, with concomitant woes (a desperate housing shortage, ruthless demolition, tactless road building, and the filling in of canals and open space) and wonders (prosperity generating provocative new construction). Thanks to the National Housing Act (Woningwet) of 1901, which required Dutch municipalities to provide extension plans and building codes (which in Amsterdam included aesthetic prescriptions), the city’s development proceeded responsibly. Initially, the main augmentations were southward, but eventually rings of buildings surrounded it in all directions. In the 1920s, Amsterdam was called the “Mecca of housing”; its social democratic administration insisted that dwellings answer artistic demands, serve the community, and embody the cultural aspirations of the working and lower-middle classes. Housing has continued to be the dominant building type. http://architecture-history.org/schools/AMSTERDAM.html

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, 1923, Ennis House, Los Angeles, USA A significant portion of the Charles Ennis house is dedicated to the massive concrete block retaining walls that support the building on the steeply-pitched hillside. Other concrete block houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, constructed in the same region and around the same time, exhibit a more typical scale in line with his approach to residential architecture. Wright referred to this as "human scale," intending to reduce the traditional unnecessary heights to a level that suits the occupants. However, the Ennis house deviates from this rule: its rooms have high ceilings, which results in the concrete block mass rising above the window lines.

In terms of the floor plan, the house essentially consists of two bedrooms, with a guest room located adjacent to the dining room. The bedrooms for the original owners are separated from each other and connected by a long enclosed gallery and an open terrace. The dining room, kitchen, and guest room are situated on a raised level above the living room. This residence is one of the last designed by Frank Lloyd Wright to feature stained glass and one of the first, alongside the nearby Freeman house, to incorporate mitred glass windows. The design's monumental nature is somewhat softened and made more human by the scale of the concrete blocks and the combination of plain and patterned blocks. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/WRIGHT/OBJECTS/1923,%20Ennis%20House,%20Los%20Angeles,%20USA.html

READ ABOUT ARCHITECTURE Architecture Matters

Betsky, Aaron The architecture of the Renaissance

Benevolo, Leonardo The Eternal Present, Volume I: The Beginnings of Art

Giedion, Sigfried The Eternal Present, Volume II: The Beginnings of Architecture

Giedion, Sigfried Unpacking My Library: Architects and their Books

Steffens, Jo Follow the link to download the books.

VILLA E-1027 was designed in 1926-29 as a summer house by Irish designer Eileen Gray (1878–1976) with her partner Jean Badovici. It takes its name from the position of their initials in the alphabet – E for Eileen, 10 for J, 2 for B and 7 for Gray.

The modernist villa was built over two storeys into a terrace on a hillside overlooking the French Riviera, and featured built-in and separate furniture designed by Gray including her famous E-1027 side table. Le Corbusier, who was later to build his Cabanon retreat on an adjacent site, visited the house in 1938-89 as a guest of Badovici and added his own murals. The house fell into neglect for many years before being taken into public ownership and restored as part of the Cap Moderne site.

OSCAR NIEMEYER, 1967-1981, French Communist Party Headquarters, Paris, FRANCE PARTY PIECE Oscar Niemeyer’s stunning headquarters for the French Communist Party in Paris was commissioned in the late 1960s – a time when the Communists enjoyed great popularity in France.

A Communist himself, Niemeyer waived his fee for the building. Visitors enter the building down a small flight of steps into the main foyer space. This strange, undulating landscape, intended to suggest a hillside, leads to the main conference hall whose white domed roof rises up out of the forecourt. Above ground, Niemeyer built six floors of offices in a gently waving plan, with a curtain-walled façade designed in conjunction with engineer Jean Prouvé. Views down from the roof terrace suggest the shape of a hammer and sickle in the landscape of the forecourt.

