Dell Upton is a historian and renowned professor of architecture and Urbanism at the University of California. He has published several books on architecture; one of them is “Architecture in the United States”, published in 1998. In this book, Upton analyzes the architecture of the United States in different aspects, such as nature, money and art, thus depicting the great variety in architectural forms, and how throughout the decades, different interests have lead communities to different ways of building, different purposes and materials, thus reflecting their way of thinking and their relationship with the environment. By exploring so many different architectural styles, Upton reveals the great diversity and richness that has always, and continues to characterize American architecture.
For Upton, “architecture is an art of social story telling, a means for shaping American society and culture...” (11), and it is up to the historian to choose which of many possible stories to tell. In his approach, he refused a chronological order and relied instead on five thematic structures: community, nature, technology, money and art. In the very first chapter, Upton introduces the symbol of the house in the United States; it represents the American dream and the concept of social mobility. He analyzes one of the most famous houses: Monticello, designed by Thomas Jefferson. In describing how this house served as a home for not only family members and numerous visitors, but for slaves as well, Upton proposes that Jefferson “organized Monticello to convey his sense of himself as the patriarch at the centre of his universe” (28).
In the Community chapter, Upton studies how the architecture of societies has represented the Americans th...
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...’s book accomplishes a lot in its timid three hundred pages, it lacks more examples of modern architecture and historical landmarks such as the ones discussed above. Also, the lack of chronological order is a new approach, but it might not appeal to all readers.
Bibliography
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Landmarks Preservation Commission. (July 19, 1994) Seventh Regiment Armory
Designation Report. (LP-1884). New York, City of New York. Retrieved from: http://www.neighborhoodpreservationcenter.org/db/bb_files/1994SeventhRegimentArmoryInterior.pdf
Upton, Dell. Architecture in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Print
James F. O'Gorman, Dennis E. McGrath. ABC of Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Document. October 2013.
In his opinionated book, From Bauhaus to Our House, Tom Wolfe describes his views on the way architecture has framed our modern world. He frames his book long essay with an excerpt from America the Beautiful, "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? . . . Every child goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement-parts wholesale distribution warehouse . . . Every new $900,000 summer house in the north woods of Michigan or on the shore of Long Island has so many pipe railings, ramps, hob-tread metal spiral stairways, sheets of industrial plate glass, banks of tungsten-halogen lamps, and white cylindrical shapes, it looks like an insecticide refinery." (Wolfe 1) This quote, in short, is the premise of his critique. He does not like the way modern architecture
In the capital of financial services, two insurance buildings dominate Boston’s skyline. The Hancock Tower and the Prudential Center are structures that display the uneven change and the urban development that has occurred in this city over the course 19th century. Located in back bay these edifices work with the directionalities of their adjacent streets and the cultural history of the structures that surround them. Boston’s foundation was composed in a manner that designated and organized space. This creates the tension and contrast present in that between the two structures. The iconography that these structures have over the city is important. It represents a sense of the past as well as the purpose that the built environment has with a changing society. Even though these structures dominate so much of the skyline, they interact differently with the public. There is a physical boundary that separates the functionalities and interaction in which society can actively have with them. This essay will focus on the structural purpose in regard to the form following function of these skyscrapers and how they each demonstrate a design aspect that characterizes Boston through a visual perspective.
...’s history. The fact that how much detail in the architect is unbelievable considering the lack of technology and machine power during the 1200’s.
But these contrived differences give rise to esthetic difficulties too. Because inherent differences—those that come from genuinely differing uses—are lacking among the buildings and their settings, the contrivances repre...
