Modern Architecture: The Early Twentieth Century

Improved Essays
The early twentieth century showed the start and growth of modern architecture. It was a period where architect starts to reject designing with the traditional materials, such as bricks, and the traditional neoclassical architectural style which the building was being decorated with ornamental elements. The early twentieth showed an emergence of new technologies and materials. Engineers were using those technologies and materials to design and construct new building types such as train stations and exhibition buildings. Such designs influence architects of that period to design and experiment with those technologies and materials. Architects are now designing with materials such as concrete, glass and steel. Their designs were simple, emphasising …show more content…
The use of steel and concrete structure, cladded with a double glass façade which acts as an insulator to prevent the interior spaces form getting too hot. The coloured glass which Scheerbart mention in his book was the same as the tinted glass used in buildings to help prevent the glare from the sun. Bruno Taut’s Glashau was revolutionary. It was a new architecture language during that period of time. Taut managed to take Scheerbart’s vision and accurately translate it into architecture. Many critics mocked Scheerbart and Taut’s Glass utopia, they felt it is a dystopia as it was so different from the architecture style of that period. However, Scheerbart’s and Taut’s glass utopia had become a reality. Glass architecture have become one of the main architecture style in the buildings we see …show more content…
It showed how far architecture have come. In the case of Paul Scheerbart and Bruno Taut’s Glass utopia, it was successful. Something that people thought to be joke during that time became one of the most use architecture style and elements in building today. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City was considered a dystopia during that period and would still be considered a dystopia today. The idea of giving one acre of land to each family would not have work since there is a limited amount of land and land is too expensive for the government to give them away for free. However, his idea of people becoming dependent of technology such as telephones and automobiles was interesting as it has become a reality for us. Wright’s idea of prefabricated housing have also become a reality for us since we precast and prefabricate most elements in constructing a building. It was interesting looking back into the past where people felt that these ideas and vision would never be realised and looking in the present this ideas and vision as integrated themselves to be part of our

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    While technical inventions and innovations play the major role in the building of these structures, economic conditions and social forces cannot be ignored. Architects comply with the building codes and encounter problems as the skyscrapers change the cities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Short biographical information about the inventors complete the narrative stories. This is an informational/nonfiction book, because it focuses on facts and information (p. 272). Although John Severance received NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for an Outstanding Nonfiction Literature for children, this…

    • 204 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Flippo Marinetti Analysis

    • 1548 Words
    • 7 Pages

    The buildings were drawn as massive constructs without landscape from eye-level perspectives which exaggerated the size of the complex. Means of vertical transportation were emphasized on the exterior. The car was, of course, a very influential aspect of the design. An unusual idea that came from the futurist movement was that of Antonio Sant’Elia. He said that “our houses will last less time than we do and that every generation will have to make its own” (Frampton).…

    • 1548 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The architecture of today is awaited to be creative and authentic. The present architecture is both cultured and comfortable. The present architecture today is very different from the architecture of 1880. 1880 style was to show growth and follow one of the themes that was created.…

    • 429 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As the International Style took hold, others architects reacted to or strayed from its purely functionalist forms, while at the same time retaining highly modernist characteristics in the mid-century of modernism. Eero Saarinen, Alvar Aalto and Oscar Niemeyer were three of the most iconic architects and designers in this movement, which has influenced contemporary modernism. Architects such as Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, Marcel Breuer, I.M. Pei and others responded to the "light" glass curtain walls advocated by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, by creating architecture with an emphasis on more substantial materials, such as concrete and brick, and creating works with a "monumental" quality. " Brutalism" is a term derived from the use of raw concreate,…

    • 158 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The appearance of forms that for decades were forbidden: pediments and arches, towers and domes, appear again during the postmodernism era. As Christian Norberg-Schulz stated, “Aren’t they just the manifestation of superficial nostalgia?”.1 Postmodernism came as a protest against the sterile emptiness of ‘late modern’ architecture, which lacks the satisfactory reference to everyday world of things. Modern architecture was always abstract and drew away from reality. It became non-figurative, as it abandoned ‘figures’ that constituted the basis of architecture of the past.2 The referred ‘architectural figure’ was a term coined by Paolo Portoghesi in the late 1970s to describe architectural design during Postmodernism, in which attempts were…

