The Story of Modern Architecture of the 20th Century · THE STORY OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE OF THE 20th CENTURY Jürgen Tietz ... whole of Europe and North America, created a new type

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THE STORY OFMODERNARCHITECTUREOF THE 20th CENTURY

Jürgen Tietz

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THE ROOTS IN THE 18THAND 19TH CENTURIES

The world around us

Our everyday life is conditioned to a significant

degree by the architecture that surrounds us

each day – at home, in the workplace, out

shopping. Even during our leisure time, at the

pool or in the football stadium or at the museum,

architecture creates the necessary architectural

environment for our activity. Without archi-

tecture, human society would be impossible.

Our cities present a colorful, multilayered

world. Buildings from many centuries mingle

with contemporary architecture to form a living

organism. Towering next to Gothic cathedrals

are high-rise buildings made of steel and glass,

or with reflecting granite façades. Exciting

museum buildings, almost like sculptures large

enough to walk in, coexist with soberly functional

factories or dreary administration buildings.

Architecture at the end of the 20th century

is as multifaceted as life itself. We experience

cities as bewildering assemblages of a variety

of functions, to which architecture, in all its

widely differing manifestations, lends the

necessary framework.

New worlds …

The swift development of architectural tech-

nique and form in this century has roots that

go as far back as the 18th century. The

Enlightenment, which enhanced the signifi-

cance and the social status of every citizen,

was accompanied by a fundamental change

in political culture. Centuries-old monarchies

gave way to democratic constitutions whose

stock of ideas spread outwards in ever-

increasing circles. It was these thoughts that

were enshrined in a comprehensive and

enduring form in the American Declaration of

Independence (1776), and found direct political

expression in the French Revolution (1789).

Following the start given by the 18th

century, it was almost inevitable that the 19th

should be an era of revolutionary changes

affecting every area of life. The industrial

revolution, which spread from England to the

whole of Europe and North America, created a

new type of worker: the wage-laborer or

proletarian, who earned a hard living in the

ever more numerous factories. A symbol of the

increasing mechanization of the world was

the steam engine, invented by Watt in 1785,

whose proliferation into newly built machine

shops and iron foundries engendered an

appropriate type of building.

A second, no less meaningful symbol of the

new age was the railway. In 1830, Crown

Street Station was built in Liverpool, the first

station intended for passengers, who could

now travel comfortably by rail between

6 ARCHITECTURE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY (1890–1910)

Stocktaking and impulses

Architecture at the turn ofthe century

1890–1910

11883333: First law against child labor inEngland.

11883377: Victoria crowned queen ofEngland.

11884422: China cedes Hong Kong toEngland, and opens its ports to westEuropean forces.

11884488: Karl Marx publishes hisCommunist Manifesto

11886611: Abraham Lincoln becomesUS president and abolishes slavery.

11886699: The Suez Canal is opened,shortening the sea route to India.

11887711: Founding of the GermanEmpire after the end of the Franco-Prussian war.

11887766: Alexander Graham Bellpatents his “membrane speakingtelephone.” International CentennialExhibition held in Philadelphia.

11888866: The Statue of Liberty erectedin New York, a present from theFrench Republic commemoratingthe anniversary of the Declaration ofIndependence.

11888899: Paris hosts an internationalexhibition, the Exposition Universelle.Completion of the Eiffel Tower.

11889955: Wilhelm Conrad Röntgendiscovers X-rays. Sigmund Freud laysthe foundations of psychoanalysis.First film shows given by MaxSkladanowsky in Berlin and theLumière brothers in Paris.

11889999: First peace conference heldin The Hague to discuss thepeaceful settlement of internationalconflicts; passing of the Conventionrelating to the Laws and Customs ofWarfare on Land. The United FruitCompany sets up the first monopolytrade in bananas in Central America.

11990000: Exposition Universelle andOlympic Games held in Paris.

11990000--0011: Boxer rising in China, putdown by an expeditionary force ofthe European powers.

11990011: Theodore Roosevelt becomesUS president. Thomas Mann’s novelBuddenbrooks published. Picasso’s“Blue Period” begins, with scenesfrom Parisian life, and the lives of

circus people. Pavlov begins hisexperiments in animal psychology.

11990033: Margarete Steiff presents thefirst toy teddy bear at the Leipzig Fair.

11990044: First performance of Puccini’sMadame Butterfly. Death of AntonChekhov.

11990055: Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig,and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff found theExpressionist art movement “DieBrücke.”

11990066: San Francisco destroyed byearthquake and fire.

11990077: Maria Montessori opens herfirst “Children’s House.” Sun Yat-senannounces his program for aChinese democratic republic withsocial legislation.

11990088: Matisse coins the word“Cubism” for a painting by GeorgesBraque.

11990099: First permanent wave inLondon. Ford specializes in the massproduction of the Model T: around19,000 are sold in this year alone.

11991100: Japan annexes Korea. The13th Dalai Lama, fleeing from theChinese, takes temporary refuge inIndia. Robert Delaunay completeshis painting The Eiffel Tower.Feininger begins to make his markwith his characteristicCubist/Expressionist style.

Max Skladanowsky with hisbioscope (projecting equipment)in 1895

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THE F IRST MODERNS (1910–1920) 23

PETER BEHRENS

When Peter Behrens built a house for himself in1901 in the Mathildenhöhe artists’ colony inDarmstadt, it created a sensation. A native ofHamburg, he was already a respected figure inGermany, having made his name as an exponentof the Jugendstil both as a painter and acraftsman. But in architecture he was a newcomer.

Perhaps it was through this versatility andopenness to the various art forms that Behrenswas destined to become one of the mostinfluential all-round artists in Germany in the firsthalf of the 20th century. Today he is best knownas an architect, but he was also a book designer,a designer of typefaces, and craftsman, so that hehas to be seen as one of the earliest “designers.”

A milestone in Behrens’s career, as well as inthe history of German art, was his connectionwith Emil Rathenau’s AEG (General ElectricityCompany), which was the biggest industrialconcern in Germany around 1910. In 1907,industrialist and designer began a partnershipthat was at that time unique. Through his workfor AEG, designing their products according toartistic criteria, Behrens provided a model for thatcooperation between art, craft, and industrialproduction that was one of the goals of theDeutscher Werkbund, founded in the same year.He thus became one of the grandfathers of“industrial design” and “corporate identity.” But itwas not only his industrial products for AEG thatbrought him public notice. There was also histurbine factory (1909), designed for the companyin Berlin, which even today, and despite its

monumental feel, remains one of the icons of mod-ern architecture with its pared-down language ofform. These were to become even more reducedin his AEG assembly shop (1912) in the Volta-strasse, the façade of which, with its clear linesand its total absence of decoration, gives it analmost revolutionary character, comparable withthe early major works of Gropius and Kahn.

