essay on modern architecture

Amazing Architecture

• {{ post.title }}
• No result found
• How to Write an Architecture Essay - Examples and Tips

• Crafting an Outstanding Architecture Essay Tips and Techniques

Imagine standing in front of a majestic Gothic cathedral, its spires reaching toward the heavens, or gazing at the sleek, gravity-defying lines of a modern skyscraper. Architecture surrounds us, shaping our world and influencing our lives in profound ways. The challenge, however, lies in translating the intricate beauty and complexity of architecture into a compelling essay. Welcome to our comprehensive guide on how to write an architecture essay . This post will offer you practical tips, insightful examples, and a clear roadmap to help you craft essays that truly stand out. Whether you're an experienced essay writer or a student just beginning, this guide is tailored to meet your needs and elevate your writing skills. Through this guide, you'll gain the knowledge and confidence needed to effectively communicate the fascinating elements of architecture in your essays.

What is an Architecture Essay?

An architecture essay is an academic paper that explores various aspects of architecture, such as design principles, historical developments, or theoretical frameworks. It requires a deep understanding of architectural concepts and the ability to communicate them effectively.

Architecture essays can take many forms, including analytical essays that dissect a particular architectural style, descriptive essays that vividly portray a building or space, critical essays that evaluate architectural theories, and comparative essays that draw parallels between different architectural movements.

In both academic and professional contexts, architecture essays play a crucial role. They help students develop critical thinking skills, enhance their understanding of architectural history and theory, and contribute to ongoing discussions within the field. For professionals, these essays can inform practice and influence contemporary architectural design.

Pre-writing Strategies

Brainstorming techniques.

Before you start writing, it's essential to generate ideas. Try mind mapping to visually organize your thoughts, freewriting to explore your initial impressions, or researching architectural styles and movements to find inspiration.

Developing a Thesis Statement

A strong thesis statement is the backbone of your essay. It should be specific, arguable, and relevant to your topic. For example, "The use of sustainable materials in modern architecture not only reduces environmental impact but also enhances aesthetic appeal."

Researching and Gathering Sources

Reliable sources are vital for supporting your arguments. Look for books, scholarly journals, reputable websites, and industry publications that provide credible and relevant information. Libraries and online databases like JSTOR and Google Scholar are excellent starting points.

Structuring Your Architecture Essay

Introduction.

Your introduction should capture the reader's attention and set the stage for your essay. Begin with an engaging opening statement or anecdote related to your topic. Follow this with background information and your thesis statement to outline the main points you will discuss.

Body Paragraphs

Organize your body paragraphs logically, each focusing on a single idea that supports your thesis. Start with a topic sentence, provide evidence and analysis, and conclude with a sentence that ties the paragraph back to your central argument. Use clear transitions to ensure coherence.

Examples and Case Studies

Consider this excerpt from an analytical essay on Gothic architecture:

"The ribbed vaults and flying buttresses of Notre-Dame de Paris not only exemplify the structural innovations of the Gothic era but also create a sense of upward movement, drawing the viewer's eye towards the heavens."

Analysis: This excerpt is effective because it combines specific architectural terminology with a vivid description, linking form and function in a way that enhances the reader's understanding.

Here's a sample from a descriptive essay on Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater:

"The cantilevered terraces of Fallingwater extend over the waterfall, merging the building with its natural surroundings. The use of locally quarried stone and natural light creates a harmonious balance between architecture and nature."

Analysis: The descriptive language and focus on sensory details make this excerpt engaging and informative, illustrating the unique features of the building.

From a comparative essay on modern and postmodern architecture:

"While modern architecture emphasizes minimalism and functionalism, postmodern architecture embraces eclecticism and ornamentation. This shift reflects broader cultural changes and challenges the notion of a universal architectural style."

Analysis: This comparison highlights key differences between the two movements and situates them within a broader cultural context, demonstrating critical thinking.

Citing Sources and Referencing

Citation styles.

Different disciplines use different citation styles. In architecture, MLA (Modern Language Association), APA (American Psychological Association), and Chicago Manual of Style are commonly used. Be sure to follow the guidelines specific to your assignment or publication.

In-text Citations

Include in-text citations whenever you quote, paraphrase, or reference someone else's work. For example, in MLA style, you might write: "According to Smith, 'the use of light in architecture is crucial' (45)."

Reference List

Your reference list should appear at the end of your essay. Format it according to the citation style you are using, and include all sources cited in your text. Double-check for accuracy and completeness.

Tips for Writing Excellence

Style and tone.

Achieving excellence in writing begins with maintaining a formal, objective tone throughout your essay. This approach ensures that your writing remains professional and credible. Avoid colloquial language and personal opinions unless the assignment specifically requests them. Colloquial expressions can make your writing appear informal and diminish its impact. Instead, strive for clarity and precision in every sentence you construct. Use direct and concise language to convey your points effectively. Remember, the goal is to communicate your ideas clearly and professionally.

Vocabulary and Terminology

Using precise terminology is crucial for conveying your ideas accurately. This is particularly important in specialized fields such as architecture, where specific terms can significantly enhance the clarity of your writing. Instead of using vague or ambiguous language, opt for precise words that accurately describe your concepts. For instance, rather than saying "nice design," you could specify "innovative use of geometric forms." This level of detail not only strengthens your argument but also demonstrates your understanding of the subject matter.

Structure and Flow

A well-structured essay is easier to read and understand. Begin with a clear introduction that outlines the main points you will discuss. Each paragraph should focus on a single idea, with a topic sentence that introduces the point, followed by supporting sentences that elaborate on it. Use transition words and phrases to ensure a smooth flow between paragraphs. This helps guide the reader through your argument and makes your essay more cohesive.

Research and Citations

Thorough research is the backbone of a strong essay. Make sure to use credible sources and properly cite them to avoid plagiarism. Incorporate evidence from your research to support your arguments. This not only adds weight to your points but also shows that you have engaged with existing literature on the topic. Proper citation also allows your readers to verify your sources and further explore the subject.

Proofreading and Editing

Thorough proofreading and editing are essential for producing a polished essay. Start by checking for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and inconsistencies. These small errors can distract readers and undermine the professionalism of your writing. Reading your essay aloud can help you identify awkward phrasing and improve the overall flow. Additionally, consider seeking feedback from peers or mentors. Fresh eyes can often catch errors you may have missed and provide valuable insights.

Visual Aids and Examples

Incorporating visual aids and examples can enhance the clarity and impact of your essay. Diagrams, charts, and images can help illustrate complex ideas and make your writing more engaging. However, ensure that any visual aids you include are relevant and add value to your content. Use them to complement your written text, not replace it.

Writing an architecture essay involves a blend of creativity, analytical thinking, and effective communication. By understanding the structure and purpose of these essays, employing pre-writing strategies, and paying attention to detail, you can craft essays that are both informative and engaging. Remember, the key to excellence lies in thorough research, precise language, and thoughtful organization.

By Liliana Alvarez

• Architecture Essay
• How to Write an Architecture Essay
• Crafting an Outstanding Architecture Essay Tips
• Outstanding Architecture Essay Tips
• Architecture Essay Tips
• Architecture Essay Tip
• Outstanding Architecture Essay Tips and Techniques
• Architecture Essay Tips and Techniques

Leave a comment

Related articles

4 Important Things To Pay Attention To On Your Company Building Exterior

The 5 Most Common Health Problems Related to Asbestos Exposure

Developing Sustainable Architecture with Innovative Design Practices

What is a Commercial Electrician? Guide to Electrical Safety

for architecture by architects

How to Write a Killer Architecture Essay | The Complete Guide

Essay writing can be quite a stressful task for any student!

But then, they are vital for giving a boost to your academic career. Especially if you’re pursuing architecture, these essays show your expertise in a particular subject along with your skills to neatly craft and present it on paper.

So, what goes into an impressive architectural essay ? What are the things you need to keep in mind while writing one?

Read along as we guide you through the essential aspects of a well-crafted architecture essay that can create an impact on the readers, and help with your academic career. 

The broad scope of architecture

To a lot of people, architecture is a field of study and career path related to designing buildings and other landscapes. But architecture is actually much broader than that. It refers to any structure that a human being designs and constructs to fill space.

This might include designing commercial and residential spaces, landscapes, green design, urban design, industrial architecture, and so on. Each of these has anthropological, psychological, and historical aspects that give them prominence and make them stand out from the rest.

So, when you write an academic essay on architecture, you must make sure that you choose a specific niche and touch along these aspects through academic approaches . This makes your piece much more credible and makes up for an exciting read.

Getting started on your essay

Perhaps, having a head-start to your piece is the most difficult part of all because you might be confused as to where to start.

At this point in time, you must be looking at certain sources on the internet or browsing books as to how to begin with your essay. This is a good thing because you’ve at least taken the initiative to work on your essay. The internet is full of websites that can help you with comprehensive learning sources, which in turn would aid you in crafting your academic paper.

Now, let us reiterate once more the fact that architecture is certainly a broad field. So, when you’re asked to write an essay, make sure you narrow down the scope of the subject. And that’s going to be your first step.

You might wonder how to go about it. Many professional academic writers advise students to zero in on a topic that can be elaborated on the basis of geographical location, time period, and style. Focussing on these aspects will give your essay the much-needed informational structure.

Ask yourself the big question, based on your interest. Then narrow it down to smaller topics by scoping out possibilities. This might require a little research. For example, if you are looking for some specific architectural structure or an architect in relation to your big question, more questions might pop up in your mind. This could pave the way for the final question you might want to find answers to and base your research paper on.

After deciding on a particular topic, you must thoroughly research it so that your essay makes for an intriguing read. You can make use of resources from the internet, books , encyclopedias from libraries, previous research papers, and several other sources to get the information that goes into your essay.

Also, make sure that you can find a good amount of information on your topic before you commit yourself to writing the essay. Many topics might look promising and easy at first, but might not actually have information worth going into a research paper. Keep switching the focus between the question and the research work to ensure that the information gained is relevant.

You must even include the aesthetics of the building in your topic, keeping in mind the historical context. Moreover, you can also critique various essays written by professionals on the said topic.

After you make notes for basic research, analyze the information collected based on visual, historical, and textual aspects. This helps you keep your essay factual, precise, and free of errors.

Essay planning

Once done with the research, the student must plan the structure of the essay. Needless to say, the style of the essay must be chosen strategically. Unless specified otherwise, many research essays and papers related to architecture follow an analytical style. Here, the students are advised to state facts based on the research work.

Also, when practicing writing essays, it is suggested to use a persuasive style as it lets you put forward a case and argue about a certain style of architecture. This helps the students effectively present their papers and master the essay writing style.

Then, the facts collected must be structured into paragraphs, which form the body of the essay. For that, you must choose the facts that you think must go into the essay and describe them in a sentence or two, ideally.

As you finish the planning phase, you are all set to start working on your architecture essay.

Writing your essay

Drafting is, of course, the most essential part of writing your essay. Prepping your information and structuring it acts like a support system for this part.

When you begin working on your essay, you must note that you should start with the introduction. This must be written in the form of a paragraph, and should not be longer than five sentences. It must be crisp, yet interesting enough to appeal to the readers.

Usually, the introductory paragraph is the one part that gives an opportunity for the writer of the essay to create an impact on the reader. So, the stronger your introductory point, the better the impression you make on your markers.

Paraphrasing is another thing that you should follow to make your essay relevant from the beginning to the end. Also, keep track of the essay’s style and the overall effect you want to create on the reader.

Once you’re sure of the introduction, start working on the paragraphs. The planning part comes in handy here as you already made notes as to what goes into the body of the essay.

To write effective body paragraphs, you must start by stating one point/fact from your research. This is the opening of your paragraph and should not be more than one sentence. Now, you must support this statement with relevant information to persuade the reader. Also, note that these supportive arguments must prove your thesis statement as a whole.

A small tip to make your essay stand out from the rest is to put your original thoughts into the essay, rather than just referring to your research materials. This creates a good impression on the writer in the minds of the readers.

The academic discipline in architecture provides you with a scope to include original thoughts, remarks, or arguments in the essay to attract evaluators and readers and enable them to read the essay with more interest. Now, this is one of the most essential skills an academic writer must possess.

The body of your architectural essay should reflect your ability as a writer to create academically relevant and coherent content and come up with a well-structured essay. An ideal academic essay ensures that those readers stay focused on the thesis statement throughout while paying attention to the detailed research executed by the writer in the form of arguments.

Students also must observe that the evaluators usually set the essay questions based on issues or topics that are mostly straightforward. He might as well delve into subjects that are more specific or of a technical nature.

Last but not least, in order to master writing an architectural essay, it’s not enough to just research well. Plan thoroughly or structure and write your essay in a well-crafted way. The concluding paragraph of your essay is as important as the rest of it, as it stresses the point you’re trying to make for one last time. And if done well, could linger in your readers’ minds for quite a while.

So, if you’re learning how to write an architectural essay, it is necessary that you give particular attention to writing the conclusion to the essay and restate your thesis strongly. An excellent conclusion summarises the best and most significant ones among the points you have argued throughout the body in one final paragraph.

It also gives you a chance to add your own thoughts, ideas remarks along with a strong emotional appeal so that your readers are deeply involved in, and impacted by your essay.

