WHAT THE HECK IS MODERNISM?
At this point in time, World Fairs are becoming more and more popular, and this is a very good thing. These fairs played a huge part in promoting and moving design forward; they were evidence that people and designers were finally "thinking out loud". The World Fair served four main purposes: it was commemorative (major anniversary), commercial (competitive), collaborative (working together), and celebratory (big events). Going a little further with each part, commemorative also included the reinforcement of relationship and celebrating independence because this part had a more political undertone. The commercial is supported by government and big business. Collaborative includes being competitive, but also uniting; it was very much both national and regional. And last but not least, celebratory indicates world events and changes.
With the help from World Fairs, architecture and design is now simultaneously looking both forward and backward, beginning in the 1930's and on. The venues from the fairs became in "institutional legacy in the city". From the venues came objects and ideas that were commemorative and innovative. Such an idea includes that of taking a twist on traditional design by adding glass and iron. Continuing with that idea, there were also implications for architecture and design. Some examples of this include the Eiffel Tower (1889), White City (1893), Barcelona Pavilion (1929), and Habitat '67 (1967).
Eiffel Tower White City
Barcelona Pavilion Habitat '67
With all these new innovative, commemorative, and implicative ideas came the revival classic. Designers look at the past of the ancient world (Greek and Rome) to keep designs timeless and classic. Two examples of this include the Indiana State Building which takes on a Gothic twist, and the New York State Building which takes on a more Colonial Revival twist. Such influences and implications led to new products and ideas, people were beginning to travel to find a new way of looking at design, new transportation modes were coming out, there were larger impacts in cities and planning, and there were new foods coming about. The purpose of all of this was to promote persuasion, peace, and working together amongst everyone.
All of this new reform is taking place in the 19th century where many are trying to change from old to new, make new forms, and decide whether things should be made by hand or the machine. With that, the new responsibility for all designers is to make a "good design for all". A designer who implicated this as well as his own style is Philip Webb who would make his designed space look as though they were designed in the medieval world.
The key idea around design in the 19th century was to look for something modern, but no one knew what exactly that meant. For example, modern American architecture said that churches could now stand for modern buildings. What?! That was something very few would have ever predicted. Starting out on the quest for modernism led America to a very colonial design style, like that of the Villard houses. Designers were copying and reinventing design by adding together new mixes and bring back rhetoric from the past. A well known designer who utilized many of these ideas in his designs is Frank Lloyd Wright. He would treat the interior of his designs with as much care and attention as the exterior. He enjoyed making homes look like Victorian styled houses that were inspired by gothic design where detail was very important. All of his floor plans were VERY open and fluid which was something completely different from what people had experience before with cramped floor plans; with that, all of his interiors had a sense of totality. Lloyd also enjoyed over-emhpasizing the horizontal layout of his houses.
Ward-Willets House by Wright Robie House by Wright
Alongside with Wright, many designers were on a search for modernism. Some were emulating classical design while others are inspired by the machine. This brought on many new types of designers and artists. Post-impressionists created a less-realistic representation of things and focused on how light hit the materials and objects. Fauvism and cubism would flatten out the space, taking post-impressionism one step further. Following that, expressionism and futurism took on a nervous energy combined with flattening an image out; they evoked strong emotion by creating multiple views of the same thing, almost as if time had stopped. Finally, art nouveau seeped through, and this was the first style that didn't implement and historic precedents, and their interests grew from metal.
One designer that really stood out during the art nouveau is Antonio Gaudi. His ideas and designs tended to "ooze" outside of the box and echo the Baroque style; he also used a lot of tile work (also glass and stone) on the exterior of his designs. A building of his, Casa Batillo, that is very strange indeed looks as though the human skeleton (metaphorically) is creeping into the interior of the space. Gaudi was quoted for saying that "buildings should not fall over under sunlight, if at all possible."The link everyone is currently sharing is that they are all questing for the same thing (modernism), but producing different things. People are becoming more and more interested in buildings that look like factories for this very reason. Designers are trying to reinvent the wheel by looking beyond history for style and abstracting nature in their designs, which is beginning to allow cast iron and glass to come together. Two examples of this, which happened to be competing with each other, are the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building. The Chrysler Building utilizes the cast iron and glass to end up becoming the tallest building in the world due to the point that was later added to the top of the structure. There is a very streamline movement from the top to the bottom of the building as it slowly goes from tiny to large. On the other hand, the Empire State Building was a major presence in the skyline and was built in a HUGE scale in comparison to everything else. This was the "new Rome".
Following all this new design and the art nouveau was the art deco. These artists and designers had an interest in surface material, utilized a different way and system of buildings and objects, and they were inspired by black and white movies. Some examples of these are the Miami Beach Hotels that were an example of a beautiful use of color, curvy lines were a big design feature, and they were all very symmetrical. Another example is Villa Stein by LeCorbusier. He developed a system that would gather all the windows together in ribbons, it would have a free facade and plan, there wasn't a lot of symmetry, the building sat on stilts, and the land would be replaced by a garden roof. Someone made a statement about LeCorbuiser that said the following: "When he was born, there was no modern architecture; when he died, there was little else".
Miami Beach Houses Villa Stein
Many of these ideas would migrate out of the Bauhaus to around the world, taking on different forms, and being criticized of the building not fitting on the land "correctly". Even still, there search for modern continues, and to help, designers are trying to figure out and decide what the renaissance was all about. Other criticism included that all buildings look so similar and it makes the vocabulary confusing, and it's hard for people to love and appreciate the buildings. Such buildings included the Unite d'Habiticion by LeCourbusier and the Edith Farnsworth House by Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe. These buildings were different, and people didn't understand them; they were like abstract art. As if it was difficult enough for these designers, a man named Phillip Johnson showed up, making things a step more confusing.
Johnson felt that comfort did not equal beauty, therefore, the interior doesn't need to be comfortable for the human, just as long as it's pretty. Wrong. He also believed that purpose wasn't necessary to make a building beautiful. Wrong. He felt that the humans would eventually fit the building so that it could be used rather than the building fitting the human. Wrong. Johnson said that form has nothing to do with sociological or functional aspect of architecture. Again, wrong. To show exactly how Johnson felt, the Johnson house was designed, and it was just another glass box that dematerialized BIG time. Modernism bursted from the art nouveau, art deco, the Bauhaus, and Classical Revival styles. No one understands the modernist language because it's so different. Many designers tried to figure it out on their own which led to many different outcomes of what modernism might be. To this day, designers are still on the quest for truly figuring out what modernism is, and it will be an ongoing quest that many will attempt.
