American architecture

In 19th and 20th century

Introduction

• The Americas (also collectively called America) comprise the totality of the continents of
North and South America. Together, they make up most of the land in Earth's western
hemis Climate

• Climate zones of the Americas in the Köppen climate classification system.

• The climate of the Americas varies significantly from region to region. Tropical rainforest
climate occurs in the latitudes of the Amazon, American cloud forests, Florida and Darien
Gap. In the Rocky Mountains and Andes, dry and continental climates are observed.
Often the higher altitudes of these mountains are snow-capped.

• Southeastern North America is well known for its occurrence of tornadoes and hurricanes,
of which the vast majority of tornadoes occur in the United States' Tornado Alley.[70] Often
parts of the Caribbean are exposed to the violent effects of hurricanes. These weather
systems are formed by the collision of dry, cool air from Canada and wet, warm air from
the Atlantic.phere and comprise the New World
Presented by
• Pranav parab
• Jyoti patil
• Praveen patil
• Sachit patil
• Rupali phalke
• Shon pisal
Early 20th-Century 1900-1920
• Exposed functional building elements,
such as ground-to-ceiling plate glass
windows, and smooth facades.
• The style was molded from modern
materials--concrete, glass, and steel.
• Characterized by an absence of
decoration.
• Interior and exterior walls merely act
as design and layout elements, and
often feature dramatic, but non
supporting projecting beams and
columns
Early 20th-Century 1900-1920

• Colonial Revival
• Neoclassical
• Tudor
• Chateauesque
Colonial Revival
• colonial Revival (also Neocolonial, Georgian
Revival or Neo-Georgian) architecture.
• a nationalistic design movement in the United
States and Canada.
• Part of a broader Colonial Revival Movement
embracing Georgian and Neoclassical styles.
• it seeks to revive elements of architectural
style, garden design, and interior design of
American colonial architecture.
Neoclassical
• A style which originated in Europe
and in the US from 1885-1925 reviving
and combining the Greek and
Roman Classical Architecture with
the ideas of Renaissance
Architecture.
• Also known as Classical Revival or
Beaux Arts Classicism, this style
incorporates; grandiose symmetrical
compositions and façade,
Colonnaded portico with grand stair
and imposing columns Balustraded
balconies
• Pronounced cornices and
entablatures, Triangular pediment
Tudor 1890 -1940

• Tudor homes are characterized by their

steeply pitched gable roofs, playfully
elaborate masonry chimneys (often with
chimney pots), embellished doorways,
groupings of windows, and decorative
half-timbering, this last an exposed wood
framework with the spaces between the
timbers filled with masonry or stucco.
 Chateauesque

• French chateau-like appearance

• Round tower with conical roof
• Steeply pitched hipped or gable roof, often
with cresting
• Tall chimneys with decorative caps
• Round arch or flattened basket-handle arch
entry
• Multiple dormers
• Quatrefoil or arched tracery decorative
elements
• Balustraded terrace
• Usually of masonry (stone or brick)
construction
 Art Deco Style c. 1923-1940
• The Art Deco style had been born in Paris, but
no buildings were permitted in that city which
were higher than Notre Dame Cathedral
(with the sole exception of the Eiffel Tower)
• Geometric decorative elements & a vertically
oriented design.
• This distinctly urban style was never widely
used in residential buildings
• Towers and other projections above the
roofline enhance the vertical emphasis of this
style.
• Flat roofs, metal window casements, and
smooth stucco walls with rectangular cut-outs
mark the exteriors of Art Deco homes.
• Facades are typically flush with zigzags and
other stylized floral, geometric, and "sunrise“
motifs.
• By 1940 the Art Deco style had evolved into
"Art Moderne," which features curved
corners, rectangular glass-block windows,
and a boatlike appearance.
 Art Deco Style c. 1923-1940
• Characteristics -In classic Art Deco, rectangular blocky forms were often arranged in
geometric fashion, then broken up by curved ornamental elements. But always the aim
was a monolithic appearance with applied decorative motifs.
• Materials-Art Deco materials included stucco, concrete, smooth-faced stone, and
Terracotta. Steel and aluminum were often used along with glass blocks and decorative
opaque plate glass (vitrolite).
• Roof -Art Deco designers adorned flat roofs with parapets, spires, or tower-like constructs to
accentuate a corner or entrance. Decorative curiosities such as chimneys were added to
further enhance the design.
• Windows -Windows usually appear as punctured openings, either square or round. To
maintain a streamlined appearance for the building, they were often arranged in
continuous horizontal bands of glass. Wall openings are sometimes filled with decorative
glass or with glass blocks, creating a contrast of solid and void forms while admitting
daylight. Many large apartment buildings found aesthetic success with decorative
embossed spandrel panels placed below windows. The Kennedy-Warren Apartments is an
example.
 Art Deco Style c. 1923-1940
• Entrance -Doorways are
sometimes surrounded with
elaborate pilasters and
pediments, and door
surrounds are often
embellished with either
reeding (a convex
decoration) or fluting (a
concave decoration). The
quality and extent of the
decorative motifs vary by
project and designer.
Frank Lloyd Wright
(1867-1959)
• Flat planes to accent the parries
of the Midwest.
• Designed around centralized
fireplace
• Attempted to create a
complete environment
• out the conviction that buildings
have a
• profound influence on their
inhabitants,
• making architects molders of
people.
Developments During the 1940s and
1950s
• The Second World War was one of the most destabilizing
events of the 20th century, with important consequences
also in the field of architecture.

