Architecture and Space
The United States played a great role in the modernism movement concerning new advanced building and construction technologies. Among construction innovations there are such materials as iron, steel and reinforced concrete. Brooklyn Bridge by John and Washington Roebling (1869–1883) (for more details see John Roebling/Washington Roebling)
Louis Henry Sullivan headed the so-called Chicago school of architecture, which was distinct by its development of functional design along with modern materials. Sullivan's follower Frank Lloyd Wright absorbed from his 'lieber Master' (dear master) the German romantic tradition of organic architecture. He developed a new and original approach to residential design before World War I, which became known as the "prairie style." It combined open planning principles with horizontal emphasis, asymmetrical facade elevations, and broad, sheltering roofs. Robie House in Chicago (1909) and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City (1946–59) are two of his seminal works.
In his works Wright moved closer and closer to an earth-bound sense of natural form, using rough-hewn stone and timber and aiming always in his houses to achieve an effect of intimate and protective shelter.
Foreign-born architects as Richard Neutra, Rudolf Schindler, and William Lescaze during the 1920s played a great role in development of American architecture performing later a style, which got the name of international style and was reflected in the design of corporate office buildings after World War II. Such buildings as Skidmore, Owings and Merrill's Lever House (1952) and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building (1956–58) in New York City are the examples of this new style. When such famous Europeans as Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe immigrated to the United States, many American architectural schools went under the influence of the traditions of the Bauhaus in Germany.
Read more about this topic: American Modernism
Famous quotes containing the words architecture and, architecture and/or space:
“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”
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“In the United States there is more space where nobody is is than where anybody is.”
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