The outstanding feature of Behrens’sbuildings, apart from their functionality, is theirimposing monumentality, for example in theturbine factory or in AEG’s small motors factoryof 1910. This quality is achieved through thebuildings’ sternly cubic volumes, but alsothrough their classical formal language, mainlyemploying the Doric order.

This monumental Doric style, through whichBehrens became the leader of European neo-Classicism, is not simply to be found in prestigebuildings like the German embassy in St. Petersburg (1911–12). He makes an evengreater use of it in private houses, like the sparelybeautiful Villa Wiegand in Berlin-Dahlem, with its

unique pillared hall. Apart from his enthusiasmfor the industrial production of artistically validobjects, this pared-down neo-Classicism was themain theme he handed on to his youngercolleagues in his Berlin architectural practice.Many were to number among the mostimportant architects of the succeeding genera-tion: Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,and Walter Gropius among others.

It was one of Peter Behrens’s attributes as anarchitect that he was very much in tune with thespirit of the times and was able to render thedemands and desires of those who com-missioned him in architectural forms appropriateto the times. His openness to new styles andforms of artistic expression is shown in the brickbuilding for the headquarters of the Hoechstdyeworks company, the high, cathedral-likeentrance hall which displays all the colors of therainbow. Behrens, a neo-Classicist before the war,here joins the Expressionist movement, with abuilding inspired by the Amsterdam School.

Behrens was a part of the next evolution ofarchitecture too, from Expressionism to NeuesBauen. It was not a surprising move: the mostimportant representatives of Modernism inarchitecture had been his pupils and colleagues.As a founder-member and leading representativeof the Deutscher Werkbund, he had contributedto the Stuttgart building complex, theWeissenhofsiedlung (see page 39), a steppedapartment block. Behrens had a masterly graspof how to put the contemporary forms of NeuesBauen to personal use. The cubic volumes of the

building so inter-penetrate each otherthat the flat roofs ofthe lower parts of the block serve asterraces for the dwel-lings above.

The Nazis, whowere attracted by theneo-Classicist side of

Behrens, also tried to get him to build for them.Just before his death he was going to build thenew AEG headquarters on the north-south axisplanned by Albert Speer for Berlin. But theproject went no further than the models (1937–39), and it foundered with the Third Reich.

The AEG company emblem evolved from an elaborate historicist style to a Jugendstil versionand then to Behrens’s functional form. Behrens also created a typeface for AEG.

An Expressionist brick building: the entrancehall of the head office of the Hoechst dyeworks.(1920–24)

Behrens as industrial designer:the AEG-Sparbogenlampe was devised specifically for interiors with limitedhanging space

The dawn of a light-flooded era: the AEGTurbine Factory inBerlin, built in 1909



THE INTERNAT IONAL STYLE (1920–1930) 33

THE BAUHAUS

Even today the Bauhaus is synonymous with theradical modernization of art. There was no areaof life that Bauhaus art was not out to reform or redesign. Far from being confined to fine artand architecture, its principles extended todance, theater, photography, and design. Eventoys (the sailing boat ) were designed in its work-shops. In having such a comprehensive brief, the Bauhaus resembled its predecessors, theEnglish Arts and Crafts movement and theDeutscher Werkbund. Even today many of itsproducts feature among the classics of design in their uncompromising modernity, such asMarcel Breuer’s tubular steel chair or theBauhaus table lamp.

In March 1919, when Walter Gropius took overthe leadership of the Weimar Art School foundedby Henry van de Velde, and united it with theformer Art and Craft School to form the“staatlicher Bauhaus Weimar,” his aim was tocreate a new unity between art and craft. Thepurpose itself points to the sociopoliticalmeaning acquired by the Bauhaus in postwarGermany. Gropius wanted to join all the creativeforces into a unified “house of building”, in whichbuilding not only implied architecture but a lot

more besides. Gropius was entirely in tune withhis time when following the catastrophe of thewar and the collapse of the old order to erect anew society, he aimed to use his art to build anew mankind.

In order to achieve these elevated, sociallyutopian aims, all the masters at the Bauhausfollowed a preordained sequence of courses withtheir students. A preliminary course introducedthe students to working with the most variousmaterials: wood, metal, textiles, glass, coloringmaterials, clay, and stone. The preliminary coursewas run by Johannes Itten in the early years inWeimar. It was largely due to Itten that theBauhaus had at first a strongly Expressionistdirection, and was formally modeled on theorganization of the medieval guilds.

In mid-1921 Theo van Doesburg, the first andleading thinker of the Dutch De Stijl movement,came to Weimar. Under his influence the Bauhausunderwent a radical change to a technical,constructionist concept of art, which conditionedthe second stage of its development. MarcelBreuer was stimulated by the red and blue chaircreated by the De Stijl artist Gerrit Thomas Rietveldto develop his tubular steel chairs.

But of all the masters at the Bauhaus, the newtrend in art education is most clearly associatedwith the Hungarian László Moholy-Nagy, who

took over the introductory course from Itten.Dressed in a workman’s boiler suit, he left nodoubt that modern artistic production must becarried out from a technical point of view suitedto the time. How broad the artistic spectrum ofthe Bauhaus remained, even under the influenceof Moholy-Nagy, can be seen from the activitythere of such diverse artistic personalities as thepainters Oskar Schlemmer, Wassily Kandinsky,and Paul Klee.

While the Bauhaus was becoming the leadingcultural force in the German – indeed theEuropean – avant-garde, it was also comingunder increasing political pressure. Theprogressive art school, which wore its politicalcommitment on its sleeve, was a thorn in theflesh of the conservative forces that were onceagain gathering strength. In 1925 the WeimarBauhaus had to close. A new beginning wasundertaken in Dessau.

In Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus building, the artschool at last had an architectonic frame tomatch its inner concept. The architecture clearlyexpressed the various functions of individualparts of the building. So the workshop area wasdominated by an uninterrupted wall of glass,providing the optimal amount of light. Thefaçade of the students’ living quarters on theother hand was characterized by an individual

balcony for each room. It went withoutsaying that Gropius’s new buildingshould have a flat roof, which in the1920s was synonymous with modern

architecture.In 1928 Walter Gropius resigned as

director of the Bauhaus. His successor was aSwiss, Hannes Meyer, who, like Gropius, was anarchitect. Under Meyer the social orientation ofthe Bauhaus became even more pronouncedthan under Gropius. Constructivism with anaesthetic bias was replaced by a style of artisticproduction that proclaimed itself to be strictlyscientific. The components of this were anincreasing standardization in the production ofart-objects, and a growing collectivization of theproduction process that took the place of individualcraftsmanship. The conscious politicization of theBauhaus mobilized the right-wing press, which led in turn to the dis-missal of HannesMeyer by the mayorof Dessau.