A solid conclusion is a fitting follow-up to a thought-provoking start and the main section that’s both precise and persuasive. So make sure you end your essay with an ending that’s as powerful as the start.

Leave a Comment

Modernism in architecture: from the Industrial Revolution to the Postmodern era

The architecture reflects the societal and cultural contexts in which it emerges. Architectural styles and patterns have evolved and transformed throughout history based on needs, aspirations, and advancements. A powerful movement in the late 19th century, known as modernism in architecture, continued to spread its influence within the entire field completely into the 20th century. This article will explore the evolution of modernism in architecture and find its roots from the Industrial Revolution to the postmodern era.

The Industrial Revolution and the Birth of Modernism

The rise of the Industrial Revolution, or the First Industrial Revolution, was started in the late 18th century, and completely revolutionized society, technology , and the built environment. Technology and mass production the revolution brought serious transformations in architectural design and construction techniques. New approaches using some traditional patterns, including neoclassicism and Gothic Revival, led to the embrace of innovation, efficiency, and functionality.

Early Modernist Pioneers

During the 20th century, architects and designers formed a group and rose as the leaders of modernism who challenged the usual architectural norms of the period. Architects like Louis Sullivan, Adolf Loos, and Frank Lloyd Wright started to focus on simplicity, rationality, and the application of new materials, particularly steel, glass, and reinforced concrete.

Louis Sullivan, also considered the father of modernist architecture , coined the famous idea “form follows function,” or simply functionalism focusing on the purpose and function of a building over its design elements, and this concept became the fundamental principle of modern architecture.

The International Style and the Bauhaus Movement

In the 1920s and 1930s, International Style and the Bauhaus movement gained popularity as major architectural styles and added further to the list of modernism. The advocates, including Walter Gropius , Le Corbusier, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the field of the International Style, fostered the idea of functionalism, abstraction, and the rejection of ornament. During that period, buildings were designed in a style that often featured clean lines, open floor plans, and a focus on integrating form and function.

The Bauhaus movement, initiated by Walter Gropius in 1919, focused on incorporating art, craft, and technology in an integrated design approach. It prioritised the value of interdisciplinary collaboration and the integration of art with industrial production. The Bauhaus school revolutionized teaching techniques and embraced an experimental approach, nurturing a generation of influential architects and designers who played a pivotal role in shaping the landscape of modernist architecture.

Postwar Modernism and Brutalism

In the wake of World War II, there was a notable shift toward reconstruction efforts and a pressing demand for accessible and efficient housing solutions. This era marked the rise of postwar modernism, characterized by the widespread adoption of prefabrication, mass production, and modular construction methods. Architects such as Le Corbusier, renowned for his “Unité d’Habitation” housing project, and Mies van der Rohe, notable for his “Farnsworth House,” epitomised the minimalist and functionalist principles that defined this period.

Brutalism emerged as a prominent architectural style in the 1950s and 1960s, bringing common admiration worldwide. Notable examples of Brutalist structures, like the Barbican Estate in London and the National Theatre in Paris, boasted striking geometric shapes and unadorned concrete surfaces. This style aimed to authentically utilise materials while reflecting its era’s social and cultural aspirations.

Critiques and the Rise of Postmodernism

On the way to the end of the 1960s, modernism came under a search for its shortcomings, including a perceived absence of human scale, disregard for historical context, and a tendency towards homogeneity. As a result, a new architectural movement called postmodernism was introduced, signing a shift in design principles. Postmodernism aimed to differ from the rigid functionalism of modernism by reintroducing historical references, ornamental elements, and many design languages.

The contributions of architects such as Robert Venturi, Michael Graves, and Frank Gehry were prominent in shaping the evolution of postmodern architecture. Postmodern buildings exhibited a distinct character, characterized by their whimsical and diverse designs that seamlessly merged different architectural elements, materials, and historical allusions. An exemplary illustration of postmodern architecture is Frank Gehry’s renowned Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which showcases organic shapes and employs titanium in its construction, exemplifying the essence of the movement.

Contemporary Modernism and Sustainable Design

In the 21st century, modernist principles retain their influence on architectural design, yet now, with a revitalized emphasis on sustainability and environmental awareness. Contemporary modernism unites the past’s functionalist ideals with ground-breaking sustainable technologies and materials. Architects like Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, and Bjarke Ingels have gained recognition for their environmentally conscious designs that prioritize energy efficiency, harness natural light, and seamlessly integrate buildings with their surrounding environments.

The influence of modernism in architecture has left a lasting impression on the constructed world, moulding cities and dictating design principles for more than a century.

Concluding modernism in architecture, its origin started with the Industrial Revolution and grew through the postmodern era; modernist architecture has adapted to shifting societal, cultural, and technological contexts. Despite facing criticism and giving rise to postmodernism, the tenets of modernism persist as a source of inspiration for present-day architects, propelling the quest for functional, sustainable, and visually captivating designs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_architecture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_architecture

Chandni is a full-time digital marketeer and content developer with over 5 years of experience majorly in the architectural hardware and glass manufacturing industries. Her expertise lies in leveraging her digital strategies to enhance brand visibility and drive traffic by creating impressive and persuasive content. She is well-versed in crafting engaging, unique, SEO-friendly, and copyright-free content for brands.

The development of sustainable and eco-friendly architecture

Brutalism: controversy, criticism, and revival of a controversial style

Related posts.

The Aesthetics of the Industry: Juxtapositions of Industrial and Traditional Styles

Asian architecture- how is it different

Architecture for Healthy and Happy Communities

Understanding different materials that are in experimental stages

The Blend of Japanese Vernacular Architecture with the West

Rediscovering the Essence: The Revival of Asian Architecture

• Architectural Community
• Architectural Facts
• RTF Architectural Reviews
• Architectural styles
• City and Architecture
• Fun & Architecture
• History of Architecture
• Design Studio Portfolios
• Designing for typologies
• RTF Design Inspiration
• Architecture News
• Career Advice
• Case Studies
• Construction & Materials
• Covid and Architecture
• Interior Design
• Know Your Architects
• Landscape Architecture
• Materials & Construction
• Product Design
• RTF Fresh Perspectives
• Sustainable Architecture
• Top Architects
• Travel and Architecture
• Rethinking The Future Awards 2022
• RTF Awards 2021 | Results
• GADA 2021 | Results
• RTF Awards 2020 | Results
• ACD Awards 2020 | Results
• GADA 2019 | Results
• ACD Awards 2018 | Results
• GADA 2018 | Results
• RTF Awards 2017 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2017 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2016 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2015 | Results
• RTF Awards 2014 | Results
• RTF Architectural Visualization Competition 2020 – Results
• Architectural Photography Competition 2020 – Results
• Designer’s Days of Quarantine Contest – Results
• Urban Sketching Competition May 2020 – Results
• RTF Essay Writing Competition April 2020 – Results
• Architectural Photography Competition 2019 – Finalists
• The Ultimate Thesis Guide
• Introduction to Landscape Architecture
• Perfect Guide to Architecting Your Career
• How to Design Architecture Portfolio
• How to Design Streets
• Introduction to Urban Design
• Introduction to Product Design
• Complete Guide to Dissertation Writing
• Introduction to Skyscraper Design
• Educational
• Hospitality
• Institutional
• Office Buildings
• Public Building
• Residential
• Sports & Recreation
• Temporary Structure
• Commercial Interior Design
• Corporate Interior Design
• Healthcare Interior Design
• Hospitality Interior Design
• Residential Interior Design
• Sustainability
• Transportation
• Urban Design
• Host your Course with RTF
• Architectural Writing Training Programme | WFH
• Editorial Internship | In-office
• Graphic Design Internship
• Research Internship | WFH
• Research Internship | New Delhi
• RTF | About RTF
• Submit Your Story

Key Steps in Writing an Architectural Essay

• by Elif Ayse Sen
• 21 August 2023

Architectural essays offer a wonderful opportunity to delve into the realm of design, art, and history, bringing together a synthesis of various perspectives and ideas. Whether you’re an architecture student, an architect, or simply someone with a deep appreciation for architectural marvels, writing an architectural essay requires a precise and thoughtful approach. In this article, we’ll outline the key steps to crafting a well-researched, compelling architectural essay.

• Understanding the Essay Prompt

The first step in writing an architectural essay is to understand the essay prompt or question thoroughly. The prompt might be as broad as analyzing the architectural elements of a particular building or as specific as comparing the influences of different architectural styles. Spend ample time understanding the question and clarify any doubts with your instructor.

• Preliminary Research

Once the essay question is clear, initiate your preliminary research. The objective is to gather a basic understanding of the architectural style, era, or building you’ll be writing about. This includes its history, key figures involved, and its defining characteristics. Online resources, architectural journals, and books provide a wealth of knowledge. Be sure to note down all sources for citation purposes.

• Formulate a Thesis Statement

Based on your research, develop a concise, strong thesis statement that expresses your perspective or argument. This statement should be a precise assertion that you intend to substantiate with evidence in the body of your essay. Your thesis should be the guiding light for your research and writing process moving forward.

• Detailed Research and Analysis

With your thesis statement in hand, it’s time to delve into detailed research. Analyze architectural plans, photographs, and firsthand accounts if available. Look at the broader socio-cultural and historical context in which the architectural work exists. Consider how it fits within its architectural style, its influence on later works, and its relevance today.

• Organizing the Essay

Now that you’ve conducted thorough research, it’s time to structure your essay. Typically, architectural essays follow the standard essay format: an introduction (including the thesis statement), body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Introduction: Set the scene by introducing the architectural work or style you’re discussing and end with your thesis statement.

Body paragraphs: Each body paragraph should deal with a single main point that supports your thesis statement. Use a combination of factual data, analysis, and interpretation.

Conclusion: Summarize your main points and reaffirm your thesis statement. Discuss the relevance or implications of your findings.

• Writing the Essay

With the research complete and the outline ready, it’s time to write. Use clear and concise language and ensure each paragraph transitions smoothly to the next. Be critical, but fair in your analysis. Remember to stick to your thesis statement and provide evidence for each point you make.

• Citing Your Sources

Citation is essential in academic writing. Cite your sources according to the required format (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.). This not only supports your claims but also shows respect for the work of others.

• Proofreading and Revision

After you finish writing, step away from your essay for a while. Return to it with fresh eyes to proofread and revise. Check for clarity, coherence, grammar, and punctuation errors. Ensure that the essay effectively communicates your argument and the evidence supporting it.

• Seek Feedback

Before the final submission, it could be helpful to have someone else read your essay. Their feedback can help improve clarity, logic, and coherence.

Writing an architectural essay is an enriching process that combines analytical and creative thinking. It allows us to appreciate the beauty and complexity of architectural works while developing our own insights. Remember, successful essays are not born overnight. It requires time, patience, and a lot of practice. So, take these steps to heart, and you’ll be well on your way to producing compelling architectural essays.

Architectural essays have an important role in the field of architecture and beyond. They function as an essential tool for discussing and exploring various aspects of architectural theory, history, and practice. Architectural essays provide a platform to delve into the various facets of architecture, such as the social, cultural, political, and economic influences on architectural design. They enable the writer to explore and understand architectural concepts, styles, and trends on a deeper level.

 Writing an architectural essay encourages the development of critical thinking and analytical skills. It pushes the writer to dissect architectural styles, constructions, and philosophies, fostering an ability to analyze and interpret the broader implications and contexts.

• Architectural Essay
• Architectural Essay Tips
• Architectural Essay Tutorials
• Architectural Essay Writing
• Design Essay
• Essay in Architecture

Elif Ayse Sen

architect, writer

The Role of AI Architecture in Autonomous Systems

The trend towards minimalist house design, you may also like.

• 4 minute read

How to Write an Admission Essay for Architecture School

• by illustrarch Editorial Team
• 11 July 2024

• 6 minute read

10 Tips for Writing an Engaging Essay That Captivates Readers

• by Carla Paulus
• 9 August 2024

Top 7 Principles for Effective Architectural Essay Writing

• 28 August 2024

• 3 minute read

How Important Is Writing An Essay For Architecture Students?

• 19 May 2023

Getting Started with Your Architectural Essay

• 1 August 2023

Essay Writing for Architecture Students

• 22 February 2023

Privacy Overview

Modern Architecture: Style of Architecture Essay (Critical Writing)

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The concepts of minimalism and functionalism, which sought to reduce structures to their essential elements and promote function over form, laid the groundwork for modern architecture. However, the movement has since changed, leading to critics claiming that the modern architecture movement has failed. The failure of contemporary architecture is due to a need for more consideration for the community (English, 2019). This failure can be attributed to the movement’s emphasis on individualism and selfishness, leading to the creation of buildings and urban spaces that prioritize the needs of the individual over the community.

One of the critical features of modern architecture is its emphasis on individualism. Instead of designing for the community’s needs, modern architects felt that structures should be suited to the needs of the individual. Frequently independent buildings with little to no engagement with the local population have resulted from this individualistic orientation (Frampton, 2020). Individualistically motivated architecture often produces unsightly and prohibitively expensive structures.

