20Th Century Arch Test 2 Terms

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Neo-plasticism

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1. Term coined by piet Mondrian and first used in 1919 as the title of a collection of his writings published.
2. It gained currency as a descriptive term applied to Mondrian’s theories of art and to his style of painting, in which a grid, delineated by black lines, was filled with blocks of primary colour
3. applied to all aspects of design that were part of daily life.
4. evanescence of natural shapes was reduced to a few essential expressive means: horizontal and vertical lines, areas of primary colour and black and white.
5. published Le Néo-plasticisme while in Paris, having become convinced that his theories, published in de Stijl, were almost unknown beyond his native country
6. No distinct school of Neo-plasticists ever existed, although some works by artists including Jean Gorin, César Domela, Jean Helion and Burgoyne Diller may be described as Neo-plasticist
7. influenced by Schoenmaeker’s writings on spiritual mathematics

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2. De Stijl

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1. Dutch periodical founded by Theo van Doesburg in 1917
2. the name was also applied from the 1920s to a distinctive movement and to the group of artists associated with it.
3. a platform for all those who were concerned with a new art: painters, sculptors, architects, urban planners, typographers, interior designers and decoratve artists, musicians, poets and dramatists.
4. search for a nieuwe beelding (new imagery) was characterized by the elementary components of the primary colours, flat, rectangular areas and only straight, horizontal and vertical lines. Former ideals of beauty had to be relinquished in favour of a new consciousness to represent the spirit of the times
5. Before World War I works of Expressionism, Cubism and Futurism, the newest tendencies in Germany, France and Italy respectively, had been exhibited in the Netherlands; De stijl was established in deliberate contrast with these movements
6. The contents included editorials by van Doesburg, who was also frequently the author of polemical articles. Many contributions were by architects, including j. j. p. Oud, jan Wils, gerrit Rietveld and robert van ’t Hoff, the last-named being responsible for the periodical’s financing. piet Mondrian was, however, responsible for around 70% of the contents of these early issues.
7. De stijl gave Mondrian the opportunity to publish the aesthetic theories that he had attempted to articulate from 1909; the later impression that he and De stijl were synonymous results from his huge contribution to these early issues.

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3. Wasmuth

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Published 2 portfolios of Frank Lloyd Wright's Work in Holland, influenced the Dutch (Berlage loved Wright, can see Wrightian influences in Oud). emphasized architect's struggle for "Mastery over the machine." Dutch ignored suburban/naturalistic imagery and use of materials, concentrated on spatial character and vocabulary of hovering and intersecting planes, which they perceived completely out of original physical and social context

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4. Domino House

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Inspired by Tony Garnier
Le Corbusier envisaged it as an affordable, prefabricated system for the construction of new housing in the wake of World War I's destruction.
Ease housing shortage
Took Perret’s innovation one step further
Where P. used reinforced concrete partitions as load bearing walls, Corbu realizes that’s unneccessary, can eliminate everything but floor slabs & stilts

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5. Maison Citrohan

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Top floor not enclosed, roof terrace
Workers should enjoy nature
House as independent unit
Massive, boxy,can see volume
First to design double height window
modeled on, among other sources, the bistro Legendre, rue Godot-de-Mauroy, where the architect lunched daily)
Inspired by Hoffmann—palais stoclet
Projected window frames where bldg bulges out, where straight, windows flush
#2
Elevated
People can circulate on ground floor
Pilotis
Creates garage
Can see into living room from bedroom
Never built

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6. Glass Architektur

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Written by Paul Scheerbart, "the first Expressionist," in 1914, a pre-war visionary. Inspired Bruno Taut, who thought the artist should reveal the form of the new polity

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7. Stadtkrone

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-- "City Crown" by Bruno Taut
--tried to embody the new collective religion in a town plan with a symbolic centre in the form of a cosmic world-mountain or stepped pyramid
--This centre was supposed to make up for the loss of centre of modern, alienated man, and to root him to deeper meanings in an integrated society...
-- a painting by Taut w/ a mountain

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8. Cathedral of Socialism/Cathedral of the Future

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Woodcut by Lyonel Feininger, a jagged, Expressionist image. Name of first Bauhaus proclamation. Tatlin's Monument is another attempt at creating a cathedral. goal of Bauhaus is to answer problems of the poor. meant to symbolize both the unity and the spiritual basis of the various arts under the primacy of architecture. metaphor for a temple to secular regeneration after the war, for the creation of small new communities, led by artists, that would then be the basis for spiritual regeneration

