Modern architecture is a style found in the buildings that have simple form without any ornamental structures to them.
This style of architecture first came up around 1900. By 1940, modern architecture was identified as an international style and became the dominant way to build for many decades in the 20th century. Modern architects apply scientific and analytical methods to design.
Many historians relate the origins of this style of architecture to the social and political revolution of the time, though others see modern architecture as primarily driven by technological and engineering developments. The availability of new materials such as iron, steel, concrete, and glass brought about new building techniques as part of the industrial revolution. Some regard modern architecture as a reaction against ancient building style. Above all, it is widely accepted as a matter of taste.
For the international style, the most commonly used materials are glass for the facade, steel for exterior support, and concrete for the floors and interior supports. The floor plans are functional and logical. But, many people are not fond of the modern style. They find its stark, uncompromisingly rectangular geometrical designs quite inhumane. They think this universal style is sterile, elitist, and lacks meaning.
Modern architecture challenged traditional ideas about the types of structures suitable for architectural design. Only important civic buildings, aristocratic palaces, churches, and public institutions had long been the mainstay of architectural practices. But, modernist designers argued that architects should design everything that was necessary for society, even the most humble buildings.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
The Historical Architecture
The Online School of Architecture
Many architectural schools require specialty on-the-job training and internships at almost every level, which takes three years.
Students who intend to take online accredited architecture training should check to find out whether the training is accredited from a valid institution or not. The process of taking architectural licensing exams becomes a bit easier if a student takes training from an accredited institution. Online architectural training helps students choose their career path in architecture.
There are many online courses available offering two-year, four-year as well as five-year programs. Taking a four-year bachelor degree program is considered to be a good choice, as it helps exploring options before deciding which graduate program in architecture would be suitable to take.
Scope of Online Architecture Training
Online architecture training can help aspiring architects achieve their career goals. It instructs students in the art and science of designing and constructing buildings. There are many busy people who wanted to pursue an architectural degree, but could not manage it due to lack of time. Online architecture training is the ideal choice for them as it is neither very expensive nor time consuming.
You can easily manage your studies while working. Most reputable institutions accredit all online architecture schools. In a number of regions, architects need to have taken an approved degree program to obtain a license.
Students considering online architecture training programs might also consider looking into options related to technical, vocational schools or community colleges offering online training. This offers a better chance for students to get good internships and placements.
If a student enrolls in a trade school, he or she can earn a certificate, diploma or degree as an Associate of Arts or Associate of Science in Architecture. This helps students save a lot of time, complete the architecture course and become independent, thereby making a mark in their chosen specialization.
School of Architecture
Rapid urbanization and buildings turning into art forms has given a boost to architecture studies.
Colleges and universities across the USA offer professional courses in architecture and related fields accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB). This is an important requirement for being a licensed architect.
The best route in being a registered or licensed architect is a five-year Bachelor or Master of Architecture degree program. If hesitant or unsure of career choice, opt for a four-year bachelor's degree and then move on to graduate school for a 2- or 3-year Masters Degree program in Architecture. To be a licensed or registered architect one needs an internship in an architectural firm working under the supervision of registered professionals, followed by a comprehensive examination.
Different states have their own jurisdiction procedures. Some boards require a pre-professional degree in architecture or a bachelor's degree in any subject. The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) follow their own criteria for admission to licensing examinations. Before applying to a college or school, check on the number of accredited programs being offered, or on related degree programs such as a program in historic preservation or architectural engineering with an accredited professional architecture degree program. The coursework is similar to accredited programs but problems arise at the time of license. Sometimes a single school offers several accredited professional degree programs, such as a five-year undergraduate degree for high school graduates and a three-and-a-half-year graduate degree for those who already have a degree in another field. One should check on the accreditation status of the school before applying as new architecture schools cannot have NAAB accreditation until the first professional class graduates.
Ahwanee Hotel in the Yosemite National Park in California
Ahwanee Hotel located in the Yosemite National Park in California.
The Ahwanee is a magnificent structure that was built in the 1920s and has been a national historic landmark since the 1980s. Fitting beautifully into the majestic Yosemite scenery, the hotel is constructed from rough-cut granite and wood. When I first saw the Ahwanee I marveled at its beauty, but also wondered if such extensive use of wood in a remote area did not represent a fire hazard. Well, the wood isn't wood. It is poured concrete that was textured with early formliners and stained to look like redwood and pine bark. When you look at the building from a distance, you see horizontal redwood siding and rough, milled timbers.
What architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood accomplished with the Ahwanee Hotel was an intelligent solution to the challenge of designing a building that fit into the breathtaking grandeur of Yosemite with its rock and woods yet was also resistant to fire. It became an architectural masterpiece and also a monument to innovative use of construction materials. By shaping, texturing and staining concrete, Underwood conjured up the natural beauty of wood, yet without incurring any of wood's drawbacks in terms of cost, safety and longevity. Underwood may not have had the type of plastic formliner we use today, but the idea and concept was the same.
While the Ahwanee was one of the most earliest and most famous examples of formliner architecture and its builders had to overcome many challenges, the concept is readily available today to architects, engineers and contractors. It adds a great degree of artistic and architectural freedom to using concrete as a construction material. Colors and textures become part of the design language, the finish of concrete as relevant as its structural properties.
Adding texture to concrete was a major task an expense when the Ahwanee was built. Today, elastomeric and urethane formliners can be specified and ordered right out of catalogs from companies that specialize in them. Hundreds of patters and textures are available, with top-notch formliner makers able to interpret and produce drawings, provide custom patterns and rustications, while adhering to schedules and budgets.
While concrete has been used as a construction material for thousands of years, it's been the fairly recent advent of concrete form liners that has given architects and engineers a powerful new tool to work with this most flexible of construction materials.
Spam Architecture at Seoul Museum of Art
The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Floating Tower in Singapore
How amazing??!! Far East Organization has commissioned the Office for Metropolitan Architecture to build this residential high-rise which stands at 153 meters tall.
I'm all for clever architecture but this thing looks insane. I'm pretty sure they're breaking one or two laws of physics. Can you imagine living here? I'd spend the whole time hugging the floor and praying "I won't die".
The Rotating Tower by David Fisher
The newest modern architecture design concept is called Dynamic Architecture. Modern architecture skyscrapers will keep moving, forever changing their shape to better fit nature and your imagination.
Dynamic Architecture reveals three major innovations – changing shapes, industrial production of units and self-production of clean energy.
Dynamic Architecture buildings follow the sun and move to the wind.
Silken Hotel Puerta America in Madrid by Foster and Partners, Zaha Hadid, Chipperfield, Jean Nouvel, Arata Isozaki, Ron Arad, and John Pawson
The Silken Hotel Puerta America in Madrid completed in 2005 called on the talents of well known designers like Foster and Partners, Zaha Hadid, Chipperfield, Jean Nouvel, Arata Isozaki, Ron Arad, and John Pawson to uniquely create each floor and room, giving free rein to their creativity in the development.
When it comes to deluxe hotel accommodations that feature state of the art architecture, interior design, and modern furniture and lighting, there is one place that harmoniously combines these elements in one breath taking place.
Fireball Lilly Lodge by Hogarth Architects
The towers will contain bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens, with the main living areas in the adjoining huts.
it is a holiday home in Kilifi, Kenya, that consists of huts on stilts and towers, connected by rope bridges by Hogarth Architects.
The remoteness of the site means that the lodges need to be as self sufficient as possible and easy to maintain.
The design also aims to have as little environmental impact as possible. No glass or air conditioning has been used and the materials will be locally sourced coral block, lime render, timber from a sustainable source and palm thatch for the roofs. The towers will house the bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens and the huts will provide the main living spaces. The impact the buildings have at ground level is kept to a minimum so that access and views to and from the narrow beach front are kept as open as possible. The elevated living spaces will also benefit from increased natural
tea house in the tree
His interest as an architect, however, lay more in pushing the limit and constraints of a traditional teahouse rather than pursuing the art of tea making, and as a result, he has created a highly expressive piece of architecture. The tea masters traditionally maintained total control over the construction of these “enclosures,” whose simplicity was their main concern. They therefore preferred not to involve an architect or even a skilled carpenter - an act considered as being too ostentatious. Following this tradition, Fujimori decided to build a humble teahouse for himself and by himself over a patch of land that belonged to his family. Takasugi-an, which literally means, “a teahouse [built] too high,” is indeed more like a tree house than a teahouse. In order to reach the room, the guests must climb up the freestanding ladders propped up against one of the two chestnut trees supporting the whole structure. The trees were cut and brought in from the nearby mountain to the site. Shoes are taken off at the midway point. Once inside the room, which is padded simply with plaster and bamboo mats, the architect’s adventurous spirit gives way to the serenity more suited to the purpose of making tea and calming one’s mind.