• The conditions that had caused the birth of modern

architecture had lost force, and architects found
themselves forced to seek new solutions while at the same
time heeding the importance of the architectural
revolution of the 1920s.
• This concerned most of all the famous European architects, who reworked
their language to avoid sterile imitation, but did so without betraying the
principles they had matured in the prewar years, or their pre-eminent
status in the industry.

• Gropius founded The Architects Collaborative, the members of which

designed the modernistic Harvard Graduate Center (1949-50), while Mies
van der Rohe became head of the architecture department at the Illinois
Institute of Technology at Chicago in 1938 and designed its new campus.

• True, the works Gropius was responsible for in the United States, primarily
schools and single-family homes, do not share the expressive intensity of his
prewar designs in Germany, but Mies van der Rohe found Chicago -
birthplace of the skyscraper and the steel framework - highly congenial to
his style.
Corporate Modernism

• On the banks of Lake Michigan, Mies van der Rohe designed his first steel-
and-glass skyscrapers.

• With the collaboration of Philip Johnson, Mies designed one of the most
influential buildings of the postwar period, New York's Seagram
Building (1954-58), an impressive skyscraper whose sharp glass-and-steel
silhouette became a highly imitated prototype. The thirty-eight-floor
building on Park Avenue was designed for the Canadian multinational
Seagram & Sons.

• Hailed as a masterpiece of corporate modernism, its curtain wall of

bronze and glass forms a dense grid that accentuates the building's stark
verticality. It is embellished by the grey-amber tint of the window glass and
the green travertine dressing of the columns at the base
• Mies van der Rohe's style of simple minimalism and use of steel and
glass were repeated by other architects, like Philip Johnson, Eero
Saarinen and Charles Eames (1907-78), whose language went
through progressive evolutions.

• The Seagram Building epitomized the use of modern architecture by

large corporate concerns, and their search for distinctive emblems of
prestige during the postwar period.

• The Connecticut General Life Insurance Company

commissioned Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, one of the biggest firms
of modern architects, to design their new Hartford headquarters
(1955-57).

• Lever Brothers had already hired the firm to design Lever

House (1952), whose park-like plaza, glass-curtain walls, and thin
aluminum mullions had Mies van der Rohe's name all over them
• The austere, geometric aesthetic of the General Motors Technical
Center (1948-56) in Michigan, was another building that followed
Miesian principles, as was the UN Headquarters Building (1947-52),
designed by Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer and others.

• Other examples of 1950s modernism include: the tower for the

Aluminum Company of America at Pittsburgh (1954), designed
by Harrison and Abramovitz; and the Inland Steel Building at
Chicago (1955-57), designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. Frank
Lloyd Wright was one of the few to reject the rectilinear geometry of
these office buildings: see, by contrast, the faceted design of his
concrete and copper Price Tower (1955), Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
Modernist
Postmodernist
Architecture
• Modernism is a philosophical movement that, along with
cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and
far-reaching transformations in Western society in the late
19th and early 20th centuries.
• The term is often applied to modernist movements at the
turn of the 20th century, with efforts to reconcile the
principles underlying architectural design with rapid
technological advancement and the modernization of
society.
Characterstics

• Common themes of modern architecture include:

• the notion that "Form follows function", a dictum originally
expressed
• by Frank Lloyd Wright's early mentor Louis Sullivan,
meaning that the
• result of design should derive directly from its purpose
• simplicity and clarity of forms and elimination of
"unnecessary detail" materials at 90 degrees
The Guggenheim Museum

