I..Am..Speechless

[texcolo]

Originally Posted by AdrianXSands

heeeeey, let's talk down to people as if we actually know them, their merit, or their knowledge... after all, internet forums are so personal. let's...

dude are you serious? because i don't back my opinions with four paragraphs of rhetoric, means i don't know what i'm talking about or that i am somehow lacking in intellectual thought? hmmm... excuse me for being so childish then. and if you'd like to get more than just opinions from me, you can call me on the phone, and we can talk about art and architecture and whatever else for hours. because, in general i choose to be simply general on internet forums. and i reserve myself to opinions and questions and answers. you can accept what i have to say or dismiss as most people do, but please spare me of the personal insults.

Yes, but posting 100 pictures of 10 buildings with nothing more than calling them monstrosities means at best you're lazy and at worst inarticulate.

If you want people to value you and your opinions, you have to back them up. Why are things rubbish?

As for art vs. architecture, my friend, they are but inseparable. They're like peanut butter and chocolate in a Reese's. They make each other better.

[Tom Servo]

Originally Posted by texcolo

If you want people to value you and your opinions, you have to back them up. Why are things rubbish?

i'm not here to prove myself to anyone; i'm not here to make people think i'm a master of rhetoric. i really don't care what people think of what i have to say.

Originally Posted by texcolo

As for art vs. architecture, my friend, they are but inseparable. They're like peanut butter and chocolate in a Reese's. They make each other better.

... art and architecture are so very different. architecture is about problem solving, creating space, making things work and function... it is something that continuously affects every aspect of our lives. is there an artistic qualities (harmony, balance, rhythm...) to the outcome? sure... but unless you're frank gehry, any aesthetic aspect of a design is very much secondary to the pragmatic needs of that design. architecture is a skill, it can be taught and learned. ask piano, nouvel, koolhaas, even calatrava or any of the great architects of our time if they consider themselves artists. the answer is no. (charlie rose asks this question and i've only heard gehry and holl say they consider themselves artistic, but not artists. calatrava acknowledges that he is an artist, but that it is separate from him being an engineer or architect)

conversely, art is about making a pretty picture. or sculpting some super esoteric assemblage of steel. it is something that is based purely on feeling. and has no pragmatic use.

[texcolo]

Originally Posted by AdrianXSands

i'm not here to prove myself to anyone; i'm not here to make people think i'm a master of rhetoric. i really don't care what people think of what i have to say.



... art and architecture are so very different. architecture is about problem solving, creating space, making things work and function... it is something that continuously affects every aspect of our lives. is there an artistic qualities (harmony, balance, rhythm...) to the outcome? sure... but unless you're frank gehry, any aesthetic aspect of a design is very much secondary to the pragmatic needs of that design. architecture is a skill, it can be taught and learned. ask piano, nouvel, koolhaas, even calatrava or any of the great architects of our time if they consider themselves artists. the answer is no. (charlie rose asks this question and i've only heard gehry and holl say they consider themselves artistic, but not artists. calatrava acknowledges that he is an artist, but that it is separate from him being an engineer or architect)

conversely, art is about making a pretty picture. or sculpting some super esoteric assemblage of steel. it is something that is based purely on feeling. and has no pragmatic use.

Le Corbesier's 'form follows function' is a fraud my friend. He and Mies put every effort to follow the rules of art / good design into everyone of their buildings. The ideas of balance, color, form, and repetition are very much present in everyone of their buildings as much as a Da Vinci painting. In fact you go back in the days of the Renaissance the best architects WERE artists.

[Tom Servo]

Originally Posted by texcolo

Le Corbesier's 'form follows function' is a fraud my friend.

umm, okay. and by the way... that's sullivan's quote.

[texcolo]

Originally Posted by AdrianXSands

umm, okay. and by the way... that's sullivan's quote.

Now that I have your attention, here's why modernism is a fraud, well to be more precise fraudulent.



If a modern skyscraper done in the modern style is supposed to be devoid of superfluous decoration then by that account every modern skyscraper should look like the above photo as finished.



In this picture of the AON Center, does the then marble, now granite columns really do anything integral in holding the building up? No. The steel underneath sure does though. So, if you go by the axioms of modern design, forum follows function and less is more, why are the columns clad in marble?

Modernism has as many rules and regulations as past architectural orders, they are just more subtle. Modernism is just as susceptible to the rules of art as any other order of architecture. If modernism is above the rules of art and design then how do buildings become dated?

