Assignment 3

Owen Jones argued that ‘construction should be decorated. Decoration should never be purposely constructed.’ That means he advocated the use of models from other period and cultures, and also allowed for the possibility of constructing original patterns base upon the study of a nature tempered by the rules he enumerated. In The Grammar of Ornament (1856), he said “Flowers or other natural objects should not be used as ornament, but conventional representations founded upon them sufficiently suggestive to convey the intended image to the mind, without destroying the unity of the object they are employed to decorate.”

I agree with his opinion, ornament and color was adopted for the decoration of buildings during that time. However, not every complex pattern, luxurious or aesthetic decoration fit with the construction. They can serve them, then will have organic combination with each other.

       

The Steiner House, Vienna, 1910      

The picture I have added is the Steiner house in Vienna. Adolf Loos work leads directly into Modern architecture. He carried on a determined argument against decoration – architecture should be utilitarian. I think it is a good example of 'construction decorated'. He argues that to put all of the attention in the austere exterior and not consider what was going on in the stylized interior negates the classical values that are manifest through the building. For Loos, the exterior was the public side of the house, that is the reason for the bare wall surfaces. Inside his buildings used spaces in relation to their function. Steiner House is without ornament, symmetrical, the different size of the windows reflect the different functions of the spaces.



Image from: http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Steiner_House.html



Assignment two

Norman Melancton Bel Geddes (1893- 1958) was a designer who focused on aerodynamics. He provided the new word---streamlined shape, this idea came from high-speed flying bird, the fish body, and the Nineteenth Century nature and life sciences. And this style also represent ‘speed’ ‘accuracy’, and ‘efficiency’.

 

The sensuous impulse looks to nature for models that feature the sinuous S-curve. I think nowadays a lot of products such as airplanes, cars, furniture and etc use the streamlined shape. Car is the typical one in all of them. It is a result of the ‘sensuous Impulse’. Like Hunter-Stiebel said ‘The evidence of three centuries suggests that the rococo spirit is alive and well. Whatever may be touted as tomorrow’s trend, somebody, somewhere, will be ‘creating something sinuous, organic, and sensuous’

Company engineers look to biology for inspiration, studying the structure of insect wings to design car-body structures. To develop the top-of-the-line R8 sports car, Audi studied the streamlined shape of a swimming penguin.

Aerodynamics

Reference image:

http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~vivek/research/index.html

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/04/0417_mostinnovative/source/23.htm

Assignment one

Postmodernism in architecture is most commonly understood as a stylistic phenomenon. Yet it should be understood first in the context of what the movement opposed, and second in what it affirmed. The very term- Postmodernism - indicated the distinction enthusiasts for the new approach intended in the early 1970s: an architecture differentiated from and following in the wake of Modernism.

These architects turned towards the past, quoting past aspects or various buildings and melding them together to create a new means of designing buildings. Several different styles put together in the same building e.g. classical columns mixed with patterned tiled areas and blocks of bright colour seen in the Piazza d'italia.