Niemeyer’s building and original furnishings have survived largely intact. The Communist Party no longer occupies all the office floors, and has converted the top floor café for office use. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/NIEMEYER/OBJECTS/1967-1981,%20French%20Communist%20Party%20Headquarters,%20Paris,%20FRANCE.html

Expressionist Buildings 1. 1898-1914, Chapel of the Colonia Güell, Crypt of Santa Coloma de Cervelló, SPAIN Antoni Gaudi 2. 1913-1914, Studio building (Glass House), Dornach, SWITZERLAND, Rudolf Steiner 3. 1913-1920, First Goetheanum, Dornach, SWITZERLAND, Rudolf Steiner 4. 1917-1920, Hembrugstraat, Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS, M. de Klerk 5. 1923, Chile House, Hamburg, GERMANY, Fritz Höger 6. 1924, Einstein Tower, Potsdam, GERMANY, Erich Mendelsohn 7. 1925-1926, Rheinhalle, Düsseldorf, GERMANY, Wilhelm Kreis http://architecture-history.org/schools/EXPRESSIONISM.html#G

LE CORBUSIER Le Corbusier (né Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) was born in Switzerland, although he studied and worked primarily in France. In 1905, when still in his teens, Le Corbusier was commissioned by one of the trustees at the school where he studied—La Chaux-deFonds—to design the Villa Fallet. Charles l’Eplattenier, a painter and mentor to the young Le Corbusier, arranged for him to be helped by a local architect, René Chappalaz. The house was constructed of freestone, rendered and decorated with stylized fir-cone patterns, with the steep roofs and all-round balcony traditional in the region.

In 1907 the fee for this commission enabled Jeanneret, in the company of fellow student Léon Perrin, to travel to Italy, where they visited 16 major northern Italian cities, including Siena, Florence, and Venice. In Tuscany, Jeanneret visited the Carthusian monastery of Ema, an experience that had a profound effect on him. In late 1907, still in the company of Perrin, he visited Budapest and then Vienna, where he met Josef Hoffmann and other members of the Wiener Werkstätte. Two more houses for La Chauxde-Fonds were commissioned: the Jaquemet and Stotzer houses. He worked on their design during a stay in Vienna of four and a half months in 1908, again receiving help from Chappalaz. Both these houses are of wood and stone, in the regional style. Follow the link to read his biography, see his projects and download books about him. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/LE%20CORBUSIER/biography.html

1928-1930, Villa Savoye, Poissy, France LE CORBUSIER Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) had been living in Paris since 1916, collaborating with Amédée Ozenfant in the production of the review L ‘Esprit nouveau, constructing several private homes, including the La Roche-Jeanneret houses (which would later become the Fondation Le Corbusier), and proposing ambitious projects for mass housing. By 1925, he succeeded in securing official backing for the construction of an experimental housing enclave at Pessac, near Bordeaux—an enterprise that seemed to presage a revolution in the building industry by bringing to construction the benefits of mass production that had made the automobile industry. He now began to receive commissions for luxury villas from families with interests in industry or with American connections. Among these were the designs made for Mongermon, one of the directors of the Voisin car and airplane industries, and in 1926 a villa at Garches for Michael and Sarah Stein. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/LE%20CORBUSIER/OBJECTS/1931,%20Villa%20Savoye,%20Poissy,%20France.html

RICHARD MEIER 1984-1997, The Getty Center, Los Angeles, USA
In 1982, the Getty Trust decided to build a facility to house its administrative offices and the staff of its six cultural programs. It purchased a 110-acre site at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains north of Los Angeles, California, and invited 80 architects to submit their responses to a program calling for soundly constructed buildings to serve and enhance the Getty's institutions in a scheme "appropriate to the site and responsive to its uniqueness." In addition, the Getty Trust emphasized the need to meet these objectives in a manner that would bring aesthetic pleasure to the building's occupants, visitors, and neighboring community. After interviewing the finalists, the selection committee chose the American architect Richard Meier (1934-) to formulate the design. The rugged topography of the promontory and a strict conditional-use permit enacted by a powerful neighborhood coalition placed unusual constraints on the architect, especially the restriction limiting the height of the buildings to 65 feet above the 896-foot hilltop. To meet this restriction and reduce the scale and monumentality of the project, Meier located approximately half the built work below ground with passageways connecting many of the facilities at a level of 876 feet. Above ground, he planned a campus of low buildings instead of one dominant structure and added a five-acre propylaeum (vestibule or entrance) to furnish parking and provide access to the acropolis via an electric tram. Follow the link to read the full story, view pictures, and download books. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/MEIER/OBJ/1984-1997,%20The%20Getty%20Center,%20Los%20Angeles,%20USA.html

