What is Modern Architecture?

By Mark Crinson

• In 1928, Swiss architect Le Corbusier posed this question
  • Asked many times before
  • The question is different now because style not based on cultural identity, but based on forces due to modernity itself
• Bruno Taut in 1929 saw British architectural culture as backwards
  • Disliked attempt to find harmony between architectural form and new technologies
  • Architect must instead find “fulfillment of purpose” which leads to beauty
  • Architect creator of social character, must encourage better behavior.
  • Political implications of architecture
• “Abstraction, function, modern technology, space, and form are all essential to the lexicon.”
  • Form follows function
  • Replication
  • Replication of images
  • Architecture border-less, free of historic and geographic constraints, in another world
  • Then came form with reflective, smooth surfaces
• Membership
  • Policing operations
• Question more difficult to answer
• Symbols in architecture to eliminate the unnecessary
  • Appropriate visual language of communication
• Architecture does have a place and a function
• Modern architecture is the coming into being of all these forces

Non West Modernist Past: Rethinking Modernism and Modernities Beyond the West

by Jiat-Hwee Chang and William S.W. Lim

• Conference for interdisciplinary critique of modern architecture
• Singapore’s architecture
• International scholars and theorists reviewed modern architecture beyond the West
• Geopolitical naming of a region can describe existing reality and imagined reality
• Was the West origin of modern architecture? Asymmetry and innovation
• Is the non-West less worthy of architectural historians?
  • Othering
  • Problematic
• The contributors challenge architecture history through 3 approaches:
  • Heterogeneous nature of modernism
  • Relationship between modernism, modernization, and modernity
  • Modernism in context outside of the west
• Expansion in scope
• Architects as actors because of their emphasis on modernity
• Modernity conditions: economics, industrial, political
  • These conditions affect needs and therefore affect architecture
  • Shifting ideologies
  • Ikea modernism: tasteful, comfortable, pleasing
  • Enthusiasm to preserve modernism heritage
  • Singapore and Southeast Asia
• Preservation of modern architecture challenging, buildings did not age well and reconstruction needed was at odds with original. Meaning and social significance lost.
• Modernism is shaped by cultural, social, economic, and political conditions of the time.

Crafting Architecture Criticism

By David Leatherbarrow

• Architecture = craft
  • Practice needs clarification
  • Today’s means of communication changed the nature of what is communicated?
  • Critics?
• Architecture has a voice of its own outside of the Architect’s voice
• Conditions and vicinity of structure and those who use it all affect the architecture’s voice
  • e. Philadelphia Saving Fund Society Building
• Projects need criticism to progress, play a role in the history of the field
• Experimentation to create work
• Criticism sparks creativity
• Architecture and Criticism
  • Enriched by, impoverished without
  • Close observation creates reeducation of the critic
• Architects image what a buildings purpose can be and context can be in the future
• Say what you see
• How else would we get new ideas into the community discourse without criticism?
• Online snap judgements
• Single parts of the building are criticized
• Reconstruction of a work and relocation of a work. Comparing works
• Criticism enlarges public understanding if there is a historical context
• Project’s aspirations are always measured against some exiting condition

Response to Crafting Architecture Criticism

I agree dialogue has to be at play for new possibilities to open up and new ideas to flow in architecture practice. However, I disagree that this genesis must arise through criticism. There can be a public view or experience of really liking a certain structure for particular reasons. An architect can hear that and generate more ideas that push that concept further. An architect’s own personal experience can force her to create something that diverges from traditional concepts. It is stated in this article that criticism is needed to open up new possibilities. The inverse states that if there was no criticism, than architectural practice would be stagnant. This cannot be the case. Change will happen whether architects like it or not. The environment will change (ever heard of climate change?) thus traditional ways of building no longer serve current conditions. If no architecture were ever criticized, architects would still be forced to find new possibilities of adaptation. It is the nature of the world we live in. Architects also have a force within themselves to generate new ideas without an outside force acting on them. There can be an innate inspiration inside that generates new ways of thinking about architecture. Criticism can provide a catalyst for change, but it does not have to be present for architecture to progress.

The Colonnade

Architect: Paul Rudolph

The Colonnade, Paul Rudolph, 1986

The Colonnade Condominiums is in Singapore and designed by architect, Paul Rudolph. The concept of the prefabricated units was initially conceived for the Graphic Arts Center of Manhattan, but the Center was never built. The idea of a megastructure as serving many functions in a single large complex was innovative. However, prefabricated units were not produced due to financial and technical limitations, so a pour-in-place concrete was used instead. This is an example of the modern aesthetic that was constructed in the “Non-West” as the article by Jiat-Hwee Chang and William S.W. Lim puts it, but by an American architect. The meaning and social significance of this 1986 structure changes with context over time, but retains its modern appeal. High-rise condominiums are abundant, but Rudolph’s use of environmental factors in his design is becoming increasingly necessary in today’s context due to climate change. Rudolph’s layout and spacing paid close attention to the sunlight with large window views welcoming sunlight in and shaded bedroom spaces. The structure showcases modern architecture with sharp orthogonal lines and white walls creating an other-worldly aesthetic appearing to be free from geographical constraints.

Take-Aways

• Criticism can be a catalyst for new possibilities
• Pre-conceived notions about what is “modern” based on western culture
• Modernity = Ikea