In this essay, I will be discussing how Charles Rennie Mackintosh has contributed to Scottish architecture. I will investigate his influences and how he affected architecture in Scotland over his lifetime.
Born on 7th June 1868 in Glasgow, Mackintosh became interested in architecture as a profession from an early age, and, at the age of sixteen secured an apprenticeship with John Hutchison. In order to complete his apprenticeship, he enrolled in the Glasgow School of Art in 1884, where he met Margaret MacDonald, an artist and his future wife. Due to poor health, Mackintosh often spent weekends in the country-side, sometimes travelling with Herbert McNair, a friend who worked at the architect’s firm of Honeyman and Keppie, (where Mackintosh would later become a partner). Mackintosh delighted in drawing from nature, particularly anything with an interesting or striking colour or shape, often returning with samples to draw later in greater detail. Furthermore, from these trips, he came to discover that every leaf and petal was unique, a fact that he often applied in later works. Together with Herbert McNair and his wife Frances MacDonald, (who was Margaret’s sister) Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald would later form a group known as the ‘Glasgow Four’.
The Four were prominent members of the Glasgow School and were known for their distinctive form of art which combined Celtic motifs and the Symbolist style, and later for being leaders of the Art Nouveau movement in Britain. Their art received mixed reviews and was criticised by some; receiving official disapproval from Walter Crane, a highly prolific writer of the time; However they were appreciatively acclaimed as the ‘Spook School’ by Gleeson White, editor of the artistic public...
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The result of the merging of these influences resulted in Mackintosh’s unique style that was an extension of Scottish Baronial architecture, as can been seen in projects Hill House, with the inclusion of towers and crow steps in the construction, which gives it a style that is highly reminiscent of Seventeenth Century town houses. The interior also shows how Mackintosh had moved on from Art Nouveau, as there are few examples of it present in the building. Instead, the interior shows what Howarth calls a ‘notable advance on contemporary work in Britain, or abroad’
Works Cited
K. Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London, 2007), p. 74
T. Howarth, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Modern Movement, (London, 1977) p. 6
M. Fazio, M. Moffett, L. Wodehouse, A World History of Architecture, (London, 2008), p. 434-435
James F. O'Gorman, Dennis E. McGrath. ABC of Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Document. October 2013.
Hitchcock, Henry Russell. Early Victorian Architecture in Britain Volumes I and II. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954.
It is the new decade after the end of world war two and modernism is a well-established practice. Its pioneers and spearheads are prevalent figures looming over the new architects and designers who are trying to make their mark in the shadows of such historically influential people. With new technologies and materials emerging from the world wars the next era of modernism had started to evolved, bringing with it philosophies and ideas which seemed far removed from those of the pioneers of modernism “What emerged in the late 1940s and 1950s was an expanding synthesis of questions utterly removed from the confident statements of the pioneers.”(Spade 1971,10) Two significant buildings were designed in the 50's, both of them for educational institutes and to house students of architecture, there were both designed in completely different styles and methods. The first is Ludwig Mies van der Rohes' Crown Hall, finished in 1956 and designed as a part of a campus master plan for the Illinois Institute of technology in Chicago. Mies' design for Crown Hall is one of his most realised expressio...
Varnedoe, Kirk. A Fine Disregard: What Makes Modern Art Modern. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1990. 152. Print.
The piece I will be discussing is Eileen Gray’s ‘Villa E1027’. The piece is hugely influential in the architecture and design world. It was one of greys first architectural projects
Stylistically, it is a very important piece of architecture. Although the Glasgow Building was built during the heart of the Art Nouveau period, its style gives a strong indication of what is to come for the future in architectural style. The Art Nouveau period was frequently organic with elaborate decoration. There were often undulating curves and twists which combined into an unpredictable picture of mental knots. The Glasgow Building did not boast many of these features making its style more difficult to pinpoint. It is a style between styles. In fact, it presents several features which will become much more prominent in the years to come.
17. Howe, Jeffery. "Frank Lloyd Wright". A Digital Archive of American Architecture. 1998. Boston College. 2004. http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267/FLW.html (accessed 29th April)
Mies' well known theory of “less is more” is apparent by the spaciousness and functional quality of the Seagram building; everything serves a purpose, either for aesthetic appeal or functionality. “Less is more” is a concept used throughout the architectural world today. “Mies van der Rohe stands as a great moral force of the International Style. The essence of architecture, to Mies, lies in the expression of structure. And his precise, sophisticated, and consistent style of architecture sets an exam...
Modernism as a new contemporary style was seen as pure geometric forms having distinct structural systems, and a relationship with the new technological advancements caused by the Industrial Revolution. Throughout Mies van der Rohe’s career he was in pursuit to provide clarity, and evolve his architecture to convert the technical solution into an architectural expression. He exposed the structure to exploit all expressive effects, which lead Mies van der Rohe to become one of four Masters of Modern Architecture
(Image taken from Tranchtenberg, Marvin, Isabelle Hyman. Architecture: From Prehistory to Postmodernity. Second Edition. Prentice Hall, Inc. New Jersey: 2002.)
The essence of modern architecture lays in a remarkable strives to reconcile the core principles of architectural design with rapid technological advancement and the modernization of society. However, it took “the form of numerous movements, schools of design, and architectural styles, some in tension with one another, and often equally defying such classification, to establish modernism as a distinctive architectural movement” (Robinson and Foell). Although, the narrower concept of modernism in architecture is broadly characterized by simplification of form and subtraction of ornament from the structure and theme of the building, meaning that the result of design should derive directly from its purpose; the visual expression of the structure, particularly the visual importance of the horizontal and vertical lines typical for the International Style modernism, the use of industrially-produced materials and adaptation of the machine aesthetic, as well as the truth to materials concept, meaning that the true nat...
As someone with a passion for writing, my final project will be an extended expository essay about the history of homebuilding from ancient to modern times. It will discuss the different types of dwellings throughout recorded human history from the perspective of how art and culture influences building design. This will fulfill my own curiosity to understand the different influences on homebuilding and design over the years and how people have dealt with these changes.
The German Pavilion, more commonly known as the Barcelona Pavilion, is one of the most recognizable buildings of the modern period during the early 20th century. It encapsulates every element of modern architecture in one structure. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the fathers of modern architecture, was the architect of this beautiful building. In this essay I will explore how Mies impacted the modern movement in architecture through his groundbreaking ideas using the Barcelona Pavilion as a case study.
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.
B. RUDOFSKY, 1905, architecture without architects, a short introduction to non pedigreed architecture, university of New Mexico press, Albuquerque, p. 40, 41 PEARSON, D. 2000, Earth to spirit, in search of natural architecture, Gaia books limited