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.

The Metropolis and the Modern World

The Babel Tower (Bourgeois)

"In the depth....what if one day those in the depth rises up again?"

The World Beneath (Non-Bourgeois)

"The hands of the holder know nothing of the dream of the workers"

The Metropolis is a modular of a modern city that was thought to be during the 20^th century, the perspective of an industrialized city with machine and mass production. The city of two worlds: one deep below the Earth’s surface lays the poor workers that were treated inhumane as if they were robots; working all days and night. The other high above the surface lays the bourgeois who live peacefully. The whole notion is represented as a machine-liked century, where the poor are force to work for the rich, where there is no more individualized. Machines are represented as an evil demon that could take away the workers’ life in any possible time.

Le Corbusier- Domino House

However, Le Corbusier's modular of a modern city is to benefit the non-bourgeois, where everything are conserve and has multiple program; Domino-House after WWI. Houses are design for living and are drawn on a form from factory that is functionally determined not ornamentally determined; functional as a machine.

Le Corbusier- Radiant City (La Ville Radieuse)

Le Corbusier also declare his manifesto of the "Radiant City" of the modern world. It is a modern form of living where city is broken up in the specific usage of zones. Such as residential zone, commercial zone, educational zone and etc. It is a modular concept for better living where every people have the same right and have an equal amount of space to live (14sq. m/ person).

" A better future, that is not classify"

Modernism Movement

The Vienna Secession was the biggest movement from the classical. It was the period of disillusion of capitalism, where they are suspicious of what they see and distance them self from the pass. By changing to serve the architecture for only the non-bourgeois, the concept had changed from the ornamental to industrialize. It was the machine age where hand crafted decoration and ornamental was rejected and consider as a waste of time. The modernism movement had played a major role on how people think about architecture. The method of mass production and machine liked material were use to serve as ornamental itself. However, distinctive period of architectures still serve as a good historical record on how far human have developed.