European Architects of the 19th century had lost sight of the fundamental principles which make architecture an expression of the age and society which produces it -namely that (i) the building must effectively fulfill the needs giving rise to its plan, (ii) the design must be suited to the construction means available, (iii) the appearance should reflect the taste of the period of its construction.
Architecture at this time became a battle of styles as architects decorated their buildings with historical ornament which archaeologists were unearthing on sites of ancient civilizations. This attempt to recapture the grandeur of the past was indicative of social unwillingness to face up to the vast changes in the community which industrialization was causing. While industrial expansion brought with it a drab colourless and monotonous way of life, the arts became isolated from the community in their sentimental attempts to recreate past achievements.
The Architects formulated an order of historic styles with which they decorated their structures - Gothic was considered suitable for religious architecture, public buildings were Renaissance, and monument and commemorative structures were Classical.
While architects squabbled over the merits of historical ornament it remained for the engineers to make use of the new materials which industrial expansion was providing in abundance. The first cast iron bridge was designed by an engineer as early as 1779 and in 1851, Joseph Paxton designed the "Crystal Palace" to house the "Great Exhibition" of the arts of manufacture". Paxton was not an architect but a greenhouse designer, and when architects plans proved completely unsatisfactory for such an undertaking, he put forward his proposal for a structure to cover eighteen acres to be assembled from 3,300 cast iron columns and 300,000 panes of glass. The "Crystal Palace" was fabricated and erected within nine months in Hyde Park London, where it was crammed with exhibits of the worst monstrosities of the industrial arts. After the Great Exhibition it was dismantled and re-erected on another site where it was destroyed in 1936. In solving this gigantic architectural problem, Paxton showed that the architect was of no real importance. He also indicated the possibilities of the light construction methods offered by iron and glass - masonry construction of such proportions would require load bearing walls of colossal thickness.
The lesson of the Crystal Palace was missed by all but a few. In France the new materials were used more than elsewhere but again in the service of a style - the Art Nouveau with its long whipping curves - to be seen in the work of Van der Velde and Victor Horta of Belgium, Hector Guimard of France.
During the last years of the 19th century there were some individual architects working among the chaos of the historical styles, who became to realize the necessity for designing in terms of the materials to be used and not ornamental appearance.
In England Philip Webb and C.F.A Voysey, in Scotland Charles Rennie Makintosh, in Spain Antoni Gaudi, in France August Perret, in America Henry Richardson and Louis Sullivan were creating designs along more rational lines, buildings with simplicity of shape and suitability to the required function.
Richardson and Sullivan began the Chicago style of commercial building - the forerunner of the modern skyscraper - but a development which was not followed until the 1930's.
Early 20th Century
In 1908 an Austrian architect, Alof Loos delivered a telling blow at Historicism. He published a book titled "Ornament and Crime" which was not to have far reaching influence in architectural and industrial design. It was Loo's claim that if an object were properly designed for the job it had to do there was no need for ornament which was being used to conceal poor design and workmanship. Loos designed, in 1910, the Steiner House, in Vienna - a well proportioned flat walled white box.
In America Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 to 1959) contrived the fundamental ideas of Richardson and Sullivan and was first destined to become one of the greatest of all architects. What first commanded Wright's attention was the Victorian style house with vertical lines and Gothic like towers standing in the flat, open Midwestern prairie country.
It became his objective to design a house to harmonize with its site. The outstanding early example of his intention was the "Robie House" (1909) in Chicago (nicknamed the "Prairie House"). The long low horizontal lines of the design help to weld house and surroundings into unified whole. The overhanging eaves of the roof give a feeling of protection, after all, the primary function. Wright also studies the requirements of modern living and reassessed the planning of interior space. He dropped the idea of rooms being individual boxes and mad the interiors of his designs into elastic spaces flowing from living are to another with broad windows and openings to join interior and exterior space.
In his use of the accented roof line with its over hang (Hickox House (1900) and Willits House (1902) ) and the linking of interior and exterior living space. Lloyd Wright shows a strong Japanese influence. Its in these two features that the striking difference with European design is to be seen - The Steiner House with its crisp clean functional purity could be places on any site and its roof forms no part of the visual effect.
In many respects architecture of the early 20th century had followed painting - Ce'zanne's interesting planes and organized space is to be seen in Lloyd Wright's work. Cubism's recognization of visual forms and massing of blocky shapes can be seen n the newly developing functional architecture of commerce.
The Destijl movement of 1917 in Holland with its abstract purity of linear shape, balance and proportion with colour limited to black, white and primaries produced an architecture of such purity that all connection with the past had been severed. Van Doesberg, Rietveld and Ovd designed buildings of a purely functional nature and an abstract beauty and precision -devoid of all applied decoration, the structural units themselves supplying aesthetic effect.