INDIA Twentieth-century architecture in India is a product of diverse regional practices and historical precedents, the country's colonial legacy, and the policies adopted by the independent state. Individual aspirations, as well as visions of the collective—nation, class, and religious affiliation—have also left their imprints on this matrix. The proliferation of stylistic labels in recent discussions of 20th-century architecture in India—Indo-Deco, Anglo-Indian modern, neovernacular, and Bania-Gothic—some invoked more humorously than others, indicate not only the multiple agencies at work but also the problem of description. More specifically, this is a conceptual problem of situating Indian architecture in the matrix of global culture and the century-long effort to tease out what is "Indian." Please click on the link to access the complete story.
http://architecture-history.org/schools/INDIA.html

ERICH MENDELSOHN 1924, Einstein Tower, Potsdam, GERMANY True to modernism’s precepts, the Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany, designed and built by Erich Mendelsohn from 1919 to 1921, is one of the most unique expressions of avant-garde architecture of the early 20th century. Born in 1887, Mendelsohn was drawn to architecture at a young age. Like so many artists and architects at the fin-de-siècle, he believed that a new era was dawning, and that new forms of architecture were necessary for the modern epoch. In 1913 Mendelsohn met the astrophysicist Erwin Finlay Freundlich; the two men discovered shared interests and developed an enduring friendship. Freundlich introduced Mendelsohn to the then- unpublished radical theory of relativity by Albert Einstein, ideas that would profoundly influence European intellectual thought, as well as the visual arts, for years to come. Freundlich; was interested in making observations that would confirm Einstein’s new theory, and Mendelsohn sought to adapt Einsteinian principals to built forms endowed with expressive plasticity. Unfortunately, both mens’ plans were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. In 1917, Mendelsohn was sent to the Western front. Please click on the link to access the complete story. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/MENDELSOHN/OBJECTS/1919-1921,%20Einstein%20Tower,Teltower%20Vorstadt,%20Germany.html

ARNE JACOBSEN, 1959-1964, St. Catherine's College, Oxford, UK
GREAT DANE Founded in 1962, St Catherine’s is Oxford’s youngest and largest college. It caused a stir when it appointed Arne Jacobsen, a Dane, to design its buildings rather than a British architect, but the decision was a success. Nikolaus Pevsner referred to it as the perfect piece of architecture while Reyner Banham approvingly called it the best motel in Oxford.

Built on a marshy site on the outskirts of the city centre, the college consists of two parallel, three-storey residential blocks with covered arcades plus four separate blocks containing common rooms, dining hall, library and lecture rooms running north to south between them. There is also a master’s house on the other side of a river, and a separate music room.

In 1993, the college was one of the first post-war buildings to be given Grade I listed status. Please click on the link to access the complete story. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/JACOBSEN/OBJ/1959-1964,%20St.%20Catherine's%20College,%20Oxford,%20UK.html

INTERNATIONAL STYLE


The phrase 'International Style' was one among many terms used in the 1920s to denote modern architecture. Introduced by an American to characterize a particular kind of European architecture, the term became generally applied in later decades to a broad range of contemporary buildings.

