IAR 221 Unit 3 Summary

EXPLORATIONS

     In Unit 1 (Foundations), we learned about the basic rules of design, which were established millenia ago but still apply today.  In Unit 2 (Reverberations), we thought about what those rules meant and how they might mean something else to another person.  In this unit, Explorations, we saw what happened when people stared making their own rules, or trying not to follow rules at all.  At the core of this departure from the rules--which is still ongoing--were a revival of old styles by means of a World's Fair (specifically the Chicago World's Fair of 1893) and the idea of sustainability.  I believe that the Chicago World's Fair was incredibly beneficial to the field of design despite its Classical elements and that sustainability is the most pressing issue in the design world today.

THE WHITE CITY: THE CHICAGO WORLD'S FAIR OF 1893

      The World's Columbian Exposition, also called the Chicago World's Fair, was held in 1893 in Jackson Park.  Intended to rival the 1889 World's Fair in Paris, the fair was designed primarily by a man named Daniel Burnham, an architect who had helped build the world's first skyscraper.  The fair would become known as "The White City," and for good reason:  Most of the fair's main attraction buildings were covered with a white stucco.  They seemingly lit up at night, when the fair's electric lights came on, awing the visitors with its brilliance.  The buildings themselves, however, were built in a classical style.  This is initially puzzling to many:  Why, during this time of great progress and innovation in American history, would the fair's architects not design buildings that reflected this ideal?  Why would they use such old and familiar structures, when there were so many advances being made in every field?  The answer is deceptively simple:  The fair's designers chose a classical style to invoke a sense of nostalgia among the visitors.  The fair was the celebration of Columbus' discovery of the New World (various issues delayed the fair's opening from its intended date in 1892 to early 1893).  Yes, much progress was being made, but men such as Burnham wanted people to remember where that progress had got its start.  The classical form served to remind people of their roots, as well as to inspire awe.  Of course, not everyone agreed with this design choice--Louis Sullivan believed that the choice to build the fair in a classical style set modern architecture back by decades.  But overall, the classical design of the fair was a major contributing factor to its splendor, and the success of the fair's design inspired the idea of modern city planning.

GOING GREEN:  THE ISSUE OF SUSTAINABILITY

        The issue of sustainability has been around for as long as the idea of design has been around; however, the term "sustainability" is fairly recent.  The first modern attempt at sustainability is Le Corbusier and his idea of a garden on the roof of the home to replace the green space occupied by the house.  Unfortunately, after Le Corbusier's death, designers seemed to stop caring about the land.  The modern architecture that arises after Le Corbusier fails to take into account the environment, placing emphasis on the building itself rather than the ground on which it sits.  In the defense of those designers, they were not necessarily to blame for this.  Architects had been building structures with little regard to the landscape for many, many years, and Le Corbusier was a lone man operating with a radical new idea.  After his death, it was easier for many to go back to the old way of doing things, rather than struggle to create a new earth-friendly design process.  Now, however, the issue of sustainability as noted by Le Corbusier can no longer be ignored.  The data we have is telling us that, unless we change our behaviors, the planet will be severely damaged, possibly beyond repair.  Thus, it is our jobs not only as designers but as human beings to do whatever is possible to keep this from happening.  In our case, this means designing more eco-friendly and sustainable buildings.  Progress is already being made in this area but there is still a long way to go.  We cannot hope to think about designing long-term, permanent structures if we do not first think about how to make them sustainable.

Image Sources
--http://www.albinocrowgallery.com/murals.html
--http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/chicago-world%27s-fair
--http://wsa.wesleyan.edu/2012/03/13/apply-to-be-sustainability-coordinator/

IAR 221 Final Blog Post: Where Are We Now?

OBJECT:  HILL HOUSE CHAIR     I first came across Charles Mackintosh's Hill House chair while doing the chair cards for this class, and immediately became a fan.  Out of all the chairs we studied during the semester, this chair remains my absolute favorite; I even drew this chair as part of my application to the Interior Architecture department at UNCG.  I like this chair because of how its beauty and elegance stems solely from its simple design.  Other chairs, like Michael Thonet's Rocker No. 1, rely on complicated patterns of swooping, swerving lines for their beauty.  But this chair is comprised of nothing but straight lines.  There are a lot of them, yes, but there isn't a single curve to be found anywhere.  The back of the chair is a series of horizontal lines, but because there are so many of them they emphasize the chair's height.  The top of the back throws several short vertical lines into the mix, creating a 5x5 grid that serves as the chair's "crown."  The overall effect of this use of lines makes the chair appear much taller than it is, creating a sense of majesty and awe.  The other beautiful aspect of this chair's design is its use of a single material; in this case, a dark wood.  This creates a sense of unity and harmony about the chair.  There is no clashing of colors, nothing garish or gaudy.  There is simply this one material, which is both attention-grabbing and easy to look at.  I am a big fan of the idea of beauty by simplicity, so this chair instantly became my favorite. 

