Architecture observation what do you think…?

[NYaMtl]

Originally Posted by Xelebes

The World Wars changed art forever.

The age of the violin had been replaced by the age of the electric guitar, the age of realist paintings had been replaced by abstract and cubist art, the age of embellishment was replaced by the age of the straight edge.

Violins are still being played, and in popular music they probably were used about as much before the wars as they were after; guitars, lutes, and other fretted string instruments, able to be played without a bow are significantly easier to learn and play making them ubiquitious in popular music before and after the wars. In places where violins were used before the war, they are still used today. In places where guitars were used, they are used more often today. Realist art continues to persist in certain styles; not quite sure what you mean by the last one (could something like the ancient Egyptian pyramids at Giza be about as unembellished as the John Hancock Tower?)

Originally Posted by Xelebes

I don't think saxophones were that important. Saxophones were much like the clarinet of the 20th century. The guitar's effect was much more prominent.

But saxophones were invented and reached prominence in the early 19th century, not the 20th century. Clarinets are still more common in virtually every ensemble that plays art music, save perhaps saxophone quartets...though surely it is more important in popular music, the guitar's effect is likely not as much as you think in other kinds of music (even other genres of popular music).

Impressionism was omitted because it started before the world wars.

A lot seems to have been omitted...it's true that the wars dramatically changed the art world. Surely there were rifts and schisms, but these art forms certainly persisted: classical music is still written and widely performed in a variety of styles; same with the visual arts... styles have probably never been so varied, and if you can't call this embellished, I don't know what is.

I think the more important factor that affected the art world beyond aesthetic shifts during and after the World Wars is the effect of mass media and mass production...but this is highly off topic.

[Altauria]

Originally Posted by Alliance

Please don't confuse gaudiness with artistry.

I'd have to agree with you, Alliance. As beautiful as I find the old styles myself, the embellishments on those buildings were essentially a commercial endeavor. It was "in style" then to create lavish, powerful, looking buildings. It made the owners appear wealthy - as they often were. The art involved with those old skyscrapers were not meant to inspire, although certainly meant to awe. This is more akin to film music and "serious" music. Music for film is wonderful, beautiful, crafty, and even, occasionally, genius......but it's rather atypical for a film composer to set out to create some shift in art music. One has to think of its audiences. This, however, is a whole different topic.

[X-fib]

Archtitecture is humanities most visual form of art. If artistic form is result of the overall design than fine, but if it is mere clading, added decoration for the sake of decoration, than its wrong. Can you imagine the Chicago Spire clad in rediculous fring? Beauty, art, should follow form.

[Patrick]

Originally Posted by Tanster

1950s and Up

640 Fifth Avenue 1949

Thats actually incorrect, this is the actual building, completed in 1949. The glassy addition was added to the top of the building in 2004.


http://www.goldmancopeland.com/portf...ommercial.html

[soleri]

I love modern art and architecture, but there's an indisputable decline in the relationship of buildings to pedestrians and the inhabitants of cities. Two cities, Chicago and NYC, offer vivid examples how new architecture can be inert if not actually hostile to human beings. When you look at the Wrigley Building, or the Tribune Tower in Chicago and compare them to even the best of newer buildings, it's really no contest. Chicago's mystique is its art deco towers. There's very little that's interesting around the Sears Tower, e.g. The John Hancock Building has a shopping plaza, which is removed from the street by design.

In Manhattan, midtown (42nd St to 57th St) is awash in modern buildings that simply suffocate the city with their unrelenting sterility. Below 42nd St, Manhattan is alive with a variety of older buildings that support the city's commerce and tourists. This is the Manhattan of our dreams, where tapered towers highlight and accent the various rhythms of urban life. It's Gershwin, as it were. Midtown is John Cage.

Modern architecture can be sublime but it's much more difficult to make it adaptable for human life. I wish I could sum up the principle but it seems to involve a fundamental shift in perspective from the street to the skyline itself. Human beings are not birds, however. We can't merely hover above the ground in order to admire the artistic statement in modernist boxes. If it doesn't live at street level and harmonize with the buildings around, it's not contributing to life as we live it. This is where modern architecture fails most conspicuously.

Every vibrant American city I know of is alive mostly by the grace of its older buildings. Modern buildings can fit into this template and contribute but it seems that there's a tipping point beyond which too many new buildings simply kill street energy and life. In my hometown of Phoenix, the dearth of older buildings downtown has made its renaissance a frustrating and tedious project where nothing seems to seed for want of fertile soil. Old buildings are the nutrients of a vital urban scene.

I'm not advocating nostalgia, or granite, or beaux-arts, or Disneyesque cities. I do love modern architecture but I detest the arrogance of many new buildings that abstract themselves from messy urban vitality. Cities are messy because humans are messy. Once the buildings become sterile, a gap is created in our experience. It's like trying to have fun in a living room where the only chairs are by Eames and Wassilys. Yes, they're beautiful, but do you really want to live there?

[Tom Servo]

over time Skyscrapers became more simple and less artistic.

...uh huh...
well, first, what is artistic?? second, what's wrong with simple? if you ask me, the more simple the more better. third, over time Skyscrapers have ebbed and flowed between an entire spectrum of design, from ... simple and featureless ... to ... tacky and over-embellished ...

actually, the chicago school of architecture, that little movement that created the skyscraper, gave us elegantly simple buildings. in fact, one of the main functions of the chicago school was to break away from the ornamentation (useless decoration as the chicago architects saw it) seen in the old european styles that were so in vogue in the late 1800's.
notice the simplicity of the burnham and root's monadnock building, built in 1891:





the subtle detail and nuance achieved in such simple and elegant design is what, imo, make this building one of the STRONGEST designs ever to come out of such a great movement in architecture.
look at the simplicity in the sullivan stock exchange building:

or jenny's second leiter building:

the chicago school was DEFINED by simplicity.

do i really need to remind you about the simple beauty and amazing elegance that mies gave his skyscrapers? ...murphy maybe? the pure genius of SOM's inland steel.



...anyway, before naysaying modernity, simplicity, minimalism, functionalism... whatever... perhaps you should read some of the essays by anyone from the werkbund movement... or maybe check out the concepts adolf loos introduced... maybe that'll help anyone who doubts simplicity and favors ornamentation and decoration.


modernity is god. and crown hall is mecca...

[SFUVancouver]

Central air conditioning plants and forced-air ventilation meant windows no longer needed to be operable and a sealed building envelope was possible. Aluminum, a decidedly post-war construction material, allowed for curtain walls and exterior metal window frames. Put the two factors together and you have the two critical components needed to build a modernist glass box.