Another factor contributing to modern architecture’s failure is its focus on selfishness. Modern architects believed buildings should be designed to showcase the architect’s individuality. This has resulted in structures prioritizing practicality over aesthetics (Kuriakose, 2022). For instance, as depicted in figure 2, the newly finished Vessel in New York City is a massive spiral staircase and a perfect illustration of architecture made to make a statement rather than fulfill a functional need (Mafi, 2019). Additionally, many modern office buildings are designed to be imposing and grand rather than practical and efficient (English, 2019). While this may be impressive, it can also lead to a lack of practicality and usability.

St. Petersburg’s Gazprom Tower in Russia has drawn flak for its high height and disregard for the environment. As illustrated in figure 1, the tower is an excellent example of modern architecture reflecting individualism and selfishness (Welch, 2022). In summary, modern architecture has failed because of its emphasis on individualism and selfishness, and to solve these issues, architects must pay more attention to community requirements.

The article by Interesting Engineering argues that modern architecture, for several reasons, tends to lack the warmth and character of older structures for various reasons. Others criticize modern architecture for emphasizing functionality over beauty (English, 2019). Moreover, others believe modern architecture needs to catch up to its goal of advancing civilization through creative design, as demonstrated by the abundance of uninspired and boring buildings in many cities.

Kenneth Frampton offers a nuanced critique of modern architecture where he argues despite modern architecture’s promise to use design to foster a more democratic and equal society; it ultimately fell short of this goal. Due to their substandard design and lack of endurance, many modern structures eventually deteriorated or were destroyed (Frampton, 2020). Furthermore, much contemporary architecture lacked a sense of visual harmony due to emphasizing functionality above aesthetics.

Modern architecture has yet to succeed in bringing about the social and environmental advancements it promised, according to architect Benny Kuriakose. He claims that cultural identity and community cohesion are lost due to modern structures’ frequent cultural insensitivity and disregard for regional building customs (Kuriakose, 2022). Even with the claims of sustainability made by the industry, many new constructions could be more efficient in energy use and contribute to environmental degradation.

The amazing design of the Vessel has drawn admiration, yet it has also attracted criticism for being unusable and inaccessible. Some have noted that it is more of a tourist attraction than a functional public area (Mafi, 2019). The expensive cost of construction and maintenance has also provoked outrage, with many claiming that the money might have been better used on initiatives that would benefit the community.

Concerns have been raised about the Gazprom Tower’s architecture and effects on the neighborhood. The tower has been linked to environmental damage, such as the uprooting of local communities and the eradication of natural ecosystems, and has been portrayed as a symbol of corporate power and control (Welch, 2022). According to critics, corporate interests and individual profit should be subordinated in favor of the community’s and the environment’s demands.

English, T. (2019). This is why modern architecture is your favorite style of architecture to hate . Interesting Engineering. Web.

Frampton, K. (2020). Modern architecture: a critical history (world of art) . Thames & Hudson. Web.

Kuriakose, B. (2022). Failures of modern architecture. bennykuriakose . Web.

Mafi, N. (2019). The Vessel in Hudson Yards has finally opened to the public . Architectural Digest. Web.

Welch, A. (2022). Gazprom Tower – St Petersburg Building, Russia – e-architect. e. Web.

• The Yangzhou Qingpu Slender West Lake Cultural Hotel
• Maya Lin's Vietnam Veterans Memorial
• The Extent of Russian Investments in the CIS Countries
• The CN Tower
• Russia's Security Implications for the US and Europe
• Frank Lloyd Wright’s Approach to Sustainability
• How Did Adolf Loos Achieve Sustainability?
• The Lovell Beach House by Rudolph Schindler
• The St. Denis Basilica Virtual Tour
• The Dome of the Rock vs. the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2024, February 13). Modern Architecture: Style of Architecture. https://ivypanda.com/essays/modern-architecture-style-of-architecture/

"Modern Architecture: Style of Architecture." IvyPanda , 13 Feb. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/modern-architecture-style-of-architecture/.

IvyPanda . (2024) 'Modern Architecture: Style of Architecture'. 13 February.

IvyPanda . 2024. "Modern Architecture: Style of Architecture." February 13, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/modern-architecture-style-of-architecture/.

1. IvyPanda . "Modern Architecture: Style of Architecture." February 13, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/modern-architecture-style-of-architecture/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Modern Architecture: Style of Architecture." February 13, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/modern-architecture-style-of-architecture/.

Poundbury, Dorset, England. Photo by RoJohn/Getty

The new architecture wars

Traditionalist and modernist architecture are both mass-produced, industrial and international. is there an alternative.

by Owen Hatherley   + BIO

The ultramodern architecture bubble has burst. Today, in much of the world, new public buildings are no longer designed by the ‘starchitects’ who dominated in the late 1990s and 2000s, including Zaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron, Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry. Cities are no longer filling with vaulting, flowing, gooey, non-orthogonal buildings engineered through advanced computing power. Architecture has been hit by a new sobriety. Tradition, apparently, is back.

The reaction against ultramodern architecture arrived slowly at first, but accelerated with the financial crash of 2008, as the world economy and many political systems became increasingly unsteady. Amid this apparent chaos, the stability of neoclassical architecture was advocated from the very top. In 2020, the United States president Donald Trump signed an executive order advocating ‘classical’ architecture, including ‘beautiful’ traditional styles such as Greek Revival, Gothic, Georgian and neoclassical. This followed the British Conservative government appointing the late philosopher Roger Scruton to head a 2018 commission ensuring that new housing would be ‘built beautiful’, which Scruton made clear meant ‘traditional’.

Even earlier, in 2014, the Chinese president Xi Jinping issued an edict demanding an end to ‘weird architecture’ in China – likely a reference to buildings such as Guangzhou’s curvaceous Opera House (designed by Hadid), the gravity-defying cantilevers of Beijing’s CCTV headquarters (by Koolhaas/OMA) or the nearby ‘bird’s nest’ Olympic Stadium (by Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei). Also in Beijing, the traditional alleyways known as ‘hutongs’, many of which were swept away by the Olympics in 2008, have been carefully restored over the past few years as tourist attractions. And in the European Union, particularly Germany and Poland, projects of historical reconstruction – the kind that, in a previous decade, might have involved ultramodern non-orthogonal CGI-optimised arts centres – now feature new traditional-style buildings with gables and pitched roofs, set along winding lanes.

The argument made by the advocates of tradition and classicism is that the answers to the problems plaguing architecture and urbanism in the 21st century lie in the past: the style needed today, the logic goes, is a revival of the traditionally ‘beautiful’ forms of classicism, not some ‘weird’ global version of modernism.

M odernism in architecture is now at least a century old, and has many traditions within it, including gooey CGI formalism, warm Scandinavian architecture from the 1930s, or the harsh and tactile Brutalist monuments built by Britain, Brazil and Japan in the 1960s. There is no single thing called ‘modern architecture’, which is why rejecting it in toto should be as ridiculous as claiming that all jazz or all modern paintings are worthless.

However, in the 21st century, modern architecture has reached an impasse. This problem, according to many of its critics, is that the style is placeless . This argument is not always accurate – most countries have had their own regional or intensely local versions – but, as a broad point against modern architecture, it is a convincing criticism. These buildings could be anywhere; they fail to engage with what is around them. At one time, these features were actually considered virtues.

Consider ‘the International Style’, perhaps the most successful sub-strand of modern architecture, which was formulated by architects and designers such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the first half of the 20th century. It was so named for the way its cubic, repetitious style had emerged in several countries at once during the 1920s, suggesting it could be reproduced around the world. With steel frames, air conditioning and elevators you could build the exact same skyscraper in Stuttgart, Sydney, Seattle, Seoul or Dar es Salaam. The same interchangeability has been true of the ultramodern architecture of the 1990s and 2000s, with designers rolling out similar designs on ex-industrial waterfronts across the globe, often with an exorbitant wastage of energy and materials.

This sensitivity to place was intended to address the dilemmas of globalism

Perhaps the single most prominent campaigner against modern architecture in the world is Charles Windsor, the King of the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth. In the 1980s, he became widely known for his one-liners directed at various modern buildings: the National Theatre in London (now heritage-listed and much-loved) was described as ‘a nuclear power station’; a proposed Brutalist expansion of London’s classical National Gallery was a ‘monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend’. Putting his money (or, rather, his land holdings) where his mouth was, he then developed an entire town according to traditional design principles grounded in place. Construction began in the early 1990s at a site just outside Dorchester in Dorset that he renamed Poundbury. Over the decades, it has been transformed into a new neoclassical town intended to be attractive, traditional and ecologically sustainable. It stands as a criticism against the apparent coldness, placelessness and disregard for local materials seen in modern architectural styles – a criticism that extends far beyond the opinions and schemes of King Charles III.

The National Theatre, London. Photo by Steve Cadman/Flickr

The theorists and historians of architectural modernism have long been aware of these criticisms. In the 1980s, as the future King Charles III was attacking London’s non-traditional buildings, the British architectural historian Kenneth Frampton wrote that a modern architecture sensitive to place and materials was required – a ‘critical regionalism’, as he called it. This newfound sensitivity to place was intended to address the dilemmas of globalism, and is becoming only more urgent as unsustainable carbon-intensive building practices come under scrutiny.

But contemporary ‘carbuncles’ have failed to solve the deeper problems of the built environment, and the spectacular architecture of the 2000s is now achingly unfashionable. Today, the most respected designers tend to be those who bridge classicism and modernism, such as Caruso St John or Valerio Olgiati. And UK critics such as Oliver Wainwright or Rowan Moore can be relied upon to ridicule the expensive, computer-aided museums and galleries designed by the starchitects who rose to prominence in earlier decades.

The result is that, in the 2020s, modern architecture has become chastened. But by criticising placelessness – a lack of attention to local differences, whether aesthetic or material – architecture’s ‘trads’ are not always being entirely honest. Increasingly, modernism and classicism share the same issues.

S tyle wars have returned to architectural discourse. And, as expected, social media is the place to see these kinds of conflicts (and the false binaries they often represent) in their most grossly caricatural form. Online platforms show two obvious positions, both identifiable with a particular politics. One occupies a similar political location to Trump and the British Tories with their mandated classicism. This position is associated with glossy images of classical buildings, ancient Greek and Roman ruins, Central European historic cities, or American Beaux Arts edifices. These images are presented as bright examples of past solutions to the problems of modern architecture. On X (formerly Twitter), some of the accounts sharing these images, with names along the lines of @TraditionalWesternBeauty, are fairly benign. Others are clearly affiliated with far-Right radicalism, accompanied by faint dog-whistling about ‘globalists’ and ‘cultural Marxists’. From this perspective, modern architecture is seen as an example of a placeless globalism, expressed through the ultramodern buildings of Hadid or Gehry, the concrete Brutalism of the 1970s or the glass skyscrapers of the 1950s. The avatars of these accounts are often images of Greek, Roman or Renaissance statues, as if Michelangelo’s David has stepped down from his perch in Florence, picked up a smartphone and decided to denounce degenerate architecture by making memes.

On the other side of the debate are those sharing longing depictions of postwar international modernist architecture, usually through old photographs of British housing estates, Brazilian and Indian public buildings, and US universities. This side of the debate is related to the fact that, at the same time as traditionalism has revived, there has been a major resurgence of interest in what was once the most hated modern architectural subgenre: Brutalism. A modern style that emerged between the 1950s and ’70s, Brutalism is defined by aggressive, dissonant and uncompromisingly right-angled buildings made from raw, unadorned concrete. This style is exemplified by Charles III’s hated National Theatre in London as well as buildings such as Boston City Hall, the Kyoto International Conference Centre, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre or the National Library of Argentina. In recent years, these enigmatic buildings have found their way onto T-shirts, tea towels and mugs. They also tend to be particularly popular among Millennials. Go, for instance, to the Barbican complex in London – an enormous megastructure involving housing, an arts centre, a concert hall, two schools and a library, all in the same bush-hammered concrete – and you’ll almost always see a tour group of youngish, fashionably dressed people being shown round its walkways and foyers. Though there are far fewer champions of this kind of architecture in party politics, even on the Left, the accounts that advocate for this kind of modernism online, with names such as @BrutalistBoi1987, typically lean Left-Liberal.

Resources, technology and energy use can no longer be taken for granted

I have more in common with @BrutalistBoi1987 than with @TraditionalWesternBeauty. Though I enjoy a nicely fluted marble Ionic peristyle as much as the next man, I’m an unabashed enthusiast for the wild ambitions of postwar modernism with its quest for new worlds and new spaces. I find the welfare states of postwar Europe more attractive as sponsors of architecture than I do the slave states of Athens, Rome and Washington, DC. But there are undoubted similarities. It pains me to concede this, as a confirmed enthusiast of Brutalism and other forms of modernist architecture, but both sides of the style wars in contemporary architecture have a certain amount in common. Online, both movements are nostalgic, whether for a recent past or a much more distant one. Both tend to caricature their opponents and treat buildings as abstracted aesthetic objects – little more than JPEGs. Both prefer images in which human life is largely absent. Both keep commentary and history to a minimum (after all, there is only so much history that can be analysed in an online argument). Both work against the reality that architecture is really about space and can be fully understood only by experiencing it in person. But, above all, both perspectives wrench architecture out of its context in a particular place: both the cosmopolitan, urban Left and the ostentatiously nativist, reactionary Right are really celebrating an international style of architecture.