I have lived in or around Winston –Salem nearly all my life but have never once researched the Reynolds name or been to Reynolda House. I found the house to be amazing with all the thought and planning that went into its architecture and its functionality as a self-sufficient farm of its day; I for some reason have a hard time thinking that the early 1900s had skilled, intelligent people that could master such a feat. Touring Reynolda House, which is a museum and discussed later in this paper, was an adventure. Not only was the art breathtaking but the house was decorated as it was in R.J’s and Katharine’s era. While researching for this paper, it was easy to place myself back in that era at the beginning of what I am calling the Reynolds’ legacy. The Reynolda House museum is people friendly and a very nice tour in my
Using Jason Reblando’s contemporary photographs of the communities, the lecture discussed a fascinating chapter of architectural and planning history during a time when the government enacted bold and ambitious plans to protect who Franklin D. Roosevelt called the “Forgotten Man.” New Deal Utopias explores how we continue to grapple with the complex roles of housing, nature, and government in contemporary
Paul Rudolph was born on October 23, 1918. “The year of Rudolph’s birth, 1918, was a key date in world history” At the end of World War I, the old established conventions of balance of power, Renaissance culture, and surplus-value economy broke down. He was not only a famous American architect, but also the Chair of Yale University's Department of Architecture for six years. Paul Rudolph was known for his complex floor plans and the new approach of concrete. “The work of Paul Rudolph has had a profound effect on the architecture of the second half of the twentieth century, but its potential for further influence has only begun to be explored.” Paul Rudolph brought many influences in his work in Florida. The time is remarkable for his approach to creative and experimental methods of construction, to expanding the structural possibilities of materials to their limits while reviving both static and aesthetic possibilities of materials; for his effort to explore and thrive the spatial copiousness, complexity, and interrelationship of the interiors and exteriors of his architectures, their location, their
“In the Cause of Architecture” is an essay written by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908. In this work, Wright outlines many of his architectural values. This text goes into great detail about the philosophy behind Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, as well as many important milestones in his life, such as working for Adler and Sullivan. This text is useful because it comes straight from Frank Lloyd Wright himself. It talks about many things important to his role as a notable American, such as his influences for his architecture and his architectural
Green, Anna, and Kathleen Troup. The Houses of History. New York, NY: New York University Press, 1999.
Breen, T.H., H.W. Brands, et al. America: Past and Present. Upper Saddle River NJ: Pearson, Print.
(Image taken from Tranchtenberg, Marvin, Isabelle Hyman. Architecture: From Prehistory to Postmodernity. Second Edition. Prentice Hall, Inc. New Jersey: 2002.)
Frank Lloyd Wright has been called “one of the greatest American architect as well as an Art dealer that produced a numerous buildings, including houses, resorts, gardens, office buildings, churches, banks and museums. Wright was the first architect that pursues a philosophy of truly organic architecture that responds to the symphonies and harmonies in human habitats to their natural world. He was the apprentice of “father of Modernism” Louis Sullivan, and he was also one of the most influential architects on 20th century in America, Wright is idealist with the use of elemental theme and nature materials (stone, wood, and water), the use of sky and prairie, as well as the use of geometrical lines in his buildings planning. He also defined a building as ‘being appropriate to place’ if it is in harmony with its natural environment, with the landscape (Larkin and Brooks, 1993).
Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier are two very prominent names in the field of architecture. Both architects had different ideas concerning the relationship between humans and the environment. Their architectural styles were a reflection of how each could facilitate the person and the physical environment. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, is considered one of the most important buildings in the history of American architecture and Le Corbusier s Villa Savoye helped define the progression that modern architecture was to take in the 20th Century. Both men are very fascinating and have strongly influenced my personal taste for modern architecture. Although Wright and Corbusier each had different views on how to design a house, they also had similar beliefs. This paper is a comparison of Frank Lloyd Wright‘s and Le Corbusier ‘s viewpoints exhibited through their two prominent houses, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye.
Jencks briefly explains post-modern aesthetics from their modernist predecessors’ and pinpoints the instant of modernism’s death, writing “Happily, we can date the death of Modern Architecture to a precise moment in time… Modern Architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 p.m. (or thereabouts)...” (23). Unlike Jencks, literary scholars talk about the first, most original or famous representatives of modernism, but they completely avoid pinpointing an ultimate end to the movement. Due to architecture’s visual character and Jencks’ early, authoritative, and internationally read scholarship, the differences between modern and post-modern aesthetics are often clearer in architecture than in literature. Architecture provides a helpful visual counterpoint for modern and post-modern aesthetics in literature. According to him, architectural post-modernism favours pluralism, complexity, double coding, and historical contextualism.