Dr.

Simon Richards
Lu-arc

Modern and Postmodern

Architecture
A very simple before-and-after overview,
pivoting around the establishment and
dismantling of CIAM and the debates that
this generated
CIAM’s failure “amounts to
treason. All the more so since
what is done is done and cannot
be torn down again (nobody is
forced to look at a bad painting,
read a bad poem or listen to
bad music).”

Aldo Van Eyck, Team 10 Primer (1962)

 Mies van der Rohe, Project for a Glass Skyscraper (1919-21); Well Coates, Lawn Road Flats, London (1934)

Walter Gropius and Hannes Meyer, Bauhaus, Dessau (1924); Philip Johnson, Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut (1949)
 Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (1997); Daniel Libeskind, Jewish Museum, Berlin (1999)

Tadao Ando, Water Temple, Hyogo Prefecture (1991); Rafael Moneo, National Museum of Roman Art, Mérida (1985)
Attenborough Tower (Arup Associates, 1970) and Charles Wilson Building (Denys Lasdun, 1963), Leicester
 Key points of MODERN architecture:
1. Aesthetic of Machines, Abstract Geometries,
Tectonics
2. Social Utopianism
3. Function/Functionalism
4. Faith in Science, Expertise and the Total Control of
the Architect-Planner (‘Lawgiver’)
5. Anti-Democratic Social Management or Dictatorship
6. Perfection and Completeness of Building, Cities,
People and Society
7. International Uniformity/International Style
8. Standardization of Parts/Elements/Fixtures, Mass-
Production, New Technologies
9. Hostile Relationship with Tradition and Existing
Cityscape (‘Tabula Rasa’/Demolish and Rebuild)
 Louis Sullivan

Carson, Pirie, Scott Building

Chicago

1899-1904

Pioneer of steel-frame
construction to overcome
limitations of load-bearing
masonry and columnar
construction

Also coined the phrase that

‘form follows function’

Elisha Otis: invented safety

elevator in 1852
Daniel Burnham

Flatiron Building

New York

1902
Francois Hennebique: patented invention of reinforced concrete in 1892

Auguste Perret, Rue Franklin Apartments, Paris (1904)

Left & Middle: Mies van der Rohe
Two Projects for a Glass Skyscraper for Berlin
(1919-21)

Right: Mies van der Rohe & Phillip Johnson

Seagram Building
New York (1957)
 Peter Behrens
AEG Turbine Hall
Berlin
(1909)
 Vladimir Tatlin
Monument to the Third International
(1919)
 Adolf Loos
Goldman & Salatsch Building
Vienna
(1909)
 Le Corbusier
Domino (1914-18)
Pilotis, free-plan, free-façade, horizontal window, roof garden
(‘Five Points of a New Architecture’, 1926)
 Tony Garnier
Une cité industrielle
(1918)
 Le Corbusier
Ville Contemporaine
(1922)
 Below:
Le Corbusier
Palais des Nations
(1927)

Above:
Flegenheimer, Nenot, Lefevre, Broggi and
Vago
Palais des Nations
Geneva (1936)
CIAM
(International Congresses of Modern Architecture):

Siegfried Giedion, Karel Teige, Cornelis van Eesteren,

Josep Lluís Sert, Mies van der Rohe,
Jacqueline Tyrwhitt, Hannes Meyer, etc.
Walter Gropius & Hannes Meyer
Bauhaus
Dessau, Germany (1924)
 Gerrit Rietveld
Schröder House
Utrecht, Holland
(1924)
 Le Corbusier
Villa Stein
Garches, France (1927)
Philip Johnson
Glass House
New Canaan,
Connecticut
(1949)
 Left:
Wells Coates,
Lawn Road Flats,
Hampstead, London (1933-34)

Right:
Ivor Smith and Jack Lynn,
Park Hill Estate,
Sheffield (1961)
Alison and Peter Smithson

Robin Hood Gardens

London (1966 – 72)

Konrad Smigielski: http://www2.le.ac.uk/news/blog/2012/january/video-the-man-who-built-modern-
leicester

Left:
Minoru Yamasaki, Pruitt-Igoe housing ‘Project’, St. Louis, Missouri
(begun 1951; demolished 1972)

Right:
Newham Council, Ronan Point, Newham, London
(built and partial collapse 1968; demolished 1986)
CIAM’s failure “amounts to
treason. All the more so since
what is done is done and cannot
be torn down again (nobody is
forced to look at a bad painting,
read a bad poem or listen to
bad music).”