SPACE:  FALLINGWATER
    While I have never personally been to Fallingwater, it is--and has been--on my list of "Places To See Before I Die."  From everything I have seen and heard about it, it is a gorgeous home and a brilliant design.  Fallingwater is a fantastic example of Frank Lloyd Wright's "Prairie House" movement, with its emphasis on the horizontal, cooperation with the environment around it, and its open floorplan.  The open floorplan is my favorite aspect of these types of homes.  With rooms defined not by walls but by the arrangement of furniture, Fallingwater (and houses like it) gain a versatility not seen in other, traditional houses.  In homes where each room is defined by walls within the house, changing the function of each room (e.g., turning a bedroom into a family room) is a difficult process.  In a house like Fallingwater, however, this process is a simple matter of moving furniture.  The open floorplan is also more intimate, a perfect environment for a family.  In short, Fallingwater as a space is a near-perfect blend of intimacy and comfort.  Its lack of walls and a traditional floorplan, in favor of an open and more innovative one, create a space that is both personal and comforting.

BUILDING:  THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING
     The Empire State Building was not the first skyscraper in the world, but it is easily one of the most recognizable.   Part of, perhaps even most of, the building's identity lies in its Art Deco style, my favorite of the "Art" styles.  Art Deco emphasizes (among other things) the use of metal, the use of lighting, and the vertical, all of which are present in the Empire State Building.  Its height is made possible by a steel frame, which allows for curtain rather than load-bearing walls.  The Empire State Building also makes good use of light:  after the sun sets, floodlights light up the top of the building.  This, combined with the sheer number of offices in use during the evening, turn the building into a pillar of light.  Finally, and perhaps most obviously, is the clear emphasis on the vertical.  The Empire State Building itself was constructed as part of an unofficial competition for title of "world's tallest building," beating 40 Wall Street and the Chrysler Building for the title.  In addition, the long vertical lines on the building's exterior draw the eyes upwards, where the "stacked" top rises into an antennae, which itself reaches incredibly high.  The Empire State Building, which has always been a gorgeous building to me, has only become more elegant after I learned more about its history and the style in which it was built.

PLACE:  THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO
     I remember walking down College Avenue for the very first time, looking around at UNCG's campus, and being in awe of how official everything looked. It sounds stupid now, but I had never really seen a college campus before (not even UNCG...the first time I saw campus was on move-in day).  I never really stopped and put much thought into why everything looked like it did.  I never thought about why the Jackson Library looked like a huge prison, or why there were circles everywhere, or why there were two Walker Avenues on either side of campus.  I didn't think of these things because, at the time, they weren't of any importance to me--I knew where each building was, and how to get there from my dorm.  That was it.  But now I find myself walking around campus and thinking "Those are ionic columns."  Or "Why isn't this connector on a straight axis?"  As I've learned more about the principles of design and how they apply to the real world, I've started seeing those things around me in everyday life.  It has made for much more interesting walks to and from class, that's for sure. 

FINAL THOUGHTS...
--Simple design, simple color scheme, simple style...I am a big fan of the simple.  I believe that the greatest beauty often comes from creative use of simple ideas and techniques.
--I also think it is in our best interests, both as designers and as human beings, to find a way to create environment-friendly designs.  I think we're starting for the first time to really care about "going green," but there is still much more to be done.
--While every design has its merits, Art Deco is arguably the most pleasing and awe-inspiring.  It was started as a purely decorative style, whereas other styles had "messages" associated with them, so it would make perfect sense that Art Deco would be the most eye-pleasing.
--It is impossible to escape the design influences that have come before us.  As much as we might try to fight it, we are all operating in the wake of Palladio, Wright, van der Rohe, Mackintosh, and countless others.  If we can take the best of each design style, and find an innovative way to incorporate them on the landscape, we will truly be successful designers.

