Post Modernism

A few weekends ago, we headed down to sweet home Chicago and looked at one prime example of each Modernist and Post Modernist architecture respectively.  We looked at the Farnsworth house by Mies van der Rohe of the Modernist style and the Illinois Institute of Technology's McCormick Tribune Campus Center by Rem Koolhaas of the Post Modernist style.

I want to report on Koolhaas' building because I believe it speaks more to the way I both think and design.  The thing I like about the Post-Modernist is that there is no set way or language, necessarily.  They take familiar forms and use them in new and unexpected ways, or simply tweak them from the normal presentation.

Philip Johnson's Gate of Europe in Madrid, seen here, which are like any standard, Modernist-esk office building, only they are pitched in toward each other at 15 degree angles.

Koolhaas' builing is remarkable.  From the outside it looks as if the elevated train had fallen and crushed this flat two story building and they just left it.  With the two triangular forms on either side crashing into each other  under the heavy train tunnel.  Inside, the one form juts out into the negative space of the other,  The metal clad tunnel is seen through a reveal in the ceiling.  The form were kept three separate entities (train, public space, private space) yet brought together to create one unified space.  The building squishing below the track instead of merely being controlled by it show the embrace of the existing environment, as does the integration to the old IIT cafeteria designed by Mies.  The grid of I-beam structure is also continued in the new area, mixed with the new structure.

The Modernist were trying to create an international style by taking out all history and context.  The Post-Modernist like Koolhaas succeeded in creating an international style by pouring handfuls of history, context, and style together to create a unified mash-up of form and styles.  In this respect, when everything is in one, anything can belong in the space, and the style can change from building to building, it can be whatever is necessary for the site.  In my opinion, the Post-Modernist succeeded in creating an international style by making it possible to make buildings in the shape of books or pianos.  They succeeded in a much different and much more open and fun-loving way than the Modernists.

Richardsonian Romanesque

Following the Queen Anne, we looked at a series of buildings of the Richardsonian Romanesque style of the late 19th century.  These buildings were very visually, and physically for that matter, heavy.  The exhibited heavy stone facades with huge columns and archways.

Henry Hobson Richardson, for whom the style is named, saw Romanesque as a holding the best qualities of each Roman and Gothic styles.  Combining the two, utilizing more of the details of Gothic style, but using the massing and form of Roman style.  The combination was a simple and direct compromise between the two.

The Romanesque was a move away from the verticality seen often in Gothic structures towards a much flatter elevation, emphasizing the horizontal.  In the residential examples of Richardsonian looked at, the Queen Anne like asymmetrical  plans and elevations were continued, whereas the commercial buildings of the style were much more symmetrical.  Like the Federal Building in downtown Milwaukee (At Right).

The Horizonal quality is exhibited below in the John J. Glessner House in Chicago.

Queen Anne

The end of the nineteenth century brought a boom in industry and wider spread prosperity in the wake of the Civil War.  The most popular style in the last twenty years (1880-1900)  was the Queen Anne.  This was in reaction to High Victorian styles.  The style is really a combination of many styles before it, being mashed together into single structures.  Playing heavily off of Gothic styles, also incorporating Greek Revival, as well as aspects of Middle Eastern styles.

The Queen Anne is a big jump from Colonial styles, becoming much more complex, much larger, and utilizing more material and ornamentation.  The Kneeland-Walker house in Wauwatosa, WI is a prime example of all of these.

A shot from the back of the house shows the scale, being the first 3+ floor house we've looked at, this eludes to the new uses of a house.  These include the addition of servants, added definition to the front vs back aspect of the house.  The front public area is much more open than we've seen, used more for gatherings and social events.  The areas were still able to be segregated when needed by the utilization of pocket doors.

This view of the back also show the wide variety of materials now being used, as follows; Stone foundation, wood paneling, brick, stone lintels, and copper roofing.

The windows also show evidence of the mashing of styles.  The house exhibited these square standard window, but also had Roman arched windows, shown in the front door here.  The front door also emphasizes the increase in grandeur being five feet in width, and roughly 3 inches thick.

