Modern architecture | EPFL Graph Search

Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that form should follow function (functionalism); an embrace of minimalism; and a rejection of ornament. It emerged in the first half of the 20th century and became dominant after World War II until the 1980s, when it was gradually replaced as the principal style for institutional and corporate buildings by postmodern architecture. According to Le Corbusier the roots of the movement were to be found in the works of Eugène Viollet le duc. Origins Modernism Modern architecture emerged at the end of the 19th century from revolutions in technology, engineering, and building materials, and from a desire to break away from historical architectural styles and invent something that was purely functional and new. The revolution in materials came first, w

Where is my place? Native home and culture in Iranian immigrants' homemaking

Maryam Jafarbegloo

This research investigates homemaking of culturally diverse groups. Homemaking is a process, which is created by residents through the understanding of forms and belongings to represent and celebrate events throughout new structures and objects. Homemaking also is influenced by residents¿ domestic traditions. The investigation of this phenomenon is the focus of this study. Several questions are discussed, partly related to understanding the meaning of home among immigrants, and partly aiming to discover the relation between homemaking and immigrants¿ previous home in their house country. In order to answer the research questions, the present study examines the tensions of immigrants to change different parts of their houses to understand how their homemaking is affected by their domestic culture and memories of their house in their native country. The research contains two main parts. The first part explains a theoretical framework and the bodies of knowledge, while the second part focuses on the analysis of findings and conclusions. In the second part of the research, a study on transformation of domestic traditions on modern house architecture in Tehran aims at discovering respective achievements related to the use of space based on cultural values. In addition, similarities and differences between immigrants¿ current houses in two different host countries and their previous houses in their native countries are observed and examined. Throughout this part, those aspects of domestic tradition, which are transferred by immigrants in the settling process, are investigated. The city of Tehran is considered as a benchmark to achieve all documents from the immigrant houses in their native country during the second Pahlavi period. In addition, as the host cities, Hamburg from Germany and Zürich from Switzerland are studied to answer the research questions with a comparative analysis from Iranian families. In addition, four types of modern houses, including detached houses, row houses, high-rise apartments, and slum houses (Alunak), built in 1940-1979 in Tehran, are examined to understand the immigrants¿ previous houses. The results of this research reveal that homemaking among immigrants serves the creation of the feeling of being at home pursued by immigrants¿ culture in order to recall their houses in Tehran. Results unravel a strong relationship between the immigrants¿ domestic traditions in Iran and their homemaking in Zürich and Hamburg. The Iranian traditional aspects commonly introduce influential factors in homemaking of Iranian immigrants. Some common findings of homemaking process, which are the results of the transformation of Iranian immigrants¿ domestic culture to Zürich and Hamburg, introduce an adaptation of the original Iranian house according to several common factors as follows: ¿ Renovation of the interior arrangement of spaces like living room and kitchen based on their houses in Tehran. ¿ The importance of privacy forces the families to make their home by covering the windows with curtains, covering the yards by tall greenery walls, and separating the interior plans into public and private sections. ¿ Owing to guest hospitality, the houses are furnished to offer sufficient space for guests same as the houses in Tehran, thereby providing different daily and nightly functions for the rooms.