It then became thetask of Meyer’s suc-cessor, the estab-lished architect Lud-wig Mies van derRohe, appointed in1930, to steer theschool into quieterwaters. Political agi-tation had never beenMies’s style, but evenhis move toconcentrate on crafttraining could notprevent the DessauBauhaus from beingclosed down at theinstigation of theNazis. Mies’s subse-quent attempt to re-establish the Bauhausin Berlin also failed.

Architecture that corresponds to content: the Bauhaus building erectedby Walter Gropius at its new site in Dessau in 1926

Demonstrating the Expressionist roots of the Bauhaus: Lyonel Feininger’s woodcut for the title page of the 1919 Bauhausmanifesto Cathedral

A classic of Bauhaus design: MarianneBrandt’s teapot with internal strainer (1924)


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The urban crisis at the end of the 19th centuryDuring the 19th century the balance betweentown and country, which had until that timegenerally been fairly harmonious, suffered adramatic change. The town became the theater ofthe industrial revolution. Its new economicstructure produced an enormous growth inpopulation. The country became depopulated; thecities exploded. In Great Britain, which spear-headed the change, there were fewer than 9 million inhabitants in 1800, 80 percent of themliving in the country. Some 100 years later therewere 36 million, 72 percent of them clustered inthe big cities. In Germany over the same periodthe number of inhabitants shot up from 24.5 to65 million. When the German state came intobeing in 1871, two-thirds lived outside the maincenters of population, but scarcely half a centurylater this had dropped to 37 percent.

This unprecedented growth led – in cities whosestructure dated back to anywhere betweenmedieval times and the 17th century – to indescrib-able problems. The technological infrastructurecould not keep pace with the change, the narrowstreets could not contain the massively increasingpressure of traffic. New transport systems such asthe railway could only be placed at the edges

of towns because of the enormous amount of space they took up. Unregulated economic forcescreated a jungle of different usages, with factorieswedged into living areas. These became soovercrowded due to the constant influx of people,that the most elementary necessities of life were nolonger guaranteed. In the English city of Bristol, forinstance, 46 percent of families had only one roombetween them. People who had to live in housesthat backed onto lightless, airless yards werebecoming ill. Infectious diseases spread through thetenements. Child mortality was high. There were nocompensatory open spaces, parks, or squares. Thehousing question became a question of power.Economic freedom led to a widening gulf in city life between rich and poor, causing people tochallenge the existing model of the city, andultimately, the political order itself. The pressure ofcircumstances led in about 1900 to a newdiscipline – town planning.

Town planningTown planning is a young discipline that looksback over a long tradition. The term was not useduntil the late 19th and early 20th century. But aslong ago as the first urban groupings of distantantiquity, people began thinking about the mostadvantageous organization and structure for these

residential and economic centers, taking intoaccount strategic and climatic factors. While manytowns were springing up “naturally,” the firstplanned towns were coming into being, mostaccording to a geometrical chessboard-likeschema (Milet, Priene). Certain functions, as forinstance that of the marketplace (the Greek agora),were allotted a specific position in the Greek city ofantiquity. At the same time, standardized dwellingswere erected according to a unified design.

The notion of the ideal city built according to ageometrical plan occurs over and over again inarchitectural theory over the centuries. It was in theera of the baroque that plans for an ideal city weretransformed into buildings (Freudenstadt 1599,Mannheim 1607), in cities shaped by the rulingconcept of society.

In Europe in the 19th century the flight from theland and the overall growth of the population led to

ever greater urban concentrations, which made aserious reconsideration of the structure of the cityessential on social and public health grounds. Theinitial steps in that direction look rather modest, inthat they sought to enlarge and improve theorganization of what already existed.

The first move was the “Commissioners’ Plan”proposed for New York in 1811. It increased six-foldthe area to be covered by the commercialsettlements which had until then beenconcentrated at the southernmost point ofManhattan, and laid a regular grid over the wholeisland. From east to west ran 155 narrow Streets, allexactly 3 miles (5 kilometers) long, and from northto south ran 12 wider Avenues, all exactly 12 miles(20 kilometers) long. As befitted the ideal of anegalitarian society each of the 2,082 blocksmeasured 650 by 2,600 feet (200 by 800 meters)and each plot was 25 by 100 feet (7.5 by 30meters). Only in 1853 was it decided to leaveCentral Park as a public space, only in 1916 was the

40 TOWN PLANNING IN THE 20TH CENTURY (1850–1930)

Revolution on a grand scale

TOWN PLANNING IN THE20TH CENTURY1850–1930

For centuries the town had functioned so well as an almost unchanging, easilycomprehensible, coordinated fabric of relationships that its laws had become invisible.Then with the industrial revolution of the 19th century it turned almost overnight into aMoloch. The flight from the land brought an urban explosion. The problems arising from this could not be removed by technology or architecture alone. So a new disciplinewas born: town planning, which looked at the city as a whole for the first time. Theplanners found their first models in the place where the people who had caused allthese urban problems had come from: the country. There they designed new towns as antitheses to the old ones.

Inner-city Barcelona today: bottom, the sea;left, the confused network of streets in the oldcity; right and above, the grid of blocks createdby Cerdà’s extension of the city in 1859. It hasgrown outwards a great deal since then.

Ideal plan for an English Garden City, 1902

1 Hospital, 2 Library, 3 Theater, 4 Concert hall, 5 Town Hall, 6 Museum, 7 Central park, 8 CrystalPalace, 9 School, 10 Church, 11 Allotments, 12 Large farms 13 Residential area



The modernist cityWhereas the designs for garden cities and“Usonia” (see pages 40–41) took root in thecountry, the French architect and socialist TonyGarnier made detailed plans for a model of amodern industrial city. The project, which hepresented in 1904 for a “Cité industrielle,” hadseparate areas demarcated for different functions,such as living, working, relaxation, and transport.The traffic system had separate roads for vehiclesand pedestrians, through-roads, and access-roads.Green spaces took up more than half of the cityarea. Set in the midst of these were loose group-ings of simple free-standing apartment blocks,built of reinforced concrete using industrial tech-niques, and affording plenty of air and light.

Garnier did the conceptual preparatory work forthe Modernist town-planners. Both his architec-tonic details and planning ideas became theirbasic principles. But it was the ambitious abstractprojects of Le Corbusier which first gave theseideas ideological force and promoted their finalbreakthrough. In 1922 he worked out his plan forthe “Ville contemporaine.” Whereas Garnier’s townwas small, with buildings a maximum of threestories high, Le Corbusier wanted to providehomes for up to three million inhabitants massedinto residential areas with buildings up to 60stories high. His “Plan voisin” three years laterplaced his designs in a real location for the firsttime. He suggested replacing a part of the historicold city of Paris with 18 skyscrapers 650 feet (200meters) high. The theoretical foundation of thissigned manifesto was worked out by the fourthCongrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne(CIAM) and published in 1943 by Le Corbusier andthe French CIAM group.

