Constructivism,Stirling,Zaha,Koolhass

JAMES STIRLING Leader of the great transition from the Modern Movement to the architecture of the New— an architecture that once more has recognized historical roots, once more has close connections with the buildings surrounding it, once more can be called a new tradition.

Sir James Frazer Stirling (1926-1992)
Born in Glasgow, Scotland
Educated from Liverpool University
1956-1992, architectural practice (with James Gowan and later with Michael Wilford)
Works mainly in England, US and Germany
His classroom projects mainly based on Classicism of Ecole des Beaux Arts
But he himself was concentrated on International style
Main two buildings-Leicester and Cambridge- in International Style
1970s Buildings in US show contextualism
His German projects, including Staatsgalerie are postmodern
Pritzker Prize in 1981

Design Philosophies
Started with International style (1950s)-small scale houses and housing complexes all built with traditional bricks and traditional English forms of warehouses, factories, barns etc.
Modern-functional, austere (no ornamentation) and with volumes defined by clean spaces and lines
But these were very humane in scale and style
Communal vitality and integration in terms of space and circulation
“Architecture is not a question of style or appearance, it is how you organize spaces and movement for a place and activity”
He was one of the earliest architects to use technology and new materials in architecture, but he always believed that the humanistic approach has to be given more importance

In an article written in 1979 for Contemporary Architects, Stirling said, "I believe that the shapes of a building should indicate—perhaps display—the usage and way of life of its occupants, and it is therefore likely to be rich and varied in appearance, and its expression is unlikely to be simple...in a building we did at Oxford some years ago, it was intended that you could recognize the historic elements of courtyard, entrance gate towers, cloisters; also a central object replacing the traditional fountain or statue of the college founder. In this way we hoped that students and public would not be disassociated from their cultural past. The particular way in which functional-symbolic elements are put together may be the "art" in the architecture."

..."If the expression of functional-symbolic forms and familiar elements is foremost, the expression of structure will be secondary, and if structure shows, it is not in my opinion, the engineering which counts, but the way in which the building is put together that is important." "Stirling's concept of contemporary architecture is concerned with the humanization of the environment. Humanistic considerations dominate all technological, economic and aesthetic preconceived ideas and ideologies. Architecture has to re-establish its own criteria for evaluation; for Stirling this obviously means creating in harmony with common sense, tradition, the existing environment, and a concern for people."

Engineering Building, Leicester University(1959)

History Faculty Library, Cambridge University (1964)

Leicester and Cambridge
Leicester and Cambridge were thoroughly modern constructivist designs that depended on technical innovation, demonstrating “form follows function” principle.
Both were built of brick and red tiles in the tradition of Victorian architecture, but with massive amounts of greenhouse glazing used on chamfered surfaces as a kind of glass skin.
They were proof that new methods and materials were a vital aspect of progressive architecture.
Although the extrovert quality of these buildings was a surprise, they and their successors (which used pre cast concrete and even prefabricated plastic to demonstrate their self-reliance) helped change the course of British architecture from a flat blandness to one showing careful use of numerous materials within a rigorously functional design.

Contextualism
By the 1970s Stirling's work took another turn: his buildings began to show a greater interest in their context, in symmetry, and in historical allusion.
The two examples of Stirling's completed commissions in America appeared during this period.
The first, an extension of the School of Architecture at Rice University, was commissioned in 1979 and completed in 1981; the second, the Sackler Museum at Harvard University, was also commissioned in 1979 and completed in 1985.
The Rice building, "a lesson in restraint," was the ultimate in contextual architecture. Both the materials and the design forms were the same as the original buildings, but Stirling used and interpreted them in witty and off-beat ways (for example, a two story arch on the main facade included a round window near the top set decidedly off-center) to give life and light to this addition.
The Sackler Museum, on the other hand, was a free standing building, located on a small lot across from the Fogg Museum, with which it was intended to be connected by an enclosed catwalk over an entrance that some said recalls the ancient Lion Gate at Mycenae and others insisted was Superman's Fortress of Solitude. The exterior of the building was striped orange and grey brick, and the interior continued this color pattern.

Later works
The use of color was a characteristic of Stirling, who saw architecture as an expression of art, not merely of social planning and engineering
Stirling signature was mullioned glass, colored building materials (including green window frames, purple and turquoise moldings, and pink railings against yellow stucco and Portland stone), and simple geometric forms and apparently random fenestration punched and cut into the building.
During the 1970s, the architectural signature of Stirling began to change as the scale of his projects moved from small and not very profitable to very large, as Stirling's architecture became more overtly neoclassical, though it remained deeply imbued with his powerful revised modernism. This produced a wave of dramatically spare, large-scale urban projects.
Staatsgalerie’s powerful basic concept has a large number of architectural amusements and decorative allusions, which led many to mistakenly see it as an example of postmodernism

Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (1977)

Cornell University, NY

CONSTRUCTIVISM

Soviet Constructivism
Soviet constructivism is a modern art movement that began around 1913.
Constructivist architecture was a form of modern architecture
Constructivist art had attempted to apply a three-dimensional cubist vision to wholly abstract non-objective 'constructions' with a kinetic element.
Constructivism was founded by an artist/architect named Vladimir Tatlin and Pevsner brothers.
Flourished in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s.
It combined advanced technology and engineering with Communist social purpose.
Fell out in 1932
Its effects have been marked on later developments in architecture.

