Some architect’s works with plan, some works with section drawing, these are the two groups that can divide designer work into. Mies van der Rohe works with the plan. The famous Barcelona Pavilion built in 1929 got famous due to the reason Mies had to design the Pavilion in less than a year, and it was took down afterwards, only the photographs was left. However, the concept and the design of the building interested the world of architecture, where a rebuild was decided, rebuilding the whole building in Barcelona where the present one is actually a copy of the original.
Mies adjusted the classical vertical central line design, where there is always one central vertical straight line and all other elements of the building follows it. In the Barcelona Pavilion, Mies have turned the vertical line 90 degree, much more emphasised the horizontal lines instead. In his drawing of the interior, the line in the middle showing the column but in a really pale colour and line, suggested the idea of thin column support the whole structure, not reality to the construction. The almost disappear wall at the back suggested the idea of a total open space. The two side of the drawing also showed the very careful and delicate marble and glass, giving the texture of the interior where the whole building is carefully chosen and filled with different delicate material, each part of the building used different material for the result, even there are 4 or more different glass used in the building. The long extending wall act like a magic piece in the building, it look as it is a freestanding wall by itself and definitely not for supporting the roof structure at the top. But this is where Mies played with his design, he emphasised the visual angle of the space, giving the maximum open view.
Le Corbusier born in 1887 was a Swiss-French architect, designe domino systemr, urbanist, writer and also a painter. He studies the modern high design and was specific in designing better living for residents of crowed cities. He was interested in new technical inventions and construction material. He invented the domino system, where stand for ‘domestic’ ‘innovation’, the principle combined the meaning of the two words and together with the domino game. He created the ‘Dom-ino’ House in 1914-1915 where he examined the new structural and material possibilities in architecture The house proposed with an open floor plan consisting of concrete slabs and supported by a minimal number of thin, reinforced concrete columns around the edges, with a stairway providing access to each level on one side of the floor plan. This design became the foundation for most of his architecture for the next ten-year.
Le Corbusier suggested the basis modern living in his Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau, it was described as a ‘machine for living in’ and compared to a similar description of automobiles as ‘machines for transportation’. He suggested the basis for a design for modern living as to be found in the efficiency and economy of the office rather than in the luxury and individuality of the traditional home or apartment, and relied more upon the skills of the engineer than those of the artist.
The four movements of the Modernist Factions contains the De Stijl in Holland by artists such as Piet Mondrian, Gerrit Rietveld, JJP Oud; Germany Bauhaus by Meyer, Walter Gropius, Josef Albers, Mies van der Rohe; Purism in France by Le Corbusier and Amedee Ozenfant; the constructivism in Russia by Vladimir Tatlin, Leonidor, Kazimir Malevich and Vkhutemas.
In the first movement - De Stijl, a style founded in the Netherlands was used to refer to a body of work from 1917 to 1931. The style express a new ideal of spiritual harmony and order, it was positioned on the fundamental principle of the geometry of the straight line and square and the natural forms and colour. They suggested pure abstraction and reduction to the essential of form and colour. The main idea was they simplified the visual compositions to only having the vertical and horizontal directions, and also only using primary colours along with black and white. With Piet Mondrian, he used only red, yellow and blue along with black and white The principle is a relationship between strong asymmetricality and the positive and negative elements in an arrangement o non-objective forms and lines.
The principle applies in painting and also architecture. In many three-dimensional works, vertical and horizontal lines are positioned in layers of planes, where the lines do not intersect, where allowing each part element to appear independently and not to be disturbed by other elements. These features are shown with the Red and Blue chair designed by Gerrit Rietveld in 1917.
The De Stijl was influenced greatly by Cubism painting, where ideas of geometric forms and layering of forregrond and background also the mathematical calculation.