This “Charter of Athens” was the manifesto forthe new city. Whereas the traditional city drew aboundary between itself and the country, dividedup its activities between public and private zonesof influence, differentiated between public streets,squares and parks, and private buildings, andseparated town planning from architecture, themodernist city would be a single, open space forliving that was organized by a central state plan-ning authority. In place of the mixed-use roadsystem open to all means of transport that was tobe found in the traditional city, the modernist citywould have a traffic system separated hierarchi-cally according to function. The housing questionwas inseparable from the crisis in the old cities,and should no longer be left in the hands ofprivate speculators, but instead dealt with byerecting whole areas of mass housing, all built to the same standard, and offering light, air, andsun for all.

The Charter of Athens became the guidebookfor all new town planning and building worldwidein the decades that followed. Its emphasis on thenew, found particular favor with the states foundedafter the Second World War. East Berlin’s city centerwas one of many dedicated to the collective idea.Over the ruins on either side of the FrankfurterAllee, Edmund Collein, Werner Dutschke, andJosef Kaiser built the first socialist residentialcomplex between 1959 and 1965. But the Westbuilt almost as many mass housing schemes ofquestionable value: right up until the mid-1970s,estates with tens of thousands of separate livingunits were put up as the old tenement areas weretorn down. Centers that had developed over centu-ries were programmatically rebuilt in the name of making the cities accessible for cars, and

motorways were driventhrough the heart ofthe old cities.

The chance to builda completely new cityoccurred only rarely,however. Between theyears of 1951 and1965 Le Corbusierwas commissioned byPandit Nehru to planthe state capital ofChandigarh, which wasintended to be thesymbol of modernIndia. Over a space of

around 250 acres (100 hectares) he laid out agrid of through roads. In between these there wereresidential areas for 150,000 people, with all the13 different castes of Indian society living separ-ately from each other. The only area shared by allwas the line of commercial establishments alongthe east-west axis, in the middle of which was thecivic center. The state government was separatedoff in its own area to the north of the city.

Similar concepts inspired Brazil to built a newcapital city 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) awayfrom Rio de Janeiro on the high plateau ofPlanatina. The competition to plan the city waswon by Lúcio Costa in 1957. Four years later OscarNiemeyer had already erected the most importantbuildings, and Brasilia was inaugurated in 1961.Costa’s plan was based on a very simple grid of

four- to ten-lane motorways. The east-west axis is1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) long and 1150 feet (350meters) wide, and along it lie all the buildingshousing local government, sports, and the armedforces, and hotels and theaters. It culminates in the“Square of the Three Powers” with the 38-storygovernment building, the bowl of the congresschamber, the dome of the senate, the law courts,the foreign ministry, and the cathedral (illustrationpage 65). At right-angles to this monumental axisruns the 8.7-mile (14-kilometer) long north-southaxis, flanked by residential complexes with greenareas around them, in which people live in slab-shaped buildings five or six stories high. The banksand the shopping center are located at the inter-section of the two highways.

Brasilia is an exemplary demonstration of thefailure of modern town planning. It was successfulonly insofar as it solved the housing problem. In all

66 TOWN PLANNING (1930–2000)

Designs for the city of the future

TOWN PLANNING IN THE20TH CENTURY1930–2000

The 20th century marked the transition from town architecture to town planning. The transition occurred as a result of the industrial revolution which took the traditionalcity beyond its limits, and gave birth to a new ideal: the modern city. The attempt torealize this ideal came to grief in the 1980s, leading to nostalgia for the traditional city.But at the end of the 20th century, the changing economic context brought the questionof the city and the possibility of exerting an influence through planning, onto the agenda once more.

The Unité d’habitation in Marseille by LeCorbusier (1952), and a cross-section throughthree floors showing two living units (page 64)

The bowl-shaped congress building, and behind it the skyscraperhousing the government offices, on the Square of the three Powers inBrasilia by Oscar Niemeyer



HIGH-TECH ARCHITECTURE

Victory of Technology

On 21 July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the

first man to walk on the moon. “That’s one

small step for a man, one giant leap for

mankind,” the American astronaut of the

Apollo 11 mission told fascinated viewers,

watching live as he leapt from the ladder of

the space capsule to the surface of the moon.

The conquest of the moon was the culmi-

nation of 10 years of continuous competition

between the superpowers (the United States

and the USSR) for supremacy in space. For

a long time – at least since 12 April 1961,

when the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin

became the first man to go into orbit in space

– it looked as though the Soviets would be

the first to put a man on the moon. But

eventually it was the Americans who won,

thanks to immense technical and economic

resources, overweening ambition, and a fair

portion of luck.

Millions of enthralled television viewers on

Earth followed the moon landing for hours,

in spite of the uncertain black and white

pictures, the crackling and rustling sound, and

the almost unrecognizably distorted voices of

the astronauts.

The moon landing was a triumph of tech-

nology, which planned and realized a high-

tech fairytale with military precision. Less than

six months later, Apollo 12 took off for the next

moonshot. The future had begun. Soon the

launching pads at Cape Canaveral in Florida

and the Apollo mission control at NASA in

Houston, Texas, became familiar sights. Bare

scaffolds and ramps, piping and lifts, innumer-

able video screens, telephones, and head-

phones gave viewers a direct impression of

the equipment necessary to bring to fruition a

task of the magnitude of space flight.

Architectural promise – speaking

architecture

High-tech constructions, for example the

launching pads and the mission control center,

became a much more frequent everyday sight.

The constructions that architects wrote into

their designs became ever bolder. In the wake

of Brutalism as practiced by the Smithsons in

England, exposed pipes, wiring, and ventila-

tion ducts became the trademarks of high-

tech aesthetics.

The quintessence of 1970s architecture and

its love of technology was the Centre National

d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou in Paris,

called the Centre Pompidou for short, the

appearance of which alarmed quite a few of

those who first saw it, and indeed continues to do

so. It was built between 1971 and 1977 in the

Place Beaubourg in the heart of the French

capital, and gave the impetus to the “grands

projets” with which President Mitterrand also

sought to immortalize himself in the cityscape,

such as the controversial Bastille opera house

built by the Canadian Carlos Ott (opened 1989), or

the new building for the Bibliothèque Nationale

François Mitterrand (National library) by Dominique

Perrault (opened 1996). The Centre Pompidou

78 HIGH-TECH AND POST-MODERNISM (1970–1980)

The future becomes the present

High-tech and Post-Modernism

1970–1980

11996699: Georges Pompidou becomespresident of France.

11997700: Intensification of the“Troubles” – the conflict betweenProtestants and Catholics inNorthern Ireland. Care for the envi-ronment is the issue of the day.