The false binary extends far beyond social media and the domain of style itself. In many ways, the arguments that characterise the style wars miss the mark. The impasse faced by architecture, whether modern or classical, is really about global approaches to materials and construction, rather than aesthetics. Resources, technology and energy use can no longer be taken for granted when it comes to architectural style.

Modernism’s guilt is easily proved: all that concrete, so proudly displayed. Concrete and steel are the materials upon which most modern architecture relies, especially the heavy Brutalist structures of the 20th century and the spectacular architecture of the early 2000s. These materials are hugely carbon-intensive (and expensive) to produce and distribute around the world. There is likely no way in which modernism could keep being practised as it was in the 20th century. On this, ‘traditionalists’ ought to have an answer grounded in place. However, architecture today of any style tends not to use local materials because, in many parts of the world, it is more expensive and difficult to build that way. Building with local materials – whether local stone, wood or baked brick – can involve highly skilled labour, which is hard to come by at a time when the construction industry has been comprehensively deskilled. Contractors working on just-in-time principles prefer to ornament their buildings with prefabricated pieces that can be produced in a classical style just as easily as a modern one. Style becomes nothing more than an interchangeable facade.

In the UK, since 2008, new luxury apartment blocks in London have been made from raw concrete frames that are clad in a quarter-inch of ‘traditional’ brick panels. In Germany, the recently reconstructed Berlin Palace (also called the Hohenzollern Palace) is made almost entirely from concrete, albeit with neo-baroque details. And in many places around the world, single-family suburban homes may look ‘traditional’ but are equally prefabricated (and predicated on a wasteful and bleak car-centric planning ideology). Classicism is every bit as mass-produced, industrialised and international as modernism. Critics of modern architecture might argue that this is a recent phenomenon: surely, modernist buildings have always been placeless, whereas classicism has only recently become deformed by globalism. This, however, is also a myth.

H ow can an architectural style that prides itself on specificity, localism and traditional materials be accused of placelessness? To understand the emergence of classicism as a global and industrial style, let’s start with a particular historical moment. Though there are precedents in the Greek and Roman empires – Greco-Roman architecture was fundamentally similar wherever you were in the European-Middle Eastern expanse of the Alexandrine and Roman empires, from York to Yerevan – it was the British who went further than anyone else in creating replicated versions of their home environment in the most unlikely places.

Between the 18th and 20th centuries, through British imperialism, architectural styles that might otherwise be firmly associated with locales such as Surrey, the West Midlands or central Scotland were faithfully reproduced when British settlers tried to build a replica of their society on the wastes they’d attempted to make of somebody else’s: in the deserts and coastlines of Australia, in the grasslands of South Africa, in the tundra of Canada, in the bays and volcanic hills of New Zealand. Among the exported architecture, one building in particular was replicated many times in the second half of the 19th century. You’ll find its ‘original’ by crossing the Solent to a small island south of Great Britain. Take a passenger boat from the quayside of Southampton, in the shadow of its 1960s concrete tower blocks. Onboard, you will pass container ships bringing goods to port and car ferries on their way to France before eventually arriving at the town of Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Nearby, facing the sea, is a palace: Osborne House.

People from the area refer to the Isle of Wight as ‘the Island’. It is a place that thrived during the Victorian era, at the height of the empire, due to its microclimate, which created a fair approximation of the Mediterranean in this corner of the north Atlantic. The Island attracted a remarkable parade of the Victorian great and good – a whole league of extraordinary gentlemen and women including Charles Darwin, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and various aristocrats who stayed as seasonal or permanent guests.

Osborne House began as a commission from the reigning monarch Queen Victoria who wanted for herself and her Prince Consort, Albert Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, a private house overlooking the estuary that divides the Island from the cities of Southampton and Portsmouth. Construction was completed in 1851 by the developer Thomas Cubitt, who was then building neoclassical terraced houses in much of what is now inner London. Osborne is generally described as a mere ‘house’ in the histories of royal palaces, and seen as a sign of the constitutional monarchy’s supposedly modest tastes and empathy with its subjects – they even used a developer who built ordinary terraced houses! But it is, of course, a palace, with so much space that it housed an entire naval college for a time, until it was finally turned into a museum after the Second World War. However, the term ‘house’ is not altogether fanciful. It may be a palace, but the scale is that of a medium-sized late-19th-century school. This is not Versailles or Peterhof; no absolute monarch, no Sun King, would be satisfied with Osborne. It is as informal as a home for the empress of an empire could possibly be.

Look more closely, and a much more global, imperial and modern structure starts to reveal itself

What exactly is ‘traditional’ about Osborne? First of all, its design is rooted in Mediterranean classicism, especially the Italian Renaissance. Facing away from the sea, the design is similar to other large houses of the period: flat-roofed, stuccoed and slightly stiff. These elements are artefacts of the German prince’s involvement in the design process and reveal his stolid continental good taste. Inside, this taste – marked by history paintings and marble casts of Greek and Roman statuary – fights it out with Victoria and her children’s love of kitsch, displayed through dozens of paintings of their dogs, and seen at its most grotesque in an entire room where the furniture, picture frames and much else have been crafted from antlers.

But Osborne House was also high-tech for its time. There are all manner of lifts, pulleys, switches, dumbwaiters and then-novel electrical devices to keep the royal family in comfort. Outside are more indications of the traditional style: Palladian windows, two campaniles, and a grand terrace of statues and fountains, planted with the semi-tropical flowers and plants that thrive in the Isle of Wight’s microclimate. In front of a rather too-apt statue of a bound slave girl, a pathway appears to lead to the sea, but kinks off into a picturesque garden, with winding paths, dense trees and what was once a private beach, with a glittering little classical alcove for Victoria herself to take in the view of ships passing by. The entire thing is undeniably beautiful, particularly because it does not ram beauty or grandeur down your throat – a contrivance, but an attractive one.

A photograph of Osborne could serve beautifully as an iconic image in the current architectural style wars. It is an elegant building, clean, clear and attractive, indubitably Western, based as it is on the architecture of the Italian Renaissance. It also appears to be rooted in its site, on the bay overlooking the Solent. Any ‘Trad’ could point to Osborne House and say: ‘This is what we want.’ But look more closely at the building and the history around it, and a much more global, imperial and modern structure starts to reveal itself.

At first glance, it may not be clear that the house is an imperial artefact. The references are Greek, Roman and Italian Renaissance. The truly imperial side of the building is carefully hidden within its public shell (like its high technology and simple, mass-produced building materials). The game is up in a large extension to the house built in 1890, furnished by the Indian architect Bhai Ram Singh in collaboration with John Lockwood Kipling, father of the celebrated novelist Rudyard Kipling. You enter it through several corridors lined with portraits of Indian princes, Rajahs and potentates who had ‘accepted’ her imperial overlordship, as well as some portraits of peoples from other corners of her empire: Africans, Arabs, Māori. Victoria apparently longed to visit India but, on deciding it would be too much of a hassle, she commissioned this annex, which would bring India to her. She had it filled with gifts from her Indian subjects: dishes, plates, architectural models, caskets, carpets. The plaster ceiling in one large hall is in a debased Mughal style – a fusion then being created by architects in British India, known as ‘Indo-Saracenic’ style. Goods and ceilings were apparently an adequate substitute for experience.

From the terrace of Osborne House, Victoria would have been able to see two major military and civilian ports at the centre of her empire: Southampton and Portsmouth at Spithead. From Southampton, the liners would leave carrying travellers and settlers to the US, but also loyal subjects who were then creating new Englands (what the historian J G A Pocock called ‘Neo-Britains’) in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Cape. In the mid- 19th century, she would have been able to stand in front of Osborne House and see – with a pair of binoculars – gunboats and warships leaving nearby Portsmouth to subjugate the Indian Mutiny at the cost of millions of lives, or leaving to fight dozens of brutal ‘little wars’ in Africa, or to suppress the Māori in the New Zealand Wars, or to force the Chinese at gunpoint to accept the opium of Scottish trading conglomerates.

It is apt, then, that in the 1870s Osborne House would be reproduced in the new colony of Victoria, in a garden site in the new city of Melbourne in Australia. However, in Melbourne, it became Government House, the seat of British power, overseeing and superintending ‘responsible government’. This replica was a statement of continuity and linkage by its architect, William Wardell, himself an émigré to the new colony. Osborne House and Government House were two substantially similar buildings standing at opposite ends of the globe to symbolically administer a Greater Britain that was expanding to every continent on Earth. In fact, the replica in Melbourne is one of many Osbornes. In Australia, you’ll find that Queensland’s Government House in Brisbane is also an Osborne clone. There is another in Auckland, New Zealand, called the Pah Homestead – a house for the Belfast-born Kiwi capitalist James Williamson, named ‘Pah’ because it was symbolically built on top of a pa , a Māori hill fort, as a statement of victory over the native population. And there is another in the far northern dominions, in Montréal, Canada: built for the Scottish-born shipping magnate Hugh Allan, Ravenscrag House may be made from stone rather than stucco, but is an obvious tribute to the original. Capitalists in the British Empire were wont to follow royal fashions, whatever their origins.

The many Osbornes built during the second half of the 19th century were followed in the first three decades of the 20th by many, many copies of other imperial buildings. This grand architecture of the British Empire, seen in Osbourne House, Balmoral House, Buckingham Palace and other places, was retrospectively called ‘Edwardian baroque’ after Edward VII, who took the throne following Victoria’s death. Edwardian baroque emerged as a style by fusing the classicism of 19th-century speculative builders such as Cubitt and the late Renaissance architecture of Christopher Wren into a reproducible international model. Just as Cubitt’s Osborne was copied, Wren’s buildings, such as St Paul’s Cathedral or Greenwich Hospital, were also reproduced across the world. You can find the same domes and pilasters recurring in the former Supreme Court of Hong Kong, the Government Buildings in Dublin, the main post office buildings in Vancouver and Auckland, the government buildings of Pretoria, railway stations in Australia and Canada, and the awe-inspiring former Viceroy’s House in New Delhi (now named Rashtrapati Bhavan), one of history’s most imposing images of raw colonial power, with its 340-room main building erected in stone on a 320-acre estate.

These buildings were roughly contemporary with the earliest monuments of what is called modernism. They were planned, built and completed around the same time as the Bauhaus buildings in Dessau, the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam, the Derzhprom building in Kharkiv and Shell-Haus in Berlin, to name just some buildings nearly a century old that still look like they could have been built yesterday. While the Edwardian baroque buildings are not modern ist , they are modern – often built of concrete, centrally heated, technologically advanced, and placed at the far corners of a global empire connected by telegraph, ocean liner and radio.

O n one side, tradition; on the other, modernism. But both are mass-produced, industrial and international. Both can be deeply insensitive to space and place. What if there’s an alternative to these false choices?

An alternative is needed to answer the serious problems that architecture faces today. Many of these problems have been raised by staunch critics of modernism, like King Charles III: why are so many buildings wilfully ugly? How can we make public spaces more humane? How can we plan for cities without cars? How can we design new suburbs that are dense and walkable, rather than spaced out? But, in falling back on the classical repertoire, the answers to these questions are unconvincing. King Charles III’s Poundbury has recently started, after some difficult early years, to be a commercial success, but largely at the cost of turning its largest public space – a square named after Charles’s grandmother, with a statue of her at the centre – into a parking lot.

Walking around Poundbury, you can see that many of the buildings use modern construction techniques and materials, and have the same problems with leakage, staining and dilapidation seen in any new suburban housing estate. The changing of the form has not led to any serious changing of the content. If Poundbury wants to be seen as an answer to the problems plaguing architecture, it will have to do better than taking a building constructed out of factory-made breezeblocks and coating it with something resembling the ashlar facade of a Georgian house. Up close, Poundbury’s placelessness is pronounced: the houses don’t even resemble the vernacular architecture of Dorset where it is located. Buildings here tend to be somewhat shaggy constructions of grey stone, not the neat classical terraces of Poundbury. What King Charles III’s project does resemble, however, is similar traditionalist housing estates of the 21st century, including the mock-British suburb of Thames Town on the outskirts of Shanghai and the Disney-sponsored new town of Celebration in Florida (with which it shares some of the same architects and planners). In reality, like much other classicist architecture today, Poundbury is international, industrial and mass-produced. In short, modern.

Housing cooperatives are more attuned to local climate, place and materials than ultramodern starchitecture

This brings us back to where we started: the affinities between a certain kind of modern architecture and a certain kind of classicism, both of which are equally committed to the same polluting, carbon-intensive construction technologies and global capital flows. Today, in the context of the climate crisis, concerns with style hide more urgent concerns about construction and materials. It is not just tedious but actively dangerous to carry on building in the old way, whether that’s concrete frames dressed in titanium or coated in neo-Georgian stock brick. So, is there an alternative?

If there is, it could likely emerge from some versions of traditionalism. Take, for instance, the work of the Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, who designed several large-scale building projects in North Africa using mud-brick during the 1970s and ’80s. Fathy came to reject modernism, but after shifting towards local tradition his work was always concerned with the most sustainable use of materials, the capabilities of local labourers, and the need to control climate without air-conditioning or similar technologies. But an alternative could just as easily come from some versions of modernism.