The academician and architect, Terunobu Fujimori, has observed that a teahouse is “the ultimate personal architecture.” Its extreme compactness, which would at most accommodate four and a half tatami mats (2.7 square metres) or even just two tatami mats (1.8 square metres) of floor space, makes it feel as though it were an extension of one’s body, “like a piece of clothing.” The interior is covered with plaster and bamboo mats. The tea house is built atop two chestnut trees, cut from a nearby mountain and transported to the site, and is accessible only by free-standing ladders propped against one of the trees. Following the tradition of tea masters, who maintained total control over the construction of their tea houses, Fujimori designed and built the structure for his own use.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Yakisugi house by Terunobu Fujimori
It comprises a living and dining area, two bedrooms, a study, and a tea room located in the tower.
The building is clad in charred cedar that was smoked in eight-metre lengths.Due to the length of timber used, the material warped during this process and the resulting gaps in the facade are filled with plaster.For Yakisugi House, it was the small cave dwelling found near the Caves of Lascaux in France Fujimori encountered on his own travel. The cave idea materialised as the main living/dining room area, which leads to a study, two bedrooms and a tearoom inside a mini ‘tower.Fujimori wrapped his ‘cave’ with highly durable charred cedar boards; a traditional cladding material still used in Okayama prefecture. Normally, however, the boards come in lengths of less than two metres, for if they are any longer they warp with the heat of their production process.Undeterred, however, the architect persuaded a group of ten friends, including the clients, to spend a whole day charring cedar boards by using a new experimental technique of his own. It took them one whole day to produce four hundred boards, all more or less eight metres tall, which were precariously but beautifully smoked in clusters of three.It is amazingly beautiful, it seems to ’suck’ light in from around it and has a colour all of its own. That was used internally however.
And the contrast of the rough external skin with the smooth internal is lovely. Love the glazing detail with the ’slices’ of tree trunks!
The Modern Architecture by Plasma Studio of London
The Modern Architecture takes on two drastically differing forms for the designers and architects of London's Plasma Studio led by founders Eva Castro and Holger Kehne who work in conjunction with their second undertaking in Sesto near Bolzano, Italy, lead by partner Ulla Hell.
In London "the multicultural staff is immersed in a fast-moving, diverse and urban culture, whereas in Bolzano- an area of outstanding natural beauty and strong local crafts tradition- the work is developed from engaging with nature, the landscape and local materials".There are some of the completed renovations, ground up construction projects, and futuristic plans for upcoming residential homes and commercial buildings done since their inception in 1999. Plasma Studio is best known for its "architectural use of form and geometry using shifts, folds, and bends to create surface continuities that are never arbitrary but part of the spatial and structural organization". For the Silken Hotel Puerta America 4th floor project in Madrid completed in 2005 well known names in the design arena like Foster and Partners, Zaha Hadid, Chipperfield, Jean Nouvel, Arata Isozaki, Ron Arad, and John Pawson were commissioned to create each floor of the hotel, giving free rein to their creativity in the development of the rooms and floor as a whole.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
AC Towers, Dubai by Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill Architecture
AC Towers, Dubai by Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill Architecture
The AC Towers- three of the world’s tallest buildings- rise up out of a central canal.
The development’s unique form is also highly functional: soaring clusters of cables and occupied sky-bridges connect the towers together as they ascend. The towers are designed to the highest environmental and performance standards and will serve as a strong symbol of Dubai’s commitment to sustainability.A true “city center,” the complex is accessible directly by both land and sea. At the base of the buildings, grand arched entrances allow boats to travel underneath the building and into a central atrium space, an oasis in the center of the development. The atria oasis, open from water to sky, is framed by the three towers and the sky-bridges above. The space has the potential to transform into a premier entertainment venue.The mixed-use development includes a hotel, residential, commercial retail and entertainment space totaling 800,000-900,000 square meters.
Continue reading......
Friday, March 13, 2009
Best architecture design of Mestizo Restaurant by Smiljan Radic Clarke
This Project won a public competition convoked by the Municipality of Vitacura in Santiago in 2005 for a restaurant in Las Américas Park.
The restaurant is sited at the northeast end of the park - a work by architect TeodoroFernández that is still under construction - and occupies a corner opposite some extraordinary water gardens stuck between a lookout hill and the pavement skirting the Bicentenario Avenue.
