Modern Architecture essays

Modern Architecture essays During the early twentieth century architecture took a new turn into the more modern way, with clean lines and a new influence of nature, which resulted in a new era of design as a whole. With this new way of thinking came a line of architects that would take architecture into a revolution, such as William Le Baron Jenney, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Their ideas would change the way of architecture and would have a lasting impression on architecture in the future along with how it was taught. The Industrial Revolution had so changed technology and design that old concepts no longer seemed right. Starting in 1840, leading artists, designers, and critics tried to develop new approaches to architecture. Modern architecture has its roots in a number of different origins. One of the persistent ideas in 20th-century architecture, however, is the belief of many, engineers as well as architects, that beauty could be seen in the clear expression of the structural properties of the new materials (Curtis 25). As iron, glass, and steel became available, building construction was no longer limited to stone and wood. One structure built for the Paris Worlds Fair of 1889 showed this exactly. The Eiffel Tower, by Gustave Alexandre Eiffel, which was seven-thousand tons of steel, was erected to soar nine-hundred eighty-four feet into the sky, as part of the centennial celebration of the French Revolution. Like this steel skeleton many other buildings would soon use the same type of way to build. High-rise buildings were made possible by the building of a steel cage, on which to hang the floors and walls. The basic skyscraper office building took form in Chicago by the 1890s and spread rapidly elsewhere. Involved were some exceptionally able architects, including members of the Chicago School. The Chicago School, an American architectural movement based in late 19th-century Chicago, was the ...