In his book "Modern Architecture, Romanticism, and Reintegration" (1929), Henry-Russell Hitchcock argued that 'the international style of Le Corbusier, Oud, Gropius, Lurcat, Rietveld, and Mies van der Rohe was a separate strain of modern architecture. Hitchcock had first written about the international style the year before in the magazine "Hound and Horn," but the more widely circulated book thoroughly discussed the architecture, placing it in a line of historical development. Basing his analysis on formal characteristics, Hitchcock claimed that a moderately modern architecture of the 'New Tradition,' as he designated it, was distinguished by a historical continuity with earlier work, simplified mass, emphasis on surface texture, and reduced and abstracted ornament. On the other hand, the 'New Pioneers' - for him, the European practitioners of the International Style, influenced by the aesthetic vision of Cubist and Neo-Plasticist painting - deleted all reference to past architecture, emphasized volume and plane rather than mass, and avoided ornament, employing the machine as an 'art-tool.' The latest advances in engineering that made this work possible lent it a 'technical beauty,' although advanced technology was not of primary importance in these structures. Please click on the link to access the complete story, view more pictures, and download books about the architectural style for free. http://architecture-history.org/schools/INTERNATIONAL%20STYLE.html

Here are some books to download and read about the International Style. http://architecture-history.org/schools/INTERNATIONAL%20STYLE.html#M Barr, Alfred Hamilton, Modern architecture. International exhibition, New York, Feb. 10 to March 23, 1932, Museum of Modern Art,1932

Giedion, Sigfried, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition, Harvard University Press, 1959

Hitchcock, Henry Russell, The International Style, W.W. Norton, 1997

Hitchcock, Henry Russell, Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration, Ams Pr Inc, 1972

Johnson, Philip, Built to live in, Museum of Modern Art, 1931

Khan, Hasan-Uddin, International Style Modernist Architecture from 1925 to 1965, Taschen, 2001

Pevsner, Nikolaus, Pioneers of Modern Design, From William Morris to Walter Gropius, Penguin Books, 1977

Follow the link to see images depicting the NARKOMFIN HOUSE after renovation, prior to restoration, and during its initial construction. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/GINZBURG/OBJECTS/1928,%20NARKOMFIN%20HOUSE,%20MOSCOW,%20RUSSIA.html#p

EERO SAARINEN 1962, Dulles International Airport,
Chantilly, USA
This airport, located 28 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., was conceived as the international gateway to the nation’s capi tal. President Eisenhower made the final site selection in 1958, and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) commissioned Eero Saarinen and Associates to build the first American airport designed specifically to handle jet airplanes. In a quirk of timing, this symbol of international welcome was named for Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, the bellicose point man for America’s Cold War policies before his death in 1959. The airport design was innovative on several counts, including its automobile traffic pattern (with separate levels for arrivals, departures, and parking) and its controversial “mobile lounges,” which detach from the main terminal building to ferry passengers out to airplanes parked next to the runways. In 1962 these odd-looking vehicles were considered a breakthrough in airport efficiency and passenger comfort. The model was never copied at any other airport, although the mobile lounges do remain in use at Dulles Airport, supplemented by a few fixed gates added to the airport in the mid-1990s. Modifications to the airport were far more visible in 1997, as work commenced to extend the main terminal building 300 feet at either end, doubling its original length. Undisturbed by these alterations, the pagoda- inspired air traffic control tower (initially planned to include an observation deck) continues to oversee the airport, providing a strong vertical accent to balance the emphatic horizontality of the site and the enlarged terminal building. Please follow the link to read the full story. http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/SAARINEN/OBJECTS/1962,%20Dulles%20International%20Airport,%20Chantilly,%20USA.html

LOUIS I. KAHN, 1901-1974
he works of Louis I. Kahn were among the greatest influences on world architecture during the second half of the 20th century. Trained in the classical tradition of the Beaux-Arts by Paul Philippe Cret at the University of Pennsylvania, Kahn nevertheless embraced the Modern movement in his early practical experience with various housing authorities and in partnership with Oscar Stonorov and George Howe. Kahn was slow in developing as an architect, and the works of the first 50 years of his life, mostly derived from International Style precedents, did not receive significant notice. Follow the link to read his biography, see his projects and download books about him.
http://architecture-history.org/architects/architects/KAHN%202/biography.html