Aldo Van Eyck, Team 10 Primer (1962)

 Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (1997); Daniel Libeskind, Jewish Museum, Berlin (1999)

Tadao Ando, Water Temple, Hyogo Prefecture (1991); Rafael Moneo, National Museum of Roman Art, Mérida (1985)
 Key points of POSTMODERN
architecture:
1. Community
2. History and Context
3. Flexibility and Open-endedness (including Self-Build)
4. Populism and Popular Taste
5. Erosion of Faith in Expertise of Architect-Planner
6. Democratic Incorporation of User/Community Views
7. Sensualist, Experiential (phenomenology)
8. Disruptive, Challenging (deconstruction)
9. Regionalism and Vernacular
10. Return to Tradition
11. Urban Regeneration rather than Demolish and
Rebuild
Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk

Seaside

Walton Country, Florida (1981 – present)

Haworth Tompkins Architects, for Coin Street Community Builders

Iroko

South Bank, London (2001)

Duany and Plater-Zyberk

Riviera Beach,
proposal for ‘urban
retrofit’

Palm Beach Country,

Florida (1991)
Above Left:
Julian Bicknell,
Forbes House,
London (1998)

Above:
Demetri Porphyrios,
Magdalen College,
Oxford (1994-98)

Left:
Quinlan Terry,
Richmond Riverside,
Surrey (1984-87)
 Leon Krier

Poundbury

Dorset

(1987 – present)
 Amphitheatres converted
to new uses

from Aldo Rossi,

The Architecture of the City (1966)
Above:
Aldo Rossi,
I. B. A. Social Housing,
Berlin (early 1990s)

Left:
‘Filarete’s Column’, Venice
from Aldo Rossi,
The Architecture of the City (1966)
 Drop City

Colorado (est. 1965)

Cedric Price
Fun Palace
(1962)
Archigram

Plug-In City
&
Living Pods

(1960s)
Constant Nieuwenhuis, New Babylon

(mid-1950s – 1974)
 Kisho Kurokawa

Nakagin Capsule Tower

Tokyo (1972)
 Metastadt-
Planungsgesellschaft
mbH

Metastadt, Wulfen (1974)

http://www.afewthoughts.co.uk/flexiblehousing/
Richard Rogers & Renzo Piano
Pompidou Center
Paris (1977)
Rafael Viñoly, Performing Arts Centre aka Curve,
Leicester (2008)
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Images from
Learning from Las Vegas
(1972)
Ahrends, Burton and Koralek

Original competition winning

design for the Sainsbury Wing
extension
Left:
VSBA,
Proposal for Philadelphia Orchestra
Hall
(1987-96)

Below Left:
VSBA,
Sainsbury Wing, London (1988-92)

Below:
FAT, Blue House, London (2004)
Left:
Frank Gehry, ‘Fred and
Ginger’,
Prague, 1995

Below:
Frank Gehry and Claes
Oldenberg,
Chiat/Day Building,
Venice, California, 1991
Above:
John Outram,
Storm Water Pumping Station,
London, 1985-87

Right:
John Outram, The Egyptian
House,
Oxfordshire, 2002
Arata Isozaki, Team Disney HQ, Orlando (1992)
Charles Moore

Piazza d’Italia

New Orleans

(1978)
Above:
Zaha Hadid
Vitra Fire Station
Weil-Am-Rheim, Germany, 1991-94

Right:
Daniel Libeskind
V&A extension aka ‘Spiral’
(proposal)
Bernard Tschumi, Glass Video Gallery, Groningen, Netherlands,
1990
 Peter Eisenman
House VI
Cornwall, Connecticut
(1976)
Hassan Fathy, New Gourna (1945-48)
 Luis Barragán