The Larkin Administration Building by Frank Lloyd Wright, it was designed in 1904 and demolished in 1950. It contains five stories a structural monumental quality of a façade, the exterior building is like a solid block. The building was constructed of dark red bricks; the main building was attached to an annex of approximately three stories, the entire roof was paved with brick and served as a recreation area for the building’s employees. Two waterfall-like fountains flanked the entrances of the building; above the fountains were bas-reliefs by Richard W Bock, who also designed the globes on the tops of the central exterior piers of the building. The interior consisted of a five-story central court or nave, surrounded by balconies, the upper level contained a kitchen, bakery, dining rooms, classrooms, a branch of Buffalo Public Library, restrooms, a roof garden, and a conservatory. At the interior of the building, the walls were made of semi-vitreous, hard, cream-coloured brick. Wright designed hermetically sealed double paned windows for allowing natural and artificial light, he also designed electrical fixtures that enabled the employees to work in comfort at their metal office furniture.
The living space had open beams, unplastered brick fireplace, paneled walls that recalled a shaker architecture in the United States and two rooms of distinct sizes. The design of Adolf Loos apartment in 1903 was an inspiration of Europe and America. The cold abstraction of the bedroom represented Europe, whereas the living room with a warmer ambiance illustrated America. These two rooms were built to create an impression that the smaller room was inside the bigger one by having this large drop in height.
Frank Lloyd Wright- Robie House 1908
The gem has been recognized as one of the best public work Wright had ever created. Initially, his client had the idea of building a little New England steeple. However, Wright wanted the building to highlight the presence of God in the gathering of people, and had successfully convinced his client to construct a church instead. The central room surrounded by solid walls instantly gave a sensation of intimate and monumental, solitary and communal, humanity and spiritual. Due to Wright’s eagerness to experiment on new materials and the limited budget that was available, the Unity Temple was constructed in reinforced concrete. Wright also used exposed concrete externally to define mass and volume and employed floating planes to define space internally. The complex interchange between the inside and outside was the vital to his architectural theories of the interior unfolding outward and was expressed in the materials used, the form and experience that he had.
In order to reveal a sense of humble human acts, Wright applied the contrasts of light and dark; compression and expansion and also played around with the geometry. For example: the multiple dark entries which lead into the temple enabled worshipers to enter without being noticed. The worshipers then entered a jewel-box-space, facing others in the parish of a communal box. Its specific geometries that pervaded the building were repeated throughout and emphasized the importance of the altar.
Art Nouveau is an international style in art, architecture and applied art appear at the turn of the 20th century. It is an approach to design according to which artists should work on everything from architecture to sculpture to a piece of funiture, making art part of everyday life. Art Nouveau transformed the objects, with combining the art of a traditional craftsman and the industurial productiod.
Art Nouveau is now considered as a ‘total’ style, because it is covering all range of design, in architecture, interior design, decorative arts including jewellery, furniture, textiles, household silver and other utensils, and lighting and the range of visual arts. Therefore it is an international movement and style.
In Spain, Barcelona was where the movement centred, and the architect Antoni Gaudi, a decorative architectural,his style was mainly the use of floral and organic forms. The most related building he design to the sylistic elements of Art Nouveau was the Casa Batlio (1904-1906) and Case Mila (1906-1908). Casa Batlio situated at Passeig de Gracia, which is part of the Illa de la Discordia in the Eixample district of Barcelona. The building is known as Casa dels ossos locally. It means “house of bones” in English. It was intended for a middle-class family as it located in a prosperous district of Barcelona. The appearance of this building is remarkable, although it had a typical Gaudi style. The ground floor is particularly astonishing with tracery; irregular oval windows and flowing sculpted stonework.
Gaudi avoided straight lines completely in designing it. Much of the façade is decorated with mosaic made of broken ceramic tiles that starts in shades of golden orange moving into greenish blues. The roof is arched and was likened to the back of a dragon or dinosaur. A common theory about the building is that the rounded feature to the left of centre, terminating at the top in a turret and cross, represents the
