Lecture 4 - From industrializationto the industrialization of War

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.

Lecture 3 - Secession

Adolf Loos Apartment 1903

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.

Lecture 2 - The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture. international style 1905-1906

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