When the historian Frampton called for a ‘Critical Regionalism’, a modern architecture sensitive to place and materials, he found an example in the work of Álvaro Siza in Portugal. Siza is a modernist. His buildings are not copied from the past, and his use of interior space and architectural form is inventive. But these buildings are also absolutely of their place. They use simple local materials, and are sympathetic to the scale and sensibilities of the cities and villages in which they are constructed.

If you look hard enough in contemporary architecture, you can find modernist approaches like Siza’s that are ready to grapple with the climate crisis and the problems of construction. Often these answers are found in luxury projects, particularly in the many private eco-houses that have filled the pages of architecture magazines for the past couple of decades. However, a few recent housing cooperatives suggest how these answers could be scaled up.

Cooperatives such as LILAC (Low Impact Living Affordable Community) in Leeds in northern England, or La Borda in Barcelona – two projects that offer lower-impact forms of communal living than conventional housing estates – are unashamedly modern in their expression. They don’t look like traditional old buildings because they’re not: form follows function here. The Poundbury repertoire of pediments, columns and decoration is wholly absent. Both LILAC and La Borda are mass-produced, in a way, with easily standardised timber frames used to make the shells of the buildings. This standardisation may appear to be a repeat of the global placelessness of the International Style, but many of these housing cooperatives are much more attuned to local climate, place and materials than any computer-generated example of ultramodern starchitecture (or facade-heavy versions of classicism, for that matter). The designers and cooperators of these alternatives have eschewed the building industry’s off-the-peg components, rejecting concrete frames, asphalt public spaces, excessive water features and metal furniture that’s rough-sleeper-proof. Instead, they have favoured simple buildings with spaces that are denser, greener and more intimate than most forms of modern architecture, whether we’re talking about 1960s Brutalism or the iconic buildings of the 2000s.

Places like LILAC or La Borda offer us an escape from a present that obviously can’t continue, and a way beyond a past that has been reduced to little more than a series of images without context. But these places have one major flaw: neither can be entirely understood as a singular image, at a glance. Architecture doesn’t float in the ether of our screens. It happens in place, and is always caught in complex meshes of competing economic and political interests. If we hope to understand real alternatives to modernism or classicism, those places and interests must be understood, too. Otherwise, all we’re doing is shouting at each other about JPEGs while living in houses we can’t afford.

Political philosophy

Citizens and spinning wheels

For Indians to be truly free, Gandhi argued they must take up traditional crafts. Was it a quixotic hope or inspired solution?

Benjamin Studebaker

C L R James and America

The brilliant Trinidadian thinker is remembered as an admirer of the US but he also warned of its dark political future

Harvey Neptune

Progress and modernity

The great wealth wave

The tide has turned – evidence shows ordinary citizens in the Western world are now richer and more equal than ever before

Daniel Waldenström

Neuroscience

The melting brain

It’s not just the planet and not just our health – the impact of a warming climate extends deep into our cortical fissures

Clayton Page Aldern

Falling for suburbia

Modernists and historians alike loathed the millions of new houses built in interwar Britain. But their owners loved them

Michael Gilson

Computing and artificial intelligence

Mere imitation

Generative AI has lately set off public euphoria: the machines have learned to think! But just how intelligent is AI?

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Modern Architecture: Everything You Need to Know 

Despite what it might sound like, modern architecture is not buildings or structures designed within the last few years. “Modern architecture comes from a historical moment,” explains Andrew Heid, founding principal of the New York–based firm No Architecture and member of the AD Pro Directory . “In the history of architecture, modern architecture begins in the 17th century and extends until the mid 20th century, ending in about the 1950s.” Even so, the movement remains one of the most notable and popular architectural styles of the present day. In this guide from AD , learn about the origins and history of modern architecture, visit famous examples, and discover the lasting impact of modern architects.

What is modern architecture?

Modern architecture is the architectural style that dominated the Western world between the 1930s and the 1960s and was characterized by an analytical and functional approach to building design. Buildings in the style are often defined by flat roofs, open floor plans, curtain windows, and minimal ornamentation. Architects of the time were guided by the “rule” that “form follows function,” which prompted designers to consider what a building should achieve for the user before what it should look like. The aesthetic look of modern buildings was heavily correlated with a set of social-political philosophies including the idea that buildings could be the answers to deep-rooted social inequalities. The style is also often called the international style or international modernism.

The National Gallery, designed by Mies Van der Rohe

“For me, modern architecture is most succinctly summarized by Peter Blake, who was the former chief curator of architecture design at MoMA, in the introduction to a book he wrote in the 1970s called T he Three Master Builders,” says Heid. “He argued that modern architecture came into existence in the 19th century when the modern metropolis created new functions and new typologies that never existed before—for example, the stock exchange, the prison, the railroad station, or the hospital—and therefore required new form or expression or style.”

History of modern architecture

The emergence of modernist design is largely credited to a group of European architects, most notably Swiss French architect Le Corbusier and German American architect Walter Gropius. Gropius founded the Bauhaus school in Germany, which taught the design style and school of thought that heavily influenced modernist design. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , another powerhouse of modern architecture who also taught at the Bauhaus and worked as its third and final director, was also heavily influential. “[Modernists] eventually fled Germany and came to the US because of the Nazis, and that’s really how modernism came to the United States and then made its way from the East Coast to West Coast,” explains Joe Dangaran, cofounder of Los Angeles–based Woods + Dangaran and member of the AD Pro Directory .

Farnsworth House, a modernist glass structure, designed by Mies Van der Rohe

By the 1930s the style spearheaded by these men was spreading throughout the United States, and American architect Philip Johnson curated an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York called “Modern Architecture: International Exhibition,” which showcased the new style or architecture defined by geometric forms and minimal ornamentation. From here, both the terms international style and modern architecture were born, and the exhibit expressed the fundamental principles of modern design. Louis Sullivan, an influential Chicago School architect and mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, coined the term “form follows function” in 1893, which ultimately became an important tenement for the modernist movement. “A big part of modern design was making homes more comfortable and healthy,” explains Dangaran. At the time, plenty of natural light and open space weren’t a given, and the modern style sought to include these elements in order to make the people living inside feel happier and healthier. “Indoor-outdoor connection, connection to the landscape, to natural light…that was really modernism that brought that into architecture,” Dangaran says.

The interior of Farnsworth House. A core principle of modern homes was an open floor plan. 

With these aesthetic elements also came structural developments, many of which are still used in contemporary architecture to this day. “The structural innovation of modernism is that they started using either thin concrete, reinforced concrete with steel, or just a steel structure themselves, and they brought the structure off of the envelope of the building, so walls were no longer needed to hold up the building,” Dangaran says. Prior to this most buildings were designed with thick load-bearing walls, and this evolution allowed for greater experimentation with the layout and form of a building. Along with this change came the opportunity for curtain windows and other large openings, fully transforming what was previously possible. “With the invention of this structural steel frame, that was the big breakthrough,” says Heid. “You could fill it with glass, and that’s really what the international style and modernist buildings are about to me.”

In the early 1920s, Corbusier published a manifesto titled the “Five Points of Architecture,” originally appearing in a publication the architect cofounded, L’Esprit Nouveau. In the seminal essay, Corbusier explored five key elements of design that he believed should be the foundation for this new architectural style—many of which concern the structural change Dangaran and Heid noted—and went on to be extremely influential during the modern movement. The principles were as follows:

Buildings are raised on a set of reinforced pilots (or pillars) for ground floor circulation and to make room for cars or gardens.

Essentially an open floor plan, this principle related to a structural development and the removal of load-bearing partition walls, allowing flexibility of the interior living spaces.

The structure is separated from the walls, allowing for more flexibility for windows and openings.

Horizontal ribbon windows extend along the facade, offering a more balanced lighting and a greater sense of space.

Modern homes should include roof gardens, which are flat roofs that allow for additional living space.

Villa Savoye

No building exemplifies these ideals quite like Villa Savoye, designed by Corbusier and his cousin Pierre Jeanneret. Located on the outskirts of Paris, the home follows Corbusier’s five points and features pilotis made from reinforced concrete, horizontal windows, a free floor plan and façade, and a roof garden.

A contemporary home designed by Andrew Heid featuring many elements seen in modernist homes including floor-to-ceiling windows, a flat roof, and connection with nature. 

In many ways, modernism was the built expression of a series of utopian social ideas, many of which were based on the ideas that buildings could improve and change social inequalities. Postmodernism rejected this idea, and rather sought to explore architecture from an eccentric and sometimes humorous perspective. As Owen Hopkins , an architectural writer and curator and author of multiple books including Postmodern Architecture: Less Is a Bore , told AD about the emergence of postmodern design , “The idea that one could simply build a better world had very much run its course.”

Defining elements and characteristics of modern architecture

The Eames House, the home and studio of pioneering designers Charles and Ray Eames 

To better understand modern architecture, consider the following elements often seen in this style of design.

This home, designed by Woods + Dangaran, takes inspiration from modernism. 

In addition to the breakthrough structural advancements, there are many aesthetic components of modern design that are signifiers of the style.

• Rectangular forms with clean lines
• Open floor plans
• Large, horizontal windows or curtain glass
• A connection between the indoor and outdoor
• Lack of ornamentation
• Steel, glass, and reinforced concrete among the most prominent building materials

Famous Modern Architecture Examples and Architects

In addition to Villa Savoye, the following are among the most recognizable and notable examples of modernist design:

The Seagram Building

Designed by two of the biggest modernist architects of the time, the Seagram Building in New York is the epitome of modernism in a skyscraper. Its impact was notable from the minute it was completed, and The New York Times even went so far as to say it is one of the city’s “ most copied buildings .”

The Barcelona Pavilion

The Barcelona Pavilion is noted for its use of many luxurious materials—such as onyx and travertine—in conjunction with its simple form. The structure was designed as the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition.

Fallingwater

A pioneer of midcentury modernism , Frank Lloyd Wright ’s Fallingwater is one of the most influential residential homes ever built. Though it incorporates elements of organic architecture as well, it was designed following many of the principles of modernism and can be viewed as an evolution of the style.

The Glass House in the fall

The Glass House by Philip Johnson is one of the best examples of the structural advancements that came about during the modern movement. No longer load-bearing, the glass walls are the standout feature of the property.

More Great Stories From AD

Sign up for our daily newsletter to get the best of design in your inbox.

Step Inside Jennifer Garner’s Cozy California Home

Find Your Focus This Fall With The Newest Arrivals

Life on the Most Remote Human Settlement in the World

Visiting Queer Eye ’s Antoni Porowski at His Manhattan Apartment

7 Best Quilts and Coverlets, Tested and Reviewed by Our Editors

Frank Lloyd Wright Designed This House at 26—It’s Now for Sale for $1.98 Million

Inside Designer Robert Stilin’s Creative Red Hook Abode

This Brazil Home With a Green Roof Feels Like a Well-Kept Secret

The 13 Most Beautiful College Quads in America

Is “Fridgescaping” Another Symptom of Our Increasingly Polarizing Times?

22 Best Shower Curtains to Transform Your Bathroom Decor

Michael Keaton’s Homes: Inside the Actor’s Impressive Real Estate Portfolio

This Artful Oasis Turns Palm Springs’ Slick Aesthetic Upside Down

Not a subscriber? Join AD for print and digital access now.

Essay Service Examples Art Architecture

Modern Architecture Essay

Table of contents

Architectural evolution, why a new movement, back to basics, experimentation in modern architecture, fundamentals of modern architecture.

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

• (1946). In K. Sykes, Designing a New Industry (pp. 154-164). New York: George Braziller.
• Macleod. (2013, Jan 28). modernism to Post Modernism. Retrieved from Macleod 29: http://macleod29.blogspot.com/
• Severino, R. (1970). Equipotential Space. New York: Praeger Publishers, Inc.
• Theodore H.M. Prudon, F. (2008). Preservation of Modern Architecture. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
• Utzon, J. (2002, May). Sydney Opera House Trust [AU]. Retrieved from sydneyoperahouse.com: https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/content/dam/pdfs/Utzon-Design-Principles.pdf

Our writers will provide you with an essay sample written from scratch: any topic, any deadline, any instructions.

Cite this paper

Related essay topics.

Get your paper done in as fast as 3 hours, 24/7.

Related articles

Most popular essays

• Architecture
• Critical Thinking
• Urbanization

“Why Ecological Urbanism? Why now?” The book discusses two important issues that can impact our...

• New York City

Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity states that “everything is relative” (Einstein, 1920). It...

The architecture of Ancient Greece is the architecture produced by the Greek-speaking people...

My passion for architecture stems from my childhood when I was recognized as being able to express...

• Natural Environment

Nature can be seen emerging in architecture right from the beginning in ancient Egypt. Natural...

Frank Lloyd Wright, throughout his career, viewed nature as a spiritual reference, yet despite...

• Cultural Diversity

Globalization heavily impacted architectural styles universally by allowing the start of cultural...

• Art History

“It has been truly said that protection from the inclemency of the seasons was the mother of...

• Ethnography

Ethnography and ethnographic research help in exploring how interactions of human beings with...

