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.