[rickdm]

Mies Van Der Rohe took great pains with proportions

I have seen this quoted about Mies, sometimes referring to the golden section or some other proportional system. Mies did not believe in proportional systems and would ridicule Corb's le Modular.

I was in a studio where we had analyzed the exterior of the Seagrams building. One of the critics, Harry Wolf, starting going on about how he had done an analysis of the sophisticated proportioning system used by Mies. James Freed the other critic in the class, who actually worked for Mies on the building, finally could take no more of it an stepped in. He said that they simply took the width of the site, divided it into five bays, then divided that into six mullions per bay. The height was what it took to get a standard ceiling height in those days. Jim said that as students at IIT they would go out and find the ugliest buildings in town, measure them to find examples of le Modular, then photograph them and put them up for ridicule.

I also got to know another architect in NY who worked for Philip Johnson for over 50 years and also worked on the Seagrams building. He had some great Mies stories. He said that watching Mies and Philip was a study in contrasts, Philip had a new idea every two minutes, Mies had a new idea every two weeks.

I love Mies and the Seagrams building but I am not sure that it is not an architectural dead end. Mies was not trying to reduce the office building to its minimum functional components, he was trying to reduce the office building to its essence. A very different proposition. The problem is that with the Seagrams building I think he achieved his goal. To me it is the purest essence of the modern office building, with each component perfectly articulated and developed. Where do you go after this? I don't know that even Mies had an answer to that one. Certainly the Mies followers who came after did not have an answer either as they produced cheaper and significantly less refined versions of Seagrams. It was the flood of poor imitations that ultimately led to the backlash against Mies and modernism.

rickdm

[Amanita]

Precisely. So many crappy knock-offs which came to taint the whole style.
Kind of a shame, really.

[wrab]

Originally Posted by AdrianXSands

i'm not here to prove myself to anyone; i'm not here to make people think i'm a master of rhetoric. i really don't care what people think of what i have to say.



... art and architecture are so very different. architecture is about problem solving, creating space, making things work and function... it is something that continuously affects every aspect of our lives. is there an artistic qualities (harmony, balance, rhythm...) to the outcome? sure... but unless you're frank gehry, any aesthetic aspect of a design is very much secondary to the pragmatic needs of that design. architecture is a skill, it can be taught and learned. ask piano, nouvel, koolhaas, even calatrava or any of the great architects of our time if they consider themselves artists. the answer is no. (charlie rose asks this question and i've only heard gehry and holl say they consider themselves artistic, but not artists. calatrava acknowledges that he is an artist, but that it is separate from him being an engineer or architect)

conversely, art is about making a pretty picture. or sculpting some super esoteric assemblage of steel. it is something that is based purely on feeling. and has no pragmatic use.

Nicely said, sir, excepting the last paragraph ("art" isn't about making a pretty picture, at least if you're the artist; it may or may not be pragmatic; it may or may not be programmatic. But I understand that you are making a broader point here.)

[scalziand]

Originally Posted by texcolo

Now that I have your attention, here's why modernism is a fraud, well to be more precise fraudulent.



If a modern skyscraper done in the modern style is supposed to be devoid of superfluous decoration then by that account every modern skyscraper should look like the above photo as finished.



In this picture of the AON Center, does the then marble, now granite columns really do anything integral in holding the building up? No. The steel underneath sure does though. So, if you go by the axioms of modern design, forum follows function and less is more, why are the columns clad in marble?

The cladding, whether stone, metal, or glass, serves to protect those columns from the elements and so prevent them from rusting. Could a coat of paint also have protected the steel? Probably. Could a coat of paint insulated the steel in the same way as a more sophisticated cladding system? No. In very tall steel buildings, insulating the columns is important because large changes in temperature of the columns will cause significant height change-enough so that the upper floors will be noticeably out of level to the occupants.

Why did the material used have to be white marble(which ironically couldn't withstand the weather anyway) as opposed to something else? I don't know.

[wrab]

^That'd probably be the client's call - Standard Oil, I believe? Although Stone did like his white marble.

Ayn Rand & Howard Roark aside, the client selects the site & dictates the parameters of the program. But I'm sure that you know this already.

I was just reading an anecdote from one of the architects involved with Water Tower Place - the white-marble-clad tower adjacent to Hancock on Michigan Ave in Chicago - on how he'd pleaded with the client to go black on the tower, but that the client insisted on white marble. What can you do? Some architects are better salesmen than others, I guess.

Although with Stone, the white marble was already sort of his professional signature, like Gehry & titanium.