Join our 150k of happy users

• Get original paper written according to your instructions
• Save time for what matters most

Fair Use Policy

EduBirdie considers academic integrity to be the essential part of the learning process and does not support any violation of the academic standards. Should you have any questions regarding our Fair Use Policy or become aware of any violations, please do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected].

We are here 24/7 to write your paper in as fast as 3 hours.

Provide your email, and we'll send you this sample!

By providing your email, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy .

Say goodbye to copy-pasting!

Get custom-crafted papers for you.

Enter your email, and we'll promptly send you the full essay. No need to copy piece by piece. It's in your inbox!

• Hispanoamérica
• Work at ArchDaily
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy

Contemporary Architecture and the Modern City

• Written by Gerhard W. Mayer
• Published on September 06, 2024

This article was originally published on Common Edge .

"O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, has there ever been another place on earth where so many people of wealth and power have paid for and put up with so much architecture they detested as within thy blessed borders today?"

Tom Wolfe wrote this in his 1981 book From Bauhaus to Our House . The conflict between modern and traditional design has barely abated since, as is evident in this recent article. In the U.S. , modern buildings are often met with community aversion, for familiar reasons: their perceived coldness and lack of contextual sensitivity, the impact on local character, and the loss of historical continuity. But on another level, the critique against modern design finds even more purchase on the larger scale: the city . Modern U.S. cities reek of traffic congestion and pollution, social inequality and gentrification , a loss of community and cultural spaces , and a lack of usable open space.

Related Article

In the U.S., modern buildings and modern cities are often conflated—and objected to. But this is not the case internationally. There, modern architecture has been separated from modern cities. Modern design is broadly appreciated for new buildings, but the “modern” city has been largely rejected. Overseas we can observe a culture that is looking forward to better urban lives with modern buildings, modern construction methods and lower carbon footprints, while here in the U.S. we reminisce about building designs that are several decades old, and cities where cars could just move around more freely.

How did we get to this point?

For most of human history, architectural design has progressed in evolutionary steps, with formal innovation carefully balanced against tried and proven prototypes and established building techniques. But just before World War I, technological advancements, a response to industrialization , and changing social values brought about a style revolution. Suddenly, architects were not just designing buildings; they believed that architecture could improve society . By linking the style movement to broader social and political changes, a rise of democratic ideals created a desire for more equitable and functional spaces for all people. Modern architecture was both a response to and an active participant in the larger social transformations of its time.

And cities really did need renewal. Before the war, living in a major metropolis was, for most people of average and below means, a challenging proposition. In London —at the time the world’s major metropolis, with about 6 million people—the effects of the Industrial Revolution led to a stark divide between the wealthy and the poor, the latter living in cramped, poorly maintained tenements, particularly in the East End. In Vienna , a severe lack of housing meant that people would rent beds in eight-hour intervals at a time. Public health was a major concern. Many areas had inadequate sanitation, leading to outbreaks of diseases like cholera and tuberculosis.

Key elements of a “modern” city emerged in Paris in 1930. Le Corbusier ’s famous urban plan envisioned a city strictly separated by functions: residential areas, business districts, and recreational spaces connected by broad, open boulevards to facilitate efficient traffic flow and prevent congestion. Housing was to be in high-rise apartment blocks set within vast green spaces. The idea was to provide ample light, air, and greenery for all residents.

After World War II, much of the world embraced this idea of a “modern city” as a guide to transforming their urban landscapes. Urban renewal was to provide new housing , commercial spaces, and modern infrastructure—frequently meaning more and more space for cars. In the U.S., modern architecture was displaying new economic and cultural power through the International Style . Combined with sprawling suburbs, this generated a prominent expression in American cities: largely flat and sprawling, with a tall central business district.

Similar “modern” design and urban planning concepts resulted in cities that began to lose their unique identities, while car-dependent mobility started to show its downsides. Many cities struggled with traffic congestion, air pollution, and noise stemming from rapid population growth and reliance on automobiles. By prioritizing space for automobiles, modern cities neglected the inclusion of sufficient green spaces and recreational areas. This affected residents’ well-being and reduced opportunities for outdoor activities, contributing to a sense of confinement and stress.

Counter to the original equitable intentions of the modern movement, the rise of modern cities often lead to the displacement of long-time residents and the erosion of affordable housing options. This process created stark divides between affluent newcomers and existing communities, exacerbated social inequality, and contributed to a sense of injustice and alienation among displaced populations.

Finally, while the International Style was an ideal vehicle for America’s new economic strength, developing cities mostly in financial terms led to a shift toward more commercial and corporate spaces at the expense of community-oriented and culturally significant areas. Traditional markets, local businesses, and communal gathering spots gave way to chain stores and luxury developments, diminishing the vibrancy and diversity that characterize thriving urban communities.

Several counter-reactions emerged against modern design ideas.

In 1972, the Club of Rome published a report called The Limits to Growth. Using computer modeling, it explored the dire consequences of continued economic and population growth on the Earth’s finite resources. This publication is often hailed as the start of the sustainability movement.

Postmodernism , which gained prominence in the 1980s, sought to reintroduce elements of history, context, and symbolism into architectural design to counteract the alienation and perceived monotony of modern buildings with a more diverse, inclusive, and often playful approach to architectural design.

But the most impactful counter-reaction to modernism was focused on Urban Design. Interbau 1957 in Berlin had presented a model for the “modern” city of tomorrow that was the first real built demonstration of Le Corbusier ’s ideals. It became an influential model much of the modern world had followed.

This new “ Hansaviertel ” brought with it also an embrace of the automobile; and over time it turned out that there simply was not enough space for them in historic cities. This led to rising public discontent and bizarre urban design ideas: in Amsterdam, for instance, an American planner suggested filling in the famous canals with underground garages.

In the 1970s, Berlin set out to create another event to undo the influence of its own 1957 Interbau and create a new way forward. The 1987 International Building Exhibition (IBA) in Berlin was to address and rejuvenate Berlin’s urban environment with a focus on architectural and planning innovation. The IBA’s goal was to regain the urban areas as residential locations through a return to traditional urban design, with modern architectural designs that were to fill in the urban fabric of Berlin. The impact of the 1987 IBA was prodigious. It triggered several subsequent similar events, although at first only in Germany. Today, the idea of Rapid Urban Prototyping as a method of urban innovation has spread beyond Germany’s borders. IBAs have gone international and are occurring as far away as Melbourne .

Berlin separated modern building design from modern urban design and demonstrated that cities can continue their timeless, traditional urban fabric with cutting-edge modern and sustainable buildings. Communities found that the environmental advantages of compact walkable cities with new sustainable building techniques put them at the forefront of green initiatives and sustainability efforts. They invested in renewable energy, green public transportation, and eco-friendly buildings. For example, Copenhagen aims to become carbon neutral by 2025 , showcasing a commitment to a cleaner future.

People overseas are quite happy with modern architecture , as they see it adding to their quality of life. New developments bring with them a belief that the modern technology in them will help us. People understand that city living is a more sustainable choice due to a more efficient use of resources, reduced reliance on cars, and better access to public transportation.

There are whole new neighborhoods being constructed in and around existing cities that are inviting, multigenerational, mixed-use districts. They promote biodiversity while offering a solution to a city’s affordable housing crisis. By picking up threads from previous garden city movements, new projects seek to bring the urban environment into harmony with existing natural landscapes , establishing a community of ecologically responsive housing units organized according to the model of a “rural village.”

Rather than characterless boxes in the International Style , modern buildings overseas are highly individualistic and often quirky, and serve to articulate the public realm while affording inhabitants the luxuries of light-flooded spaces with open-floor plans. Modern buildings range from individualistic to highly artistic and incorporate natural features of the landscape. Sustainability is promoted throughout.

People hope that with modern buildings in well-designed cities, there is a path forward to solve our climate crisis and maintain a high-quality life people have become accustomed to.

In the U.S., laypeople conflate modern design with the modern city, to predictable results. Modern architects here are stuck because the cities they work in are stuck. Los Angeles , for instance, still celebrates the Case Study residential design program as cutting-edge “modern,” as though it were created just yesterday instead of 60 years ago. And many urban planners are still dreaming about a city of towers, although by now it is abundantly clear that they will likely be towers in giant parking lots, or on giant parking garages, surrounded by traffic clogged streets. And the promised open space is spoon-fed in tiny parklets few people will ever use.

Of course, there are those occasional U.S. architects who manage to transcend local obstacles and deliver first-class modern designs. But for modern building design to become a broadly desired solution, as many architects desperately wish for, it might be necessary to reform urban design first and start migrating the car dominated cities into timeless, walkable, multimodal, and compact cities. This will generate whole catalogs of new building types and design challenges for which architects can then create uniquely American solutions. If modern design is seen as contributing to the urban quality of life and fixes our climate problems, people will find new hope. And with that will come, eventually, a desire to express our unique way forward in contemporary ways.

Until our cities change, public objection to modern design is a major factor that affects the speed of delivery, cost, and our general ability to solve our problems, all resulting in compromised urban and building solutions inferior to those found abroad. Modern design must demonstrate that it can increase people’s quality of life and solve problems, above all by lowering society’s carbon footprint. Continuing to prioritize car mobility in our cities, with giant boxy buildings that take massive efforts to push past people’s objections, is the opposite direction we should be headed in a warming world.

Image gallery

• Sustainability

世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!

想浏览archdaily中国吗, you've started following your first account, did you know.

You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.

Modern Architecture and Other Essays

• Vincent Scully

Support your local independent bookstore.

• United States
• United Kingdom

Art & Architecture

• Neil Levine

• Download Cover

Vincent Scully has shaped not only how we view the evolution of architecture in the twentieth century but also the course of that evolution itself. Combining the modes of historian and critic in unique and compelling ways—with an audience that reaches from students and scholars to professional architects and ardent amateurs—Scully has profoundly influenced the way architecture is thought about and made. This extensively illustrated and elegantly designed volume distills Scully’s incalculable contribution. Neil Levine, a former student of Scully’s, selects twenty essays that reveal the breadth and depth of Scully’s work from the 1950s through the 1990s. The pieces are included for their singular contribution to our understanding of modern architecture as well as their relative unavailability to current readers. Levine offers a perceptive overview of Scully’s distinguished career and introduces each essay, skillfully setting the scholarly and cultural scene. The selections address almost all of modern architecture’s major themes and together go a long way toward defining what constitutes the contemporary experience of architecture and urbanism. Each is characteristically Scully—provocative, yet precise in detail and observation, written with passionate clarity. They document Scully’s seminal views on the relationship between the natural and the built environment and trace his progressively intense concern with the fabric of the street and of our communities. The essays also highlight Scully’s engagement with the careers of so many of the twentieth century’s most significant architects, from Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn to Robert Venturi. In the tradition of great intellectual biographies, this finely made book chronicles our most influential architectural historian and critic. It is a gift to architecture and its history.

Awards and Recognition

• Vincent Scully, Winner of the 2004 National Medal of Arts, National Endowment for the Arts
• One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2003

"Scully . . . may find a place among the gallery of distinguished American critics . . . for his historically grounded but engaged architectural criticism. That possibility is enhanced by the well-chosen essays in this volume. Not only did Neil Levine make an excellent selection, he also provided a brief but illuminating biographical essay tracing Scully's career. Better yet, the headnotes he has written for each of Scully's essays are themselves gemlike mini-essays."—Thomas Bender, The Nation

"Vincent Scully is surely one of the most influential architectural historians and critics of the twentieth century. . . . None of the essays included here are available in Scully's (more than 15) published books. Interestingly, I think the selection will work well both for readers familiar with Scully and his work, as well as for those to whom his writing will be new territory. . . . The very best thing about this book is the wonderful quality of Scully's writing itself—clear, learned and witty."—Victoria Keller, The Art Book

"Many of the texts, which span the years 1954 to 1999, were previously published only in magazines and have thus effectively been out of print. They cover the 20th century's mainstream trends, from the birth pangs of Frank Llyod Wright's Prairie Style to the death throes of postmodernism. All are fiercely opinionated."—Eve M. Kahn, ArtNews

"Scully ranks among the most influential architectural historians of the 20th century. . . . [T]his anthology is a wonderful source for anyone with a keen interest in architecture. No one living has written on the subject in a more eloquent and compelling way."— Choice

"Covering diverse themes from Classicism to Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright to suburbia, each essay is telling in its own right, But whatever the ostensible theme, almost every one charts a growing awareness of Modernism's complex roots and relationships to tradition."—Jeremy Melvin, Architectural Review

"[These essays] provide wide-ranging insights into the architectural thought of the past half-century by a central figure."—Richard Guy Wilson, Architectural Record

"[An] overdue and welcome anthology. Scully owes his reputation to an authorial voice that is as arresting in the classroom as the printed page. In lecture, it is the elegant literary and formal precision that startles; on the printed page, the intimate spoken quality."—Michael Lewis, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

"Reading [this book], one sees quickly why Vincent Scully (now emeritus) was such a popular lecturer, a charismatic professor whose influence extended broadly throughout the architectural profession and the academy. . . . Scully's writing bears comparison with [the] elevation of the esthetic to an almost religious level, and his particular approach to the architectural object—which he regards ideally both as internally coherent and as somehow 'corresponding' with reality itself—is very much in keeping with the New Criticism."—Tom McDonough, Art in America

"This book is long overdue. The absence of a comprehensive collection of Scully's work has left the field unfortunately—even suspiciously—unbalanced. His writings are important for their immediate impact and for their enduring lessons. The book will appeal to practicing architects and architectural historians, but it is also a major contribution to general cultural history that should attract audiences far outside architecture."—Michael Hays, Harvard University

"I greet this book with great pleasure. Neil Levine's editorial commentary adds immeasurably to the appreciation that this and future generations will take in reading Vincent Scully's remarkable and remarkably influential writings."—Robert Stern, Yale University

Stay connected for new books and special offers. Subscribe to receive a welcome discount for your next order. 

