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Modern Architecture: Rejecting the Past
Modern architecture is marked by innovation and by rejecting
the past, by brilliant and tall structures as well as by small,
intimate spaces. The Modern movement, beginning at the turn of the 20th
century, was brought forth by the rather cocky belief that modern man
had transcended earlier man, and thus needed a new form of
architecture; this was often interpreted by architects as architecture
should now be plain and unadorned, resulting in plain, blocklike
buildings.
Fortunately, architects came to their senses. Frank Lloyd Wright,
widely recognized as the father of modern architecture, was largely
ignored in his early career. Wright created such innovations as the
concept of free-flowing space, and the idea of connecting related
elements closely together. Wright rejected the concept of trapping
living space inside a square box, and instead allowed elements to flow
freely together in an almost organic manner. He encouraged minimizing
the number of rooms used in a building, and focused his talents on the
inner space of buildings rather than the outer space.
Wright also created innovations in comfort. He was one of the first
modern architects to pay serious attention to air flow in buildings,
making possible modern versions of duct heating and air conditioning.
In his work with office buildings and the first skyscrapers, he defined
four new properties that modern architects would have to incorporate in
their work. The first was transparency, obtained with glass, as an
architectural element rather than as something that allowed light
inside houses that were now often lit with electricity. The second he
called tenuity, which was a new plasticity available for building
shapes; this would not be possible without steel-and-concrete
construction. Between these first two things, the core of the modern
skyscraper developed. Wright also encouraged focus on naturalism,
allowing the natural beauty of materials to show through; and on
integration, a closely related design concept in which ornament was a
function of the building’s design.