11997711: Death of the jazz musicianand trumpeter Louis Armstrong.

11997722: Murderous attack by Arabterrorists on the Israeli Olympic teamin Munich. Signing of the SALT IAgreement for the limitation of stra-tegic weapons between the USAand the Soviet Union. Re-election ofPresident Nixon.

11997733: The Watergate affair cloudsNixon’s electoral victory. Military coupin Chile brings about the fall ofPresident Salvador Allende and theinstalling of a military regime underGeneral Augusto Pinochet.

Worldwide petroleum crisis. TheArab states use oil for the first time asa political weapon. The first volumeof Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s descrip-tion of the Soviet prison camps (TheGulag Archipelago) is published, andhe is deprived of his Soviet citizen-ship the following year. Death of thepainter Pablo Picasso.

11997744: The German Federal Chancellor,Willy Brandt, resigns as a result of theGuillaume Chancellery espionage affair.

11997755: End of the war in Vietnamwhich had begun in 1963. Death ofGeneral Franco in Madrid, followedby the building of a parliamentarydemocracy. Nobel Prize foreconomics awarded to MiltonFriedman. Microsoft Corporationfounded by Bill Gates. First showingof the US film One Flew Over theCuckoo’s Nest: , with Jack Nicholson.

11997766: Death of Mao Zedong.Jimmy Carter becomes president ofthe United States. A chemical acci-dent in the Italian town of Sevesopollutes the environment with dioxin,

causing a severe reaction to chlorine.The 13-year-old violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter begins her career.Disco music from the films of JohnTravolta becomes popular.

11997777: Abduction of the head of theGerman employers’ association H.-M. Schleyer in Cologne by terror-ists of the Red Army Faction. Firstshowing of the American science-fiction film Star Wars: by GeorgeLucas.

11997788: Cardinal Karol Wojtyla ofCrakow becomes Pope John Paul II.

11997799: Nobel Peace Prize awardedto the Catholic nun Mother Teresa.After the flight of the Shah, theAyatollah Khomeini returns to Iranfrom 15 years in exile to lead theIslamic revolution.

11998800: Iraqi invasion of Iranian terri-tory begins first Gulf War.

Scene from the film Star Wars byGeorge Lucas, with Carrie Fisher asPrincess Leia and the robot R2-D2



96 CROSS ING BOUNDARIES (1980–1990)

SIR JAMES STIRLING

“Master of styles,” was the heading that theDeutsche Bauzeitschrift gave to its obituary of theBritish architect James Stirling (1926–92). But hewas much more than the creator of the uselesscolumns and split pediments which tend to bedismissed today as jokes. As the leading protago-nist of Post-Modernism, he prepared the groundfor the paradigm-change in 20th-century archi-tecture. His buildings are polemics against anossified Modernism. The theories which he devel-oped with Kevin Lynch and Charles Moore whenhe was Professor at Yale University led to a recon-sideration of values that had been neglected byModernism: the relationship to history and the

surroundings of a building, as well as the power ofarchitecture to make an emotional statement.

The re-evaluation began with quotations fromthe icons of architectural history. Between 1959and 1963, long before the term Post-Modernismwas coined, Stirling and James Gowan designedthe Institute of Engineering at Leicester University.The overall shape of the tower-like part of thebuilding, with its cantilevered lecture theater, seemsa downright copy of the picture, much reproducedat that time, of the Rusakov workers’ club designedby the Russian Constructivist Konstantin Melnikovin Moscow in 1928 (illustration page 35). Thepillars with a capital in the shape of a truncatedcone that turned up for the first time in the Olivettibuilding in Milton Keynes, England, in 1971, andwhich became the trademark of the firm which SirJames Stirling and Michael Wilford founded thesame year, can be read as a greatly simplifiedquotation from the mushroom-shaped pillarscreated by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1939 for theJohnson Wax Company headquarters in Racine,Wisconsin (illustration page 16).

Stirling’s Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart (1977–84) isan assemblage of historical quotations. The poly-chrome masonry echoes the medieval church

buildings of Pisa, and the sequence of rooms corresponds to a neo-Baroque suite. Stirlingassembles a Deconstructivist covered entrance,Gothic pointed arches, vaguely antique pillaredwalks, and Bauhaus details around the ruin-likereference to Schinkel’s rotunda in the AltesMuseum in Berlin, making a varied and colorfulcollage. In his plan for the Berlin Wissen-schaftszentrum (Scientific Center) Sir James alsoassembled together a whole repertoire of arche-types from architectural history: a cruciform basilica,a Greek stoa, a medieval campanile, and anantique theater.

Distinct from manyof the modish hangers-on of Post-Modernism,Stirling never usedother styles for theirown sake. The exteriorsof the Wissenschafts-zentrum, so full of arch-itectural “significance,”are completely filledwith identical utilitarianoffices. The basilica of the Wissenschafts-zentrum actually housesnothing but toilets andthe caretaker’s lodging.The real message ofthe pale blue and pink striped building ispure polemic againstthe paradigm ofModernism: the unityof form and function.

In his 1985 exten-sion to the Tate Gallery in London, Stirling criti-cized another ideal of modernism: the showingof the construction. The façade displays a grid ofmasonry and plastered surfaces, which hasnothing to do with the reinforced concreteconstruction inside. Whereas the galleries insideconcentrate on displaying the works of J. M. W.Turner in natural light, the outside tries to fit inwith the buildings around, a not unreasonableidea always neglected by self-obsessedModernists. At the same time, the strong colorsand spectacular entrance of the Clore Wingattract an attention from the public which wouldnever have been achieved by the pictures alone.This entertainment value is an ideal whichModernism always rejected.

Stirling was fond of relating a key experienceof his, which was that when he was a student hevisited Palladio’s Villa Rotonda. The plaster wasfalling off the pillars. Something that was pretendingto be marble turned out to be “only” brick. But didthat alter the architectonic quality of the building?

This latter was what Stirling always caredabout most, as can be seen from his lastbuilding, the Braun factory in Melsungen,completed in 1992, for which the Stirling andWilford partnership also engaged the services ofthe young Berlin architects Walter Nägeli andRenzo Vallebuona. The mighty building is in factmade up of a large number of highly indepen-dent volumes which fit precisely into the winding

valley of the Pfieffewiesen. The complex displaysnot only the way the plastics manufactured thereare made, but also the manner in which thebuilding itself is constructed. For example, theconcrete wall of the covered car park whichextends along the back of the site, is draped witha mesh of formwork, in such a way that even inits completed state the fluid character of the rawmaterial remains recognizable.

