Architectural Movements of

the 20th & 21th Century

Post modernism and its

Variations
Reaction Against Modernism
 In the later decades of the twentieth
century, designers rebelled against the
rational Modernism and a variety of post
modern styles evolved. Examples of post
modern architecture include:
 Postmodernism
 High Tech
 Organic
 Deconstructivism
 Metabolism ……….we will discuss later
 Postmodernism
 Timeline: 1960-70s---till date
 Place: America
 Cause: As a reaction of modernism
 Aims: communicating ideas with the public.
(Often, the communication is done by quoting extensively
from past architectural styles.)
 it also strives to produce buildings that are sensitive to the
context within which they are built.
 Reintroduction of ornament, color, decoration and human
scale to buildings.
 Form was no longer to be defined solely by its functional
requirements or minimal appearance.
 Postmodernism
 Postmodern architecture evolved from the
modernist movement, yet contradicts many of the modernist
ideas.
 Combining new ideas with traditional forms, postmodernist
buildings may startle, surprise, and even amuse.
 Familiar shapes and details are used in unexpected ways.
Buildings may incorporate symbols to make a statement or
simply to delight the viewer.
 The key ideas of Postmodernism are set forth in two
important books by Robert Venturi: Complexity and
Contradiction in Architecture and Learning from Las Vegas.
 Examples of Postmodern Architecture

The Sony Building (formerly AT&T

building) in New York City, 1984,
by Philip Johnson, illustrating a
"Postmodern" spin with the
inclusion of a classical broken
pediment on the top which
diverged from the boxy functional
office towers common in
Modern Architecture.
 Examples of Postmodern Architecture
 When he designed a house for his mother,
Robert Venturi said that the front was
meant to evoke a picture of a house,
especially one from the 18th century
allusion; the way the gable suggests a
triangular classical pediment is another;
the horizontal moulding, like a string
course on an older building, is a third. But
all of these features are only hinted at: the
pediment is split at the apex by a large
opening; the arch is interrupted by the gap
and the lintel over the doorway. The
house also contains allusions( such as the
strip windows) to buildings by modernist
guru le corbusier. The postmodernists
liked to have things both ways.
Examples of Postmodern Architecture
Architects Associated with Postmodern
Architecture
 High-Tech Architecture
 Timeline: 1970s---till date
 Place: Britain
 Characteristics:
 the prominent display of the building's technical and
functional components, and
 An orderly arrangement and use of pre-fabricated elements.
 Glass walls and steel frames were also immensely popular.
 High-tech architecture, also known as Late Modernism
or Structural Expressionism, is an architectural style that
emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high-tech
industry and technology into building design.
 High-tech architecture appeared as a revamped modernism
, an extension of those previous ideas helped by even more
technological advances.
 This category serves as a bridge between modernism and
post-modernism, however there remain gray areas as to
where one category ends and the other begins.
 In the 1980s, high-tech architecture became more
difficult to distinguish from post-modern
architecture. Many of its themes and ideas were
absorbed into the language of the post-modern
architectural schools.
 Like Brutalism, Structural Expressionist buildings
reveal their structure on the outside as well as the
inside, but with visual emphasis placed on the
internal steel and/or concrete skeletal structure as
opposed to exterior concrete walls.
 High-tech buildings are often called machine-like. Steel,
aluminium, and glass combine with brightly colored braces,
girders, and beams.
 Many of the building parts are prefabricated in a factory
and assembled later.
 The support beams, duct work, and other functional
elements are placed on the exterior of the building, where
they become the focus of attention.
 The interior spaces are open and adaptable for many uses.
 The High-tech Centre Pompidou in Paris appears to be
turned inside out, revealing its inner workings on the
exterior facade.
Examples of High Tech Architecture

examples of high-tech architecture.

