Shri Ram College of Architecture I 3rd Year I Semester VI I Theory of Design I 2012-13

Shri Ram Group of Colleges

Modern Architects

Scientist
Inventor
Artist

Architect

Artist
Poet
Author
Moni bhardwaj

Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (May 18, 1883 July 5, 1969) was a German architect and founder of
the Bauhaus School,[1] who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier and Oscar
Niemeyer, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture
Gropius's career advanced in the postwar period. Henry van de Velde, the master of the Grand-Ducal
Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar was asked to step down in 1915 due to his Belgian
nationality. His recommendation for Gropius to succeed him led eventually to Gropius's appointment
as master of the school in 1919. It was this academy which Gropius transformed into the world
famous Bauhaus, attracting a faculty that included Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Herbert
Bayer, Lszl Moholy-Nagy, Otto Bartning and Wassily Kandinsky. One example product of the
Bauhaus was the armchair F 51, designed for the Bauhaus's directors room in 1920 - nowadays a reedition in the market, manufactured by the German company TECTA/Lauenfoerde.
In 1919, Gropius was involved in the Glass Chain utopian expressionist correspondence under the
pseudonym "Mass." Usually more notable for his functionalist approach, the "Monument to the
March Dead," designed in 1919 and executed in 1920, indicates that expressionism was an influence
on him at that time.
In 1923, Gropius designed his famous door handles, now considered an icon of 20th-century design
and often listed as one of the most influential designs to emerge from Bauhaus. He also designed
large-scale housing projects in Berlin, Karlsruhe and Dessau in 1926-32 that were major
contributions to the New Objectivity movement, including a contribution to the Siemensstadt project
in Berlin.

Bauhaus (built 19251926) in Dessau,

Germany

Walter Gropius's Monument to the

March Dead (1921) dedicated to the
memory of nine workers who died in
Weimar resisting the Kapp Putsch

Gropius House (1938) in Lincoln,

Massachusetts

Reception_stair.jpg (725 480 pixels, file size: 295 KB, MIME type

Le Corbusier
Charles-douard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier
(French: [l kbyzje]; October 6, 1887 August 27,
1965), was an architect, designer, urbanist, and writer,
famous for being one of the pioneers of what is now
called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland
and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned
five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout
Europe, India and America. He was a pioneer in studies of
modern high design and was dedicated to providing
better living conditions for the residents of crowded
cities. He was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal and AIA
Gold Medal in 1961.
Le Corbusier adopted his pseudonym in the 1920s,
allegedly deriving it in part from the name of an ancestor,
"Lecorbsier."

It was Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye (19291931) that most succinctly

summed up his five points of architecture that he had elucidated in the
journal L'Esprit Nouveau and his book Vers une architecture, which he
had been developing throughout the 1920s. First, Le Corbusier lifted the
bulk of the structure off the ground, supporting it by pilotis reinforced
concrete stilts. These pilotis, in providing the structural support for the
house, allowed him to elucidate his next two points: a free faade,
meaning non-supporting walls that could be designed as the architect
wished, and an open floor plan, meaning that the floor space was free
to be configured into rooms without concern for supporting walls. The
second floor of the Villa Savoye includes long strips of ribbon windows
that allow unencumbered views of the large surrounding yard, and
which constitute the fourth point of his system. The fifth point was the
roof garden to compensate for the green area consumed by the building
and replacing it on the roof. A ramp rising from ground level to the third
floor roof terrace allows for an architectural promenade through the
structure. The white tubular railing recalls the industrial "ocean-liner"
aesthetic that Le Corbusier much admired. As if to put an exclamation
mark after Le Corbusier's homage to modern industry, the driveway
around the ground floor, with its semicircular path, measures the exact
turning radius of a 1927 Citron automobile.

Le Corbusier Quotes
I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for
lies.
Less, Lies,Talking
A house is a machine for living in.
Architecture, Living,House
The home should be the treasure chest of living.
Living,Treasure
Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms
assembled in the light.
Architecture, Game,Learned
Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as
much as they need bread or a place to sleep.
Men, Sleep,Need
A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe and 50
times: It is a beautiful catastrophe.
Beautiful, Thought, Times
To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function
and objects.
Create,
The styles are a lie.

