FUTURISM
Self – Conscious Modernity
History
The Italian Futurism is the first art movement that can be considered an
avant-garde movement.
They introduced with their art an ideological interest that affected deeply
culture and even social costumes, when denies all the past, substituting it by
stylistic and technical experimentation.
International art movement founded in Italy in 1909
Contrast to Romanticism
Speed, noise, machines
Pollution and cities
Fearing and attacking technology
ry of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Meanderings of Modernism
CHARACTERISTICS
Futurist painters made the rhythm of their repetitions
of lines
Inspired by some photographic experiments, they
were breaking motion into small sequences, and
using the wide range of angles within a given time-
frame all aimed to incorporate the dimension of time
within the picture
Histo ry of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Meanderings of Modernism
F .T. MARINETTI - THE FIRST FUTURIST
“It is in Italy that we are issuing this
manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence,
by which we today are founding Futurism,
because we want to deliver Italy from its
gangrene of professors, archaeologists,
tourist guides and antiquaries……..
For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it
may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of
balm for their wounds, the admirable past,
at a moment when the future is denied
them.
Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, 1909 But we will have none of it, we, the YOUNG,
STRONG and LIVING Futurists!”
FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE ~ Antonio Sant'Elia (1888 – 1916)
“ No architecture has existed since 1700.
A moronic mixture of the most various stylistic
elements used to mask the skeletons of modern
houses is called modern architecture.
The new beauty of cement and iron are
profaned by the superimposition of motley
decorative incrustations that cannot be
justified either by constructive necessity or by our
(modern) taste, and whose origins are in Egyptian,
Indian or Byzantine antiquity and in that idiotic
flowering of stupidity and impotence that took
the name of neoclassicism. "
FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE
- His Ideas..
FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE
1. That Futurist architecture is the
architecture of calculation, of
audacious temerity and of simplicity;
• The architecture of reinforced
concrete, of steel, glass, cardboard,
textile fiber, and of all those
substitutes for wood, stone and
brick that enable us to obtain
maximum elasticity and lightness
Antonio Sant'Elia (1914), Drawing
FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE
FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE
2. That Futurist architecture is not
because of this an arid combination of
practicality and usefulness, but remains
art, i.e. synthesis and expression
Antonio Sant'Elia (1914), Power Station
FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE
3. That oblique and elliptic lines are
dynamic, and by their very nature
possess an emotive power a thousand
times stronger than perpendiculars and
horizontals, and that no integral,
dynamic architecture can exist that does
not include these
Antonio Sant'Elia (1914), House with external elevators
FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE
4. That decoration as an element superimposed on
architecture is absurd, and that the decorative value of
Futurist architecture depends solely on the use and
original arrangement of raw or bare or violently coloured
materials
Antonio Sant'Elia (1914), Drawing
FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE
5. That, just as the ancients drew inspiration for
their art from the elements of nature, we—who
are materially and spiritually artificial—must
find that inspiration in the elements of the
utterly new mechanical world we have created,
and of which architecture must be the most
beautiful expression, the most complete synthesis,
the most efficacious integration
Antonio Sant'Elia (1914), Drawing
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Meanderings of Modernism
FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE
6. That architecture as the art of arranging forms
according to pre- established criteria is finished
7. That by the term architecture is meant the
endeavor to harmonize the environment with
Man with freedom and great audacity, that is
to transform the world of things into a direct
projection of the world of the spirit
FUTURIST ARCHITECTURE
The most famous example which was considered to be
-the first Futurist constructive invention
The Lingotto building was avant-garde, influential and
impressive—Le Corbusier called it "one of the most
impressive sights in industry", and "a guideline for
town planning"
History of Architecture - II (AP-313) – Meanderings of Modernism
EXPRESSIONISM
Self – Conscious Modernity
EXPRESSIONISM
Expressionism was an early 20th-century movement in art and
architecture
It developed between 1910 and 1924 among a group of architects
from European countries including Germany, Austria, and Denmark
It was a time of great turmoil and upheaval in Europe and many of
the architects had fought on the battlefields of World War I
Their experiences greatly impacted their work and what they created
looked like nothing that had come before it
EXPRESSIONIST ARCHITECTURE
Expressionist architecture was an architectural movement that
developed in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century in
parallel with the expressionist visual and performing arts.
