Complet Lecture 13

Modernism and postmodernism

Deconstructivism in contemporary architecture is opposed to the ordered rationality of Modernism and Postmodernism. Though postmodernist and nascent deconstructivist architects both published in the journal Oppositions (between 1973 and 1984), that journal's contents mark a decisive break between the two movements. Deconstructivism took a confrontational stance to architectural history, wanting to "disassemble" architecture.[2] While postmodernism returned to embrace the historical references that modernism had shunned, possibly ironically, deconstructivism rejected the postmodern acceptance of such references, as well as the idea of ornament as an after-thought or decoration.[citation needed]

In addition to Oppositions, a defining text for both deconstructivism and postmodernism was Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in architecture (1966). It argues against the purity, clarity and simplicity of modernism. With its publication, functionalism and rationalism, the two main branches of modernism, were overturned as paradigms. The reading of the postmodernist Venturi was that ornament and historical allusion added a richness to architecture that modernism had foregone. Some Postmodern architects endeavored to reapply ornament even to economical and minimal buildings, described by Venturi as "the decorated shed." Rationalism of design was dismissed but the functionalism of the building was still somewhat intact. This is close to the thesis of Venturi's next major work,[3] that signs and ornament can be applied to a pragmatic architecture, and instill the philosophic complexities of semiology.[citation needed]

The deconstructivist reading of Complexity and Contradiction is quite different. The basic building was the subject of problematics and intricacies in deconstructivism, with no detachment for ornament. Rather than separating ornament and function, like postmodernists such as Venturi, the functional aspects of buildings were called into question. Geometry was to deconstructivists what ornament was to postmodernists, the subject of complication, and this complication of geometry was in turn, applied to the functional, structural, and spatial aspects of deconstructivist buildings. One example of deconstructivist complexity is Frank Gehry's Vitra Design Museum in Weil-am-Rhein, which takes the typical unadorned white cube of modernist art galleries and deconstructs it, using geometries reminiscent of cubism and abstract expressionism. This subverts the functional aspects of modernist simplicity while taking modernism, particularly the international style, of which its white stucco skin is reminiscent, as a starting point. Another example of the deconstructivist reading of Complexity and Contradiction is Peter Eisenman's Wexner Center for the Arts. The Wexner Center takes the archetypal form of the castle, which it then imbues with complexity in a series of cuts and fragmentations. A three-dimensional grid, runs somewhat arbitrarily through the building. The grid, as a reference to modernism, of which it is an accoutrement, collides with the medieval antiquity of a castle. Some of the grid's columns intentionally don't reach the ground, hovering over stairways creating a sense of neurotic unease and contradicting the structural purpose of the column. The Wexner Center deconstructs the archetype of the castle and renders its spaces and structure with conflict and difference.[citation needed]

Deconstructivist philosophy

Some Deconstructivist architects were influenced by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Eisenman was a friend of Derrida, but even so his approach to architectural design was developed long before he became a Deconstructivist. For him Deconstructivism should be considered an extension of his interest in radical formalism. Some practitioners of deconstructivism were also influenced by the formal experimentation and geometric imbalances of Russian constructivism. There are additional references in deconstructivism to 20th-century movements: the modernism/

postmodernism interplay, expressionism, cubism, minimalism and contemporary art. Deconstructivism attempts to move away from the supposedly constricting 'rules' of modernism such as "form follows function," "purity of form," and "truth to materials."[citation needed]

The main channel from deconstructivist philosophy to architectural theory was through the philosopher Jacques Derrida's influence with Peter Eisenman. Eisenman drew some philosophical bases from the literary movement Deconstruction, and collaborated directly with Derrida on projects including an entry for the Parc de la Villette competition, documented in Chora l Works. Both Derrida and Eisenman, as well as Daniel Libeskind[4] were concerned with the "metaphysics of presence," and this is the main subject of deconstructivist philosophy in architecture theory. The presupposition is that architecture is a language capable of communicating meaning and of receiving treatments by methods of linguistic philosophy.[5] The dialectic of presence and absence, or solid and void occurs in much of Eisenman's projects, both built and unbuilt. Both Derrida and Eisenman believe that the locus, or place of presence, is architecture, and the same dialectic of presence and absence is found in construction and deconstructivism.[6]

According to Derrida, readings of texts are best carried out when working with classical narrative structures. Any architectural deconstructivism requires the existence of a particular archetypal construction, a strongly-established conventional expectation to play flexibly against.[7] The design of Frank Gehry’s own Santa Monica residence, (from 1978), has been cited as a prototypical deconstructivist building. His starting point was a prototypical suburban house embodied with a typical set of intended social meanings. Gehry altered its massing, spatial envelopes, planes and other expectations in a playful subversion, an act of "de"construction"[8]

