420 After the International Style: The Late Twentieth Century
A curving open stair to the mezzanine level
provides a visual accent.
The towers of Pelli’s Petronas Center in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (1998), were, when
built, the tallest buildings in the world. They
house, at base level, a variety of lobby and
shopping atrium spaces; upper levels form bal-
conies surrounding open areas, one topped
with a flat dome. Pelli also designed one of
Los Angeles’s most distinctive landmarks, the
Pacific Design Center’s bright blue glass-clad
building (1978) known as the “Blue Whale,”
followed by a trapezoidal green building (1988)
and a bright red curving one in 2011.
The works of Kahn, with their intro-
spective sense of restraint, and of Pelli
with their exuberant excesses, form an
interesting contrast. Both defy classifica-
tion as representing any recognizable style
or school.
The era of exploration and experiment that
followed the domination of International Style
modernism crystallized into several categories,
each of which was eventually given a popu-
lar title. They are: high-tech, post-modernism,
deconstructivism, minimalism, and an unclas-
sifiable group that is, for want of a better term,
sometimes called late modernism.
HIGH-TECH
The modern movement viewed new technol-
ogy (steel, concrete, and glass) as one of its
prime bases. In recent decades technology has
made vast forward steps, particularly the tech-
nology associated with aircraft, with space
exploration, and the associated advances in
communication and computers. The popu-
lar term given to design based on advanced
technology is “high-tech,” taken from a 1978
book of the same name, which documented
the trend toward using industrial materials
in design. The style was interpreted in both
architecture and interior design. Designers
of high-tech style note that more than half
the cost of any modern project is gener-
ated by electrical, telephone, plumbing, and
air-quality systems. Adding basic structure
and mechanical transport (elevators, esca-
lators, and moving sidewalks), technology
becomes the major component of any build-
ing or interior. The decision to make these
systems visually dominant and to maximize
c21.indd 420
their impact leads to the special quality of
high-tech design. Interiors in this style use
structural columns, beams, ductwork, and
other elements as decorative framework,
and industrial and laboratory equipment
as accessories.
Fuller
Even before this way of thinking took on a
name, it was the basis of the work of Richard
Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), the American
engineer, designer, inventor, and philosopher
whose activities became known as far back as
the 1920s. Fuller was the inventor–designer of
projects that were usually called “futuristic”
and therefore not implemented beyond the few
prototypes he managed to build. He coined the
word “Dymaxion” (conflating “dynamic” and
“maximum”) to identify such projects as his
Dymaxion house of 1927, its elevated living
floor cable suspended from a central mast. The
three-wheeled Dymaxion automobile followed
in 1933, as did a factory-made, prefabricated
bathroom, in which fixtures and plumbing
were an integral part of a unit that could be
shipped fully assembled to a site. Although
all Fuller’s projects attracted interest, none
21.6 Richard Buckminster
Fuller, United States Exhibit
Pavilion, Expo 67, Montreal,
1967.
A partial sphere, constructed
with the geometry of Fuller’s
geodesic domes, housed
exhibits on platforms reached
by escalators. The geodesic
domes were hemispherical,
space-frame constructions,
formed from lightweight rods,
joined to create hexagons.
The design of the exhibition
was by a company called the
Cambridge Five. Automatic
shutters controlled the daylight,
which poured in through the
plastic panels that formed
the outer skin for the metal
structure.
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