Architects Associated With High-Tech Architecture
 Organic Architecture
 Definition:
 Organic Architecture is a term Frank Lloyd Wright used to
describe his approach to architectural design. The
philosophy grew from the ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright's
mentor, Louis Sullivan, who believed that
 "form follows function."
 Wright argued that
 "form and function are one."
 Organic architecture strives to integrate space into a
unified whole. Frank Lloyd Wright was not concerned with
architectural style, because he believed that every building
should grow naturally from its environment.
 Organic Architecture
 Frank Lloyd Wright introduced the word ‘organic’ into his
philosophy of architecture as early as 1908.
 Although the word ‘organic’ in common usage refers to
something which has the characteristics of animals or
plants, Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture takes on
a new meaning. It is not a style of imitation, because he
did not claim to be building forms which were
representative of nature. Instead, organic architecture is a
reinterpretation of nature’s principles as they had been
filtered through the intelligent minds of men and women
who could then build forms which are more natural than
nature itself.
 Characteristics:
 Organic architecture involves a respect for the properties
of the materials—you don’t twist steel into a flower—and a
respect for the harmonious relationship between the
form/design and the function of the building (for example,
Wright rejected the idea of making a bank look like a Greek
temple). Organic architecture is also an attempt to
integrate the spaces into a coherent whole: a marriage
between the site and the structure and a union between
the context and the structure.
 Gaia Charter:
 Architect and planner David Pearson proposed a list of rules towards
the design of organic architecture. These rules are known as the
Gaia Charter for organic architecture and design. It reads:
 "Let the design:
 be inspired by nature and be sustainable, healthy, conserving, and
diverse.
 unfold, like an organism, from the seed within.
 exist in the "continuous present" and "begin again and again".
 follow the flows and be flexible and adaptable.
 satisfy social, physical, and spiritual needs.
 "grow out of the site" and be unique.
 celebrate the spirit of youth, play and surprise.
 express the rhythm of music and the power of dance.
 Example:
 A well-known example of organic architecture is
Fallingwater, the residence Frank Lloyd Wright
designed for the Kaufman family in rural
Pennsylvania. Wright had many choices to locate
a home on this large site, but chose to place the
home directly over the waterfall and stream
creating a close, yet noisy dialog with the rushing
water and the steep site.
Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be
one, joined in a spiritual union – Frank Lloyd Wright
 Alvar Aalto
 Antoni Gaudi
 Eero Saarinen
 Louis Sullivan
 Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959)
 Bruno Zevi
 Toyo Ito
Critical Regionalism
Architects associated with:
Sustainable architecture
 Japanese Metabolism Movement:
 When: 1960 – 1970s
Where: Tokyo.
Why: The origins of the movement date back to 1946, post
World War II Japan, when Kenzo Tange established the
Tange Research Laboratory at Tokyo University. Urban
reconstruction of Japanese cities destroyed during WWII
was the problem to be solved. Tange's Japanese students
challenged the Western ideas of static urban planning.
Who: Fumihiko Maki, Masato Otaka, Kiyonari Kikutake,
and Kisho Kurokawa. Other students and associates of
Kenzo Tange, such as Arata Isozaki, are also associated
with the movement.
Definition:
 The word metabolism describes the
process of maintaining living cells.
Young Japanese architects after World
War II used this word to describe their
beliefs about how buildings and cities
should be designed.
 Characteristics:
 organic urban design and reconstruction,
 recycling,
 organic growth and
 change,
 prefabrication,
 expansion and contraction based on need,
 attachable / detachable substructure,
 replaceable units (cells or pods),
 sustainability
 Explanation:
 The postwar reconstruction of Japan's cities spawned new
ideas about the future of urban design and public spaces.
 Metabolist architects and designers believed that cities and
buildings are not static entities, but are are ever-changing
—organic with a "metabolism."
 Postwar structures of the future are thought to have a
limited lifespan and should be designed and built to be
replaced.
 Metabolically designed architecture is built around a spine-
like infrastructure with prefabricated, replaceable cell-like
parts easily attached. These 1960s ideas became known
as Metabolism.
 Example:
 A well-known example of
Metabolism in architecture
is Kisho Kurokawa's
Nakagin Capsule Tower in
Tokyo. Over 100
prefabricated cell-capsule-
units are individually
bolted onto a single
concrete.
With cell-like apartments, Kisho Kurokawa's 1972 Nakagin Capsule Tower in
Tokyo exemplifies the 1960s Metabolism Movement in Japan.
 The End of Metabolism?
 The 1970 International Exposition in Osaka was the last
collective effort of Metabolist architects. Kenzo Tange is
credited with the master plan for the exhibitions at Expo '70.
After Japan's first World's Fair, individual architects from the
movement became self-driven and more independent in
their careers. The ideas of the Metabolist movement,
however, are themselves organic—organic architecture was
a term used by Frank Lloyd Wright, who was influenced by
the ideas of Louis Sullivan, often called 19th century
America's first modern architect. Twenty-first century ideas
about sustainable development are not new ideas—they've
evolved from past ideas. The "end" is often a new beginning.
 Deconstructivism
 Deconstructivism, or Deconstruction, is an
approach to building design that attempts to view
architecture in bits and pieces. The basic
elements of architecture are dismantled.
Deconstructivist buildings may seem to have no
visual logic. They may appear to be made up of
unrelated, disharmonious abstract forms.
Deconstructive ideas are borrowed from the
French philosopher Jacques Derrida.
 Examples
 Examples of Deconstructivism in
architecture, look at works by:
 Peter Eisenman
 Frank Gehry
 Richard Meier
 Rem Koolhaas
 Theoretical background: (literary theory)
One of the principal aspects of the Post-modern
rejection of the modernist point of view was
the shift from social theory to literary theory as the
paradigm for architectural theory.
Robert Venturi, in his book Complexity and
Contradiction in Architecture, used the literary
criticism of T. S. Eliot as a framework for analyzing
architecture.
Eliot had pointed out that poetry is captivating
because it is not univalent and clear but multivalent
and layered, filled with many possible readings and
interpretations, i.e. “complex and contradictory.”
 Linguistic theory
Literary criticism, however, was not the only
source of new architectural thinking in the 1970s
and 1980s.
Linguistic theory also rose to prominence as an
apparatus for understanding architecture.
 Prominent among the linguistic theories that
architects and architectural theorists considered
were structuralism and semiotics, both of which
were also related to anthropology.
 Structuralism