In addition to Derrida's concepts of the metaphysics of presence and deconstructivism, his notions of trace and erasure, embodied in his philosophy of writing and arche-writing[9] found their way into deconstructivist memorials. Daniel Libeskind envisioned many of his early projects as a form of writing or discourse on writing and often works with a form of concrete poetry. He made architectural sculptures out of books and often coated the models in texts, openly making his architecture refer to writing. The notions of trace and erasure were taken up by Libeskind in essays and in his project for the Jewish Museum Berlin. The museum is conceived as a trace of the erasure of the Holocaust, intended to make its subject legible and poignant. Memorials such as Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Peter Eisenman's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe are also said to reflect themes of trace and erasure.

Constructivism and Russian Futurism

Another major current in deconstructivist architecture takes inspiration from the Russian Constructivist and Futurist movements of the early twentieth century, both in their graphics and in their visionary architecture, little of which was actually constructed.

Artists Naum Gabo, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, and Alexander Rodchenko, have influenced the graphic sense of geometric forms of deconstructivist architects such as Zaha Hadid and Coop Himmelb(l)au. Both Deconstructivism and Constructivism have been concerned with the tectonics of making an abstract assemblage. Both were concerned with the radical simplicity of geometric forms as the primary artistic content, expressed in graphics, sculpture and architecture. The Constructivist tendency toward purism, though, is absent in Deconstructivism: form is often deformed when construction is deconstructed. Also lessened or absent is the advocacy of socialist and collectivist causes.

The primary graphic motifs of constructivism were the rectangular bar and the triangular wedge, others were the more basic geometries of the square and the circle. In his series Prouns, El

Lizzitzky assembled collections of geometries at various angles floating free in space. They evoke basic structural units such as bars of steel or sawn lumber loosely attached, piled, or scattered. They were also often drafted and share aspects with technical drawing and engineering drawing. Similar in composition is the deconstructivist series Micromegas by Daniel Libeskind.

Computer-aided design

Computer aided design is now an essential tool in most aspects of contemporary architecture, but the particular nature of deconstructivism makes the use of computers especially pertinent. Three-dimensional modelling and animation (virtual and physical) assists in the conception of very complicated spaces, while the ability to link computer models to manufacturing jigs (CAM - Computer-aided manufacturing) allows the mass production of subtly different modular elements to be achieved at affordable costs. In retrospect many early deconstructivist works appear to have been conceived with the aid of a computer, but were not; Zaha Hadid's sketches for instance. Also, Gehry is noted for producing many physical models as well as computer models as part of his design process. Though the computer has made the designing of complex shapes much easier, not everything that looks odd is "deconstructivist."

Critical responsesSince the publication of Kenneth Frampton's Modern Architecture: A Critical History (first edition 1980) there has been a keen consciousness of the role of criticism within architectural theory. Whilst referencing Derrida as a philosophical influence, deconstructivism can also be seen as having as much a basis in critical theory as the other major offshoot of postmodernism, critical regionalism. The two aspects of critical theory, urgency and analysis, are found in deconstructivism. There is a tendency to re-examine and critique other works or precedents in deconstructivism, and also a tendency to set aesthetic issues in the foreground. An example of this is the Wexner Center. Critical Theory, however, had at its core a critique of capitalism and its excess, and from that respect many of the works of the Deconstructivists would fail in that regard if only they are made for an elite and are, as objects, highly expensive, despite whatever critique they may claim to impart on the conventions of design.

The difference between criticality in deconstructivism and criticality in critical regionalism, is that critical regionalism reduces the overall level of complexity involved and maintains a clearer analysis while attempting to reconcile modernist architecture with local differences. In effect, this leads to a modernist "vernacular." Critical regionalism displays a lack of self-criticism and a utopianism of place. Deconstructivism, meanwhile, maintains a level of self-criticism, as well as external criticism and tends towards maintaining a level of complexity. Some architects identified with the movement, notably Frank Gehry, have actively rejected the classification of their work as deconstructivist.[11]

Critics of deconstructivism see it as a purely formal exercise with little social significance. Kenneth Frampton finds it "elitist and detached".[12] Nikos Salingaros calls deconstructivism a "viral expression" that invades design thinking in order to build destroyed forms; while curiously similar to both Derrida's and Philip Johnson's descriptions, this is meant as a harsh condemnation of the entire movement.[13] Other criticisms are similar to those of deconstructivist philosophy—that since the act of deconstructivism is not an empirical process, it can result in whatever an architect wishes, and it thus suffers from a lack of consistency. Today there is a sense that the philosophical underpinnings of the beginning of the movement have been lost, and all that is left is the aesthetic of deconstructivism.[14] Other criticisms reject the premise that architecture is a language capable of being the subject of linguistic philosophy, or, if it was a language in the past, critics claim it is no

longer.[5] Others question the wisdom and impact on future generations of an architecture that rejects the past and presents no clear values as replacements and which often pursues strategies that are intentionally aggressive to human senses.[5]

Peter Zumthor (born 26 April 1943) is a Swiss architect and winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize.

