Alvar Aalto(1898-19760
Over the course of his 50-year career, Alvar Aalto, unlike a number of his contemporaries, did not rely on modernism’s fondness for industrialized processes as a compositional technique, but forged an architecture influenced by a broad spectrum of concerns. Alvar Aalto ‘s is an architecture that manifests an understanding of the psychological needs of modern society, the particular qualities of the Finnish environment, and the historical, technical, and cultural traditions of Scandinavian architecture. Early works by Alvar Aalto combined neoclassical ideas with the International Style. Later, Aalto’s buildings were characterized by asymmetry, curved walls, and complex textures. Alvar Aalto received international acclaim with the completion of the Paimio Tuberculosis Sanatorium. The Sanatorium building established Aalto’s dominance of the International style and, more importantly, emphasized Aalto’s attention to the human side of design. The patients’ rooms, with their specially designed heating, lighting and furniture, are models of integrated environmental design. Alvar Aalto’s Paimio chair assisted patient breathing. The term Nordic Classicism has been used to describe some of Alvar Aalto’s work. Many of his buildings combined sleek lines with richly textured natural materials such as stone, teak, and rough-hewn logs. Alvar Aalto was also known for furniture and industrial design. In 1932, he developed a revolutionary type of furniture made of laminated bent plywood.
In 1937 at the International Exhibition in Paris, Aalto built the Finnish Pavillion, an eloquent antidote to pomposity. The modest scale of the building, shaded with high trees, was restful to the visitor. Instead of crushing the visitor with bombastic exhibits . it offers the visitor a helping hand and puts him at ease. In Finland, the work of Aalto showed a huge advance on then current modern architectural thinking.
Le Corbusier(
Le Corbusier pioneered modernism in architecture and laid the foundation for the International Style. During his long life, Le Corbusier designed buildings in Europe, India, and Russia. Le Corbusier also designed one building in the United States and one in South America. Le Corbusier individuality can be understood only if one accepts his buildings not as isolated phenomena, but against the background of comprehensive architectural philosophy. He became better known for his writings of the future rather than what he built. The earlier buildings by Le Corbusier were smooth, white concrete and glass structures elevated above the ground. He called these works “pure prisms.” In the late 1940s, Le Corbusier turned to a style known as “New Brutalism,” which used rough, heavy forms of stone, concrete, stucco, and glass. The same modernist ideas found in Le Corbusier’s architecture were also expressed in his designs for simple, streamlined furniture. Imitations of Le Corbusier’s chrome-plated tubular steel chairs are still made today. Le Corbusier is perhaps best known for his innovations in urban planning and his solutions for low income housing. Le Corbusier believed that the stark, unornamented buildings he designed would contribute to clean, bright, healthy cities. Le Corbusier’s urban ideals were realized in the Unité d’Habitation or the “Radiant City,” in Marseilles, France. The Unite incorporated shops, meeting rooms, and living quarters for 1,600 people in a 17-story structure. Today, visitors can stay at the Unite in the historic Hotel Le Corbu
His philosophy was:
1. The separation of load bearing construction from space- enclosing walls. Free standing columns lift the first floor off the ground. ” The house is suspended in the air, away from the ground, while the garden spreads under the house. Le Corbusier differentiates between the house and its surroundings, at the same time establishing a new relationship with nature by bringing green spaces under the building.
2. The flat roof, appropriate to the idea of a house as a cube, since pitched roof would spoil the desired unity of its rectangular shape. He uses the roof as a terrace garden.
3. Freedom in planning the interior made possible by frame construction- orientating the structural system in the same direction: two main girders placed longitudinally carry the suspended ceiling of the hall. BY this penetrating interpretation of function, structure and form, a new and original type of hall emerges , which is can have a stimulating effect on the design of large concert halls and auditoriums.
Walter Gropius(1879-1964)
Walter Gropius was a German architect and art educator who founded the Bauhaus school of design, which became a dominant force in architecture and the applied arts in the 20th century. Bauhaus combined art, sculpture and architecture as one. Gropius taught that all design should be functional as well as aesthetically pleasing. The architect’s personality is subordinated to his work. The Bauhaus school pioneered a functional, severely simple architectural style, featuring the elimination of surface decoration and extensive use of glass. He started with the famous industrial architect, Peter Behrens. Although Gropius is best known for the Bauhaus style, his architectural reputation was first established when, working with Adolph Meyer, he designed the Fagus Works (1910-1911) and the office building for the Werkbund exhibition in Cologne (1914). The Fagus building appears to be a glass curtain wall building. There is no change in the conventional structural building except steel beams are used for the floors. Masonry columns are offset from the corners allowing the corners to be glass. is only used Walter Gropius opposed the Nazi regime and left Germany secretly in 1934. After several years in England, Gropius began teaching architecture at Harvard University. As a Harvard professor, Gropius introduced Bauhaus concepts and design principles – teamwork standardization, and prefabrication – to a generation of American architects at the Harvard Graduate Design Center where he taught architecture foe many years. Between 1938 to 1941, Gropius worked on several houses with Marcel Breuer. They formed the Architects Collaborative in 1945. Among their commissions were the Harvard Graduate Center (1946), the U.S. Embassy in Athens and the University of Baghdad. One of Gropius’s later designs, in collaboration with Pietro Belluschi, was the Pam Am Building (now the Metropolitan Life Building) in New York City
MIES VAN DER ROHE (1886-1969)
Mies van der Rohe succeeded Some say that he stripped architecture of all humanity, creating cold, sterile and unlivable environments. Others praise his work, saying he created architecture in its most pure form. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe began his career in his family stone-carving business in Germany. He never received any formal architectural training, but when he was a teenager he worked as a draftsman for several architects. Moving to Berlin, he found work in the offices of architect and furniture designer Bruno Paul and industrial architect Peter Behrens. Early in his life, Mies van der Rohe began experimenting with steel frames and glass walls. He was director of the Bauhaus School of Design from 1930 until it disbanded in 1933. He moved to the United States in 1937 and for twenty years (1938-1958) he was Director of Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Mies van der Rohe taught his taught students at IIT to build first with wood, then stone, and then brick before progressing to concrete and steel. He believed that architects must completely understand their materials before they can design. Mies van der Rohe was not the first architect to practice simplicity in design, but he carried the ideals of rationalism and minimalism to new levels. His glass-walled Farnsworth House near Chicago stirred controversy and legal battles. His bronze and glass Seagram Building in New York City (designed in collaboration with Philip Johnson) is considered America’s first glass skyscraper. And, his philosophy that “less is more” became a guiding principle for architects in the mid-twentieth century. Skyscrapers around the world are modeled after designs by Mies van der Rohe.
Louis Kahn(1901-1974)
Louis I. Kahn competed only a few buildings, yet he is widely considered one of the great architects of the twentieth century. His training at the Pennsylvania School of Fine Arts grounded Kahn in the elaborate approach to architectural design. As a young man, he became fascinated with the heavy, massive architecture of medieval Europe and Great Britain. Struggling to build his career during the Depression, Kahn designed low-income public housing. Inspired by the Bauhaus Movement and the Modern-Architecture/International, Kahn became a champion of Functionalism. Using simple materials like brick and concrete, Kahn arranged building elements to maximize daylight. The commissions that Kahn received from Yale gave him the chance to explore ideas he’d admired in ancient and medieval architecture. He used simple forms to create monumental shapes. Kahn was in his 50s before he found what he felt to be his true architectural voice. Many critics praise Kahn for moving beyond the International Style to express unique ideas.