To be sure there are quotations from architec-tural history in Melsungen, but they are neverthere for themselves, but to create architectural

qualities. The production shed may be reminis-cent of Peter Behrens’s epoch-making AEG-Maschinenfabrik in Berlin, but one’s impressionsare dominated by the wonderful view offered bythe curved construction opening on to the land-scape. The upturned truncated cones whichsupport the administrative building are certainly areminder of Le Corbusier, but above all they pointto the off-center distribution of forces. You couldlist innumerable precedents for the colorfulslanting window jambs, but their main effect is togive the light which reaches the desks of theoffice workers an inspirational fluidity. Have morespatial qualities ever been wrested out of abuilding task normally treated as workaday?

As if constructed for the performance of Greek theater: the rotunda inthe interior court of the Neue Württembergische Staatsgalerie (NewWürttenberg National Gallery) in Stuttgart is the summit of Stirling’sconnotation-rich collage architecture.

Sir James Stirling, circa 1980

Colorful variety: the Clore Wing of the TateGallery in London (left). The curvedadministration building of the Braun AGworks in Melsungen (right) responds to thetopography of the surrounding hills.



A NEW MILLENNIUM

For a lot of people, the beginning of the new

millennium was an incisive event, a moment

that raised expectations and hopes. But this

special date was also marked by fears and

anxieties: What would the new age bring?

Accompanied by a worldwide countdown,

the third millennium after the birth of Christ

began. Notwithstanding the millennium-hype,

the development of the world seemed

predetermined, thanks to the modern

communication technology – above all, the

Internet – that increasingly diminishes the

contrast between the cultures. The Canadian

media scientist Marshall McLuhan had said

way back in the 1960s that the world would

become a “global village”. The sceptics

pointed to the drawbacks of these

developments. After all, the bloody war in

former Yugoslavia in the 1990s showed what

dramatic consequences these unsolved

ethnic and religious conflicts could have.

Then came 11 September 2001. In an

attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade

Center (WTC), constructed in 1973 by Minuro

Yamasaki, terrorists killed over 2,000 people.

Millions of spectators all over the world

watched the attack on one of the symbols of

the Western world on their TV screens. Even

today, the shock sits deep because the attack

exposed the vulnerability of the free world

drastically. The terrorists did not hit just any

building; they hit both the 1361-feet

(415-meters) high towers of WTC, the

monument which defined the skyline of New

York. Besides its actual function as an office

building, WTC was an icon that had a second

existence as a two-dimensional symbol of

architecture known worldwide. It adorned

countless postcards and posters, and also

formed the background for many movies from

the Hollywood “dream factory”.

CONSTRUCTED ICONS

The term icon comes from the Greek word

for picture. According to the tradition of the

eastern church, it still signifies precious cult

pictures, on which the figures of the Holy are

represented against a gold-plated

background. In architecture, the constructed

icons are not the invention of modernity;

with the Tower of Babel, whose story is

narrated in the Old Testament, they have

existed since the beginning of all

constructions. The number of these

architecture icons has increased since the

end of the 1990s. An inspiration for this was

the Guggenheim Museum, which was

constructed by Frank O. Gehry in 1997 in the

North Spanish city of Bilbao. Its silver

shimmering components, which seem to

have been inspired by Cubism, give the

house its distinctive appearance. Since the

sensational success of the museum, the

“Bilbao effect” is observed worldwide.

Whether glassy cool or concrete gray,

Architecture in the 21st century

The first decade

Herzog & de Meuron, NationalStadium, Peking, 2003–2007

The stadium for the Olympic Games2008, designed by Basel star architectsHerzog & de Meuron, appears like agigantic bird nest. For the expressiveinterwoven construction of the stadiumfaçade, Herzog & de Meuron usedapproximately 40,000 tons of heavyprefabricated steel elements. Thepowerful steel beams overlap in alldirections. The inside of the 230-feet (70-meters) high sports complex in turnconsists of a sophisticated concreteconstruction that has a seating capacityof up to 91,000 spectators. After theAlliance Arena in Munich with itscolorfully illuminated plastic cover,Herzog & de Meuron have come up withtheir third sports stadium, a building withan expressive picture effect. This hashelped them to reinforce their position asone of the most innovative architectureoffices worldwide.

112 THE F IRST DECADE

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120 GLOSSARY

aabbssttrraaccttiioonn Tendency in modernart starting about 1850 tosimplify forms whenrepresenting a naturalistic modelin a work of art, especially inpainting. The culmination of thistendency is in painting without asubject – abstract painting – asfor example in the period around1910 with the works of PietMondrian or Kasimir Malevich.

aaccaaddeemmiicc The nature of theeducation, conforming totraditional values, formerlyoffered by art schools. Isgenerally used pejoratively torefer to conservative art incontrast to innovativemovements such asImpressionism, Expressionismand the Secession.

AAmmsstteerrddaamm SScchhooooll InfluentialDutch Expressionist architecturalmovement, whose chiefrepresentatives, Johann Melchiorvan der Mey, Michel de Klerk,and Pieter Kramer, constructedstrongly expressive buildings inbrick.

aannttiiqquuiittyy Generic termdescribing the two high periodsof early European culture: Greekantiquity (at its apogee in the 5thand 4th centuries BC) andRoman antiquity (1st and 2ndcenturies AD).

aarrccaaddee A range of arches carriedon piers or columns, either free-standing or attached to a wall.

aarrcchh Any upwardly curvedelement which forms a linkbetween two vertical elements.Extremely varied types of archeshave existed since the time ofAncient Rome. The use ofdifferent types of archcharacterizes specific epochs ofarchitectural history (semicirculararch: Romanesque, Renaissance;pointed arch: Gothic). Flattenedarches are also frequently to befound; these consist of asegment of a semicircular arch.The functional purpose of anarch is to distribute a down force(e.g., the weight of a vaulted roof)into several supports.

aarrcchhiitteeccttuurraall eennggiinneeeerriinnggBuilding of a kind which sincethe days of Antiquity could onlybe carried out with specialtechnical knowledge. In the 19thcentury this was represented

mainly by stations, bridges, andalso buildings entirely of iron,such as the Eiffel Tower. The20th century has seenarchitectural engineering carriedto new heights, especially insports stadia. (See Pier Luigi Nerviand Frei Otto).

aarrcchhiitteeccttuurree ppaarrllaannttee Frenchterm meaning ‘‘speakingarchitecture,” describingbuildings where the form givesan indication as to their use, asfor instance in the case of FritzHöger’s Chile House, which wasbuilt for a shipping company.

AArrtt DDééccoo A style in art in the 20sand 30s, whose name derivesfrom the “Expositioninternationale des arts décoratifset industriels modernes” (Paris,1925). One of its distinguishingmarks is rounded corners.

AArrtt NNoouuvveeaauu Generic term for amovement which had manyvariants: “Art Nouveau” in France,“Modern Style” in England,“Jugendstil” in Germany, “Stileliberty” in Italy, “Modernismo” inSpain. With its flat-lookingornamentation displaying awealth of vegetal curves, it wasthe complete opposite toacademic art.

