The White God No.2

From my last lecture on the modernism, we were focusing mainly on one of four great “European functionalists” named “ Mies van der Rohe. ( as Hitchcock and Johnson called him; “The International Style” writers) In this chapter, they tried to distinguished between two words “ Architecture” and “Building”, and these four great European were consider by Hitchcock and Johnson that they were creating what is called an “architecture”. In contrast , in America , architects who thought they were involve with modern and being functional were just engaged only to a word “building”.

“ The skyscrapers were empty compositions tarted up with “ zigzag trimmings”

If we were to look at the early design of the skyscraper of American architecture ,which we would say that it is a “ bad design”. According to the preface to the book “ The international Style” , the writers point out to the most famous NY skyscraper design the “ Chrysler Building”. He made comments thatit is a stainless-steel gargoyles with little Christmas-tree ornaments on top. Moreover, they also added they also heard he architects were arguing about the function of the ugly ornaments and hollow grandiosity were “ functional”. From that , they made another sarcastic comments about this skyscraper that the only function it does is to “please” the clients. The person who should blame forthis is “client”. To be engaged with the style of modernism, clients were not play the roles of the decision of how the building looks like , the only job that they do in this case is “ paying”.

For this response , I would like to compare the design of skyscraper of the American architecture with building by European architects : “Mies van der Rohe”.In 1919, G magazine proposed new standard of “ architecture”. The cover of the magazine was images of heavy building on the right and the new design of skyscrapers of Mies 'style on the right”.Mies most famous concept is “ less is more”. He added that he was to combine the usual worker-housing elements in an elegant way while maintain the concept of “minimalism”.

In 1958, the “Seagram building” designed by Mies was rised up on the Park Avenue street. This building designed was the proposal by the firm manufactured rye whiskey. It is a worker housing based on “ non-bourgeois” word. It is a 38-stories high of entirely glasses that has tinted brownish amber to emphasize the color to the whiskey bottle. The steel structure were propose to be “ broze” as it mean to have a coherent color to the glasses. The building composed of only steel beams and glass with concreted slabs creating floors and ceiling. Furthermore , due to the requirement that the steel must encased in concrete or fire protecting material, then Mies end up with enclosing the steel members in concrete and express them by sticking vertical wide-flange beam outside the concrete.

In my opinion, we can definitely say that this can be called as “ architecture” not just “ building”.From the book as it said “ heart of the function was not function but the spiritual quality known as non-bourgeois”. The elements that compose the building are what make it non bourgeois such as the color glass which came from machine manufactured , bronze that use instead of steel reveal the true color of it, and the pure structural without the decorative element : steel beams, glasses , concrete. Lastly,the wide -flage beam that doesn't function in term of physical ,but in term of spiritual reveal the term of being “ worker” or “non bourgeois”

In conclusion, Mie using the concept of “minimalist” as we can see from the pure structural of the buidling witout any additional decoration; the material that plays a role of decoration in itself (colors).These compositions are what make the building become “ architecture”

Modernsim: From Art to Architecture

Respond to the lecture

From my last history of architecture class, the lecture drove us back to the starting of beginning of the Modernism in context of how it is related to "Art" in that era.

“Le Corbusier was a thin, sallow, nearsighted man who went about on a white bicycle, wearing a close-fitting black suit, a white shirt, a black tie, round black owl-eye glasses, and a black bowler hat”

This is how Tom wolf described the great modernist architect name “Le Corbusier”.

As he called his house design as “ machine for living” and he tried to start startled onlookers, therefore he intentionally emphasize the image of perfect “mass-producible” wire figure for the Machine Age through his character of fashion that look as neat and precise and anonymous as possible.

As he said the architect who wished to grow must join the compound or “ism”, and be part of them ;accept the forms that compound have created.

…………….

Then , What is compound ? What does it do ?

From quote from the text

“ Secessionists -had a natural tendency to be esoteric, to generate theories and forms that would baffle the bourgeoisie.”

The compound is group of people who try create new language of architect and re-creating the world; creating the new community which based on the idea of

“non-bourgeois”. The compounds produced the sort of avant-gardism that inscribe in the history of twentieth-century art, and the tool of dissipate the compound is“ painting “ ;the most perfect device that creating visual codes for the esoteric theories of compound – or designing in code.

It started in 1905 , when the fauve exhibition at Salon d' Automne. The modern painting were seeking for purity. It tended to avoid what have been doing in the classical era through the concept of " simplicity " and "abstraction" and get approach to the words " minimalism".

An example of work which assure the concept of minimalism from the painting" the dance " by founder of the movement "Henri Matisses".

Matisses simplify the painting into the pure abstract form of human by using the few lines and colors. Even though, the painting is

on the flat canvas with the use of few color, the human figure seem to appear creating depth on the 2D canvas.

From Fauvists to Cubist : In 1909-1912 , it is the period of analytical cubism ; in this era the movement tend to explore the idea of simultaneity, everything is rendered visible at once to the viewer. They rejected the 3 dimensional representation and simplify into the language on flat canvas. The example of the work is " The Guitar " by Pablo Picasso. This painting is rejected all the tonality and depth ; rather represented as flatness abstract flattening of human parts with the guitar. In the contrary, the

painting can be look at from many angles to perceive the 3 dimensional image on two dimension flat surface.

Move forward to 1917, Theo van Doesburg was published the movement " De-Stijl". The purposes of the style are

- pure orthographical

- pure abstraction and universality by reducing phenomena to simply form and colour ( black, white and primary colours)

- rectilinear forms

We can see an example clearly from the painting by "Piet Mondrian"

The Element of the painting is annunciated which broken into lines, and every room/plane has its own expression(layered out in xyz axis)

Then, how art reveal to form Modernist Architecture ?

"The inner structure, the machine-made parts ,the mechanical rectangles ,the modern soul of the building must be expressed on the outside of the building, completely free of applied decoration. The ultimate expression of this principle was the de Stijl"

The clear example were shown by through the principle of expressed structure of the Schroder house by Gerrit rietveld.The projections of the exterior of the Schroder has only function was to indicate the grid, the diagram, the paradigm, the geometric progression on which the plans were based .

In 1923 , Corbusier published the " Toward a new Architecture " , this book is a new manifesto apply to the new age of modern architecture.

In my opinion , what he was trying to say in the manifesto is the idea of architect that reveal the truth through the " pure form " of architecture ( Basic elements telling themselves as they )like what an artist from the movement trying to reveal the truth through the painting by simplify and abstract the subject into the simple form. As Corbu said

"mass and surface are the elements by which architect manifests itself ".