Romanticism-- THE AGE OF ENLIGHTMENT

Romanticism is the first architectural movement that expresses architecture in a phenomenal and an emotional means. The age of Enlightenment is also referring to the age of reasons. It is actually the time where architects begin to find the real meaning of architecture and the original source of how European architecture had become. This had lead to “THE GRAND TOUR”--> The journey to find architectural ruins, paintings, and sculptures in order to understand and become reasonable of what had already exist! For this, they would bring back paintings and duplicate sculptures of what they had seen from the journey to create a sophisticated appearance.

This also led to the movement of “Phenomenology” in the age of Romanticism.  It is the architecture that played mostly with our consciousness, on how we make sense and perceived of the world.  The feeling of “SUBLIME”—Counter reaction to pure reason, was created. It is the biggest aspect of portraying architecture toward people. On how the architecture tries to evoke the feeling of overwhelm and greatness as visitor get in toward the architecture.  This Feeling can be described as “Vastness”, “Infinity”, and Magnitude in Building”.

I believe that the feeling of sublime has been used since the early architecture was created. Just like ancient Egyptian Architecture that they would focus on God’s scale to create the sense of sacredness toward to the visitor; with the use of Doric Columns, Sculptures and etc. The Acropolis is also tries to give the visitor the perfect angle in seeing the architecture in a sublime way!

Baroque Architecture

Baroque Architecture was the movement that tries to break the rules of Renaissance architecture in many ways. This movement was first lead by Michelangelo, where he takes the most classical figure of Christianity and distorts the reference.

“The reformulation of rigid Renaissance principle”

It was the movement that tries to deconstruct the exiting rules and proportion of classical elements in Renaissance architecture. It was portrayed to be the opposite of Renaissance architecture. Where there would be no perfect geometry and ornamentation would be very expressive and massive. The Pediments would also be broken down in to three layers, multi-dimension cornice, paired column and etc. This made the architecture become very expressive than ever before!

The Baroque movement is somehow similar to the Post-Modernism Movement, where both of them try to break the rule of the existing rules and movement! This significantly shows that through out history, Architecture has tried to be changing all the time in any matter. Where new architects would try to find new rules in order to overwhelm the old ones. And yet, architectural movement would still be on going in the future in parallel with the society! 

Renaissance

       Renaissance is the period of perfection! Perfect symmetry and proportion are portrayed on every piece of artwork and architecture. This ideal is what gave the Italian Renaissance uniqueness on their characteristics that specify its style. Donato Bramante is one of the earliest and greatest architects that create a legendary to this creation of perfection.

        Santa Marai Presso San Santiro was the project that Bramante tried to play with perspective paintings to create a perfect symmetry. The choir was supposed to be built in order to create a perfect symmetry, but it was not build because of the placement of the road. Therefore, Bramante painted the perspective view of the choir as an illusion to trick the viewer in thinking that it’s a perfect symmetry that continues.

        

     St. Maria Della Consolazione is simple but powerful work that Bramante had design to portrayed the meaning of proportion and symmetrical. The church is centrally planned surrounded by 4 symmetrical circular domes, and covered with a dome on top. 

JUNK SPACE

            Rem Koolhaas is one of the architects that had created a strong ideal to the history of the postmodernism movement. Since he love to read and was once a writer, and later became an architect. He had valuably declared his manifesto from the book called “Delirious New York”. The ideal of “JUNK SPACE”--->was described to be something that cannot be describe. Giving the idea of a space that is endless with times and space.  Junk space is always endless where the people inside would have no notice of times, and weather of the outside world. The space was design to be able to expand endlessly, where everything are arranged to give the flow toward the people. This is the answer to a space that ignore context, because it already has its own meaning of context within themselves.

“Within each building between each Building”

            The idea of endlessness has also lead to the phenomenal creation of the elevator and escalator. Which would bring people through the space endlessly!

          In my opinion, Junk space is a very big influential aspect toward the way of living of people. It had vividly divided the essence of hierarchy of people toward spaces. The division between the bourgeois and that non-bourgeois can be strongly pulled out by looking at the Junk Space and the Space outside.

Central World is a very big example of this idea of dividing different hierarchy! As seen that the bourgeois are trapped inside the luxury endless mall that would hide them from the outside world. Where they would have no notice that there are many small un luxury vendors outside surrounding the space. This gives a very big contradiction of what Junk space had created to the society. Where groups of people would have no consideration of the other groups; creating a separate cultures. 

Post Modernism

Post-modernist is a movement that was first foreshadow by Louis L Kahn but one of the really first architect is Venturi. The movement rejects all idea of modernist such as the idea of blending in classes together or the idea of not using the reference to the past and triggering the memories of the time of the great depression. Post-modernist refer to something in their building such as Frank Gary where he refer to the beginning as the fish for his architecture but he abstract it to fit the flow, circulation and the movement of the people. The form then become abstract but through deforming and changing it to fit and go with the flow.

Romanesque building is one of the building styles that consider the user and circulation a lot. They use sculpture as a trick to attract people inside and the footpath that allow people to circulate around to see relics without disturbing the people inside listening. Even the shape of the aisle adjusts to the way people flow and circulate around.

The Modern City

The movie "Play Time" portrayed the International style of modernism into the city of Paris in such a mechanical industrialize city. Paris was illustrated as a large mass production and auto-mobile city; with repetition of similar buildings and massive car. All materials are use in glasses and colored with grey, which is the significant of entirely manufactured city! The environment is accurately control, clean, and is entirely uniform, but some what seem unfriendly to live because everything are the same; people, city, and etc.

"Dead looking environment"

The architecture was designed to highly controlled the environment, which every one are portrayed to be equalized in the modern city.

This method of modernism movement, however does not fit Louis I Kahn's method. Kahn was the first to really open a way of thinking toward post-modernism. His belief of looking back toward history and bringing back the space. He reconsider the past in the new light and redefine aesthetic of modernism after he had studied at Rome. and had finally analyze "LIGHT".

Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies

"Silence and Light"...."Voids and Light"

After Louis I Kahn, Robert Venturi was the first architect to reject modernism and make a movement toward post-modernism. He believes that modernism is redundant of pure form that are mostly dead looking environment. He declare that "LESS is a BORE", and its the era of "Both....And". Venturi first building was his mother house, he used the vernacular architecture to express on the building with the taste of historical element to define the differences between modernism and post-modernism. The idea of showing that structure form that are useless and express it out as an ornamentation instead.

Modernism

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe is another influential architect of the modern city. His modular concept of the modern world is parallel to Le Corbusier, however he is far more minimal on the structure and many principles.

“Architecture is the will of the age conceived the spatial item”

After Word War One, everything was destroyed and there were no architecture left. Therefore, Mies Van Der Rohe’s style is to create the architecture for the modern era; the idea of abandoning the historical culture, materials, and political influence to create a new pure modern world. Mies’ movement toward modernism is to abandon all ornamentation of the building, and use mechanical structures to emphasize ornamentation instead…… “structures were express as a piece of jewel”; ornament.

Barcelona Pavilion's pole; purely ornamented

Barcelona Pavilion- very minimal structure. " LESS IS MORE"

The Barcelona Pavilion is the ideal concept of Mies' modular movement. His repetition of making every piece of his works disappear to the surrounding nature; making everything very pure and simple (minimize). All of his building will use very little materials such as steel structures and glasses. He does not only design the structure of the pavilion, but also design the famous Barcelona Chair.