Le Corbusier Quotes . . .
The object of this edict is to enlighten the present and future citizens
of Chandigarh about the basic concepts of planning of the city so that
they become its guardians and save it from whims of individuals.
The city of Chandigarh is planned to human scale. It puts us in touch
with the infinite cosmos and nature. It provides us with the places and
buildings for all human activities by which the citizens can live a full
and harmonious life. Here the radiance of nature and heart are within
our reach.
A ramp provides gradual ascent from the pilotis, creating totally
different sensations than those felt when climbing stairs. A staircase
separates one floor from another: a ramp links them together.

Le Corbusier Quotes . . .
You employ stone, wood, and concrete, and with these three materials
you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work.
But suddenly, you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I
say: 'This is beautiful.' That is architecture. Art enters in. My house is
practical. I thank you as I might thank Railway engineers, or the
Telephone service. You have not touched my heart.
But suppose that walls rise toward heaven in such a way that I am
moved. I perceive your intentions. Your mood has been gentle, brutal,
charming, or noble. The stones you have erected tell me so. You fix me
to the place and my eyes regard it. They behold something which
expresses a thought. A thought which reveals itself without word or
sound, but solely by means of shapes which stand in a certain
relationship to one another. These shapes are such that they are clearly
revealed in light. The relationships between them have not necessarily
any reference to what is practical or descriptive. They are a
mathematical creation of your mind. They are the language of
Architecture. By the use of raw materials and starting from conditions
more or less utilitarian, you have established certain relationships which
have aroused my emotions. This is Architecture.

The Modulor

A Fibonacci spiral,
created by drawing
arcs connecting the
opposite corners of
squares in the
Fibonacci tiling
shown above see
golden spiral

A tiling with squares

whose sides are
successive Fibonacci
numbers in length

Le Corbusier explicitly used the golden

ratio in his Modulor system for the
scale of architectural proportion. He saw
this system as a continuation of the long
tradition of Vitruvius, Leonardo da
Vinci's "Vitruvian Man", the work of
Leon Battista Alberti, and others who
used the proportions of the human body
to improve the appearance and function
of architecture. In addition to the golden
ratio, Le Corbusier based the system on
human measurements, Fibonacci
numbers, and the double unit.
He took Leonardo's suggestion of the
golden ratio in human proportions to an
extreme: he sectioned his model human
body's height at the navel with the two
sections in golden ratio, then subdivided
those sections in golden ratio at the
knees and throat; he used these golden
ratio proportions in the Modulor system.
.

The Modulor
Le Corbusier's 1927 Villa Stein in Garches exemplified the
Modulor system's application. The villa's rectangular ground
plan, elevation, and inner structure closely approximate golden
rectangles.

Le Corbusier placed systems of harmony and proportion at

the centre of his design philosophy, and his faith in the
mathematical order of the universe was closely bound to the
golden section and the Fibonacci series, which he described as
"rhythms apparent to the eye and clear in their relations
with one another. And these rhythms are at the very root of
human activities. They resound in Man by an organic
inevitability, the same fine inevitability which causes the tracing
out of the Golden Section by children, old men, savages, and
the learned.

The Open Hand

The Open Hand Monument in Chandigarh, India
The Open Hand (La Main Ouverte) is a recurring motif in Le
Corbusier's architecture, a sign for him of "peace and
reconciliation. It is open to give and open to receive." The
largest of the many Open Hand sculptures that Le Corbusier
created is a 28 meter high version in Chandigarh, India known
as Open Hand Monument.

Architectural Proportions

A Fibonacci spiral,
created by drawing
arcs connecting the
opposite corners of
squares in the
Fibonacci tiling shown
above see golden
spiral

A tiling with squares

whose sides are
successive Fibonacci
numbers in length

Le Corbusier & Steven Holl Past Continuous Inspiration 2

Conscious Inspiration Facades

Le Corbusier & Tadao Ando Conscious Inspiration

Tadao Ando unlike most contemporary architects did not receive any formal architectural
schooling. Instead, he trained himself by reading and traveling extensively through Africa,
Europe, and the United States.
Tadao Ando was studying architecture by going to see actual buildings, and reading books
about them. His first interest in architecture was nourished in tadaos 15 by buying a book
of Le Corbusier sketches. I traced the drawings of his early period so many times, that all
pages turned black, says Tadao Ando: in my mind I quite often wonder how Le Corbusier
would have thought about this project or that.