COMPARISON BETWEEN MODERNIST AND POST-MODERNIST

MODERNIST

MIES VAN DER ROHE, LUDWIG

Original name: Maria Ludwig Michael Mies  

born March 27, 1886, Aachen, Germany

died Aug. 17, 1969, Chicago, Illinois, United State of America.

He was said to be a son of a master mason who was said to own a small stonecutter's shop. He helped his parent on various construction sites but never received an official architectural training, at age 15 he was a trainee to several Aachen architects. He sketched outlines of architectural decorative object. This assignment was said to developed his skill for linear drawings, which he used to produce some of the good looking architectural artistic portray.

At the age of 19, in 1905, He went to work for an architect in Berlin, to become a trainee with Bruno Paul, a leading furniture designer who designs in the Art Nouveau style of the period. Two years later he received his start up project, a traditional suburban house. It was a perfect job done, so that impressed Peter Behrens, so Peter Behrens Germany's most liberal architect, that he offered  him a job in his office, where, at about the same period, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier were also just beginning their practice. He established ties with this association of artists, which advocated a unity between art and technology, which is new design tradition that would give form and significance to machine-made things, including machine-made buildings. This new and functional design for the industrial age would then give birth to a new worldwide culture in a totally reformed man-made surrounding. These ideas motivated the modern movement in architecture that soon culminates in the so-called International Style of modern architecture. These ideas were for seen by the werkbund’s members which influenced him as a member. After the First World War many modernist architects believed that their new modernist ideologies in architecture should come and change the society. Architecture should provide the needs of society and all humans should be equal, which is why they ignored the social and cultural structures of the society and also its religious faith, because they thought modernism was a suite of new beliefs that people needed to follow.

He stated that “Less is more” .This quotation means that the concept of design should be based on simplicity; in his Barcelona Pavilion He used pure design elements, right angles, unambiguous meaning and the use of an open floor plan idea, simple lines, pure and cubic shapes. In general, every part of any of his design has functionality and rationality rather than a form based on aesthetics. He also rejected any kinds of decoration. So design concepts in modernism are high-class to each of his design. In the Barcelona pavilion He used space in a manner and technique that created a unique feeling that had the objects and rooms flexible through free-flowing space, He was successful in using spaces. He supported the idea of creating the International style in modernism which was to design prototypes and mass production so that all buildings would have a similar appearance in a certain way. This had a negative side, which was repetition in design.

He served as the school's director in Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) which He designed within 1939–41; a cubic plainness marked the campus buildings, which could easily be adapted to the varied demands of the school. Exposed structural steel, large areas of glass reflecting the grounds of the campus, and a yellow-brown brick were the basic materials used.

POST MODERNIST

FRANK OWEN GEHRY

Born Feb. 28, 1929,

He was said to have being born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; He is Polish Jews. After working for several architectural firms, he established his own company, Frank O. Gehry & Associates, in 1962 and established its successor, in 2002 Gehry Partners. He was creative, and was encouraged by his grandmother, Caplan, with whom he hopes to become great in life. The use of steel structures, corrugated steel and other materials was said to be partly inspired by spending His weekend’s mornings at his grandfather's hardware store. He loves drawing with his parent and that makes him great in the world of art. In his early work he built unique, structures that emphasized human scale and contextual integrity.

He is a  Professor of Architecture at Columbia University and also teaches at the Yale School of Architecture, He is considered a post-modern architectural icon and celebrity. He is very much inspired by fish, not only do they appear in his buildings; he created a line of jewelry, curves. Asymmetrical forms, household items, and sculptures based on this motif. "It was by accident I got into the fish image", claimed Gehry. One thing that sparked His interest in fish was that, his colleagues are repeating and recreating forms relating to Greek temples. He said, "Three hundred million years before man was fish....if you got to go back, and you're insecure about going forward...go back three hundred million years ago.

Much of His work falls within the style of Deconstructivism, also identified as DeCon Architecture, is sometimes referred to as in nature for its ability to go beyond current modalities of structural definition. It is one of the styles used in post modern architecture; its application totally departs from modern architecture in its basic criticism of culturally inherited givens such as societal goals, simplicity and functional necessity. Because of this, unlike early modernist structures, DeCon buildings are not compulsory to reflect specific social or modern ideas, such as universality of form that is primitive shapes like cubes. Vertical and horizontal lines and they do not reflect a belief that form follows function. His Santa Monica residence is a commonly cited example of Deconstructivism architecture, as it was so drastically divorced from its original context, and, in such a manner, as to subvert its original spatial intention.

He is sometimes associated with what is known as the "Los Angeles School," or the "Santa Monica School" of architecture. The fitness of this designations and the existence of such a school, however, remain controversial due to the lack of a unifying philosophy or theory that governs the design.

His style at times seems unfinished or even crude, but his work is consistent with the California ‘funk’ art movement in the 1960s and early 1970s, which featured the use of inexpensive found objects and non-traditional media such as clay to make serious art. Gehry is called "the apostle of chain-link fences and corrugated metal siding"(Wikipedia 2013, Frank Owen Gehry, viewed 30 January 2013).

Frank Gehry's work has its adverse critics. Like it is said:

Ø  The buildings waste structural materials by creating functionless forms.

Ø   The buildings appear strange in their surroundings

Ø  The buildings are designed without accounting for the weather conditions

Ø  The lack of a unifying philosophy or theory that governs the design (The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and Dancing House in Prague)

CONTRAST BETWEEN THE MODERNIST AND POST MODERNIST

Postmodernist elevations contain ornamental and classical elements like the Dancing House in Prague, which is recognized as an icon of postmodern architecture, while modernism elevations contain strictly vertical and horizontal structural elements.

In His design of the Seagram building (Mies Van Der Rohe, Ludwig), which is an office building, He for the first time in the United State America used glass and steel frame skyscraper. He preferred that the steel structures in a building should be obvious from outdoors. However, this is not acceptable according to American building codes because steel is flammable. Therefore he decided to use non-structural glass walls (curtain walls) for the facades including I- sections of bronze beams and columns. He also used window blinds to give the building an attractive appearance when windows open or close

 SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE MODERNIST AND POST MODERNIST

The new construction materials such as steel, reinforced concrete and development of technology have mainly affected the façades and structures of modern and postmodern architecture. Both movements are similar in using these materials yet are different in their facades.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, although the modernist idea began over 100 years ago to spread new ideologies in terms of space, new design, functionality and façade, it could not provide the aesthetics for viewers because of repetitive design features, which led to it being dismissed by most people. As a result, postmodernism replaced it because each movement in architecture brings new ideas and covers the flaws of the former movements.