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10. Johannes Itten

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-- Swiss painter, textile designer, teacher, writer and theorist.
-- replaced by Van Doesburg in 1921
-- interest in analogies between art and music.
-- October 1919 Itten appointed to the Bauhaus at Weimar on the recommendation of Alma Mahler, Walter Gropius’s wife at the time
-- He swiftly gained control of the carpentry, metal, carving, stained-glass and mural workshops
-- He also devised and taught the Vorkurs, an obligatory six-month preliminary course, which aimed to liberate students from preconceptions and develop their latent creative powers
-- Itten’s charismatic personality came to dominate and then divide the school
-- key issue was his allegiance to Mazdaznan, a life-system based on the ancient wisdom of Zoroaster and one of many cults that flourished during the Weimar Republic
-- Irreconcilable differences in approach had arisen between Itten and Gropius: whereas Itten wished to preserve the school as a contemplative enclave, Gropius had come to believe that the school must look outwards and establish contact with industry
-- In 1922 Itten withdrew from his teaching responsibilities, moving to the Mazdaznan community at Herrliberg in 1923

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11. Proletkult

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- 1918 movement...
- is an portmanteau of "proletarskaya kultura" (пролетарская культура), Russian for "proletarian culture". It was a movement active in the Soviet Union in 1917/1925 to provide the foundations for a truly proletarian art devoid of bourgeois influence.
- uneasy alliance between workers' unions and aspirations avant-garde..
- see Malinoski: effort of science and art will educate masses and bring change to society

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12. Last Futurism Exhibition

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aka 0,10 Petrograd 1915, Malevich introduced his non-objective, geometric Suprematist paintings. included 'Black Square' (1915)

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13. Victory over the Sun

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-Malevich
-origins of Suprematism to his sets and costumes
-Russian Futurist opera
-St Petersburg in December 1913
-His designs reflected the complex synthesis of Russian and west European art that reached its height on the eve of World War I
-exemplified the collaboration of poets and painters that was a cardinal feature of Russian Futurism
-reflected the strong irrational trend of pre-war Russian Futurist work

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14. Suprematism

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-- Term coined in 1915 by Kazimir Malevich for a new system of art
-- The term itself implied the supremacy of this new art in relation to the past.
-- Malevich saw it as purely aesthetic and concerned only with form, free from any political or social meaning.
-- He stressed the purity of shape, particularly of the square
-- he regarded Suprematism as primarily an exploration of visual language comparable to contemporary developments in writing
-- Suprematist paintings were first displayed at the exhibition ‘The last Futurist exhibition of paintings: 0.10’ held in Petrograd (now St Petersburg) in December 1915
-- Malevich traced the origins of Suprematism to his sets and costumes for the Russian Futurist opera Pobeda nad solntsem (‘Victory over the sun’), given in St Petersburg in December 1913.
-- His designs reflected the complex synthesis of Russian and west European art that reached its height on the eve of World War I
-- The opera exemplified the collaboration of poets and painters that was a cardinal feature of Russian Futurism and reflected the strong irrational trend of pre-war Russian Futurist work.

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15. Constructivism

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a Russian abstract movement, founded by the sculptors Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo in 1920. Dedicated to producing widely accessible sculpture from industrial anti-art materials like sheet-metal, glass, and plastic, it developed alongside and owed much to Vladimir Tatlin's collage constructions of 1914–17. Tatlin's Constructivism, based on socially useful ‘production art’ and rooted in Communist ideologies, was short-lived because its artists, like Alexander Rodchenko, turned to typography and other design disciplines where Constructivist goals were more achievable. Pevsner's and Gabo's Constructivism, expounded in their Realist Manifesto (1920) was of greater consequence; they stated that sculpture should be about movement in space, rather than volume and political values. Oppressed by the dominance of ‘production art’, Pevsner and Gabo moved to Western Europe in 1922 and 1923 respectively, and with others, like van Doesburg at the Bauhaus (1921–8) and Lissitzky with his contacts with Dada and De Stijl artists, developed an International Constructivism. Based on mathematics and aesthetics instead of politics, and concerned mainly with painting and sculpture, the movement influenced Western architecture and developments like Concrete and kinetic art.

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16. Constructivist Manifesto

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The Realistic Manifesto (1920) outlined Gabo's concepts of art, one of which—that ‘art has its absolute, independent value'—ran contrary to the Bolsheviks’ doctrine of utility, prompting Gabo's departure for Berlin in 1922. is a key text of Constructivism written by sculptor Naum Gabo and cosigned by his brother Antoine Pevsner. The manifesto laid out their theories about artistic expression. The Manifesto focused largely on divorcing art from such conventions as use of lines, color, volume, and mass. They also believed art should accompany man through all parts of his life: "at the workbench, at the office, at work, at rest, and at leisure; work days and holidays, at home and on the road, so that the flame of life does not go out in man." Gabo rejected: 1. Color as accidental and superficial. 2. The descriptive value of line in favor of line as direction of static forces 3. volume in favor of depth as the only pictorial and plastic form in space 4. mass in sculpture in favor of the same volume constructed of planes 5. the thousand year old delusion of static rhythm in favor of "kinetic rhythms as the basic forms of our perception of real time"...rejected Malevich, considers himself a constructor: instead of carving or molding a sculpture of one piece we built it up into space

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17. Vkhutemas

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-- Soviet school of art and architecture, active in Moscow from 1920 to 1930.
-- the role of art in the new society and its participation in industrial production; this was called ‘production art’,
- The Woodwork and Metalwork Faculty (Dermetfak) was the most Constructivist in orientation. Its staff included Rodchenko, Vladimir Tatlin and El Lissitzky, and its students were trained as ‘engineer–artists’: designers capable of devising interiors for clubs, transport centres, trains and buses, as well as producing smaller objects such as light fittings.