Tatlin Tower
The first and most famous Constructivist architectural project was the 1919 proposal for the headquarters of the Comintern in St Petersburg by the Futurist Vladimir Tatlin, often called Tatlin's Tower. Though it remained unbuilt, the materials - glass and steel - and its futuristic ethos and political slant (the movements of its internal volumes were meant to symbolise revolution and the dialectic) set the tone for the projects of the 1920s.
Planned in 1920, the monument, was to be a tall tower in iron, glass and steel which would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower in Paris (it was a third taller at 1,300 feet high). Inside the iron-and-steel structure of twin spirals, the design envisaged three building blocks, covered with glass windows, which would rotate at different speeds (the first one, a cube, once a year; the second one, a pyramid, once a month; the third one, a cylinder, once a day). High prices prevented Tatlin from executing the plan, and no building such as this was erected in his day.

ASANOVA AND OSA
Other major constructivist works are Lenin Tribune by El Lissitzky(1920)-a moving speaker’s podium and Gustav Klutsis’ “Dynamic city”
After the World war, Soviet avant-garde school started an architectural wing called ASNOVA
A colder and more technological Constructivist style was introduced by the 1923/4 glass office project by the Vesnin brothers for Leningradskaya Pravda . In 1925 the OSA Group, also with ties to Vkhutemas, was founded by Alexander Vesnin and Moisei Ginzburg- the Organisation of Contemporary Architects. This group had much in common with Weimar Germany’s Functionalism, such as the housing projects of Ernst May.[2] Housing, especially collective housing in specially designed dom kommuny to replace the collectivised 19th century housing that was the norm, was the main priority of this group.

REM KOOLHASS

BIOGRAPHY AND CONCEPTS
BORN IN 1944, IN ROTTERDAM.
DUTCH ARCHITECT, ACADEMICIAN, ARCHITECTURAL THEORIST AND URBAN DESIGNER
HE CO-FOUNDED OMA(OFFICE FOR METROPOLITAN ARCHITECTURE) IN 1980 AND BECAME ITS PRINCIPAL
FIRST DIFFERENT PROJECT WAS THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO THE ‘VENICE BIENNALE’, A STAGE LIKE FRONTAGE HAD TO BE DESIGNED FOR AN INTERNAL STREET FOR A COMPETITION CALLED ‘PRESENCE OF THE PAST’. WHILE ALL THE OTHER ARCHITECTS DID POSTMODERN DESIGNS, OMA’S WAS THE ONLY MODERN SOLUTION
THEIR FIRST REALISED MAJOR PROJECT WAS ‘KUNSTHAL’(1992)
HE WROTE ‘DELIRIOUS NEWYORK’ WHICH ACCOMMODATED MANY OF HIS FINDINGS

HE ANALYSES TWO CONTRADICTIONS IN ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN DESIGN- ITS EFFORT TO MAINTAIN MATERIAL HONESTY, HUMAN SCALE AND CAREFULLY CRAFTED MEANING AGAINST THE NW GLOBALISATION OF MATERIAL ECONOMY, MACHINE SCALE AND RANDOM MEANING
HE CELEBRATESTHE NEW CITY STYLE(JAPANESE METABOLISM INFLUENCE IN THIS APPROACH)
HE CRITICISES ‘PROGRAM’ IN ARCHITECTURE-’FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION’ ATTITUDE, AND INTRODUCED CROSS-PROGRAMMING.
ANOTHER BOOK, ‘S,M,L,XL’ HAS ESSAYS, FICTION, TRAVELOGUES ETC.OF NEW CITY WITH LOT OF PICTURES AND DENSE TEXTS.
OLD PRINCIPLES CAN NO LONGER BE APPLIED IN THE ‘BIGNESS’ SCALE

LATER HE PUBLISHED THREE MORE BOOKS WITH THE HELP OF HIS STUDENTS
THESE OBSERVE HIGHLY FUNCTIONAL CITIES WHCH LACK INFRASTRUCTURE
ALSO THE EFFCT OF SHOPPING IN THE NEW URBAN WORLD
HE INCORPORATED THESE FINDINGS IN HIS CCTV HQ DESIGN, BEIJING-NEBULOUS CAMPUS WITH PUBLIC ROUTES INSIDE
LATER HE FORMED AMO WHICH IS THE THINK TANK OF OMA-INCORPORATING THE INFLUENCE OF VIRTUAL WORLD
LATER HE CO-FOUNDED VOLUME MAGAZINE
HIS EUROPEAN FLAG PROPOSAL-’BARCODE’-IS WELL KNOWN

SEATTLE CENTRAL LIBRARY

A southbound Green Line train passing through the stainless steel tube shielding the McCormick Tribune Campus Center. Nicknamed the BUTT for "Building Under The Tracks"

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Constructivism,Stirling,Zaha,Koolhass

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