Image Sources
--http://www.hiphop-eshop.de/gx/product_info.php?language=en&info=p31_400--designer-stuhl-hill-house--von-charles-rennie-mackintosh.html&
--http://homesinteriordesign.info/fallingwater-interior-design.html
--http://www.poctos.com/live/empire-state-building
--http://www.psncabarrus.org/index.php?page=research

IAR 221 Blog Post 13: A Tragic Failure in the Modernist Movement

     While the Modernist movement brought about a staggering number of architectural innovations and successes, it is important to remember that the best lessons are learned from mistakes.  Not every structure built during the Modernism era was perfect, and while much was learned from these small mistakes, there was often a price associated with them.  Perhaps the most famous--or rather infamous--example is the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri (pictured above).  Begun in 1978 and completed in 1980, the hotel is a massive building and an impressive display of Modernism at work.  The height of the building, the UFO-like disc at the top, the heavy use of glass in its design--all of these things place the Hyatt Regency comfortably in the "modernist" category.  But what could be so dangerous about such a simple design, a design that was by the late 1970's one that had been built and rebuilt all over the world many times?  The problem originates here:

   Inside the hotel were superimposed walkways, that were supposed to be held up by a single long rod with individual bolts supporting each individual walkway.  During construction, however, the design was changed so that several smaller poles, with two bolts at either end, supported the walkways instead:

     This design change, while seemingly harmless, is actually incredibly dangerous.  The nut on the far right, while only rated to support the weight of a single platform, now has to support two platforms.  On the night of 17 July 1981, the support system failed, and the walkways collapsed on top of each other.

     Approximately 114 people were killed instantly, and another 200 received lifelong injuries. The idea of superimposed walkways suspended in midair was "the direct result of the modernist impulse to appear to defy gravity"  (Roth 568).  Eventually the mistake was discovered, and steps were taken to ensure that a disaster such as this would never occur.  And the steps have proven effective:  to this day, the Hyatt Regency disaster remains the worst accident where poor architectural design and engineering were the primary causes.  Yes, the Modernist movement brought many new ideas, technologies, and procedures to life.  But we must not forget that some of these new innovations did not come without a price.

Final Thoughts...
--The Hyatt Regency Hotel disaster of 1981 is the single worst building failure where architectural design and engineering were the sole causes.
--The simple design change from a single rod to multiple smaller rods was the cause of this terrible accident.
--The Modernism movement was not a perfect movement:  it had its share of mistakes and errors; some (like the one presented here) were not without tragic consequences.

Image Sources:
--http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=154955
--http://frogstorm.com/?p=4319
--http://www.cracked.com/article_19623_6-small-math-errors-that-caused-huge-disasters.html  (Item #4)

IAR 221 Blog Post: Good Design for All

     I think the glass skyscraper (seen here as the Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago), designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is a great example of "good design for all."  They were built approximately 60 years ago, and were the first iteration of the glass skyscraper that is today a prominent building in any city's skyline.  In its short lifespan, the glass tower has become an important, almost necessary, building in cities around the world.  This is due largely to its versatility as a structure.  Van der Rohe built the tower as an apartment complex, but since its construction the glass skyscraper has been used as office buildings and rental offices.  The glass tower is "good design for all" because anyone can use it, for almost any purpose.  It is also, when one learns the history of it, a symbol of unity and togetherness in a very volatile time in history.  Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the man who designed the tower, was a German architect who came to America in 1937, during Hitler's rise to power.  However, construction on the tower didn't begin until 1948, after WWII had ended.  In a postwar America, Germans still remained, in the minds of many, "the enemy."  So it must have been a surprise when van der Rohe built his impressive tower.  But it was even more of a surprise when, suddenly, people started copying his building.  Despite the fact that van der Rohe was a German, in a time when Germany was for many reasons very looked down upon, people found his work to be of a higher quality than anything else before it.  His imitators were able to look past his nationality and instead focused on his work; they put their biases aside and focused on what he had built.  In a divided world, this is an important step on the path to healing and reunion:  the ability to put one's own personal views and opinions away and focus on the quality of the work; to focus on the thing produced and not the one producing it.  In this way--how van der Rohe's glass tower helped mend a postwar world--the glass skyscraper is truly a "good design for all."  It is both practical as a building and a symbol of acceptance. 

Image Source:
--http://www.aviewoncities.com/buildings/chicago/lakeshoredriveapartments.htm

IAR 221 Reading Response: The Advent of the Glass Tower

     A perfectly normal part of the modern cityscape, the glass tower is a fairly recent architectural invention.  Glass has been around for a long time.  The technology needed to build skyscrapers, while newer, has also been around for quite some time.  But the combination of the two, into an enormous glass structure, did not arise until 1951.  It was then that the Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago (seen above) were completed and ushered in a new era in architecture.  The glass tower quickly became a staple of city planning, and today many buildings in cities all over the world are imitations of this building. 