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PROUN

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Pro-Unovis. In 1919 he coined the new word proun to signify this innovative form of creative work, part painterly, part architectural and part graphic, and capable of application in any of these fields of activity. Proun was essentially Lissitzky's exploration of the visual language of suprematism with spatial elements, utilizing shifting axes and multiple perspectives; both uncommon ideas in suprematism. Suprematism at the time was conducted almost exclusively in flat, 2D forms and shapes, and Lissitzky, with a taste for architecture and other 3-dimensional concepts, tried to expand suprematism beyond this. His Proun works (known as Prounen), spanned over a half a decade and evolved from straightforward paintings and lithographs into fully 3-dimensional installations. They would also lay the foundation for his later experimentations in architecture and exhibition design. It was later defined by Lissitzky ambiguously as "the station where one changes from painting to architecture."[4]

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19. Monument to the Third International -

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1919-1920 A Paper project by Vladimir Tatlin. Had 2 interlacing spirals of open, structural latticework that suspends 3 rotating geometric elements: a cube, pyramid, a cylinder. would contain various congress halls of the state. 400m tall, red for the Revolution. spirals meant to be expression of a new order...emblem of marxist ideology, symbolizes idea of a revolutionary society, aspiring to 'highest state' of an egalitarian, proletarian Utopia. difficult to realize. all metal. belief in power of line & plane & russian government...

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DOM-KOMMUNA

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type of Worker's Dwelling; "communual housing"; assoc. Melinov

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21. ASNOVA

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-Russian architectural group, Moscow from 1923 to 1932
-was the USSR’s first avant-garde architectural association
-Asnova intended to serve the new Soviet regime by establishing an architectural language based on economic and psychological efficiency
-This Rationalist approach also attempted to secure an irrefutable, scientific foundation for the aesthetics of modern architecture
-Asnova helped to catalyse the Vkhutemas’s creative energies
-polemically opposed the Constructivist position of Osa, the competing wing of the Soviet architectural avant-garde during the 1920s
-Constructivists argued that a building’s programme, function and technical considerations sufficed to determine its architectural design
-Asnova encouraged designers to clarify architectural form for the public’s mental, perceptual and psychological comfort, which was held to depend on the merging of a building’s visual and conceptual realities
-architect was thus obliged to maximize optical stimuli, through the use of volume and structure, in order to minimize the discrepancies between perceived form and actual form
-Functioning as a loose association of broadly like-minded architects, Asnova’s fluid membership also included Konstantin Mel’nikov and El Lissitzky, some of whose designs reveal clear debts to Asnova precepts, for example the projects for the Lenin Podium (1924) and the Wolkenbügel (1924), Moscow, by El Lissitzky, and the Soviet pavilion at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris (1925), and Rusakov Club (1927), Moscow, by Mel’nikov

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22. Worker’s Club

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The club, according to Melnikov, is not a single fixed theater hall, but a flexible system of different halls that may be united into a single, large volume when necessary. His larger main halls can be divided into three (Rusakov Club) or two (Svoboda Club) independent halls.

One common feature of his clubs - bold use of exterior stairs - is actually a consequence of 1920s building codes that required wide internal staircase for fire evacuation. Melnikov, in an attempt to save interior space, connected the main halls to exterior galleries, which was not regulated by the code. [16]
Melnikov

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23. Heimat style

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a style that evokes a particular image of rural country...ie Gropius' sommerfield house 1921

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24. Siedlung type housing

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"housing estate," large complex homes, began at Bauhaus w/ Gropius...how to create inexpensive houses for for workers and take advantage of everyday living...successful...affected US housing projects...example is Mies 1925 exhibition at stuttgart

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25. Tubular Steel Chair

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1928-29, Marcel Breuer, aka Wassily Chair; Back at the Bauhaus, one of his first projects was the 1926 steel club armchair (later renamed the Wassily, after the Bauhaus teacher Wassily Kandinsky) made from extruded nickel-plated tubular steel. Unusually light and easy to assemble from ready-made steel tubes, the chair was the result of Breuer's years of experiments with bending steel and was immediately hailed as an important breakthrough in furniture design. "I thought that this out of all my work would earn me the most criticism," he noted, "but the opposite of what I expected came true."

