Rationalism and Pioneers in Modern Architecture

Posted on Nov 30, 2024 in Social sciences

Rationalism: The most important architectural movement of the 20th century, after World War I, producing a vanguard architectural language completely detached from the past and responding to the needs and aspirations of modern society. It is based on the following premises:

  • Functionalism: Ways to serve the function, a practical concept of architecture. “Architecture as an instrument of social progress” in the service of collective needs.
  • Inspired by Neo-Dutch, Russian Constructivism, and Cubism.

Defining features:

  1. New industrial materials: Iron, steel, concrete, and glass.
  2. Structural architectural triumph: The essence of the building is the frame of metal beams covered with concrete, supporting the load.
  3. New construction:
    • Build cheaper and faster by using prefabricated elements.
    • Walls lose their sustaining role: They are simple enclosures and can be distributed freely. This eliminates the massive wall and replaces it with large windows.
    • Interior space takes on new formulas: “open plan.”
    • Develops high buildings (skyscrapers).
  4. New formal and aesthetic language:
    • It requires an aesthetic based on formal simplicity: Decorative elements disappear, and rectilinear volumes and pure linear forms dominate.
    • Serious concerns over proportion, with the human scale being the reference point.
    • Renewed concept of space, linked to the functional value of the building and the principle of the “open plan.” It rejects the single-view, closed-ended shaft, seeking continuous, interconnected, dynamic, asymmetric space with multiple views.
  5. The most representative buildings are related to collective needs or social housing (skyscrapers), industrial buildings, administrative buildings, and cultural buildings.

Le Corbusier is the highest representative of rationalist architecture. His work is based on a solid theoretical foundation and research, as well as his admiration for Cubism. His works skillfully condense the achievements and aesthetic language of rationalism, as applied to housing and urban development. His style is based on five points or principles:

  1. Free pillars.
  2. The roof garden.
  3. The free plan.
  4. The longitudinal window.
  5. The free façade.

Since the 1950s, rationalism has adopted a softer and more curvilinear style, using organic shapes, rough textures, and undulating forms (e.g., Ronchamp Chapel).

Architecture of New Materials:

  1. Use of new materials: Iron, steel, glass, and concrete. There are new techniques: Wrought iron, beams, welding, and riveting. Construction is based on prefabricated elements.
  2. New construction: The building structure is formed by a frame of high-strength metal beams that distribute and support the load. Walls are structurally devalued. Solid walls can be eliminated. Wide interior spaces. Building construction is cheaper and faster.
  3. New formal language: Forms serve the building’s function, using an aesthetic based on objective and rational logic, clarity, purity of lines, and bare structures.
  4. New typologies related to the needs of industrial society (bridges, factories, markets, etc.). The institutions at the forefront of architectural renovation are England and France.

The Chicago School: Chicago will see the birth of truly utilitarian and modern rationalist architecture, developing new construction criteria on a large scale.

  1. The Chicago School applies and extends new techniques to traditional typologies and construction related to the needs of industrial urban life: Offices, residential buildings, hotels, etc.
  2. Architecture based on new materials (iron, steel, concrete) and the technique of the metal structure.
  3. The invention of the elevator allows for height in construction (skyscrapers).
  4. Imposing a formal and rationalist language, as defined by buildings of high purity, linear categorical volumes, formal simplicity, and sobriety.

The pioneer in this architecture was Richardson.

Organic Architecture: Wright

The U.S. is the focus of intense architectural renovation that, starting from the Chicago School and the technical solutions provided by functional rationality, is represented and defined at its maximum by Wright.

Features:

  1. Building as an organic entity that is inserted and blends with the countryside. Poetic and stately architecture, looking comfortable.
  2. Peculiar organization of space and form: The building is designed from the inside out. Open forms are created and related to the exterior and interior. Spatial continuity. Asymmetric and rotating space, open plan dominated by continuous space. Glass surfaces. Although it uses rectilinear forms, it also uses curvilinear, broken, and winding profiles. Horizontal tension prevails.
  3. Use of industrial materials (concrete) and natural materials (wood, stone).
  4. Selective treatment of light.
  5. Single-family homes.

The most representative works are “House on the Prairie” and “Fallingwater.”