AArrttss aanndd CCrraaffttss MMoovveemmeennttInfluential movement in the areaof applied art, originating inEngland in the middle of the19th century under theleadership of William Morris,Philip Webb and John Ruskin.They were in favor of a return tothe craft tradition of the MiddleAges and were against industrialmass production.

aattttiicc (specialist sense) Anerection above the cornice,hiding the beginning of the roof.Often used to give emphasis to acentrally projecting volume.

aaxxiiss ((lliinnee ooff ssiigghhtt)) A straight linefrom the eye to the object ofsight. Buildings and gardens aregenerally laid out symmetricallyon either side of a line of sight,which enhances their effect.Window axes are imaginary linesrunning from back to front orfrom side to side of a building.

bbaarrooqquuee (Portuguese “barocco”– small stone, unevenly shapedpearl) This idea, derived from the

art of the jeweler, was used in aderogatory sense (meaningbizarre or bulbous) by theclassicists about the previous era.The terms cover art and cultureof the 17th and 18th centuries inEurope. It was very different in thevarious countries. Generallystarting from the formal canon ofantiquity, the baroque developedcolorful and opulent decorations,sometimes made of stucco,which created a particularlymagnificent impression. It wasdisliked by the classicists of the18th and early 19th centuries onthe grounds that it wasoverladen. It was brought to lifeagain from about 1860 in theneo-Baroque.

bbaassee Bottom section of abuilding or sculpture (seepedestal).

bbeellvveeddeerree (Italian: beautiful view)Originally the description of,among other things, a pavilion(usually in a garden), which canbe used to admire a view.

bboorrddeerr Ornamental decorativepanel at the edge of a fabric. Alsoused in connection with walls.

bbrriicckk See also clinker. Blockmade of clay in various colors(usually red or yellow) baked till itis hard. Bricks that have beensubmitted to a great heat arecalled clinker, and were muchused in expressionistarchitecture.

BBrrüücckkee,, DDiiee A group of artistsfrom Dresden, founded in 1905and including among others Karl Schmidt Rottluff, ErichHeckel, Otto Müller, MaxPechstein and Ludwig Kirchner.Their strongly expressive andhighly colorful works, influencedby Gothic models and primitiveart, founded the GermanExpressionist movement inpainting.

BBrruuttaalliissmm Idea introduced by LeCorbusier originally relating tothe use of unfinished, bareconcrete, and taken up by theSmithsons and others in GreatBritain. Brutalism stands forarchitecture that is truthful aboutits materials, and where nothingis covered up, so that functionalrelationships are directly visible.

ccaappiittaall The top of a column, aform deriving from thearchitecture of Antiquity. It differsin shape according to whichorder it belongs to (Doric, Ionic,Corinthian or Composite).

ccaasstt iirroonn aarrtt An art form found inthe decorative arts andarchitecture, especially in 19thcentury Prussia (Schinkel,Memorial on the Kreuzberg,Berlin 1818–21) which wasattributed a high degree ofnational importance.

cceemmeenntt Waterproof buildingmaterial made of a mixture ofburnt lime and clay. An importantingredient of concrete.

cceerraammiicc ttiilleess Tiles made of firedclay, for the most part glazed andcolored (see faience).

CChhaarrtteerr ooff AAtthheennss see CIAM

SScchhooooll ooff CChhiiccaaggoo A group ofAmerican architects such asWilliam Le Baron Jenney andLouis Sullivan, who took part inthe rebuilding of Chicago in thelate 19th century and builtskyscrapers that becamesignposts for the new.

CCIIAAMM (Congrès Internationauxd’Architecture Moderne).International forum of the avant-garde for modernist architectsfounded in 1927 under theleadership of Le Corbusier andSiegfried Gidion. The congresses,which were highly ideologicaland formalistic, took a differenttheme each time. So, theoutcome of CIAM II, in 1929, ledby Ernst May, was a report titled“The minimal-living unit.” In1930 in Brussels there followed“Rational building methods,”when Gropius was one of thespeakers. CIAM IV (1933) wasdevoted to the functional city.From this emerged the “Charterof Athens,” which bore the stampof Le Corbusier’s concepts. TheCharter of Athens presupposesthe division of the modern cityinto zones corresponding to theirmain functions: living, work,leisure and transport. Against abackground of increasingcriticism of the International Styleand the advent of Brutalism, the10th and last CIAM took place inOtterlo in 1959.

ccllaassssiicciissmm Return of theclassical formal repertoire of thearchitecture of Antiquity inEurope and North America in thelate 18th and early 19th centuries(see Schinkel).

cclliimmaattiizzaattiioonn A technical systemfor optimizing the balance ofincoming and outgoing air inbuildings. Especially important inmuseums, whose treasuresrequire a constant climate, as

GLOSSARY OF TERMSThe words in italics in the main text are explained in this glossary. Thoseitalicized here are further elucidated elsewhere in the glossary or in thenames index.



GLOSSARY 121

well as buildings holding a lot ofpeople, as for instance publichalls and skyscrapers.

cclliinnkkeerr Brick that has beenbaked at a very high temperature,so that the pores sinter, that is tosay acquire a glassy waterproofsurface.

ccoonnccrreettee A resistant, relativelylight and cheap substance,made of sand, gravel, andcement, which sets hard asstone, and can be cast in adesired shape using formwork. Itwas brought to perfection inFrance in 1879 by Hennebiquein the form of reinforcedconcrete. This system enhancesthe load-bearing properties ofconcrete by the addition of aniron or steel skeleton, so thatenormous roof areas can bespanned. The adaptability ofconcrete to a variety of usageshas made it one of the mostimportant building materials ofthe 20th century (see Perret, LeCorbusier).

ccoolloonnnnaaddee Hall or walk withpillars. A roofed area with rows ofpillars and entablature.

ccoolluummnn Cylindrical supportcharacterized by its swelling form(entasis). A column has a base,clearly differentiated from thestructure underneath, and acapital which tops the column,and connects it to theentablature.

ccoonnsseerrvvaattiioonn Efforts, beginningin the 19th century, to preserveworks of art from previousepochs (preservation), or to repairthem (restoration).

CCoonnssttrruuccttiivviissmm A theory of artheld by Tatlin and El Lissitsky inthe early days of the SovietUnion, according to whicharchitecture must be reduced toits necessary functional (seefunction) elements, so that it isdominated by pure construction.

ccoorrnniiccee A horizontal moldedprojection which crowns abuilding.

CCuubbiissmm (Latin: “cubus” – cube) Astyle adopted by Picasso, Braqueand Delaunay from 1907onwards, whereby natural formsare reduced to their geometricbasic construction. Thecorresponding movement inarchitecture was that of thePrague Cubists.

ccuurrttaaiinn wwaallll A non load-bearingfaçade or wall of glass, granite or

plastic hung in front of a load-bearing construction.