San Cristobal Stable, Pools and House

Los Clubes, Mexico City

(1968)
Juan O’Gorman, Gustavo Saavedra
and Juan Martinez de Velasco

UNAM Library

Mexico City

(1952)
Peter Zumthor, Serpentine Pavilion, London (2011)
 Key values of MODERN architecture:
1. Aesthetic of Machines, Abstract Geometries,
Tectonics
2. Social Utopianism
3. Function/Functionalism
4. Faith in Science, Expertise and the Total Control of
the Architect-Planner (‘Lawgiver’)
5. Anti-Democratic Social Management or Dictatorship
6. Perfection and Completeness of Building, Cities,
People and Society
7. International Uniformity/International Style
8. Standardization of Parts/Elements/Fixtures, Mass-
Production, New Technologies
9. Hostile Relationship with Tradition and Existing
Cityscape (‘Tabula Rasa’/Demolish and Rebuild)
 Key values of POSTMODERN
architecture:
1. Community
2. History and Context
3. Flexibility and Open-endedness (including Self-Build)
4. Populism and Popular Taste
5. Erosion of Faith in Expertise of Architect-Planner
6. Democratic Incorporation of User/Community Views
7. Sensualist, Experiential (phenomenology)
8. Disruptive, Challenging (deconstruction)
9. Regionalism and Vernacular
10. Return to Tradition(alism)
11. Urban Regeneration rather than Demolish and
Rebuild
 MODERN architecture: POSTMODERN architecture:

1. Aesthetic of Machines, Abstract 1. Community

Geometries, Tectonics 2. History and Context
2. Social Utopianism 3. Flexibility and Open-endedness
3. Function/Functionalism (including Self-Build)
4. Faith in Science, Expertise and 4. Populism and Popular Taste
the Total Control of the 5. Erosion of Faith in Expertise of
Architect-Planner (‘Lawgiver’) Architect-Planner
5. Anti-Democratic Social 6. Democratic Incorporation of
Management or Dictatorship User/Community Views
6. Perfection and Completeness 7. Sensualist, Experiential
of Building, Cities, People and (phenomenology)
Society 8. Disruptive, Challenging
7. International (deconstruction)
Uniformity/International Style 9. Regionalism and Vernacular
8. Standardization of 10. Return to Tradition(alism)
parts/elements/fixtures, Mass- 11. Urban Regeneration rather than
Production, New Technologies Demolish and Rebuild
9. Hostile Relationship with
Tradition and Existing Cityscape
(‘Tabula Rasa’/Demolish and
Rebuild)
 Mies van der Rohe, Project for a Glass Skyscraper (1919-21); Well Coates, Lawn Road Flats, London (1934)

Walter Gropius and Hannes Meyer, Bauhaus, Dessau (1924); Philip Johnson, Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut (1949)
 Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (1997); Daniel Libeskind, Jewish Museum, Berlin (1999)

Tadao Ando, Water Temple, Hyogo Prefecture (1991); Rafael Moneo, National Museum of Roman Art, Mérida (1985)
 Caveats
This is only one version of 20th century architectural history, based around the life and
death of CIAM. Although simple and although using contested terms (‘Modern’,
‘Postmodern’) it is a useful way to begin to understand the bigger historical picture.
Alternative histories exist, however, and they complicate the picture.

They argue:

• That the values ostensibly ‘discovered’ in Postmodernity were in fact rediscoveries

of an alternative Modernist tradition that existed alongside CIAM, e.g. in the work
of Frank Lloyd Wright and Alvar Aalto. This is a plausible historical view. (See Colin
St. John Wilson’s The Other Tradition of Modern Architecture, 1995)

• That the key Modernists of CIAM upheld the same values as the best of ‘today’,
and were all lovers of history, democracy, equal rights, community, regional
values, nature, and so on. This is usually much less plausible, and these histories
sometimes operate in a rehabilitative and hagiographic mode that is geared
towards recruiting architectural heroes to current ways of thinking.

• If you want to know more about these competing historiographies, read the
introduction and first chapter (‘The More Things Change’) of my book, Architect
Knows Best (Ashgate, 2012).
Below:
Erich Mendelsohn,
Einstein Tower,
Potsdam (1919-21)

Above:
Frank Lloyd Wright,
Fallingwater,
Bear Run, Pennsylvania (1934-37)

Others in the ‘alternative’ modernist tradition:

Hugo Häring, Hans Scharoun, Gunnar Asplund,

Alvar Aalto, Hassan Fathy and Luis Barragán