Week 7 BLOG: The Emergence of Modernism

 Week 7 BLOG: The Emergence of Modernism

 

The Emergence of Modernism took place 1900-1950s. During this time, World War I was going on and there was an opportunity to redesign the world. Technological advancements took place as skyscrapers, automobiles, photography, and movie pictures became popular. Two of the main inspirations for design were “The Machine” and Functionalism. These ideas rejected the past, historical designs and embraced industrial design. 

The new direction of design introduced pioneers of modernism; one with a newfound sense of clarity and movement. Architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Groius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier became well-known. They each are also considered masters in international style architecture. 

Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the first major architects. He was born in Wisconsin in 1867 and became an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator. He designed over 1000 organic architectural structures. He created many residential designs, including the Winslow House, the Prairie House, and the Robie House. Wright’s residential design concepts for incorporating  private areas with the public areas of the house illustrates a kindred manipulation of a square-and-rectangle grid derived from the art-glass and wall tiles.He also created many commercial buildings, such as the Unity Temple, the Rookery, the Johnson Wax Building, and the Larkin Company. He even had International Commercial Work with the Imperial Hotel, Japan. The International Style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. Three principles of the International Style explain the expression of volume rather than mass, the emphasis on balance rather than preconceived symmetry, and the expulsion of applied ornamentation. 

Walter Gropius is another architect from this time. He is known more for Bauhaus style designs. He used methods and materials that utilized borrowed materials and methods of construction from technology and mass production of steel, glass and concrete. Marcel Breuer  was born in Hungary and taught at the Bauhaus. He was mentored by Walter Gropius and was a master of the construction shop at the Bauhaus. 

Other designers and architects from this Modernism era are Wassily Kandinsky and Alvar Aalto.

Favorite Pieces of Furniture: 

F 51 Armchair, 1923

Cabinet for periodicals, 1923

Cesca Chair, 1928

Wassily Chair, 1925

The Barcelona Chaise

Brno Chair

Charlotte Perriand Chaise, 1929

Current Applications:

Chaise inspired by the 

One Step Further:

Zaha Hadid is a present-day architect that developed a form of modernist architecture that focuses on futurism. She is an Iraqi and British architect, artist and designer, and recognised as a key figure in architecture of the late-20th and early-21st centuries. Hadid adopted painting as a design tool and abstraction as an investigative principle to "reinvestigate the aborted and untested experiments of Modernism [...] to unveil new fields of building". Hadid was the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize, in 2004. Her works are characterized by curving facades, sharp angles, and the use of materials such as concrete and steel. Some of Hadid’s most famous buildings are the Galaxy Soho, the Aquatics Centre (It is what has been called the “most jaw-dropping municipal swimming pool in the world.”), the Bridge Pavilion, Zaragoza (2008), the Opera House, and the Heydar Aliyev Center.