EPFL2017

Erweiterung des Funktionalismus 1930-1950

Christoph Wieser

Functionalism serves as the guiding concept of this piece of work, on the example of which shall be traced the changes that took place in modern architecture between 1930 and 1950. This choice seems appropriate since Functionalism is a particularly relevant yardstick of the state of modern architecture owing to its radical nature. In its generally accepted form, Functionalism embodies the most rigorous stage of a development that in the early 1920s assumed a variety of forms, that became increasingly strongly focussed, and which finally expanded in the early 1930s. On the other hand, a penetration of the core of the concept of Functionalism is an uphill task and demands an investigation into allied concepts such Objectivity, and in particular the New Objectivity, Neues Bauen and Rationalism, as well as a digression into Italian Razionalismo. This exploration is followed by an attempt to define Functionalism, whereby the intention is not to equate it with the status of "dogmatic Functionalism" with which its condition at the end of the 1920s shall be labelled, but to attempt to understand it in a more comprehensive sense. This extended view of Functionalism forms the basis of an analysis of the expansion stage, which can be divided into three parts for which the following concepts stand: "enlightened Functionalism" for the years from 1930 to 1935, "self-evident Functionalism" for the following period up until the end of the war, and "subliminal Functionalism" for the first post-war years until 1950 – concepts that refer to the types of development in which Functionalism continued to forfeit its radicality and mutate into an undogmatic, widely accepted form of modern architecture. Towards 1950, however, functionalistic methods were more and more frequently overlaid by a traditional language of form that increasingly blurred the contours of functionalist aesthetics. This represented the final stage of development, for an invisible functionalism is no longer an "ism" – and thus no longer Functionalism. Buildings from Switzerland and Sweden provide the main source of illustrative material, despite the fact that Functionalism developed in Germany. This is connected with the architectural quality of Swiss and Swedish building at the time, as well as with the changes in the political situation. For although World War II brought about a crucial break in Switzerland and Sweden, it did not call a complete halt to the previous developments as it did in most other European countries.

EPFL2005

La création d'une japonité moderne (1870-1940), ou Le regard des architectes européens sur le Japon

Irène Elizabeth Vogel Chevroulet

This thesis questions the fundamentals and modes characterising the European architects' way of looking at Japanese architecture and garden art between 1870 and 1940. It establishes the corpus of the major writings and of other texts published by their Occidental and Japanese contemporaries in English, French and German. We analyse the writings' major issues, outstanding specifics and realisations. We detect and describe the creation of a modern Japan-ness through the writings of four major protagonists. Firstly, Josiah Conder was professor of Architectural History and Theory at Tokyo Imperial College and later considered as the "father of modern architecture" in Japan. We discuss his articles and books, published between 1877 and 1893, as being inaugural as well as forerunners of Japan-ness. Between 1903 and 1910, the architect Chûta Itô and the art historian Kakuzô Okakura gave its premises in their publications. The engineer Franz Baltzer as well as the architects Ralph A. Cram and Frank Lloyd Wright confirmed some of these ideas in their books published between 1903 and 1912. Secondly, we study writings from an architect who never traveled to Japan : Robert Mallet-Stevens. His articles, written in France from 1911 et 1913, were an indirect reference to Conder's articles. Thirdly, we analyse the theoretical and innovative works published by Bruno Taut between 1924 and 1937. We look at the way in which he valued and consolidated an intercultural Japan-ness. We question the existence of a Japan-ness in garden arts' writings. We establish how his contemporaries spread Japan-ness specificities : the architects Wajiro Kon, Kôji Fujii, Tetsuro Yoshida, Sutemi Horiguchi, Wells Coates, Richard Neutra and Antonin Raymond, the art historian Jirô Harada, the landscape designers – Tsuyoshi Tamura, Percy. S. Cane et Christopher Tunnard –, and the writer Jun'ichiro Tanizaki. We identify which specificities had already been defined by Itô, Kon and Horiguchi before Taut validation. Fourthly, Charlotte Perriand confirmed this established modern Japan-ness as a source of inspiration with her notes taken during her stay in Japan between 1940 and 1941. The thesis chronicles the impact of her notes onto some of her realisations in Japan and later in France. Thanks to this comparative analysis of texts, the thesis argues that the European gaze towards Japan is reflecting its preoccupations towards justifications for its own architectural development. This gaze is also orientated by the interests of the Japanese themselves. These are looking for an international recognition of their traditional architecture. We describe then how Japan-ness is created through writings and how it works as an appropriation of modernity enabling Japanese architecture to step in an avant-garde role. This creation follows two stages. The first one is a process of distinction from Asian architecture by identification and reinforcement of Japanese specifics. At its core lies the discourse upon the differences of the Japanese shintoist and zen soul. The second one is a process of sorting out common specificities with Western avant-garde ones. This time, the discourse concerns abstract similarities. The whole set of Japan-ness specificities defines an intercultural architecture which distinguishes itself both from Japonisme and from Occidentalisme. Lastly, the results show the profits gained by this European gaze and taken into account in their own architecture.

EPFL2009