The destijl principles were used with most effect by German architect Mies Van der Rohe. One of the most significant of his early project was for a country house (1922) in which for the first time the wall instead of the room was used as the unit of composition. The interior space was allowed to flow in directions controlled by the placement of wall surfaces which did not join or intersect and some of which extended out into the landscape. During the 1920's Van der Rohe experimented with projects for glass and concrete buildings and sky scrapers in the curtain wall principle which is the basis of today's construction methods - Instead of the exterior walls acting as the load bearing members and thus severely limiting window space due to strength requirements, exterior glass walls are simply hung from each floor which in turn supported by an internal structure or core which also acts as service connections.
Mid 20th Century
The clean, precise, logical architectural design of Van der Rohe in the late twenties and early thirties, derived from the destijl principles, are contrasted by the work of Eric Mendelsohn with its dramatic plastic form. It is on Van der Rohes lines that architecture of the thirties and post war period develops while the daring forms of the fifties and sixties may we owe much to the spirit of Meldelsohn.
Van der Rohe with his arrangements of free flowing interior and exterior space (German Pavilion Barcelona, 1929; Tugendhat House, Czechoslovakia 1930) and Walter Gropius (Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany 1926). Had demonstrated an international style of architecture suited to the machine age.
In France Edvard Jeanneret (practicing under the name Le Corbusier) and Amerbe Ozenfant developed a type of Cubist painting with greater clarity and precision than the work of Picasso and Barque. Le Corbusier and Ozenfant wrote many theories on the redevelopment of the arts - in particular architecture. In 1914 Le Corbusier prepared diagrams for a method of construction adaptable to any problem. Floors made of reinforced concrete slabs were supported by columns set in from the perimeter of the building. As the floors were supported by columns only, there was no need of complicated foundations and floors could be stacked on as needed. As the building could stand free of the ground the space left could be use as gardens. The top most slab, as it was flat could also be used as a garden or recreational area. Examples: Swiss building, Paris University 1932; Apartment House, Marseille 1950. As the walls serve no structural purpose the building can be clad with any material considered suitable. Le Corbusiers ideas for a house design are the formation of a self contained unit distinct from exterior - as with Loos - a building which might suit many conditions of site and open to the outside by way of its transparent window areas (the Stein house 1927, Savoye House 1927, both in France).
Le Corbusiers most radical and exciting thinking is to be seen in his plans for housing and town planning projects. It has been his ability to solve architectural problems of exceptional difficulty and still organize each individual project with the feeling of a painter or sculptor, that has been a powerful influence on toady's architects.
United States of America
In the United States the skyscraper and factory became the leading architectural features of the 1930's. Greek and Gothic styles were proving quite impossible with structures of such size that they could not be seen in one glance and so high that the top could not even be seen from the street (effect of peace, tranquility, spiritual uplifting and aspiration of Greek, Gothic). The American skyscrapers of the thirties designed by the large collaborating firms of architects gained a purity of form as the structural piers of columns were treated as a vertical decorative element which accented the building's slender shaftlike form.
In the field of individual architectural expression, Frank Lloyd Wright designed some of the most famous houses of the 20th century.
"Taliesin West" built in the Arizona desert 1938 is an attempt to capture the primitive spirit of the landscape with its stony cactus studded terrain, its hot dusty conditions and short sudden rain squalls sweeping down from the mountains. Lloyd Wright set blocks of local stone in concrete to form low protective walls. Redwood beams spanning the walls supported canvas awnings for weather protection in a warm temperate climate. Living space was planned on stepped levels which echoed in the open mesa country side.
The most sophisticated of Wright's domestic buildings is the Kaufmann House "Falling Water" built in Pennsylvania in 1937.
The cantilevered construction form a rock ledge over hangs a waterfall. The horizontal slab walls appear suspended in space with a classical calm tranquility. The spatial relationship and rectangular mofits owe much to the international style of Van der Rohe and corbusier but the ingenious integration of building and site is Wright's.
The biggest failure of architecture of the post war years and fifties undoubtedly be the enormous quantity being done. Some of it with outstanding qualities ensuring for its future recognition - but most is the product of mediocre architects who, without really understanding, following the footsteps of the originators. A reassessment of old materials in the light of new construction materials each with their own structural possibilities is giving the architect a great scope in a profession challenged by the incredible population explosion and consequent need of many buildings of unprecedented variety. It is perhaps, in some of the newly developing countries without a traditional way of thinking and seeing, that some of the biggest strides will be taken.