Scribd
Upload
17 views

AA6 - MA - Lecture 2

The document discusses the origins and development of modern architecture through key organizations and figures in Germany in the early 20th century. It begins with the Deutscher Werkbund, an association that aimed to integrate crafts and industrial design. Important modernist buildings like the Fagus Factory and Bauhaus School developed under architects like Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. The Bauhaus had a profound influence and pioneered the International Style, known for stripped down, functionalist designs using steel, glass and concrete. Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion exemplified this style through its simple forms and use of luxurious materials.

Uploaded by

Ramisa Ferdousi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
17 views

AA6 - MA - Lecture 2

The document discusses the origins and development of modern architecture through key organizations and figures in Germany in the early 20th century. It begins with the Deutscher Werkbund, an association that aimed to integrate crafts and industrial design. Important modernist buildings like the Fagus Factory and Bauhaus School developed under architects like Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. The Bauhaus had a profound influence and pioneered the International Style, known for stripped down, functionalist designs using steel, glass and concrete. Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion exemplified this style through its simple forms and use of luxurious materials.

Uploaded by

Ramisa Ferdousi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 53

Art and Architecture VI

Lecture 2
Deutscher Werkbund
• The Deutscher Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen) is a
German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists,
established in 1907. The Werkbund became an important element in the
development of modern architecture and industrial design, particularly in the
later creation of the Bauhaus school of design.

• Its initial purpose was to establish a partnership of product


manufacturers with design professionals to improve the
competitiveness of German companies in global markets. The Werkbund
was less an artistic movement than a state-sponsored effort to integrate
traditional crafts and industrial mass production techniques, to put
Germany on a competitive footing with England and the United States. Its
motto Vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau (from sofa cushions to city-
building) indicates its range of interest. (Wikipedia)

• The architects involved include Peter Behrens, Eliel Saarinen, Walter


Gropius and Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe
Fagus Factory(1911, Alfeld, Germany, by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer)
First Curtain Glass building
Bauhaus
• German term, literally "House Of Construction“- stood for "School Of
Building".

• School in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts (1919-1933)

• Did not offer courses in Architecture until 1926

• Moved from Weimer to Dessau then to Berlin before being shut down by
Nazi party

• Directors were sequentially Hennes Meyer, Walter Gropius & Ludwig Mies
Van Der Rohe

• Bauhaus style, also known as the international style, was marked by the
absence of ornamentation and by harmony between the function of an object
or a building and its design
Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius, born on 18 May 1883, belongs like Le Corbusier and Mies Van
Der Rohe to the generation who absorbed the knowledge of the pioneers, and
created the architecture of our time.

Working in the office of Behrens, Gropius became familiar with the elements of
modern architecture, but he reacted against the superimposed monumentality
which, in his later years, led Behrens ever further away from the principles of
modern architectural form.

Reference: Ashik Vaskor Mannan


Dessau Bauhaus (Walter Gropius, 1926)
Dessau Bauhaus
• Bauhaus was Initially a school in Weimar. Growing political resentment
forced it to move to Dessau. Gropius took this as an opportunity to build a
school that reflected his hopes for the education that would be had within
it’s walls. The style of the Dessau facilities initiated the teaching of
modernist architecture, then known as the international style.

• The studio block had the designed by Walter Gropius, without support
from slab. Gropius wanted absolute transparency, but that was later
compromised by need for curtains to avoid direct sunlight.

• It was built under a year, being a testament to advances of modern


building technology.

• Every piece of fixture & furniture were originally custom designed &
built by the Bauhaus students

• The extensive facilities in the plans of the Bauhaus at Dessau include


spaces for teaching, housing for students and faculty members, an
auditorium and offices, which were fused together in a pinwheel
configuration. From the aerial view, this layout hints at the form of airplane
propellers, which were largely manufactured in the surrounding areas of
Dessau.
The International Style
The International Style is the name of a major architectural style that developed
in the 1920s and 1930s and strongly related to Modernism and Modern
architecture. It was first defined by Museum of Modern Art curators Henry-
Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in 1932, based on works of architecture
from the 1920s.

The International Style is often thought of as the "architecture of the machine


age," which symbolized for many the crystallization of modernism in building
design. This became particularly true after World War II, when the postwar
economic building boom made the International Style a kind of "unofficial"
American architecture.

Often called "minimalist" architecture, International Style buildings are well-


known for the way they seem to strip away all extraneous ornament from the
structure, leading to an extreme blurring of interior and exterior space, the
exposure of buildings' construction with unvarnished honesty, and the
glorification of modern industrial materials: chiefly, steel, concrete, and glass.

The International Style was one of the first architectural movements to receive
renown and be adopted unequivocally on every inhabited continent. It became
a global symbol of modernity both before and after World War II, especially in
Latin America and Asia, where nations felt a keen desire to industrialize and
compete politically and economically with traditional powers in Europe and
North America.
Mies Van Der Rohe
• Mies van der Rohe, the son of a stonemason, was born in Aachen,
Germany in 1886. Like Walter Gropius he was decisively influenced by
Peter Behrens, whose office he entered in 1908.

• Born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies, he changed his name, as his career
began to take off, just like Corbusier. He also worked with Corbusier under
Peter Behrens.

• He started working with his father, a stonemason, on construction sites in


his hometown of Aachen before becoming an architectural apprentice at
age 15. He never went through any formal architectural training—instead,
he served as an apprentice to leading German designers and architects.

• Mies's style was characterized by its severe simplicity and the


refinement of its exposed structural elements. Although not the first
architect to work in this mode, he carried rationalism and functionalism to
their ultimate stage of development.

• His famous dictum “less is more” crystallized the basic philosophy of mid-
20th-century architecture. Rigidly geometrical and devoid of ornamentation,
his buildings depended for their effect on subtlety of proportion, elegance
of material (including marble, onyx, chrome, and travertine), and
precision of details.
Barcelona Pavilion
• The Barcelona Pavilion was the German Pavilion for the 1929
International Exposition in Barcelona. It is an important building in the
history of modern architecture, known for its simple form and its
spectacular use of extravagant materials, such as marble, red onyx and
travertine. The same features of minimalism and spectacular can be
applied to the prestigious furniture specifically designed for the building,
among which includes the iconic Barcelona chair. It has inspired many
important modernist buildings.

• Its simple form was intended as “a zone of tranquility” for the weary
exposition visitor, attracted into the pavilion on the way to the next site.
Since the pavilion lacked an exhibition, the architecture itself was the
exhibit.

• The building stood on a large podium alongside a pool. The structure itself
consisted of eight steel posts supporting a flat roof, with curtain glass
walling and a handful of partition walls. The overall impression is of
perpendicular planes in three dimensions forming a cool, luxurious space.

• Mies designed the Barcelona chair for the house. The Pavilion was
dismantled at the end of the exhibition, but a copy has since been built on
the same site.
Barcelona Pavilion (1929, Mies Van Der Rohe)
Original Plan from Mies’ Office, 1929
The 155 ft wide circular glass-supported roof is the largest carbon-fibre composite roof in the world. Even the wires are
hidden in the seams of the glass

You might also like