History of American Architecture - Essay Example

After World War II the style manifested itself in clean-lined, unadorned glass skyscrapers and mass housing projects. Modernist architects of the early and mid-twentieth century were politically idealistic and radical. Their architecture expressed their faith that modernisation and progress would bring a better world. Modern architecture is a term given to a number of building styles with similar characteristics, primarily the simplification of form and the elimination of ornament, that first arose around 1900.

Around 1900, a number of architects around the world began developing new architectural solutions to integrate traditional precedents with new technological possibilities. By the 1940s these styles had been consolidated and identified as the International Style and became the dominant architectural style, particularly for institutional and corporate building, for several decades in the twentieth century. Some historians see the evolution of modern architecture as a social matter, closely tied to the project of Modernity and hence to the Enlightenment, a result of social and political revolutions.

Others see modern architecture as primarily driven by technological and engineering developments, and it's plainly true that the availability of new building materials such as iron, steel, concrete and glass drove the invention of new building techniques as part of the Industrial Revolution. By the 1920s the most important figures in modern architecture had established their reputations. In 1932, the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture, curated by Philip Johnson and collaborator Henry-Russell Hitchcock drew together many distinct threads and trends, identified them as stylistically similar and having a common purpose, and consolidated them into the International Style.

This was an important turning point. With World War II the important figures of the Bauhaus fled to the United States, to Chicago, to the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and to Black Mountain College. Modernism became the pre-eminent, and then the only acceptable, design solution from about 1932 to about 1984. Modernist architecture became popular, because the ideal of progress was so widespread during the mid-twentieth century. Its gleaming glass, steel, and concrete buildings helped to spread the faith that technology and planning could heal the sick, replace the slums with hygienic housing projects, and create affluence for all.

What is Post-ModernismPostmodern architecture is an international style whose first examples are generally cited as being from the 1950s, and continues to influence present-day architecture. Postmodernity in architecture is generally thought to be heralded by the return of "wit, ornament and reference" to architecture in response to the formalism of the International Style of modernism. As with many cultural movements, some of postmodernism's most pronounced and visible ideas can be seen in architecture.

The functional and formalized shapes and spaces of the modernist movement are replaced by