Renaissance Architecture
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CHICAGO SCHOOL & WORKS OF LOUIS SULLIVAN Lesson 6 INTRODUCTION TO CHICAGO SCHOOL The Chicago school was a style that developed as a result of the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871. Before the fire, buildings were built of huge amounts of stone, and could not be very high. Growing use of the elevator, and the steel skeleton, the buildings grew taller and taller. The steel structure also allowed windows to be made bigger. Architects were encouraged to build higher structures because of the escalating land prices Conscious of the possibilities of the new materials and structures they developed buildings in which: Isolated footing supported a skeleton of iron encased in masonry There were: fireproof floors, numerous fast elevators and gas light The traditional masonry wall became curtains, full of glass, supported by the metal skeleton The first skyscrapers were born. • Chicago's architecture is famous throughout the world and one style is referred to as the Chicago School. • The style is also known as Commercial style. In the history of architecture, the Chicago School was a school of architects active in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. • They were among the first to promote the new technologies of steel-frame construction in commercial buildings, and developed a spatial aesthetic which co-evolved with, and then came to influence, parallel developments in European Modernism. • A "Second Chicago School" later emerged in the 1940s and 1970s which pioneered new building technologies and structural systems such as the tube-frame structure. • Some of the distinguishing features of the Chicago School are the use of steel-frame buildings with masonry cladding (usually terra cotta), allowing large plate-glass window areas and limiting the amount of exterior ornamentation. • The first floor functions as the base, the middle stories, usually with little ornamental detail, act as the shaft of the column, and the last floor or so represent the capital, with more ornamental detail and capped with a cornice. • Sometimes elements of neoclassical architecture are used in Chicago School skyscrapers • The "Chicago window" originated in this school. It is a three-part window consisting of a large fixed center panel flanked by two smaller double-hung sash windows. • The arrangement of windows on the facade typically creates a grid pattern, with some projecting out from the facade forming bay windows. The Chicago window combined the functions of light-gathering and natural ventilation; a single central pane was usually fixed, while the two surrounding panes were operable. These windows were often deployed in bays, known as oriel windows, that projected out over the street. SECOND CHICAGO SCHOOL • In the 1940s, a "Second Chicago School" emerged from the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his efforts of education at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. • Its first and purest expression was the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments (1951) and their technological achievements. • This was supported and enlarged in the 1960s due to the ideas of structural engineer Fazlur Khan. • He introduced a new structural system of framed tubes in skyscraper design and construction. • The Bangladeshi engineer Fazlur Khan defined the framed tube structure as "a three dimensional space structure composed of three, four, or possibly more frames, braced frames, or shear walls, joined at or near their edges to form a vertical tube-like structural system capable of resisting lateral forces in any direction by cantilevering from the foundation. • Closely spaced interconnected exterior columns form the tube. • Horizontal loads, for example wind, are supported by the structure as a whole. About half the exterior surface is available for windows. • Framed tubes allow fewer interior columns, and so create more usable floor space. Where larger openings like garage doors are required, the tube frame must be interrupted, with transfer girders used to maintain structural integrity. SECOND CHICAGO SCHOOL • The first building to apply the tube-frame construction was the DeWitt-Chestnut Apartment Building which Khan designed and was completed in Chicago by 1963. • This laid the foundations for the tube structures of many other later skyscrapers, including his own John Hancock Center and Willis Tower, and can been seen in the construction of the World Trade Center, Petronas Towers, Jin Mao Building, and most other supertall skyscrapers since the 1960s. Some of the more famous Chicago School buildings include: •Auditorium Building •Sullivan Center •Reliance Building •Gage Group Buildings •Chicago Building •Brooks Building •Fisher Building •Heyworth Building •Leiter I