What the Hell is Modern Architecture? (Part One)
I hope you guys like Modernism, because you’re about to get two more Sunday posts about it. Why? Because Modernism dominated the world of architecture for more than a century and it really wouldn’t be fair to stuff it all into one post.
Today’s post is going to focus on the movements leading up to Modernism and early Modernism, specifically the time period of the late 1800s to the beginning of WWII. All photos in this post are from Wikimedia Commons unless otherwise noted.
Before I start my post, I have a few of things to say:
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Ok, back to architecture.
Some of you may be wondering - how did all of those glassy boxy buildings even get here? Why did architecture go in this direction after centuries upon centuries of Classical tradition?
Good thing I’m here to answer your questions or else you’d be up late at night thinking about them in a spiral of anxiety.
Basically, Modernism in architecture can be tied to these three concepts:
1.) The concept of Modernity in general. See here.
2.) Cool new technology!
3.) Aesthetic opinions of some dudes about some other dudes.
What is commonly referred to as Modernity in the fields of philosophy and sociology can basically be summed up as lots of new science coupled with angst. The science included ideas such as evolution and new fields such as psychology. The angst in the early 19th century manifested itself as Romanticism, which was best expressed by writers (especially poets like Byron), and composers like Beethoven (large-scale) and Chopin (small-scale - seriously this dude wrote his own funeral march.)
The new science and philosophy of modernity changed during the Industrial Revolution, resulting in a period of waxing poetic (culminating in ideas like Socialism and Existentialism) about how technology changed social order and how people lived and worked. Hence:
The 19th century saw the rise of the factory, which changed how the masses lived and worked. (Hint: it was mostly in filth and poverty.) It also saw the rise of two dope new building materials: reinforced concrete and steel.
Architects, being architects, went insane. Suddenly one could build things that were REALLY TALL and REALLY WIDE and totally not reflective of one’s ego at all.
Basically, throughout most of the 19th century (which will get its own post) architecture was really flowery.
The use of ornament in architecture got more and more, well, ornate. By the 1880s, architecture was producing many extremely complex styles such as Gothic Revival and Beaux Arts.
Besides looking pretty, architectural ornament played another, less flattering role: hiding the ugly structural bits of the building.
However, the new technology that was emerging made the structures of buildings a lot stronger and cleaner looking. For example the use of steel made the iron-age buildings, which relied on complex arch forms for their structural integrity, obsolete. Gone too were the limits regarding height that were imposed by the structural shortcomings of masonry.
This, of course, led to a stylistic *existential crisis* amongst architects, because none of the historical precedents of the past really applied to this new way of building.
Enter Louis Sullivan, the Chicago architect who declared in 1896:
“It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human, and all things super-human, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.”
Sullivan’s main point was actually that this new way of building was unprecedented, and therefore deserved a new stylistic language to go with it, rather than relying on the tired vocabulary of Greco-Roman inspired Classicism.
Somewhat ironically, many of his contemporaries took the “form follows function” bit and ran of with it, decrying that in this new technological age, ornament was “nonessential” to the construction of buildings, and was thus frivolous. But we’ll get to that bit later.
Pre-Modernism: Exploring New Ornament
This idea of establishing a new language of architectural ornament wasn’t limited to Sullivan and his much more famous (and douchey) protege Frank Lloyd Wright. In Western Europe, it seemed like every country had its own new ornamental language:
As we can see here, late 19th century ornament was super cool and also, in the case of Gaudi’s vaguely skeletal buildings, super weird. Still, all this dopeness wasn’t enough for the dudes who saw all ornament as frivolous and also dumb.
To literally no one’s surprise, this line thinking began with the ever-so-practical Germans and Austrians. Like Marx, whose Communist Manifesto sparked massive political change, the Austrian architect Adolf Loos’ 1910 essay Ornament and Crime sparked a similar reaction in architecture.
The Rational Style: Modernism Canonized
In Loos’ essay, he makes a somewhat valid point that ornamentation can have the effect of causing objects to go out of style and thus become obsolete. Therefore, ornamentation was wasted effort (a crime in this new factory-driven hyper-rational world). What was the point of adding ornament when it would make buildings “meh” in like 10 years?
Loos attached ornament to the concept of morality, (he literally called it “degenerate”) And, in a very manifesto-y way, declared its suppression was necessary for regulating modern society.
MEANWHILE IN GERMANY a few years before (1899) the Austrian architect Joseph Maria Olbrich seceded from the Vienna Secession (something something Secession II: Electric Boogaloo) to form an artists colony in Darmstadt back when forming an artists colony meant that actual work got done.
This colony, named the Deutscher Werkbund, became the official national designers’ organization of Germany. Its goals focused on how to best utilize the sweet new tools of mass production (with the side effect of a ton of designers bickering about aesthetics.)
The most important product of the Werkbund was Peter Behrens’ 1907 turbine factory (built for the German electric company AEG). It blew everyone’s freaking mind.
Seriously, this one building kickstarted the hyper-efficient factory aesthetic of architectural modernity. Suddenly, like the new approach to warfare during WWI, architecture was all about efficiency, rationality, and functionality.
In 1919, the soon to be hella famous architect Walter Gropius, who worked under Behrens, seceded(!) to form his own design school based off of these new principles. This school, called the Bauhaus, (German for “construction house”) would ultimately become the most influential arts institution of the 20th century.
The Bauhaus (1919-1933), later headed by some guy named Hannes Meyer (who had such a huge stick up his ass that he forced one of the dankest Bauhaus members [Marcel Breuer] and others to resign) who was usurped by modern all-star Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, trained some of the most famous architects of the 20th Century. It’s credo “Less is More” (coined by Mies - he’s so clever) would dominate the theory and practice of architecture for more than 60 years.
Sadly, the work of the Bauhaus was cut short by the Nazis, who were coincidentally really into ornament. Shortly after Hitler took power, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and company fled to America where they proceeded to dominate Harvard, other academic institutions, and architecture in general. But we’ll get to that.
Well, that sums it up for Modern Architecture Part O–
Oh yeah, you thought I forgot about these guys, didn’t you?
Don’t worry, I didn’t. They’re simply so important that they’re going to get their own special post next Sunday. Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright impacted architecture, design, and urban planning in such significant ways that if I included them in this post, they’d make it twice as long and y’all are probs tired of reading at this point.
SO YES. That’s it for this week’s post on Modernism. Join us Thursday for the Certified Dank™ McMansion of the Week, and REMEMBER TO GO VOTE ON TUESDAY FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY IN THE WORLD.
P. S.: The deadline for submitting logo proposals is tomorrow (11/7/2016) at midnight! After all proposals have been submitted, the review process will begin!
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