DDeeccoonnssttrruuccttiivviissmm Thismovement became knownthrough the exhibition“Deconstructivist Architecture”organized by Philip Johnson andMark Wigley in 1988 at theMuseum of Modern Art.Deconstructivist buildings differfrom Modernist or Post-Modernbuildings through theirintersecting, splintered, andsharply inclined forms. Theyexpress a general sense ofdestabilization which has beenwidespread in the West (and notjust in the West) in the 1980sand 90s. The viewer’s firstsensation on seeing many ofthese buildings is astonishment,aroused by their apparenttechnical impossibility, theirastonishing use of materials andtheir unusual formal language.The chief representatives ofDeconstructivism, which hasnow become an internationalmovement are Gehry, Libeskind,Hadid, the COOP Himmelblau,Peter Eisenman, and BernardTschumi.

DDee SSttiijjll A group of artists formedin Holland in 1917 under theinfluence of Piet Mondrian, andwhich included, among others,Theo van Doesburg, GerritThomas Rietveld, and JacobusJohannes Pieter Oud. Their aimwas to produce applied arts andarchitecture in an abstractlanguage of forms freed from thedecoration of traditionalarchitecture.

DDeeuuttsscchheerr WWeerrkkbbuunndd Anassociation, founded in 1907, ofcraftsmen, industrialists, andarchitects to promote theproduction of art on a nationalscale, and extend its economicrelevance and industrialization.

DDiioocclleettiiaann wwiinnddooww Also knownas Thermal window. A semi-circular window, subdivided bytwo vertical supports. Firstappears in Ancient Rome.

ddoommee A type of roof having theshape of part of a sphere, whichhas been in use since AncientRome. Has frequently appearedin the West since theRenaissance in palaces andsacral buildings, but it is alsofound in quite ordinary buildingsin Islamic architecture.

DDoorriicc One of the three mostimportant orders of columns of

Ancient Greece, which has asquat shaft with no base andbroad flutes, and is crowned by aspreading capital and a friezewith triglyphs (surface in theentablature decorated withgrooves).

ddrryy ssttoonnee wwaallllss Traditional wallswhere the stones are piled ontop of each other and not boundtogether with any agent such as mortar.

eecclleeccttiicciissmm A mixture of severalhistorical styles in a building. Itpredominates in Historicism butis also to be found in Post-Modernism.

eennttaabbllaattuurree That part of an orderwhich is above the column,including the architrave, thefrieze, and the cornice.

eeppoocchh Historical period in whicha particular style and itscharacteristic ornamentationdevelop.

EExxpprreessssiioonniissmm Art movement inthe early 20th century, chiefly inwestern and eastern Europe,covering painting (Die Brücke,the Fauves) and architecture (theAmsterdam School). Thedistinguishing features ofExpressionism in architecture areforms with a lot of movementand color and frequently withdetailed ornamentation. Brickand clinker are the buildingmaterials most frequently used.

ffaaççaaddee (Latin: “facies” – theexternal form) The “face” of ahouse, usually the front wall orthe side that is most intended tobe seen. The appearance andarticulation of a façade oftenreveal the characteristics of anepoch or of a particular style.

FFaauuvveess (French: the wild men) Agroup of artists headed by HenriMatisse, roughlycontemporaneous with theDresden Brücke Artists, whocreated an art characterized byvivid movement and studiesfrom nature.

ffaaiieennccee Brightly colored potteryderiving its name from the Italiancity of Faenza, which was thecenter of its production in theRenaissance.

ffllaatt rrooooff See roof.

ffllaatttteenneedd aarrcchh See arch.

fflluuttiinngg Vertical grooves on theshaft of a column.

ffoorrmmwwoorrkk Temporary, generallyprefabricated hollow structureinto which liquid concrete is

poured. After the concrete hashardened, the formwork is thenremoved. Bare concrete oftenshows the traces of theformwork, sometimes thisincludes the marks of the grainwhen it was made of woodenplanks.

ffrriieezzee An area, normally justunder the roof or ceiling whichhas been used since Antiquity fordecoration, either in an abstractor figurative way.

ffuunnccttiioonn,, ffuunnccttiioonnaalliissmm Basic tothe design of ground plans andfaçades in modern architecturefrom Sullivan (“form followsfunction”) right up till Post-Modernism. This concept, whichimplies that the function of abuilding should dominate itsdesign, making it as economicas possible, was chiefly to befound in industrial building, butalso occurred in residentialbuilding, where it implied doingaway with elements consideredto be superfluous, such asdecoration, and with rooms thatwere mainly for show. It was chiefly through theBauhaus that functionalismbecame the dominant principlein the organization ofarchitecture in the 20th century.More recent movements such asPost-Modernism andDeconstructivism arecharacterized by their criticalattitude to a one-sided emphasison the functional in architecture.

FFuuttuurriissmm Modern art movementin pre-First World War Italy,inspired by enthusiasm for thefuture. (In architecture see, forexample, the designs ofSant’Elias).

ggaabbllee A triangular surface in theroof between two slopingelements. In major buildingworks such as castles, there areoften remarkable sculptures inthe gables. Split gables (orpediments) are to be foundespecially in Renaissance,baroque and Post-Modernbuildings. These do not join atthe top but have an interruptedform, giving a dramatic note tothe culmination of the building.

ggllaassss aarrcchhiitteeccttuurree Glass hasentered architecture more andmore since John Paxton’s CrystalPalace. Bruno Taut’s glasspavilion at the Werkbundexhibition in Cologne united



With contributions from Wolfgang Hoffmann and Philipp Meuser

Drawings: Meuser Architects, Berlin

© h.f.ullmann publishing GmbH

Managing Editor: Peter DeliusProject management: Ulrike Reihn-Hamburger

Editing and layout: Ulrike SommerCoverdesign: Simone Sticker

Cover: All images: © Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin, except for:Front cover top left and top middle right

Back cover bottom: © British Architectural Library Photographs Collection

Original title: Geschichte der ArchitekturISBN 978-3-8480-0564-2

© for the English edition: h.f.ullmann publishing GmbH

Translation from German: Susan Bennett in association with Goodfellow & Egan, CambridgeEditor of the English-language edition: Philippa Youngman in association with Goodfellow & Egan, Cambridge

Typesetting: Goodfellow & Egan, CambridgeProject Management: Jackie Dobbyne for Goodfellow & Egan, Cambridge

Overall responsibility for production: h.f.ullmann publishing GmbH, Potsdam, Germany

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The Story of Modern Architecture of the 20th Century · THE STORY OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE OF THE 20th CENTURY Jürgen Tietz ... whole of Europe and North America, created a new type