Building •Leiter II Building •Marquette Building •Monadnock building •Montauk Building •Rookery Building •Wainwright Building SOURCES OF THE STYLE The Louisiana-born architect Henry Hobson Richardson. Although he was trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Richardson rejected the école's dictum that the Greek and Roman classical style was the ultimate standard of design. Instead, his ideal was the rugged Romanesque of the South of France. The second source of style for the architects of the First Chicago School derived from the very nature of the material they so wholeheartedly adopted: steel. The Chicago certainly contributed much to Illinois architecture, but hardly anyone knows about the great ideas and strong personalities of • Dankmar Adler, • Louis Sullivan, • Daniel Burnham • John Root, • William Holabird , • Martin Roche, • William Le Baron Jenney. LOUIS SULLIVAN Louis Sullivan- was born in 1856.Sullivan thought that architecture should never be studied as a series of styles, because styles did not deal with buildings’ main design and construction. An American architect based in Chicago and a member of Chicago school. Sullivan was the main architect of this style Sullivan provided his building with a firm visual base, treated the intermediate office floors as a unit, and crowned the whole with a bold cornice The decorative ornamentation devised by Sullivan and used on some of his office buildings is based on floral motifs but organized in a manner closely resembling the Irish interlace of the early Middle Ages Sullivan designed with the principles of reconciling the world of nature with science and technology His buildings were detailed with lush, yet tastefully subdued organic ornamentation. His attempt to balance ornamentation into the whole of building design inspired a generation of American and European architects; the idea that ornamentation be integral to the building itself, rather than merely applied. He created a personal style that had few imitators or followers Sullivan is one of the few human beings to whom Frank Lloyd Wright publicly acknowledged a debt of influence in his career. He argued that the building structure should express its function and coined the famous phrase “form follows function” which became central theme. He mentored Frank Lyod Wright. Louis H. Sullivan was probably the most important American architect of the 19th century and is still considered the “Father of the Skyscraper.” Sullivan was born in Boston in 1856 and, at age 16, attended the fledgling Architecture School at M.I.T. At age 18, after working under architects Frank Furness in Philadelphia and William LeBaron Jenney in Chicago, he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris for about six months, followed by a trip to Italy, where he was particularly impressed by the Sistine Chapel. Sullivan then returned to the United States and settled in Chicago. After working for a few years at Dankmar Adler’s firm as chief draftsman and designer, they formed the firm of Adler and Sullivan in May 1883. Sullivan was the primary design partner and Adler was the engineer. Adler and Sullivan’s buildings, including the Auditorium and Stock Exchange Buildings in Chicago, the Wainwright Building in St. Louis, and the Guaranty Building, were at the leading edge of American architecture and skyscraper design. The Guaranty Building was Sullivan and Adler’s last collaboration; Adler withdrew from the firm as the building was under construction. Sullivan increasingly turned his practice from skyscrapers to smaller buildings in small towns. His career declined, and Sullivan died in obscurity and poverty in Chicago in 1924. CHARACTERISTICS Bold geometric facades pierced with either arched or lintel-type openings. The wall surface highlighted with extensive low-relief sculptural ornamentation in terra cotta. Buildings often topped with deep projecting eaves and flat roofs. The multi-story office complex highly regimented into specific zones or ground story, intermediate floors, and the attic or roof. The intermediate floors are arranged in vertical bands. Large arched window Decorative terra cotta panel Decorative band Vertical strips of windows Pilaster-like mullions Projecting eaves (the under part of a sloping roof overhanging a wall) Highly decorated frieze. Enriched foliated rinceau (an ornamental motif of scrolls of foliage, usually vine) Porthole windows Decorated terra cotta spandrels Capital of pilaster strips Guilloche (a pattern of interlacing bands forming a plait and used as an enrichment on a moulding) enrichment Foliated and linear enrichments along jambs or entry EXAMPLES GUARANTY BUILDING(PRUDENTIAL BUILDING), BUFFALLO WAINWRIGHT BUILDING. ST LOUIS. WAINWRIGHT BUILDING The Wainwright Building (also known as the Wainwright State Office Building) is a 10-story red brick