Structuralism argues that meaning in language

derives from its internal logic and formal
relationships. We can say, “I see the dog,” but we
can’t say, “Dog see I the,” without leaving a
listener clueless as to what we mean, even though
each word is understandable and familiar. The
order of the words and their relationship to one
another, i.e. the structure of the sentence,
conveys the meaning.
 Semiotics
Semiotics, on the other hand, argues that
language is a system of signs that may be
understood to have meaning through the
convention of social acceptance.
The sign (or signifier) is not the meaning (the
signified) but conveys meaning. The word “cat” is
formed by two consonants and a vowel. It has a
sound that has nothing to do with a furry domestic
animal that purrs. Yet, we agree that when we
say “cat,” we intend to refer to the category of
animal that falls within the feline genus.
 third linguistic theory
In the 1980s, a third linguistic theory emerged in
the circles of literary criticism and was fascinating
to a group of architectural critics and academics:
deconstruction. The principal inventor of literary
deconstruction was Jacques Derrida, a French
linguist, who argued that meaning in language is
completely unstable. He argued that a text cannot
have any single meaning, certainly not a meaning
that the writer invests in it.
According to deconstruction, meaning is fluid,
brought to a text by its readers as well as by its
placement on a page, in a journal or a book, and
by many other factors that affect the way it is
perceived. In fact, these issues are stronger than
the intentions of the author, even to the point of
arguing that texts have no author, once they have
been written. The author sets the words down,
but once released, has no more ownership of or
control over the text.
A number of architects whose work came to
international prominence in the 1980s have either
been interested in some version of literary theory
or have been described as representing the
general directions of linguistic theory. These
include, but are not limited to, Peter Eisenman,
Wolf Prix of the firm Coop Himmelblau in Vienna,
Guenther Behnisch, Frank Gehry, and Zaha
Hadid, the Iraqi-born British architect, currently
building the new Contemporary Art Center in
Cincinnati.
The question is: do these architects actually
derive architecture from linguistic theory or is
linguistic theory a convenient way to analyze and
discuss architecture? Is their architecture actually
rooted in other sources, which are predominantly
formal rather than theoretical?
 Russian constructivism
In addition to the problem of literary theory, the
concept of an architecture of “deconstruction” is also
related to a broad interest in and examination of
Russian constructivism. This early 20th-century
style was used at some schools of architecture,
such as the Architectural Association in London, to
help students understand transformative design. In
fact, a hybrid term evolved from the two words
“deconstruction” and “constructivism”:
deconstructivism.
Whether conscious or unconscious, the use of this
word confuses the issue. Are the buildings in
question derived from an idea about the relationship
between language and meaning or are they a kind
of revival of an early phase of modernism?
Peter Eisenman, Wexner Center, OSU, Columbus, 1983-89