• Situated in Manhattan, New York City, it is the permanent

home of a renowned and continuously expanding
collection of Impressionist, Post- Impressionist, early
Modern and contemporary art.
• Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, the cylindrical building,
wider at the top than the bottom, was conceived as a
"temple of the spirit".
• Its design was inspired by a "Ziggurat" Babylonian temple
pyramid, inverted.
Postmodernity

• Postmodernity in architecture is said to be heralded by the

return of "wit, ornament and reference" to architecture in
response to the formalism of the International Style of
modernism.
• The functional and formalized shapes and spaces of the
modernist style are replaced by diverse aesthetics: styles
collide, form is adopted for its own sake, and new ways of
viewing familiar styles and space abound.
• Perhaps most obviously, architects rediscovered the expressive
and symbolic value of architectural elements and forms that
had evolved through centuries of building which had been
abandoned by the modern style.
Characterstics

• These characteristics include the use of sculptural forms,

• ornaments, anthropomorphism and materials which perform
trompe
• l'oeil. These physical characteristics are combined with
conceptual
• characteristics of meaning, including pluralism, double
coding, flying
• buttresses and high ceilings, irony and paradox, and
contextualism.
• The sculptural forms, not necessarily organic, were created
with much
Decorative Formalism

• During the early 1950s, in a move away from 'functionalism'

towards 'formalism', modern architects became increasingly
interested in the decorative qualities of different building
materials and exposed structural systems.

• In simple terms, they began using the formal attributes of

buildings for decorative, even expressive, purposes. An
interesting example of this new aesthetic was Frank Lloyd
Wright's design for the Guggenheim Museum in New York
(1943-59), a building organized around a spiral ramp that
constitutes the arrangement of the museum's display as well as
the generative element of its overall design.
• Other American architects also used curvilinear structural
geometry, as exemplified by the sports arena at Raleigh (1952-
53), designed by Matthew Nowicki (1910-49), where two
parabolic arches, held up by columns, and a stretched-skin
roof enclose a massive space devoid of interior supports.

• The more muted formalist style of Minoru Yamasaki (1912-86) is

illustrated by his 1,360 foot Twin Towers of the World Trade
Center, buildings 1 and 2, designed in 1965-66
• Another example of formalist decoration was the John Hancock Center
(1967-70), designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, which made a
feature of the building's X-shaped support braces, designed by Fazlur
Khan (1929-82), probably the greatest skyscraper design-engineer of the
20th century. This trend of structural expressionism, dynamic
monumentalism - call it what you will - remains a presence in modern
architecture: witness the sleek rectangular patterns of SOM's Time Warner
Center (2003-7), New York.

• An interesting recipient of the Gold Medal of the American Institute of

architects, in 1971, was the Estonian-born Louis Isidore Kahn (1901-74).
Kahn's career followed a different course from many of those cited above.
His training had taken place before the international style had taken root
in the United States.
Deconstructivism
• Deconstructivism is a movement of postmodern architecture which appeared in the 1980s,
which gives the impression of the fragmentation of the constructed building. It is
characterized by an absence of harmony, continuity, or symmetry. [1] Its name comes
from the idea of "Deconstruction", a form of semiotic analysis developed by the French
philosopher Jacques Derrida. Architects whose work is often described as
deconstructionism (though in many cases the architects themselves reject the label)
include Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Bernard
Tschumi, and Coop Himmelb(l)au.
• Besides fragmentation, Deconstructivism often manipulates the structure's surface skin and
creates by non-rectilinear shapes which appear to distort and dislocate elements of
architecture. The finished visual appearance is characterized by unpredictability and
controlled chaos.
History, context and influences
• Deconstructivism came to public notice with the 1982 Parc de la Villette
architectural design competition, in particular the entry from Jacques Derrida and
Peter Eisenman[2] and the winning entry by Bernard Tschumi, as well as the
Museum of Modern Art’s 1988 Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition in New York,
organized by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley. Tschumi stated that calling the work
of these architects a "movement" or a new "style" was out of context and showed
a lack of understanding of their ideas, and believed that Deconstructivism was
simply a move against the practice of Postmodernism, which he said involved
"making doric temple forms out of plywood".[3]

• Other influential exhibitions include the 1989 opening of the Wexner Center for the
Arts in Columbus, designed by Peter Eisenman. The New York exhibition has
featured works by Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman,
Zaha Hadid, Coop Himmelb(l)au, and Bernard Tschumi. Since their exhibitions,
some architects associated with Deconstructivism have distanced themselves
from it; nonetheless, the term has stuck and has come to embrace a general
trend within contemporary architecture.
Thank you….