Buy a gift card for the book lover in your life and let them choose their next great read.

• ebook & Audiobook Cart

Home — Essay Samples — Arts & Culture — Modern Architecture — What Is Architecture

What is Architecture

• Categories: Art in Architecture Modern Architecture

About this sample

Words: 1385 |

Published: Nov 26, 2019

Words: 1385 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Works Cited

• Unwin, S. (2014). Architecture and the principles of design. In Analysing Architecture (3rd ed., pp. 32-42). Routledge.
• Pallasmaa, J. (2009). The eyes of the skin: Architecture and the senses. John Wiley & Sons.
• Leach, N. (1999). Rethinking architecture: A reader in cultural theory. Routledge.
• Frampton, K. (2007). Modern architecture: A critical history. Thames & Hudson.
• Harries, K. (1998). The ethical function of architecture. The MIT Press.
• Groat, L., & Wang, D. (2013). Architectural research methods. John Wiley & Sons.
• Jencks, C., & Kropf, K. (2015). Theories and manifestoes of contemporary architecture. John Wiley & Sons.
• Rowe, C., & Slutzky, R. (1997). Transparency: Literal and phenomenal. In Mathew Gullerud & Daniel P. Gregory (Eds.), Theoretical perspectives in environment-behavior research: Underlying assumptions, research problems, and methodologies (pp. 36-42). University Press of America.
• Lefaivre, L., & Tzonis, A. (2003). Critical regionalism: Architecture and identity in a globalized world. Prestel Publishing.
• Tafuri, M. (1980). Architecture and utopia: Design and capitalist development. MIT Press.

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below:

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof. Kifaru

Verified writer

• Expert in: Arts & Culture

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2 pages / 763 words

2 pages / 794 words

1 pages / 345 words

1 pages / 485 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Modern Architecture

The aim of the essay is to redefine what the public space is by comparing two different architects’ two different plans and architecture. These days, public space tends to be regarded as mere space for public or a space that has [...]

Burj Khalifa, which is also known as Burj Dubai, is one of the tallest buildings in the world with a length of 828 Meters. It was established in January 2004 and opened in January 2010. It is located in the UAE in the center of [...]

There is often a very close relationship between a building and the body that occupies it. I picked the Therme Vals designed by Peter Zumthor to analyze this concept and took into consideration the views of architects Vetruvius [...]

The construction of the city is influenced by historical architecture and the collective memory of the people, which help to shape both the layout of the city and reinforce the place's identity. This essay addresses the [...]

The paper is trying to understand the impact of technology in the making of architectural wonders such as Guggenheim Bilbao museum. Established in 1997, the museum offers swirling facades and complex geometrical shapes that was [...]

One project that I am interested in completing is more along the lines of abstract photography, an aspect image capturing that I have not done much of, as I prefer to take images of nature and scenes that are easily [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Architecture Essay Topics

100+ Architecture Essay Topics: Ideas and Inspiration

Published on: May 5, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 30, 2024

Share this article

Are you struggling to come up with an engaging architecture essay topic that showcases your knowledge and captivates your readers?

It can be challenging to find inspiration when it feels like every idea has already been explored. You want to make an impression on your professor but the topic you chose does not have the desired effect. 

Fear not! 

Our comprehensive guide to architecture essay topics is here to help. With a wide range of ideas, we'll help you craft an outstanding essay that will leave your readers impressed.

Let's dive in and discover the world of architecture essay topics together.

On This Page On This Page -->

Architectural Theory and Criticism Dissertation Topics

• The Influence of Modernist Architecture on Contemporary Design
• A Critical Analysis of Postmodern Architecture and Its Legacy
• Examining the Role of Cultural Identity in Architectural Design
• The Impact of Technology on Architecture and Urban Spaces
• An Investigation into the Intersection of Art and Architecture
• The Relationship Between Architecture and Power Structures
• A Comparative Study of Eastern and Western Architectural Philosophies
• Reimagining Urban Spaces: A Study of Participatory Design
• Challenging the Status Quo: A Critical Analysis of Alternative Architecture Movements The Ethics of Architecture: Balancing Aesthetic and Social Responsibility

 Sustainable Architecture Dissertation Topics

• Passive Solar Design for Sustainable Architecture
• The Role of Renewable Energy in Sustainable Building Design
• Green Roofs and Walls: A Sustainable Approach to Urban Design
• Sustainable Building Materials: A Study of Their Performance
• Sustainable Construction and Waste Reduction
• Net Zero Energy Buildings and their Benefits
• Building Resilience: A Sustainable Design Approach
• Smart Buildings and Sustainable Architecture
• Sustainable Infrastructure and Transportation
• Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Buildings

Sustainable Architecture Essay Topics

• Sustainable Architecture in Developing Countries
• The Economics of Sustainable Buildings: Life Cycle Cost Analysis
• Sustainable Retrofitting of Existing Buildings
• Passive Design Strategies for Sustainable Architecture
• Green Building Certification Systems and Their Impact on Sustainable Architecture
• Sustainable Design and the WELL Building Standard
• Sustainable Materials and Construction Techniques
• Net-Zero Energy Buildings: Case Studies and Analysis
• Bioclimatic Design Principles for Sustainable Architecture
• Carbon Neutrality and the Built Environment

Urban Design and Planning Dissertation Topics

• Urban Renewal and Sustainable Development
• Sustainable Transportation in Urban Planning
• Social Equity and Inclusive Urban Design
• Placemaking: Creating Livable Urban Spaces
• Smart Cities and Urban Innovation
• The Role of Public Spaces in Urban Design
• Urban Agriculture and Sustainable Food Systems
• Sustainable Urban Water Management
• Community Participation in Urban Design and Planning
• Urban Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Change

Paper Due? Why Suffer? That's our Job!

Urban Design and Planning Essay Topics

• The Role of Transit-Oriented Development in Urban Planning
• Walkable Cities: Designing for Pedestrian Mobility
• Urban Design for Aging Populations
• Housing Affordability and Urban Planning
• Community-Based Planning and Design
• Urban Form and Social Interaction
• The Impact of Gentrification on Urban Spaces
• Historic Preservation in Urban Planning and Design
• Sustainable Urban Design and Resilience
• Participatory Planning and Community Engagement

Interior Architecture Dissertation Topics

• Interior Design for Sustainable Buildings
• The Role of Indoor Environment Quality in Building Performance
• Adaptive Reuse of Interior Spaces
• User-Centered Design for Interior Spaces
• Biophilic Design and its Impact on Indoor Environment Quality
• Sensory Design: Creating Inclusive and Accessible Interior Spaces
• Wellness in Interior Architecture: A Holistic Approach
• Interior Design and Emotional Wellbeing
• Interior Lighting Design for Sustainable Buildings
• Sustainable Interior Materials and Finishes

 Building Technology Dissertation Topics

• Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Its Applications
• Advanced Building Systems and Materials
• The Future of Construction Technology: 3D Printing and Robotics
• Building Energy Modeling and Simulation
• Building Automation and Control Systems (BACS)
• Smart Homes: Integration of Technology and Design
• Façade Engineering for High-Rise Buildings
• Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) in Building Maintenance
• Building Acoustics and Noise Control
• Innovations in Sustainable HVAC Systems

 Architectural History and Theory Essay Topics

• The Evolution of Architecture from Ancient Times to the Present
• The Role of Symbolism in Architectural History
• The Influence of Gothic Architecture on Modern Design
• Architectural Style and National Identity
• The History and Evolution of Skyscrapers
• The Architecture of Religious Structures: Sacred Spaces and Rituals
• The Impact of Modernism on Architectural Theory and Practice
• The Politics of Architecture: Architecture as a Form of Political Expression
• Feminist Critiques of Architecture and Design
• The Intersection of Architecture and Philosophy

Architecture Essay Topics on History

• The Architecture of Ancient Greece: Influences and Significance
• The Gothic Revival: Architecture as a Symbol of National Identity
• The Influence of Islamic Architecture on Western Design
• Renaissance Architecture: Classical Ideas in a New Age
• Baroque Architecture: Drama and Spectacle in Design
• The Architecture of Industrialization: From the Crystal Palace to Skyscrapers
• The Bauhaus School and the Modernist Movement in Architecture
• Brutalism: A Controversial Style in Modern Architecture
• Postmodernism: The Emergence of a New Architectural Language
• Contemporary Architecture: The Challenges and Opportunities of Globalization

 Interior Architecture and Design Essay Topics

• The Psychology of Color and its Impact on Interior Design
• The Role of Textiles in Interior Architecture and Design
• Innovations in Furniture Design for Interior Spaces
• Workplace Design and Employee Wellbeing
• Interior Design for Healthcare Environments
• Interior Design for Educational Spaces
• The Evolution of Kitchen Design: From Functionality to Lifestyle
• Universal Design: Designing for All Abilities and Ages
• Biophilic Design in Interior Architecture
• Sustainable Design Strategies for Interior Spaces

Architecture Dissertation Topics Related to Psychology

• The Psychology of Space: How Architecture Shapes Human Behavior
• Designing for Neurodiversity: Autism and Architecture
• The Impact of Architecture on Mental Health and Wellbeing
• The Role of Cultural Identity in Architecture and Design
• The Psychology of Color in Architecture and Interior Design
• The Evolution of Sacred Spaces and the Human Experience of Spirituality
• Architecture and Social Justice: Designing for Inclusivity and Equity
• Architecture and the Senses: Perception and Design
• The Design of Learning Environments: The Role of Architecture in Education
• Aging in Place: Designing for an Aging Population and their Wellbeing

Architecture Argumentative essay topics 

• The Ethics of Building Skyscrapers: Should We Build Higher and Higher?
• Traditional vs. Modern Architecture: Which is Better?
• The Impact of Architecture on Climate Change
• The Pros and Cons of Preservation: Balancing Historical Value and Economic Development
• Architecture and the Community: Whose Interests are Being Served?
• Architecture as a Reflection of Power: How Buildings Symbolize Social and Political Structures
• The Role of Architects in Creating Sustainable and Livable Cities
• Designing for Disability: The Obligation of Architecture to Provide Equal Access
• The Consequences of Ignoring Cultural Context in Architecture
• The Use of Technology in Architecture: Advancements vs. Ethical Implications

Roman Architecture Essay Topics

• The influence of Greek architecture on Roman architecture
• The evolution of Roman architecture over time
• The role of architecture in ancient Roman society
• The significance of arches in Roman architecture
• The use of concrete in Roman architecture
• The impact of Roman architecture on modern architecture
• The symbolism of columns in Roman architecture
• The relationship between religion and architecture in ancient Rome
• The impact of Roman aqueducts on architecture and engineering
• The use of mosaics in Roman architecture

Modern Architecture Essay Topics

• The evolution of modern architecture over the past century
• The impact of technology on modern architecture
• The role of sustainability in modern architecture
• The influence of postmodernism on modern architecture
• The relationship between modern architecture and urban planning
• The impact of modern architecture on the environment
• The significance of minimalism in modern architecture
• The use of glass in modern architecture
• The role of aesthetics in modern architecture
• The future of modern architecture and its potential impact on society

Architecture Comparison Essay Topics

• A comparison of Gothic and Romanesque architecture
• A comparison of modern and traditional architecture
• A comparison of ancient Greek and Roman architecture
• A comparison of Chinese and Japanese architecture
• A comparison of Islamic and Christian architecture
• A comparison of Baroque and Rococo architecture
• A comparison of Renaissance and Gothic architecture
• A comparison of American and European architecture
• A comparison of contemporary architecture in different regions of the world
• A comparison of the architecture of different periods in history.

Tips To Write A Perfect Architecture Essay Everytime 

Here are some tips to help you write a perfect architecture essay:

• Understand the topic: Before you start writing, make sure you understand the topic and its requirements. Read the instructions carefully and clarify any doubts you may have with your instructor.
• Conduct research: Architecture is a vast field, and there is a wealth of information available on various topics. Conduct thorough research using credible sources to gather relevant and accurate information for your essay.
• Develop a clear thesis statement: Your thesis statement should be clear, concise, and should summarize the main point. It should be supported by the evidence you present in your essay.
• Organize your essay: A well-organized essay has a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction should provide a brief background on the topic and introduce your thesis statement. 
• Use appropriate language and style: Use clear, concise, and formal language in your essay. Avoid using jargon or technical terms that your reader may not understand. Also, make sure your essay is well-structured, with proper grammar, punctuation, and formatting.
• Use visuals: Using visuals such as diagrams, images, or sketches can help illustrate your points and make your essay more engaging.
• Edit and proofread: Before submitting your essay, edit and proofread it thoroughly to ensure it is free of errors.