Zumthor was born in Basel, the son of a cabinet-maker. He apprenticed to a carpenter in 1958 and studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in his native city starting in 1963.

In 1966, Zumthor studied industrial design and architecture as an exchange student at Pratt Institute in New York. In 1968, he became conservationist architect for the Department for the Preservation of Monuments of the canton of Graubünden. This work on historic restoration projects gave him a further understanding of construction and the qualities of different rustic building materials. As his practice developed, Zumthor was able to incorporate his knowledge of materials into Modernist construction and detailing. His buildings explore the tactile and sensory qualities of spaces and materials while retaining a minimalist feel.

Zumthor founded his own firm in 1979. His practice grew quickly and he accepted more international projects.

Zumthor has taught at Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles (1988), the Technical University of Munich (1989), Tulane University (1992), and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (1999). Since 1996, he is professor at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio

His best known projects are the Kunsthaus Bregenz (1997), a shimmering glass and concrete cube that overlooks Lake Constance (Bodensee) in Austria; the cave-like thermal baths in Vals, Switzerland (1999); the Swiss Pavilion for Expo 2000 in Hannover, an all-timber structure intended to be recycled after the event; the Kolumba Diocesan Museum (2007), in Cologne; and the Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, on a farm near Wachendorf.

In 1993 Zumthor won the competition for a museum and documentation center on the horrors of Nazism to be built on the site of Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Mr. Zumthor’s submission called for an extended three-story building with a framework consisting of concrete rods. The project, called the Topography of Terror, was partly built and then abandoned when the government decided not to go ahead for financial reasons. The unfinished building was demolished in 2004.[1] In 1999, Zumthor was selected as the only foreign architect to participate in Norway’s National Tourist Routes Project, with two projects, the Memorial in Memory of the Victims of the Witch Trials in Varanger, a collaboration with Louise Bourgeois (completed in 2010), and a rest area/museum on the site of an abandoned zinc mine.[2]

For the Dia Art Foundation in Beacon, New York, Zumthor designed a gallery that was to house the “360° I Ching” sculpture by Walter de Maria; though the project was never completed. Zumthor is the only foreign architect to participate, with two projects, the Memorial in Memory of the Victims of the Witch Trials in Varanger, a collaboration with Louise Bourgeois (to be completed in June), and a rest area/museum on the site of an abandoned zinc mine (completion date 2011). In November 2009, it was revealed that Zumthor is working on a major redesign for the campus of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.[3] Recently, he turned down an opportunity to consider a new library for Magdalen College, Oxford. He was selected to design the Serpentine Gallery's annual summer pavilion with designer Piet Oudolf in 2011.[4]

Currently, Zumthor works out of his small studio with around 30 employees, in Haldenstein, near the city of Chur, in Switzerland.[5]

Recognition

In 1994, he was elected to the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. In 1996, he was made an honorary member of the Bund Deutscher Architekten (BDA). In 1998, Zumthor received the Carlsberg Architecture Prize for his designs of the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Bregenz, Austria and the Thermal Baths at Vals, Switzerland (see below). He won the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in 1999. Recently, he was awarded Praemium Imperiale in (2008) and the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2009).

Zumthor and HeideggerThe Vals spa—famed among architects for its evocative sequence of spaces and exquisite construction details—presents intriguing correspondences between Heidegger’s writing and Zumthor’s architecture. Writing in his architectural manifesto, Thinking Architecture, Zumthor mirrors Heidegger’s celebration of experience and emotion as measuring tools. A chapter entitled “A way of looking at things” begins by describing a door handle:

I used to take hold of it when I went into my aunt’s garden. That door handle still seems to me like a special sign of entry into a world of different moods and smells. I remember the sound of gravel under my feet, the soft gleam of waxed oak staircase. I can hear the heavy front door closing behind me as I walk along the dark corridor and enter the kitchen[...].(1998:9)

Zumthor always emphasises the sensory aspects of the architectural experience. To him, the physicality of materials can involve an individual with the world, evoking experiences and texturing horizons of place through memory. He recalls places he once measured out at his aunt’s house through their sensual qualities. Zumthor’s Vals spa recounts the thinking he describes in his essay, making appeals to all the senses. The architect choreographs materials according to their evocative qualities. Flamed and polished stone, chrome, brass, leather and velvet were deployed with care to enhance the inhabitant’s sense of embodiment when clothed and naked. The touch, smell, and perhaps even taste of these materials were orchestrated obsessively. The theatricality of steaming and bubbling water was enhanced by natural and artificial light, with murky darkness composed as intensely as light. Materials were crafted and joined to enhance or suppress their apparent mass. Their sensory potential was relentlessly exploited with these tactics, through which Zumthor aimed to celebrate the liturgy of bathing by evoking emotions.

LiteratureZumthor's work is largely unpublished in part because of his philosophical belief that architecture must be experienced first hand.[7] His published written work is mostly narrative and phenomenological.

Thinking Architecture

In Thinking Architecture Peter Zumthor expresses his motivation in designing buildings that speak to our feelings and understanding in so many ways and that possess a powerful and unmistakable presence and personality. It is illustrated throughout with color photographs by Laura Padgett of Zumthor's new home and studio in Haldenstein.

“To me, buildings can have a beautiful silence that I associate with attributes such as composure, self-evidence, durability, presence, and integrity, and with warmth and sensuousness as well; a building that is being itself, being a building, not representing anything, just being. The sense that I try to instil into materials is beyond all rules of composition, and their tangibility, smell, and acoustic qualities are merely elements of the language we are obliged to use. Sense emerges when I

succeed in bringing out the specific meanings of certain materials in my buildings, meanings that can only be perceived in just this way in this one building. When I concentrate on a specific site or place for which I am going to design a building, when I try to plumb its depths, its form, its history, and its sensuous qualities, images of other places start to invade this process of precise observation: images of places I know and that once impressed me, images of ordinary or special places places that I carry with me as inner visions of specific moods and qualities; images of architectural situations, which emanate from the world of art, or films, theater or literature.”

Atmospheres

Atmospheres is a poetics of architecture and a window into Zumthor's personal sources of inspiration. In nine short, illustrated chapters framed as a process of self-observation, Zumthor describes what he has on his mind as he sets about creating the atmosphere of his houses: Images of spaces and buildings that affect him are every bit as important as particular pieces of music or books that inspire him.

From the composition and “presence” of the materials to the handling of proportions and the effect of light, this poetics of architecture enables the reader to recapitulate what really matters in the process of house design. In conclusion, Peter Zumthor has described what really constitutes an architectural atmosphere as "this singular density and mood, this feeling of presence, well-being, harmony, beauty...under whose spell I experience what I otherwise would not experience in precisely this way."

Peter Zumthor Therme Vals

Therme Vals is the only book-length study of this singular building, features the architect’s original sketches and plans for its design as well as Hélène Binet’s striking photographs of the structure. Architectural scholar Sigrid Hauser contributes an essay on such topics as “Artemis/Diana,” “Baptism,” “Mikvah,” and “Spring”—drawing out the connections between the elemental nature of the spa and mythology, bathing, and purity.

Annotations by Peter Zumthor on his design concept and the building process elucidate the structure’s symbiotic relationship to its natural surroundings, revealing, for example, why he insisted on using locally quarried stone. Therme Vals’s scenic design elements, and Zumthor’s contributions to this book, reflect the architect’s commitment to the essential and his disdain for needless architectural flourishes.[8]

Seeing Zumthor

Seeing Zumthor represents a unique collaboration between Zumthor and Swiss photographer Hans Danuser, containing Danuser’s images of buildings created by Zumthor. More than twenty years ago, in a milestone event of twentieth-century architectural photography, Danuser photographed, at Zumthor’s invitation, two buildings: the protective structure built for archaeological excavations in Chur and St. Benedict’s Chapel in Sumvitg. When first shown in exhibition, those photos ignited a lively debate that has been revived with a recent exhibition of Danuser’s photographs of Zumthor’s most famous work, the spa at Therme Vals. Seeing Zumthor collects these three important series of Danuser’s pictures and includes essays by leading art historians exploring the relationship between the two seemingly different disciplines or architecture and photography.[9]

Frank Owen Gehry (born Frank Owen Goldberg; February 28, 1929)

His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions. His works are cited as being among the most important works of contemporary architecture in the 2010 World Architecture Survey, which led Vanity Fair to label him as "the most important architect of our age".[2]

Gehry's best-known works include the titanium-covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; MIT Ray and Maria Stata Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles; Experience Music Project in Seattle; Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; Dancing House in Prague; the Vitra Design Museum and MARTa Museum in Germany; the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Cinémathèque française in Paris; and 8 Spruce Street in New York City. But it was his private residence in Santa Monica, California, which jump-started his career, lifting it from the status of "paper architecture"—a phenomenon that many famous architects have experienced in their formative decades through experimentation almost exclusively on paper before receiving their first major commission in later years. Gehry is also the designer of the future Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial.[3]

Much of Gehry's work falls within the style of Deconstructivism, which is often referred to as post-structuralist in nature for its ability to go beyond current modalities of structural definition. In architecture, its application tends to depart from modernism in its inherent criticism of culturally inherited givens such as societal goals and functional necessity. Because of this, unlike early modernist structures, Deconstructivist structures are not required to reflect specific social or universal ideas, such as speed or universality of form, and they do not reflect a belief that form follows function. Gehry's own Santa Monica residence is a commonly cited example of deconstructivist architecture, as it was so drastically divorced from its original context, and in such a manner as to subvert its original spatial intention.

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, SpainGehry is sometimes associated with what is known as the "Los Angeles School" or the "Santa Monica School" of architecture. The appropriateness of this designation and the existence of such a school, however, remains controversial due to the lack of a unifying philosophy or theory. This designation stems from the Los Angeles area's producing a group of the most influential postmodern architects, including such notable Gehry contemporaries as Eric Owen Moss and Pritzker Prize-winner Thom Mayne of Morphosis, as well as the famous schools of architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (co‑founded by Mayne), UCLA, and USC where Gehry is a member of the Board of Directors.

Gehry’s style at times seems unfinished or even crude, but his work is consistent with the California "funk" art movement in the 1960s and early 1970s, which featured the use of inexpensive found objects and non-traditional media such as clay to make serious art[citation needed]. Gehry has been called "the apostle of chain-link fencing and corrugated metal siding".[9] However, a retrospective exhibit at New York's Whitney Museum in 1988 revealed that he is also a sophisticated classical artist, who knows European art history and contemporary sculpture and painting[citation needed].

The Gehry Residence is Frank Gehry's own house. It was originally an extension, designed by Gehry built around an existing house. It makes use of unconventional materials, such as chain link fences and corrugated steel. It is sometimes considered one of the earliest deconstructivist buildings, although Gehry himself denies that it was deconstructivism.

The Gehry Residence is located in Santa Monica, California. In 1977, Frank and Berta Gehry bought a pink bungalow that was originally built in 1920.[citation needed] Gehry wanted to explore with the materials he was already using: metal, plywood, chain link fencing, and wood framing.[citation needed] In 1978, he chose to wrap the outside of the house with a new exterior while still leaving the old exterior visible.[1] He hardly touched the rear and south facades and to the other sides of the house he wedged in titled glass cubes. Then, in the fall of 1991, they chose to remodel due to the needs of their growing family including two teenage boys.[citation needed] Many of Gehry's neighbors were not happy at the unusual building being built in their neighbourhood. It's rumoured that one neighbor used to regularly bring his dog to defecate on Gehry's lawn, in protest

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is a museum of modern and contemporary art, designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, built by Ferrovial,[3] and located in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain.

It is built alongside the Nervion River, which runs through the city of Bilbao to the Atlantic Coast. The Guggenheim is one of several museums belonging to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. The museum features permanent and visiting exhibits of works by Spanish and international artists.

One of the most admired works of contemporary architecture, the building has been hailed as a "signal moment in the architectural culture", because it represents "one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united about something."[4] The museum was the building most frequently named as one of the most important works completed since 1980 in the 2010 World Architecture Survey among architecture experts.[4]

In 1991, the Basque government suggested to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation that it would fund a Guggenheim museum to be built in Bilbao's decrepit port area, once the city's main source of income.[5][6][7] The Basque government agreed to cover the US$100 million construction cost, to create a US$50 million acquisitions fund, to pay a one-time US$20 million fee to the Guggenheim and to subsidize the museum's US$12 million annual budget. In exchange, the Foundation agreed to manage the institution, rotate parts of its permanent collection through the Bilbao museum and organize temporary exhibitions.[8]

The museum was eventually built at a cost of US$89 million.[9] About 5,000 residents of Bilbao attended a preopening extravaganza outside the museum on the night preceding the official opening, featuring an outdoor light show and concerts. On October 18, 1997, the museum was opened

The museum is clad in glass, titanium, and limestoneThe Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation selected Frank Gehry as the architect, and its director, Thomas Krens, encouraged him to design something daring and innovative.[10] The curves on the exterior of the building were intended to appear random; the architect said that "the randomness of the curves are designed to catch the light".[11] The interior "is designed around a large, light-filled atrium with views of Bilbao's estuary and the surrounding hills of the Basque country."[12] The atrium, which Gehry nicknamed The Flower because of its shape, serves as the organizing center of the museum.[8]

When the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opened to the public in 1997, it was immediately hailed as one of the world's most spectacular buildings in the style of Deconstructivism (although Gehry does not associate himself with that architectural movement),[13] a masterpiece of the 20th century.[14] Architect Philip Johnson described it as "the greatest building of our time",[15] while critic Calvin Tomkins, in The New Yorker, characterized it as "a fantastic dream ship of undulating form in a cloak of titanium," its brilliantly reflective panels also reminiscent of fish scales.[14] Herbert Muschamp praised its "mercurial brilliance" in The New York Times Magazine.[16] The Independent calls the museum "an astonishing architectural feat".[12] The building inspired other structures of similar design across the globe, such as the Cerritos Millennium Library in Cerritos, California.[citation needed]

The museum is seamlessly integrated into the urban context, unfolding its interconnecting shapes of stone, glass and titanium on a 32,500-square-meter site along the Nervión River in the old industrial heart of the city; while modest from street level, it is most impressive when viewed from the river.[5][16] With a total 256,000 square feet, it had more exhibition space than the three Guggenheim collections in New York and Venice combined at that time.[7] Eleven thousand square meters of exhibition space are distributed over nineteen galleries, ten of which follow a classic orthogonal plan that can be identified from the exterior by their stone finishes. The remaining nine galleries are irregularly shaped and can be identified from the outside by their swirling organic forms and titanium cladding. The largest gallery, measures 30 meters wide and 130 meters long.[6][16] In 2005, it housed Richard Serra's monumental installation "The Matter of Time",[17] which Robert Hughes dubbed "courageous and sublime".[18]

The building was constructed on time and budget, which is rare for architecture of this type. In an interview in Harvard Design Magazine, Gehry explained how he did it. First, he ensured that what he calls the "organization of the artist" prevailed during construction, to prevent political and business interests from interfering with the design. Second, he made sure he had a detailed and realistic cost estimate before proceeding. Third, he used computer visualizations and collaborated closely with the individual building trades to control costs during construction.[19] Computer simulations of the building's structure made it feasible to build shapes that architects of earlier eras would have found nearly impossible to construct.[

Renzo Piano, Ufficiale OMRI (Italian: [ˈrɛntso ˈpjano]; born 14 September 1937 in Genoa) is an Italian Pritzker Prize-winning architect. Architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff said of Piano's works that the "...serenity of his best buildings can almost make you believe that we live in a civilized world."[1]

In 2006, Piano was selected by TIME as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.[2] He was selected as the 10th most influential person in the "Arts and Entertainment" category of the 2006 Time 100.

Piano was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1937 into a family of builders. He was educated and subsequently taught at the Politecnico di Milano. He graduated from the University in 1964 and began working with experimental lightweight structures and basic shelters.[3] From 1965 to 1970 he worked with Louis Kahn and Z.S. Makowsky. He worked together with Richard Rogers from 1971 to 1977; their most famous joint project, together with the Italian architect Gianfranco Franchini (it) is the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1971). He also had a long collaboration with the engineer Peter Rice, with whom he shared a practice (L'Atelier Piano and Rice) between 1977 and 1981.

In 1981, Piano founded the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, which today employs 150 people and maintains offices in Paris, Genoa, and New York City.[4]

In 1994, Renzo Piano won the international competition for the new Auditorium in Rome. The Auditorium Parco della Musica, a large multi-functional public music complex situated in the north of city, was inaugurated in 2002.

In 1999, Piano designed a watch entitled "Jelly Piano (GZ159)" for the Swatch Summer Collection. The watch design is clear and the exposed inner workings were influenced by his Centre Georges Pompidou design.[5]

On 18 March 2008, he became an honorary citizen of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.[6]

Piano's recent expansion of the Art Institute of Chicago includes a 264,000-square-foot (24,500 m2) wing with 60,000 square feet (5,600 m2) of gallery space[7] called the Modern Wing, which opened on 16 May 2009.[1][8] It includes a "flying carpet", a sunscreen that hovers above the roof and a 620-foot (190 m) steel bridge connecting Millennium Park to a sculpture terrace that leads into a restaurant on the wing’s third floor.[9]

His current projects include the The Shard, Europe's tallest skyscraper which was opened on July 6, 2012, and the Centro de Arte Botín. The Botin Foundation,[10] the largest private foundation in Spain, will invest over US $150 million for the construction and programming of a new Botín Center that will become an international reference in culture and education for the development of creativity through art.[

Yoshio Taniguchi (谷口 吉生, Taniguchi Yoshio; born 1937)

Biography

Taniguchi is the son of architect Yoshirō Taniguchi (1904-1979). He studied engineering at Keio University, graduating in 1960, and studied architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, graduating in 1964. He worked briefly for architect Walter Gropius, who became an important influence.

From 1964 to 1972, Taniguchi worked for the studio of architect Kenzo Tange, who was perhaps the most important Japanese modernist architect, at Tokyo University. While in the Tange office, Taniguchi also worked on projects in Skopje, Yugoslavia and San Francisco, California (Yerba Buena), living on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley while involved in the latter project. Important later collaborators include Isamu Noguchi, American landscape architect Peter Walker, and artist Genichiro Inokuma. Taniguchi is best known for designing a number of Japanese museums, including the Nagano Prefectural Museum, the Marugame Genichiro Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, and the Gallery of the Hōryū-ji Treasures at the Tokyo National Museum.

Taniguchi won a competition in 1997 to redesign the Museum of Modern Art, beating out ten other internationally renowned architects, including Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, and Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. The MoMA commission was Taniguchi's first work outside Japan.

Taniguchi has since won a commission to design the Asia House for the Texas branch of the Asia Society. This $40 million project will be located in Houston's museum district and will be Taniguchi's first free-standing new building in the United States.

Steven Holl (born December 9, 1947) is an American architect and watercolorist, perhaps best known for the 1998 Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland, the 2003 Simmons Hall at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the celebrated 2007 Bloch Building addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri,[1] and the praised 2009 Linked Hybrid mixed-use complex in Beijing, China.[1]

Early works

Kiasma, Helsinki, 1993-1998Holl won first prize in the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek International Library Design Competition in 1988, an expansion and renovation of the American Memorial Library in Berlin. In February, 1989 Holl's work was exhibited in a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. MoMA later purchased twenty-five works by Holl for the museum's permanent collection. In the 1992 competition for a new contemporary arts museum in Helsinki, Finland, Holl's entry, entitled "Chiasma," won first prize out of more than five hundred international entries. The museum opened to the public in 1998, having permanently adopted the name "Kiasma," the Finnish translation of "chiasma."

CareerHoll graduated from the University of Washington and pursued architecture studies in Rome in 1970. In 1976, he attended graduate school at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and established his offices New York City. Holl has taught at Columbia University since 1981.

Holl's architecture has undergone a shift in emphasis, from his earlier concern with typology to his current concern with a phenomenological approach; that is, with a concern for man's existentialist, bodily engagement with his surroundings. The shift came about partly due to his interest in the writings of philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty and architect-theorist Juhani Pallasmaa.

Recognition and awards

In 1998, Holl was awarded the prestigious Alvar Aalto Medal. In 2000, Holl was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In July 2001, Time named Holl America’s Best Architect, for "buildings that satisfy the spirit as well as the eye." Other awards and distinctions include the New York American Institute of Architects Medal of Honor (1997), the French Grande Médaille d’Or (2001), the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture (2002), Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (2003), the Arnold W. Brunner Prize in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the 2008 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Arts category.[2] In 2007, Steven Holl Architects received the AIA Institute Honor Award and the AIA New York Chapter Architecture Merit Award for Art Building West for the School of Art and Art History (University of Iowa, Iowa City). The Higgins Hall Insertion at Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, New York) and the New Residence at the Swiss Embassy both received the AIA New York Chapter Architecture Honor Award in 2007. In 2010, Herning Museum of Contemporary Art (Herning, Denmark) was awarded the RIBA International Award. The Horizontal Skyscraper-Vanke Center received the 2011 AIA Institute National Honor Award, as well as the AIA NY Honor Award. In 2011, he was named a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council.,[3] and Holl was named the 2012 AIA Gold Medal winner.

Architecture in English II

Lecture 13: Recent MovementsFall 2012

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

•Creative Uses of Material

•Deconstruction

•Regionalism

•Uses of Technology

Where is Architecture Going?