    • 1458 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    19thc Modernism Analysis

    • 1319 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Assignment 1 – ARCH 3053, Gabe Lever-Brine “How did the development of new technologies and materials affect 19thC modernism?” In the 19th century, architecture arrived at a pivotal junction bringing together revivals from Greek and Gothic styles and modernising them with the latest technologies and materials that were becoming mainstream during that time. That and the careful application of Classical standards following the 18th century Industrial Revolution set the foundations to the iconic era of 19th century Modernism. With materials such as glass and cast iron emerging through the middle years of the century and steel becoming widely produced in the later years paved the way for prominent architects like Joseph Paxton and Gustave Eiffel…

    • 1319 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    ‘Modern architects’ fought over what logic and artifact could should guide ‘modern architecture’”. In other words, modern architecture is a rebellious art form that strives to depict a new vision that is personal to the architect or the people of the buildings community. Modern architecture is about incorporating new ideas with mixtures of…

    • 1931 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In contrast to Le Corbusier vision of cites where he took the idea from the radiant city from the garden city by Horard. But he didn’t only design a physical environment but he tries to make ideal…

    • 1285 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In 1887, Wright got a job with the influential architect Louis Sullivan (“Architecture, Interior Design”). When he first started his career, Wright was a part of Sullivan’s Prairie School group, which aimed to create more modern buildings (“Frank Lloyd Wright Talks”). However, he quickly left the group in order to start his own architecture practice and discover his own style (“Frank Lloyd Wright”). His style was described as “quintessentially American” (Lubow). During the 1920s, Wright’s most groundbreaking design was the prairie style home.…

    • 1700 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Architecture Of Happiness

    • 1362 Words
    • 6 Pages

    De Botton, Alain. The Architecture Of Happiness. New York: Pantheon Books, 2006. Print.…

    • 1362 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Additionally, tectonics and material expression are both still very important and relevant in modern day architecture, and there are many buildings that show this. The houses similarly share the concept of being of “skin and bones” design. They are both constructed of steel and glass materials, and…

    • 925 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This essay will analyse Le Corbusier’s The Radiant City (La Ville Radieuse) by looking at the unbuilt city scape’s historical, theoretical and philosophical background as well as how it was received and reviewed. Greenhalgh’s features of the Pioneer phase (such as Social Morality, Technology and Anti-historicism) will also be looked at in relation to how and why The Radiant City was conceptualised and designed. As the idea of The Radiant City was conceived in the 1930s (and by Modernist architect and artist Le Corbusier) it is fits in the time frame of Modernism and therefore by looking at the principles of Modernism it can be determined whether or not The Radiant City is reflective of the Modernist ideals.…

    • 2099 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Panopticism Essay

    • 1082 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Panopticism by Michel Foucault states that with the use of architecture and geometry, a ‘Panopticon’ can create in visitors a sense of being watched, making a change to the behavior of an individual subject to observation and leading him to act in a disciplined manner. Bentham’s ‘Panopticon’ is the architectural model of this theory. His ‘Panopticon’ is based on an annular building at the periphery containing cell divisions, with a central tower at the center with two windows that make it able to see all the building’s cells and the reflection of every individual in the cell. There are two windows in the cell, one at the outer side of the building reflecting light, and the other at the inner side, making the person’s shadow visible to the central…

    • 1082 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Our behaviors and how we perceive those behaviors are extremely different. He applies this directly to the architecture world. Each culture has a different approach at architecture. But just because one may enjoy how another culture does things, does not mean they can bring it into their own culture and recreate it. The reason we have so many different types of architecture and design is because they have been developed in many different countries and cultures.…

    • 832 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Earth is currently undergoing environmental problems. The existence of these environmental problems is represented by three factors: increase of population due to the rise of economic activities, decrease of the Earth’s resources, and the destruction of nature. Because of these, architects are searching for sustainable approaches and are promoting sustainable architecture. In the modern day, several infrastructures around the globe are based on. Architecture is more than building and designing.…

    • 748 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays