History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2014
Term Paper for History of Architecture (AP131)
Shivika Gulati Roll Number: 02016901611 Sushant School of Art and Architecture
The word modern, first modern, first recorded in 1585 in the sense "of present or recent times," has travelled through the centuries designating things that inevitably must become old-fashioned as the word itself goes on to the next modern thing. The word „modern‟ comes from the Late Latin modernus, which modernus, which is derived from Latin modo in in the sense "just now," [1] the English word modern (first (first recorded at the beginning of the 16th century) was not originally concerned with anything that could later be considered old-fashioned. old-fashioned. It simply meant "being at this time, now existing," an obsolete sense today. In the later 16th century, however, the word began to be contrasted with the word ancient . Modern was was being applied specifically to what pertained to present times and also a lso to what was new and a nd not old-fashioned.
Etymologically speaking, three basic levels of meanings are associated with the word „modern‟. In the first and oldest sense it means present , or current, implying as it‟s opposite the notion of earlier, of what is past. A second meaning of the term is the new , as opposed to the old. Here the term is used to describe a present time that is experienced as a period, and which possess certain specific features that distinguish it from previous periods. This term began to be used in the seventeenth Page 1 of 8
History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2014
century. During the course of the nineteenth century another level of meaning became important. The notion of modern then acquired the connotation of what is momentary , of the transient, with its opposite notion no longer being a clearly defined past but rather an indeterminate eternity.
Modernity, as a result of these meanings, is what gives the present the specific quality that makes it different from the past and points the way toward the future. It is also described as a break with tradition, and as typifying everything that rejects the inheritance of the past. By the eighteenth century, modernity became a condition that couldn‟t be pinned down to a se t of fixed attributes. It was in the nineteenth century that modernization also gained ground in the economic and political fields. In the urban environment, modernity became more than an intellectual concept. On the whole then, a distinction could be drawn between modernization, modernity and modernism.
The term main
[2]
is used to describe the process of social development, the
features
of
which
are
technological
advances
and
industrialisation,
urbanisation and population explosions, the rise of bureaucracy, an enormous expansion of mass communications systems, democratizations, and an expanding world market.
refers to the typical features of modern times and to the way that these features are experienced by the individual: it stands for the attitude toward life that is associated with a continuous process of evolution and transformation, with an orientation toward a future that will be different from the past and the present. The experience of modernity provokes responses in the form of cultural tendencies and artistic movements.
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History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2014
, in its broadest sense, is the generic term for those theoretical and artistic ideas about modernity that aim to enable men and women to assume control over the changes that are taking place in a world by which they too are changed. The suffix
is a derived word used in philosophy, politics, religion or
other areas pertaining to an ideology an ideology of some sort.
Historically, Modernism describes a series of reforming cultural movements in art and architecture, music, literature and the applied arts which emerged in the three decades before 1914.
Embracing change and the present, modernism encompasses the works of thinkers who rebelled against nineteenth century academic traditions, believing the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated; they directly confronted the new economic, social and political aspects of an a n emerging fully industrialized world. There were two important art movements originating in France that had an impact on modernist thought: impressionism and symbolism. Impressionist paintings were characterised by visible brushstrokes, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles with some famous impressionist painters being Claude Monet, Eduard Manet, Pierre Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas. Symbolism, on the other hand, was largely a reaction against Naturalism and Realism, movements which attempted to objectively capture reality. It was marked by a belief that language is expressly symbolic in its nature and that poetry and writing should follow connections that the sound and texture of the words create.
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History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2014
The period prior to the First World War saw many social, political, and economic forces at work that would become the basis to argue for a radically different kin d of art and thinking. Chief among these was industrialization, which produced buildings like the Eiffel Tower (constructed in 1889), which broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could be. Industrial urbanisation brought with it many problems and changes in the ways in which people lived their lives. With the invention of the telegraph offering instant communication at a distance, the experience of time itself was altered. These developments began to give a new meaning to what was termed 'Modernism‟'Modernism‟- it embraced disruption, rejecting or moving beyond simple Realism in literature and art. Modernism, while it was still "progressive" increasingly saw traditional forms and traditional social arrangements as hindering progress, and therefore the artist was recast as a revolutionary, overthrowing rather than enlightening. However it was not until after the Second World War that it gained mass popularity, after modernist planning was implemented as a solution to the previous failure of architecture and design to meet basic social needs. It is then that Modernism truly manifested itself in architecture as architecture as the prominent figures of the movement – Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - had established their reputations and the dream of the urban utopia. During the 1930s as much as 15% of the urban populations were living in poverty, and
slum
clearance
was
one
of
the
many
social
problems
of
this
decade.[3] Modernist planning was a popular idea, and used as a solution to these problems. But the movement could not adequately comprehend and cater for the social dynamics of family and community, and a result, many modernist buildings were pulled down in the seventies. Page 4 of 8
History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2014
The central theme in the Modernist architectural theory was the representation of the space-time continuum. Architecture was seen as a representation of the worldview and an expression of the space-time structure of the physical and experiential reality.
Students at the Bauhaus school of design were taught purity of form and to design for a better world by Walter Gropius. The phrase „form follows function‟ became the modernists‟ slogan. Modernists believed that ornament should follow the structure and purpose of the building. Family life and social interaction was at the centre of the modernist dream for a planned environment. “The vision was for trouble free areas by mixing blocks with terraces to create squares, zoning services and amenities, all interlinked interlinked by roads”. The roads”. The modernists planned for zoned areas where residential
and
commercial commercial
amenities were
distinct
and and
separate.
In
his
introduction to Modernism in Design, Paul Greenhalgh outlined key features in modernist design including function, progress, anti-historicism and social morality.[4] Le Corbusier‟s famous Villa Savoye in Poissy, France is a prime example. It shows no reference to historic architectural design; the pioneering plan was a progressive leap for the late 1920s. The form clearly follows the intended functions of the residential building, bearing no unnecessary ornament, and the open space surrounding the structure as well as the open plan interior lends itself to the ideals of social living and communication. The modernist ideals were not applied to social housing until 1937, when Maxwell Fry‟s Kensal House in London applied the principles of the movement to a social housing scheme. It was a success and is still popular with its residents today. It then became the prototype for other social housing projects to follow the example of modern living.
Many projects of the modernist era were initially successful, and the public came to associate this strong aesthetic with prosperity and progress. In the post war era, the
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History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2014
ambitions of the modernists and their “strong sense of social responsibility in that architecture should raise the living conditions of the masses.” [5] seemed progressive and promising.
However, modernism has had its fair share of criticism. Jane Jacobs, author of The Life and Death of Great American Cities, in her book accused Le Corbusier, one of the pioneers of the movement, of an inhumane planning process that did not properly consider those who were to live in the planned developments. She claimed the modernist aesthetic to be dull, and her writing promoted the street, in particular the pavement, as a place where a community can meet, socialise, and control their privacy.
[6]
Not all modernist social housing projects were as successful: many were demolished from the 1970s due to large-scale failure. The ultimate example of the failure of the modernist utopia is the now infamous Pruitt Igoe urban housing development in St. Louis, Louis, Missouri, completed completed in 1955. The development was was planned according to the modernist principles of Le Corbusier, and comprised of 33 11 storey high rise blocks made up of small individual apartments. There were communal areas including large corridors, outdoor spaces around the blocks, and communal rooms for activities such as laundry, intended to increase the social interaction amongst the community.
However by the late 1960s, “the project's recreational galleries and skip -stop elevators, once heralded as architectural innovations, had become nuisances and danger zones. Large numbers of vacancies indicated that even poor people preferred to live anywhere but PruittPruitt-Igoe.” Igoe.”[7] Poverty, crime and segregation of the community were major problems for the residents of the development. It was suggested that the modernist style was to blame for these social problems.
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History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2014
Le Corbusier noted the positive force technology had played in people‟s lives with revolutionary inventions such as the car and the telephone, and declared the house should be be “a machine for living in”. They utilised glass, steel and concrete in their designs, which allowed them the opportunity to create buildings of radical design, such as the skyscraper, which would not have been plausible were it not for these materials. He and the other modernist architects believed that a for a home to provide its function it should have the purity of form of a well-designed machine. [8]
The pioneers of the movement held a firm belief that in creating a better architecture, a better world would ultimately follow.
REFERENCES
1. Mifflin Company, H, 2000. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language . 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company
2. Heynen, Hilde (1999). Architecture and Modernity: A Critique . London: The MIT Press. 10-13.
3. Jeremiah, D. (2000). Emergency, Economy and Modernisation: 1940-1953. In:Architecture In: Architecture and Design for the Family in Britain, 1900-70 . Manchester: Manchester University Press. pp. 123-163.
4. Greenhalgh, P (1990) Modernism in Design , London: Reaktion pp.1-24
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History of Architecture (AP313) | Term Paper | 2014
5. Henket, H,J. (2002). Modernity, Modernism and the Modern Movement. In: Henket, H & Henyen, H Back from Utopia: The Challenge of the Modern Movement . Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. p.10
6. Henket, H,J. (2002). Modernity, Modernism and the Modern Movement. In: Henket, H & Henyen, H Back from Utopia: The Challenge of the Modern Movement . Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. p.11.
7. Von Hoffman, A. Why They Built the Pruitt-Igoe Project. Available: Project. Available: http://www.soc.iastate.edu/sapp/ http://www.soc. iastate.edu/sapp/PruittIgoe.html. PruittIgoe.html. Last accessed 06 May 2010.
8. The Open University. The Machine Age. Available: Age. Available: http://www.open2.net/modernity/. http://www.ope n2.net/modernity/. Last accessed 6 May 2010.
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