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

•Peter Zumthor

•Frank Gehry

•Renzo Piano

•Yoshio Taniguchi

•Steven Holl

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1990 -96 Architect: Peter Zumthor

Thermal Baths - Basel, Switzerland

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1990 -96 Architect: Peter Zumthor

Thermal Baths - Basel, Switzerland

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1990 -96 Architect: Peter Zumthor

Thermal Baths - Basel, Switzerland

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1990 -96 Architect: Peter Zumthor

Thermal Baths - Basel, Switzerland

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1990 -96 Architect: Peter Zumthor

Thermal Baths - Basel, Switzerland

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1990 -96 Architect: Peter Zumthor

Thermal Baths - Basel, Switzerland

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1990 -96 Architect: Peter Zumthor

Thermal Baths - Basel, Switzerland

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1990 -96 Architect: Peter Zumthor

Thermal Baths - Basel, Switzerland

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1991 Architect: Frank Gehry

Gehry Residence - Santa Monica, California

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1991 Architect: Frank Gehry

Gehry Residence - Santa Monica, California

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1991 Architect: Frank Gehry

Gehry Residence - Santa Monica, California

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1997 Architect: Frank Gehry

Guggenheim Museum - Bilbao, Spain

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1997 Architect: Frank Gehry

Guggenheim Museum - Bilbao, Spain

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1997 Architect: Frank Gehry

Guggenheim Museum - Bilbao, Spain

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1997 Architect: Frank Gehry

Guggenheim Museum - Bilbao, Spain

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1997 Architect: Frank Gehry

Guggenheim Museum - Bilbao, Spain

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1997 Architect: Frank Gehry

Guggenheim Museum - Bilbao, Spain

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1997 Architect: Frank Gehry

Guggenheim Museum - Bilbao, Spain

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1997 Architect: Frank Gehry

Guggenheim Museum - Bilbao, Spain

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1997 Architect: Frank Gehry

Guggenheim Museum - Bilbao, Spain

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1997 Architect: Frank Gehry

Guggenheim Museum - Bilbao, Spain

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 Architect: Renzo Piano

Kansai International Airport - Osaka, Japan

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 Architect: Renzo Piano

Kansai International Airport - Osaka, Japan

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 Architect: Renzo Piano

Kansai International Airport - Osaka, Japan

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 Architect: Renzo Piano

Kansai International Airport - Osaka, Japan

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1993 - 98 Architect: Renzo Piano

Tjibaou Cultural Center - Noumea, New Caledonia

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1993 - 98 Architect: Renzo Piano

Tjibaou Cultural Center - Noumea, New Caledonia

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1993 - 98 Architect: Renzo Piano

Tjibaou Cultural Center - Noumea, New Caledonia

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1993 - 98 Architect: Renzo Piano

Tjibaou Cultural Center - Noumea, New Caledonia

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1993 - 98 Architect: Renzo Piano

Tjibaou Cultural Center - Noumea, New Caledonia

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 2002 - 04 Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - New York

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 2002 - 04 Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - New York

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 2002 - 04 Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - New York

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 2002 - 04 Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - New York

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 2002 - 04 Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - New York

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 2002 - 04 Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - New York

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 2002 - 04 Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - New York

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 2002 - 04 Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - New York

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 2002 - 04 Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - New York

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 2002 - 04 Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - New York

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 2002 - 04 Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - New York

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 2002 - 04 Architect: Yoshio Taniguchi

Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) - New York

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1993 - 98 Architect: Renzo Piano

Tjibaou Cultural Center - Noumea, New Caledonia

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1993 - 98 Architect: Renzo Piano

Tjibaou Cultural Center - Noumea, New Caledonia

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1993 - 98 Architect: Renzo Piano

Tjibaou Cultural Center - Noumea, New Caledonia

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1993 - 98 Architect: Renzo Piano

Tjibaou Cultural Center - Noumea, New Caledonia

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 - 97 Architect: Steven Holl

Saint Ignatius Chapel - Seattle, Washington

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 - 97 Architect: Steven Holl

Saint Ignatius Chapel - Seattle, Washington

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 - 97 Architect: Steven Holl

Saint Ignatius Chapel - Seattle, Washington

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 - 97 Architect: Steven Holl

Saint Ignatius Chapel - Seattle, Washington

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 - 97 Architect: Steven Holl

Saint Ignatius Chapel - Seattle, Washington

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 - 97 Architect: Steven Holl

Saint Ignatius Chapel - Seattle, Washington

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 - 97 Architect: Steven Holl

Saint Ignatius Chapel - Seattle, Washington

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 - 97 Architect: Steven Holl

Saint Ignatius Chapel - Seattle, Washington

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 - 97 Architect: Steven Holl

Saint Ignatius Chapel - Seattle, Washington

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Date: 1994 - 97 Architect: Steven Holl

Saint Ignatius Chapel - Seattle, Washington

Wednesday, January 9, 2013