Post Modernism Vs. Robert Venturi

­Post Modernism Vs. Robert Venturi

It is time now to move from modernism which mainly steel, glass functional box. Robert Charles Venturi was the first architect to stand agents modernism. He said that ornamentation and form plays a significant role in design. Post modernism brings modernism to another level.

The “Duck and Decorated Shed” designed by Robert Venturi is a very good example. The “Duck” shows the function of the building through ornamentation in the form of a duck building. The building is a shop selling duck eggs, so the purpose the building is shown by its form of ornamentation as a duck. People can know right away what the building is for by that way.

Decorated Shed is another way to show the identity of the building without making the building itself a sign. A completely generic and normal building becomes a hotel or a shop by adding different signs, which indicate its functions. The decorated shed gives more freedom of choice since it can be adjust to different purposes. The building can be understood differently according to how it is decorated. The duck building, on the other hand, is more straight forward and leaves no room for alternative interpretation. It is a duck and cannot be understood otherwise.

(Repost) Modernism Vs. Expressionism

Modernism Vs. Expressionism

Modernism has no doubt to become a great era of design I the world. We have been seeing modern architectures, modern art and others ways of modern for a long time. Modernism has become well known as a “international style” through the work of many famous architects like Le Corbusier, Mies Van Der Rohe and Walter Gropius. Simplicity is one word that connects their works together. Relating to modernism the form fallow function.

Expressionism is different from modernism, which is simple and dull in terms of designing. Expressionism tends to give more feeling to the building itself and it expresses feeling out in terms of form.

The TWA Terminal at JFK international airport, New York by Eero Saanrinen, 1962. The building uses cure roofs with glass facades in a shape like a bird flying, representing the feeling of flying because it’s an airport. By that shape the architect is trying to express the word flying in an abstract way. 

Towards New Architecture / PlayTime

Le Corbusier, another great modernism architect of this era like Mies Van Der Rohe the father of modern architecture. For him everything in his architecture must be simple and clean just like the word “modern”. The architectures are simple, but by being simple they still provide functions for living.

The film “Playtime” directed by Jacques Tati, A comedian and director. In this film he tells a story of a man traveling in Paris, which every thing looks the same, well managed, put in order, colorless, plain and simple. A city full of plain metallic, glass buildings with no decorations. Mainly mass produces architecture. People are label by numbers and dressing all the same, which is very confusing. Everything divided into blocks, which all look the same. It is so confusing

The movie is clearly showing the world through Corbusier’s mind about modern architecture. The whole city was well design and organized in a modern way. Everything is in the grid, glass boxes and steel structure.  I was quite interested at the start of the movie I didn’t understand the movie clearly, but by spending more time watching through the movie and looking through the scenes we can start understand the story he wants us to see. The color of the places were very dull so all the buildings look the same, the cars in the airport parking lot even a picture of the hotel in the poster for a vacation looks exactly the same as the office. The people inside the film dress the same and looks the same, their cloths looks international, that’s why you can see people getting confused all the time, they keep saying hello to strangers, but they think they know that person.

In the film the director uses sound effects to identify different places, person, actions or feelings, but actually those sound effects are unreal.

MIES VAN DER ROHE & ORNAMENTATION

Mies Van Der Rohe one of the most successful modernism architecture of the 20^th century. His work was mainly pure and modern, showing the real materials, being honest. Mies was the person who came up with the quote “Less is more”, avoiding all the elements of “bourgeols” such as ornamentation. He was able to provide functional out of the materials itself based on minimalism, which also relates to his quote “Less is more”. He started working in the US with this line of billionaire clients waiting for his design. Since he was not a bug fan of ornamentation his work was just plain walls, but then he came up with the whole wall craft out from marble, which cost about a million dollars. In my opinion that was quite against his concept because modernism was more a kind of mass production working with prefabricated materials like steel or glass and they don’t cost a lot. Another example was the “Seagram” due to the fire at Chicago forcing him to cover the I-beams, which is the main structure of the building with concrete. Another row of i-beams were established on the façade of the building because he wanted to show what was inside the concrete columns, that was totally against his style in terms of ornamentation. Because he was so famous, in the end no one really said that he was breaking his own theory.