Today the meaning has to refer to architecture of any date or location
that exhibits some of the qualities of the original movement such as
distortion,
fragmentationor
the communication of violent or overstressed emotion.
EXPRESSIONIST ARCHITECTURE
The style was characterized by an early-modernist adoption of
novel materials,
formal innovation, and
very unusual massing,
Sometimes inspired by natural biomorphic forms, sometimes by the
new technical possibilities offered by the mass production of brick,
steel and especially glass.
Many of the most important expressionist works remaining as projects
on paper, such as Bruno Taut's Alpine Architecture and Hermann
Finsterlin's Formspiels
CHARACTERISTICS
Expressionist architecture was individualistic and in
many ways express aesthetic rules, but it is still
useful to develop some criteria which defines it.
Distortion of form for an emotional effect.
Subordination of realism to symbolic or stylistic
expression of inner experience.
An underlying effort at achieving the new, original, and
visionary
Abundance of works on paper, and models, with
discovery and representations of concepts more
important than pragmatic finished products The Chilehausis an office building
and landmark structure in Hamburg,
Often hybrid solutions, irreducible to a single Germany. Designed by architect
concept Fritz Höger, it was built between
1922 and 1924
CHARACTERISTICS
Themes of natural romantic phenomena, such as caves, mountains,
lightning, crystal and rock formations. As such it is more mineral and
elemental than florid and organic which characterized its close
contemporary Art
Utilizes creative potential of artisan craftsmanship.
Tendency more towards the gothic than the classical.
CHARACTERISTICS
Though a movement in Europe,
expressionism is as eastern as western.
It draws as much from Moorish, Islamic,
Egyptian, and Indian art and
architecture as from Roman or Greek.
Conception of architecture -- as a work
of art.
The major permanent extant landmark
of Expressionism is Erich Mendelsohn's
Einstein Tower in Potsdam.
Expressionist architects of the 1920s
Adolf Behne Carl Krayl
Hermann Finsterlin Erich Mendelsohn
Antoni Gaudí Hans Poelzig
Walter Gropius - early period Hans Scharoun
Hugo Häring Rudolf Steiner
Fritz Höger Bruno Taut
Michel de Klerk
Piet Kramer
Bruno Taut
EXPRESSIONISM
BRUNO TAUT
renowned German architect, urban planner and author
He was active during the Weimar period, and is known for his
theoretical works as well as his building designs.
GLASS PAVILION
Built in 1914.
Glass dome structure at Cologne Deutscher Werkbund exhibition.
Constructed using concrete and glass.
The concrete structure had inlaid colored glass plates on the facade
that acted as mirrors.
The purpose of the building was to demonstrate the potential of
different types of glass for architecture. It also indicated how the
material might be used to orchestrate human emotions.
• It had a fourteen-sided base constructed of thick glass bricks used for the exterior walls devoid of
rectangles
• Each part of the cupola was designed to recall the complex geometry of nature
• The Pavilion structure was on a concrete plinth, the entrance reached by two flights of steps (one on
either side of the building), which gave the pavilion a temple-like quality.
• Taut's Glass Pavilion was the first building of importance made of glass bricks.
TAUT’S IDEA FOR GLASS PAVILION
Taut wanted to create a building with a different
structure, and similar to Gothic Cathedrals.
Bruno told that his building wasn't going to have
any real function, it was more to provoke
something in someone than a practical building
The Glass Pavilion was one of the first exhibition
building designed as a mechanism to create vivid
experiences, where people would be able to feel,
touch and primarily see
The goal of this functionless building as that
architecture would include the other arts of
painting and sculpture, to achieve a new, unified
expression.