Old World WIsconsin

Koepsell Farm House(1859)

The Koepsells were a Pomeranian (German) family who migrated to Washington County in 1857.  The house was constructed in the same way as the Kilbourntown House, heavy timber framing with brick infill, except for this was not sided, the timbers and brick are the very outside of the structure.  This shows the difference between country settling and city/in town settling.  While similar construction methods tie the two together, Benjamin Church would have been more concerned with appearance being in the city closer to his neighbors and holding a higher social position.

David Handlin writes a good chunk about why early settler architecture (most of what is seen at Old World Wisconsin) varies so much from building to building as well as the lack of refinement.  He writes this about seventeenth and eighteenth century settlers, however the reasoning hold true for the examples shown at Old World Wisconsin, which were mostly from the nineteenth century.  Settlers were coming over from different backgrounds, moving to different areas, and were often few and far between.  Farm houses and other country buildings were usually built as temporary, the families not knowing how long they could/would be staying.  If they ended up staying there indefinitely, they added on as the family grew (Handlin, 14-15, 22).

This is what happened at the Lowell Damon House in Wauwatosa, WI.  The main square in the plan below is the original house, then the front larger rectangle was added later on as one of Lowell's sons started a family.

Benjamin Church House (Kilbourntown House)

On our second trip out in Milwaukee, we visited the Kilbourntown House, Built by Benjamin church in 1844.  The house was originally built at Court St on Fourth St here in Milwaukee.  It now resides in Estabrook Park on Capitol Dr.

It is a whitewashed plank sided house with four columns guarding the front entrance, a clear example of Greek Revival style.  Although from the outside it looks like a modest, one story home, the front facade eludes to the grand nature of the house.  The two windows symmetrically flanking the front entry share a common datum line at with the top of the door, making them taller than standard windows, and stretching out the visual height.  This height is then repeated inside with the ~11' ceiling in the main parlor.

The walls of the house were built heavy-timber framing with brick infill as insulation.  The walls were then plastered over inside and sided wood plank sided on the outside.

Milwaukee Public Museum

Native American Architecture

We are beginning the class chronologically with Native American Architecture.  We took a trip to the Milwaukee Public Museum to look at the outstanding Native American exhibit, with it's wonderfully crafted and presented dioramas of the different types of architecture from pre-colonist America.  The types displayed include: the Earth Lodge of the prairies and Northwest, the Pueblo of the Southwest, the Tipi of the Great Plains, the Longhouse of the Northeast, and the widespread Wigwam of the Northeast.  I chose the Earth lodge to catalog and studie more in depth.


The Earth Lodge is dated back to 300 A.D. (Walker 22).  Earth Lodges of the Southeast prairie, which is the type on display at the museum (shown here) were used in much the same way as the Longhouses of the Northeast.  They were communal dwellings housing upwards of 40 people in a 40' diameter circular room, hard to imagine by todays standards.  The only privacy allotted was from willow matt or leather partitions hung between each "house" where each family slept (Walker 23).

As diagramed, the lodges were structured by to octagonal rings of heavy logs.  The earth was dug out below them anywhere from 4 to 8 feet to utilize the warmth given off by the earth as well as to minimize draft.  The lodges were skinned in sod, pine needles, willow brush, and so on.  This skin was quite thick, especially on the Kalapoya Tribe style because they would walk on the roof and enter through the smoke hole at the top.  The Mandan Tribe of the Southeast prairie put there entrance on the side(shown in the sketch below).

GOOOOOOOOOOOOD MORNING VIET...uh...Internet

Helllooo Internet!

My name's Erich, I'm an Interior Architecture + Design (IA+D) student at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD).  My fellow classmate Aaron and I get the exciting task of blogging with you our experiences in our Architecture in the Field (AitF) class this semester.  It is a studio class, but we thought it'd be fun to go more in depth into the history of what we look at, past the technical lessons gained.  Hope you enjoy, firsts posts coming very soon!

This blog - aitf-erich.blogspot.com
Aaron's blog - aitf-aaron.blogspot.com

And yes, we DO like acronyms.