[alexjon]

I like modernism-- I like sleek and functional. I like lines that lead the way. Form-fitting and structurally sound. Modernism works like a finely-tailored suit, to accentuate based on the structure itself (as a suit is tailored to fit the body and move with you in a flattering way); it creates identity in the daily function of the building. Art Deco buildings with their functional ornamentation that terminated in the building's structural lines showed that you can have ornamentation without extending yourself beyond a flattering point.

A lot of pomo abortions (like the Sony building or Graves' Portland Building) pretend to be a breakthrough in style by pretending to add something to the building-- but their additions are akin to giving a top hat and monocle to someone and saying they're high brow. Better examples of Post-Modernism like the Washington Mutual Tower take what pomo professed to advocate and actually worked with it to create a dignified form to something entirely functionless.

Extending the clothing and fashion analogies further, we have intentionally grotesque buildings like Gehry's abominations, which I'd reason are, at best, similar to casual friday's finest. Schlubby but self-aware-- relax the lines and function while expressing your identity to a suitable level of class.

And then we have his own calamities that are entirely like throwing on sweat pants and oversized tweety shirts and calling it fashion of any sort.

Did I sound biased there?

For the record, I couldn't find a single campus building pictured that I disliked in this entire thread.

[scalziand]

Originally Posted by wrabbit

^That'd probably be the client's call - Standard Oil, I believe? Although Stone did like his white marble.

Ayn Rand & Howard Roark aside, the client selects the site & dictates the parameters of the program. But I'm sure that you know this already.

I was just reading an anecdote from one of the architects involved with Water Tower Place - the white-marble-clad tower adjacent to Hancock on Michigan Ave in Chicago - on how he'd pleaded with the client to go black on the tower, but that the client insisted on white marble. What can you do? Some architects are better salesmen than others, I guess.

Although with Stone, the white marble was already sort of his professional signature, like Gehry & titanium.

I was unsure of how much leeway Stone had in designing the building.

It's ironic the way Mies himself dealt with the insulation problem in the Lakeshore Drive Apartments. Here's Daniel Libeskind on them:

But to me they are the ultimate irony. When they were built from 1948 to 1951, there were to be the embodiment, the visual articulation, of the modernist ideology. That was what we were to see in the clearly expressed steel skeletons and the black-painted steel sheets covering the columns and beams. But Mies knew this steel couldn't be fireproofed and thus had to be encased in concrete. And then he covered the concrete and steel-just for show. So much for the idea that form follows function.

Oh, and I rather enjoyed The Fountainhead when I read it.

[Lecom]

But to me they are the ultimate irony. When they were built from 1948 to 1951, there were to be the embodiment, the visual articulation, of the modernist ideology. That was what we were to see in the clearly expressed steel skeletons and the black-painted steel sheets covering the columns and beams. But Mies knew this steel couldn't be fireproofed and thus had to be encased in concrete. And then he covered the concrete and steel-just for show. So much for the idea that form follows function.

That's similar to how SOM approached designing the US Steel Building, now One Liberty Plaza, in New York. They wanted to create a tower bared down to its steel structure essense - vertical steel columns support horizontal steel beams that separate the floors, with nothing but glass in between, and it's what they did. However, that steel had to be fireproofed, so they clad that fireproofing in metal sheets that ultimately made the building look like that simple I-beam grid they were initially shooting for. However, one cannot dismiss this move as purely decorative since after all, that sheeting was necessary to protect the fireproofing from the elements. So here one can argue that SOM was hypocritical in its application of "form follows function", yet may also say that they did actually follow function by weatherproofing the fireproof material. As of making the ultimate product look like I-beams and painting it black - well, there's nothing wrong with a restrained touch of decoration by anyone's standards. If anything, it seems that many designers who claim that form follows function in their design actually go by "form imitates function".

[Zerton]

these chairs are everywhere



"One of Mies' most well-known projects is the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where he was Director of the Architecture Department from 1938 until 1958.

This photograph appears in the catalog to the 1947 exhibition on Mies at the Museum of Modern Art. This groundbreaking exhibit, curated by architect Philip Johnson, was instrumental in making Mies' reputation as a leading modernist architect and designer.

Incomplete at the time of the Museum of Modern Art exhibit, the IIT campus became one of the major monuments of modernist architecture."
-St. Louis Public Library, exhibits.slpl.org









by koolhas (aka pritzker award winning architect)




also koolhaus






^ Those are the dorms!!



So in conclusion, after spending almost two weeks living here, the people who say this school (that is renowned for its architecture and architects) is somehow lacking in architecture are idiots.


photos not mine, from google