Lecture 3

From Here to Modernity

Mies van der Rohe

Crown Hall, Chicago,

1952-6

Michael Shewan

Gray’s School of Art,

1966

Mies van der Rohe

Farnsworth House,Illinois, 1946-50

Josef and Anni Alber’s living room at the Dessau Bauhaus, 1920s

Josef and Anni Alber’s living room in Connecticut USA, 1970s

The minimum could be

defined as the perfection

that an artefact achieves

when it is no longer possible

to improve it by subtraction.

This is the quality that an

object has when every

component, every detail, and

every junction has been

reduced or condensed to the

essentials. It is the result of

the omission of the

inessentials.

John Pawson - Minimum,

1996

John Pawson 1990s

Flowers, even salt and pepper get in the way…

John Pawson

Evolution is synonymous with the removal of ornament from objects of everyday use

Adolf Loos (Ornament and Crime, 1928)

Utopia / DystopiaThings to Come 1936Things to Come William CameronMenzies

1936

Utopia / Dystopia

Thamesmead, London

1960s

Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, 1928-31

Nathan Coley, Villa Savoye, 1997

‘This is a shot of the main

façade … it’s somewhat

blank and forbidding …

giving the impression

(later to be disproved) of a

completely symmetrical

building.’

‘The site is expansive,

bordered by trees on three

sides, and has long views

towards the softly rolling

fields and valleys.’

‘At first sight, there is a

shock of recognition - a

sense of formal

inevitability. What can be

more natural than this

horizontal white box,

poised on pillars, set off

against the rural

surroundings, the far

panorama and the sky?’

‘This shows you how the long

window becomes part of the

façade solution.’

‘The moment one steps

inside the villa one finds a

new structural rhythm

taking over.’

Dan Flavin

Untitled (monument for V. Tatlin) 1975

Vladimir Tatlin

Monument to the Third International, Petrograd, 1920

Carl Andre (1935-)

Equivalent VIII, 1966

My arrangements I’ve

found are essentially the

simplest I can arrive at,

given a material and a

place …

Carl Andre

Drum and Bass, 2003

Combat(after Rodchenko), 2003

Mathieu Mercier

David Mabb

Self Portrait posing as Rodchenko, dressed in a Rodchenko Production Suit made from the ‘Fruit’ William Morris fabric

2002

Peter van der Jagt (Droog Design)Bottom’s Up doorbell, 1994

Less is More

Mies van der Rohe

Less is a Bore

Robert Venturi

Alessandro Mendini, Redesign of Modern Movement Chairs - Wassily by Breuer, 1978

Marcel Breuer 1925

I like elements which are hybrid rather than

‘pure’, compromising rather than ‘clean’,

distorted rather than ‘straightforward’,

ambiguous rather than ‘articulated’, perverse as

well as impersonal, boring as well as

‘interesting’, conventional rather than

‘designed’, accommodating rather than

excluding, vestigial as well as well as

innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather

than direct and clear.

Robert Venturi 1966 (Architect)

I am for richness of meaning rather than clarity

of meaning; for the implicit function as well as

the explicit function.

Robert Venturi 1966 (Architect)

The Titanic - Photomontage, Stanley Tigerman, 1978, USA

Functionalism, Yes, But.Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

2003

1929

We can no longer fulfill our obligations as architects if we carry on as cake decorators. Our role is far greater than that. We, the authors of architecture, have to take on the task of reinvestigating Modernity

Zaha Hadid 1983

Zaha Hadid

Terminus, Strasbourg France, 2001

Andreas Gursky,

Hong Kong and

Shanghai Bank,

1994

Surely it is time for a new Baroque, based on the clean, cold legacy of Modernism

Contemporary Magazine 2004

Won Ju Lim

Ruby, 2001

Modernism is the expression by

individual human beings of how they

will live their own present, and

consequently there are a thousand

modernisms for every thousand

persons.

Octavio Paz (Nobel Prize reception speech)

(happy christmas)To Modernity and Beyond?