In conclusion, writing a perfect architecture essay requires a combination of research, organization, language, and style. It is not just about presenting information; it's about presenting it in a clear and compelling way that engages your reader.

If you need professional help with your architecture essay, look no further than our   architecture essay writing service .

Our essay writer can provide you with high-quality essays that meet all your requirements.

Contact our essay help service today to learn more about how we can help you achieve your academic goals!

Barbara P (Literature)

Barbara is a highly educated and qualified author with a Ph.D. in public health from an Ivy League university. She has spent a significant amount of time working in the medical field, conducting a thorough study on a variety of health issues. Her work has been published in several major publications.

Paper Due? Why Suffer? That’s our Job!

Legal & Policies

• Privacy Policy
• Cookies Policy
• Terms of Use
• Refunds & Cancellations
• Our Writers
• Success Stories
• Our Guarantees
• Affiliate Program
• Referral Program
• AI Essay Writer

Disclaimer: All client orders are completed by our team of highly qualified human writers. The essays and papers provided by us are not to be used for submission but rather as learning models only.

ESSAY SAUCE

FOR STUDENTS : ALL THE INGREDIENTS OF A GOOD ESSAY

Essay: Modernism in architecture

Essay details and download:.

• Subject area(s): Architecture essays
• Reading time: 9 minutes
• Price: Free download
• Published: 12 September 2015*
• Last Modified: 12 September 2015
• File format: Text
• Words: 2,465 (approx)
• Number of pages: 10 (approx)

Text preview of this essay:

This page of the essay has 2,465 words.

Modernism in Architecture began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has made a movement that revolutionized the shape of our environment. The evolution of modern architecture has started just after the evolution of building materials in 19th century and it has inspired many architects to take a chance of a new way of thinking. An architect Reese Rowland said: ‘Architecture is the only art form that is functional.’ thats why it has such a powerful impact on our lives. Its where we live, where we work and thats how we can express our personalities and values. All of our relationships, our dreams and memories are surrounded by the shapes of architecture.The buildings started to have a completely different meaning in early 30s and began to express not only the outside but also the inside of the building. The basics in architectural design before and after the modernism, has always been the same such as space making, space defining or looking how the light falls within the space. The only thing that has changed was the use and the connection of materials. In late 18th century when the High Baroque style appeard it was very popular for architects to use smooth, light-coloured surfaces, occasionally curved, and extensive areas of glass (windows and mirrors). Then the modernism started, and the look of roof design became flat and simple. There were also some changes in the material category. Glass towers, steel frames or reinforced concrete became to be the main aspects of architectural life. One of the most famous buildings in 20th century, modern architecture was the Bauhaus placed in Germany. It was designed by an architect called Walter Adolf Georg Gropius in 1919. ‘Gropius was the first to state question in modern terms. The conflict had arisen because of the warring possibilities of the quality of craftsmanship and the quantity made possible by industry’. The Bauhaus was mainly used for exhibitions, concerts and theatrical performences but was also used for educational purposes. ‘In the first year, students learnt the basic elements and principles of design,colour theory, plus experimented with a range of materials and processes’. Bauhas inspired architects from other countries and continents to create a place where people would share with their similar interests and knowledge. This was a perfect place for people that were creative and admired art in every meaning. ‘The structure of the Bauhaus reflected a pragmatic approach to integrating theory and application’. The Bauhaus movement transformed the design and production of modern architecture and has used steel frames and glass walls and windows. Gropius used a big amount of glass to make the building feel like an open space. Open space suggests that he wanted to make people feel free and independent. The amazing structure of the Bauhaus gives an incredible impression particularly at night time when the lights highlight the beauty and freedom of glass walls. Architecture became modern when the revolution of materials and technology appeared in 20th century. You can perceive Modernism when you look at buildings like Burj Al Arab in Dubai by Tom Wright, Le Grand Louvre in Paris by Ieoh Ming Pei or Frank Lloyd Wright???s greatest works: Guggenheim and Fallingwater. These famous modern designs are mainly made out of glass. In modern Architecture glass is almost like a principle of modernism. Another feature of modernism is non symmertrical windows and roofs. Sharp and clear lines used sa simplicity are the main key ideas in modernism. Another important thing and how you can recognise modernism is when you see open spaces with a lot of light coming through different shaped and angled windows. One of the precursors to Modernism is Roman Architecture. The building that I choose is called Pantheon that was built in Rome in 125AD and it was rebuilt by the emperor Hadrain. This building was a combination of classical and modern styles. The architect who designed Pantheon has not been discovered and no records have been made so the architect remained unknown. Until now the building remains the best preserved in Roman Architecture. The Pantheon is one of the best achievements in the worlds history of architecture because of its astonishing construction and size. As the architect of the Pantheon was unknown people didnt know what was the purpose of the building. Its enourmous space inside has given people idea that the possible mean of Pantheon could be a temple to all gods because of its open space and a whole in the dome. This is a perfect place for others to take a rest and sooth their thoughts. Another possible purpose of this design was to ‘express the Roman Mastery of the world’. They wanted to show this by building a massive dome from concrete. It was very hard and risky to design a dome that would be 44 meters long without any concrete reinforcment as it would presumably collapse under its own weight. However the engineers ventured to build the design and it came out as one of the most famous buildings in the world. A very interesting central feature in the Pantheaon is a Latin appellation ‘oculus’ which could be translated as an ‘eye’. This is placed in the centre of the dome and its a whole that is ten meters wide. The fantastic open space was very important in this design because this helped the light come through and illuminate the whole dark space inside as there is no electrical lighting involved. The front construction of the building is supported by sixteen of the finest columns made from Egyptian granite. The next very eye catching feature is the huge bronze front door that are seven meter tall and are opening to a cercular area. The moment you walk in the only thing you can think of is the space around you. The engineers have made the dome out of concrete and came up with an idea of rings of collars around the dome to make reduce its weight and the pressure. They have made the dome very thick at the bottom and the concrete was lighter within each layer. To reduce the weight of the concrete dome architects came up with an idea to cut out symmetrical and characteristic square shapes on the inside of the dome which also decorated the interior in unusual way. The construction materials that have been used when making the Pantheon are heavy concrete and limestone blocks which was very popular in Rome at that time and used in almost every Roman Architectural design. The second level just under the dome was made out of bricks. Inbetween the layers the architects have hidden series of complicated arches which also helped with reducing the weight. The building that I have choose for Modern Architecture is Swiss Re. The Swiss Re is a modern architectural design and was started to built in 1997 and finished in 2004. the colours that have been arranged within the building are colours of sea ??? blue green and silver. These are cold colours so they perfectly emphasised the shades of sea water. The look of the building contrasts with the rest of the background as it is an enormous and unique cigar shape. The colour that dominates the whole building is dark green, which stands out from the rest of the colours that have been used in the design this is because the green elements are glass which reflects the light. The design of the work has been determined by the spiral elements shape going from the bottom to the top of the building. Another shape that has been standing out is ‘an eternal diagonal grid of steel beams stiffed by horizontal hoops’. The building has a very smooth shape even though the patterns combined are much more epressive as it shows the individuality. The subject matter of the modern architecture piece is the idea of an environmental sustainabilty based on nature. This architectural design is about how the ‘shape ameliorates the wind flow, just as the sea-sponge’s shape helps water flow round it’.The work has been based on direct observation that has been reworked into a building design. The intention of the design was to deliberate exaggeration in order to make the work unique. In the building there are hidden aspects od the design which were inspired by natural organisms. The Swiss Re is a 600-foot glass tower which was designed with a metal and glass to demonstrate the natural look of the sea-sponge. The architectural building was designed to reduce greenhouse gases. This is done by the flow of winds from street level and open windows along its spiral body which funnels through the buildings offices naturally. ‘In nature, every organism has to be as efficient as possible wiith its use of resources. There’s no way that an organism can use more energy than it produces’, said Alexis Karolides, an architect with the Rocky Mountain Institute in Boulder. I have visited Swiss Re also called by people The Gherkin and I think that this classis building sculpture design stands out from the architecture around it because of its tremendous size and unusual bullet shape. Many people visit the building mainl to see the difference between a photograph and building in real live. People are fascinated by the huge size of the building which suprises almost everyone. This simple but interesting design is surrounded by architects who admire the unique structure and combination. The Gherkin began to be an example of modern architecture which encouraged other architects to create unique shapes designs with different materials. The techniques and the process that Norman Foster used to produce the work are sketches od natural organisms and informations about how they work.it was then developed into an architectural design. Norman Foster has commenced the work which he then establlished into professional sketches. In my opinion this architect has made his idea of combining architecture and nature rapidly, but the natural ventilation system was arranged over a long period of time. This is because the design was influenced by sea-sponges feeding system. This work has affected me as it has shown me an interesting side of composition between modern and old architecture. The emotions that I have experienced when seeing Swiss Re was misleading as it differed from the buildings around. It is also capturing the feelings about life and nature which has been submitted in the final appearance of this architectural design. The architect’s feelings when producing this work were to introduce more nature into today’s society. The work is soothing but at the same time disturbing comparing with old architecture in the background. The inherent qualities that affected me in this work are the distinguishing shapes and initial ideas compared to its final appearance. The building fits into London’s city scape as the design stands out. The scale of The Gherkin is almost twice as big as the architecture around it. The design of Pantheon and Swiss Ree are completely opposite such as the materials like concrete,limestone and bricks in Pantheon and in Swiss Re glass and metal. Also the massive difference between the two buildings are the shapes and the overall appearance. In the ancient Architecture, architects used columns,archs and parthenons that have been inspired by Greeks. In the 20th century people started to have a different understanding of Architecture. During designing Ancient Architecture everything was drwan by hand with just paper and pencil. Then the technology appeared and has drastically changed and Architecture became to have more possibilities in designing with different materials and unique shapes. During designing Ancient Architecture everything was drwan by hand and people only used paper and pencil. They never thought that technology could be more accurate than hand drwaing. People no lonegr have to spend hours on drawing the designs on paper because we now have the programmes that help Architects save their time at developing each design at any time. Another revolution in the world of Architecture are the methods of building. A huge amount of details is no lonegr a problem as everything can be done, produced and be ready to put into a ready design. Nowadays, its easier and quicker to design and then produce a piece of Architecture. The first photo represents one of the first modern architecture design which is The Bauhaus. On the photograph you can see a long, glass wall with black,metal elements. This adds more decoration and stability to the wall. The colours used in Bauhaus are grey and white which were very popular to use in modernism in early 20th century. The lines are clear and the overall shape is simple. The next diagrams show three different ideas of the Bauhaus area. In the first two diagrams the shapes that have been used are squares and rectangles. Both designs are then combined together to make one piece of architecture. The building is elongated in three different directions and because of that it has a feeling of three separate spaces.This photograph represents the Pantheon in Rome. The photograph shows the moment when the natural light is coming through the ten meters whole on the top of the dome. The light is giving a very interesting impression and it highlights only some of the historical details that are in the building. It also highlighs the dull colours that have been used to create the inside. In the first diagram it is notible that the Pantheon is a symmetrical architectural design. It also shows how much open space there is within the interior. Black markings demonstrate the thick walls of the dome and the front entracnce. In the last sketches you can see the ideas and all the details that have been arranged in this design. The main aspect of those sketches are the columns in the front of the pantheon. They give a mysterious feeling as you cant see what is hidden behind them. In the photograph you can see The Swiss Re in London. It stands out from the rest of the buildings with its shape, size and materials. The buildings shape is comparable to a bullet which also suggests the force and power of the design. The buildings mainly made out of glass which reflects the light and highlights the colours of the sea. The photograph shows the spiral features which makes people drag their eys from the bottom to the top of the Swiss Re. The diagram shows the process of how the wind flows in and out of the building. It also demonstartes how natural organisms work. The sketch represnts part of details that the whole building is made out of. The triangular shapes resemble husks as the main idea of the design was to show natural sea life through Architecture.

About this essay:

If you use part of this page in your own work, you need to provide a citation, as follows:

Essay Sauce, Modernism in architecture . Available from:<https://www.essaysauce.com/architecture-essays/essay-modernism-in-architecture/> [Accessed 10-09-24].

These Architecture essays have been submitted to us by students in order to help you with your studies.

* This essay may have been previously published on EssaySauce.com and/or Essay.uk.com at an earlier date than indicated.

Essay Categories:

• Accounting essays
• Architecture essays
• Business essays
• Computer science essays
• Criminology essays
• Economics essays
• Education essays
• Engineering essays
• English language essays
• Environmental studies essays
• Essay examples
• Finance essays
• Geography essays
• Health essays
• History essays
• Hospitality and tourism essays
• Human rights essays
• Information technology essays
• International relations
• Leadership essays
• Linguistics essays
• Literature essays
• Management essays
• Marketing essays
• Mathematics essays
• Media essays
• Medicine essays
• Military essays
• Miscellaneous essays
• Music Essays
• Nursing essays
• Philosophy essays
• Photography and arts essays
• Politics essays
• Project management essays
• Psychology essays
• Religious studies and theology essays
• Sample essays
• Science essays
• Social work essays
• Sociology essays
• Sports essays
• Types of essay
• Uncategorised
• Zoology essays