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26. Return to order

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Rappel a l'ordre...consolidation after chaos of war...in Germany, through Bauhaus, France through Le Corbusier...reflected when Ozenfant and Le Corbu applied math and precision to cubism...led to Purism

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27. Pilotis

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In architecture, pilotis are ground-level supporting columns. They refine a building's connectivity with the land by allowing for parking, garden or driveway below while allowing a sense of floating and lightness in the architecture itself. One of Corbu's 5 points

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28. Objet-type

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Objects that tend toward a type which is determined by the evolution of forms between the ideal of maximum utility and the neccessities of economic manufacture, ie the bottles and machine parts in Le Corbu's paintings..mass produced things...inspired by typiserung

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29. Promenade Architectural

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- ie in Villa La Roche and Villa Savoie, spaces ingeniously linked in sequence to allow gradual exploration of interior...le corbu criticized star shapes and axes of plans of beaux-arts because they were patterns on paper...a good plan would contain an enormous quantity of ideas and and the impulse of an intention

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30. 1929

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Year of International Exposition in Barcelona, an nationalistic architectural showcase, Mies did German Pavilion for it

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31. Five Points of New Architecture

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free plan, free facade, pilotis, roof terrace, ribbon window

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32. Machine à habiter

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a house whose functions had been examined from the ground floor up and stripped to the essentials

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33. Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes

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Paris 1925; showcase stage of new architecture...had Le Corbu's Pavilion de L'Esprit Nouveau...which was a Citrohan box but broken up...reflects influence of Loos--wants cozy environment not Gesampkunstwerk...Mass produced furniture ...

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34. L’Esprit Nouveau

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a periodical of aesthetic speculation founded by a poet...Le Corbu was a major figure for it--he and Ozenfant published many things for it ...singled out the cube as an ideal form...also ideas of "Ville Contemporain" and Citrohan house as unit for apt buildings

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Functionalism

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Functionalism, in architecture, is the principle that architects should design a building based on the purpose of that building.

European Modernists were greatly outnumbered by traditionalists even in the 1920s, and they soon discovered the value of solidarity, concealing their sometimes considerable differences of approach behind a common front. Functional or pseudo-functional arguments were their best ammunition against their conservative rivals and were widely and uncritically accepted. The appearance of the new architecture, cubic and white, was read as functional because of its simplicity and a then unusual lack of ornament, even if its organization was often based on abstract geometric composition. Its authors often sincerely believed their functionalist arguments, but found in practice that the pressures of use were insufficient to dictate form. Moreover, when they turned to the question of construction, they found a craft industry geared to traditional designs. Thus, although they spoke of machine production, their works were often constructed by hand, and the ‘machine aesthetic’ was dictated not so much by machinery itself as by an anticipation of what it might bring. The desired simplicity of detail, however, and the compulsive use of crude flat-roof technologies resulted in technical failures and maintenance problems: ‘Functionalist’ architecture often functioned badly.

Meyer’s manifesto ‘Bauen’, published in the Bauhaus magazine in 1928, the year he became director of the Bauhaus, was a statement of aims for the school and it remains a landmark in architectural theory. It opens with a denial of art, claiming that everything is a product of the formula ‘function times economy’. He lists the 12 functions of a dwelling, claiming them as the only motives when building a house, and explains how the measurements—psychological as well as physical—that affect function are to be made; he asserts that ‘building is nothing but organization: social, technical, economic, psychological organization’.

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36. Mies’s five elements of Architecture

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elementaren Gestaltung...(1) the plane (2) line (3) massing (4) reflections (5) illumination...which he defined in "G" magazine

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Purism

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French movement in painting and architecture. Purism was an aesthetic programme initiated c. 1918 by amédée Ozenfant and Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (known as Le corbusier in his architectural work after 1920–21) as a reaction to Cubist painting and ideas that dominated avant-garde art in France before World War I. Above all, Purist philosophy is characterized by an admiration for the beauty and purity of the form of the machine. Ozenfant and Le Corbusier advocated a rappel à l’ordre in response to what they perceived to be the distortions and excesses of later, particularly Synthetic Cubism. While they embraced much Cubist subject-matter, particularly the celebration of the ordinary, mass-produced object, they emphasized the geometry, simplicity, proportion and harmony of those objects, rather than their dissection or analysis. The Purists perceived the golden section to be an ideal governing rule in the depiction of form. They preferred that form be presented with unbroken contours and smoothly polished surfaces.

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Bauhaus

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- School of Arts in Germany
- moved from Weimar to Dessau
- rhetoric under Gropius: union of fine and applied arts
- rhetoric under Meyer (1927 onward) drop fine arts. architecture-->building, meyer is socialist, stopped discussing aesthetcs, wanted to solve problems of everyday life