     The man behind the glass tower was a German-born architect named Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.  Born in 1886, he worked in Germany until he was forced to immigrate to the United States in 1937.  He took a position at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and immediately began building large, upward reaching skyscrapers and horizontal, single-space buildings.  But the building he most wanted to build was one that he had dreamed of since his days in Germany:  a glass skyscraper.  In Germany, he was unable to build this structure because of Germany's relatively weak production power.  In the United States, however, he found that industrial power would not be an issue.  All that was left was a suitable location for the building.

     He soon found the perfect site:  a plot of land near Lake Michigan, the body of water that had helped Chicago become one of the most popular cities in America during the 19th century.  The land selected for the building was shaped like a trapezoid, which forced van der Rohe to rethink his tower.  Instead of building a single dominating tower, he instead built two towers in an L-shape to fit in the trapezoid.  The facades of the buildings were also made uniform:  there is no difference between the sides that face the lake and the others.  Soon van der Rohe's towers were copied all over the country and eventually the world, and were used for a variety of purposes.  Van der Rohe built other glass towers throughout his career, but the Lake Shore Apartments remained his crowning achievement and the prototype for glass towers the world over.

Final Thoughts...
--The glass tower has only been in existence for ~50 years, but is already one of the most important buildings in city construction.
--Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in fleeing The National Socialists of his native Germany, came to America and began building prototypical building, the most influential of which were his Lake Shore Apartment buildings.
--Because they can be used for an incredible number of purposes, glass towers quickly became a staple of architecture, and today stand as an integral part of the modern cityscape.

Image Sources
--http://www.architravel.com/architravel/building/860-880-lake-shore-drive-apartments
--http://vincentloy.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/todays-google-doodle-dedicated-to-mies-van-der-rohe-the-father-of-modern-architecture/
--http://draketoulouse.com/2010/07/12/hey-chicago-bps-already-spilling-into-lake-michigan/

IAR 221 Reading Response: Erich Mendelsohn and German Expressionism

     Erich Mendelsohn was a German architect working in the early 20th century.  This puts him in the same era as great architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, but while they worked in the same time, Mendelsohn was the antithesis of the "Cartesian" school of design practiced his colleagues.  Instead of the logical rational architecture being built by van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, Mendelsohn was one of a large group who favored architecture as a medium for expressing the power of emotion.

     Built outside of Berlin just after the end of World War I, the Einstein Tower is one of the German Expressionist's exemplary works.  Erich Mendelsohn, its designer, began sketching the tower during the war, and was commissioned to build the tower as a place for scientists to prove Einstein's theories of relativity.  However, Mendelsohn's plans called for the tower to be built out of concrete, which was hard to find in Germany after the war.  So the foundation was made of concrete, and the rest of the structure was built of brick and covered with a concrete stucco.  To van der Rohe and the like, this change in material could not be made unless the structure itself was redesigned.  But Mendelsohn disagreed, focusing more on the essence of the structure and paying less attention to what it was made of.  As long as the design of the structure remained the same, its physical composition was not an issue. 

     Of course, Mendelsohn was not alone in his way of thinking, just like how Le Corbusier and van der Rohe were not alone in theirs.  In 1914, Paul Scheerbart published an article called "Glass Architecture," in which he commented that people work and live in enclosed spaces.  He believed that in order for culture to move forward, the way people viewed buildings and structures must change; buildings must be more open and allow for natural light to penetrate the building.  Scheerbart and Mendelsohn shared the idea that architecture shaped culture, not the other way around (as van der Rohe and Le Corbusier might believe).

Final Thoughts:
--Erich Mendelsohn believed architecture to be a way of expressing emotion, which resulted in almost sculpture-like designs.
--His Einstein Tower was both a place to house equipment for scientists to test the theory of relativity, and a symbol of the power of the modern world that had been revealed during WWI.
--Fellow Expressionists such as Paul Scheerbart believed that a culture was defined by its architecture, and that for a culture to advance, it must first rethink its architecture and the values therein.

Image Sources:
http://www.kvl.cch.kcl.ac.uk/THEATRON/biographys/bioemendelsohn.html

http://www.3-co.com/Public/Technical%20Information/architecture.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Scheerbart