Visual Acoustics: Julius Shulman

Julius Shulman was one of my favorite architectural photographer, being was one of the best and still is in my heart. He expresses architecture in the period of modernism through photographs with a glimpse on the people living in the house. Not only the architectures he shot are iconic but it is also undeniable that the photographs of Julius Schulman is as iconic as well. The uniqueness of Julius’ photos must be how he captures the most beautiful design element from the architecture and expresses it together with the lifestyle of the habitant.

Shulman’s work is not considered a “product of architecture” but the work itself demands that it is an independent form of art. As said above, every images taken by Shulman really has its uniqueness of his perception to the architecture and his understanding of the relation between the building and its context. His pictures are so beautifully composited that it makes many of his work an iconic architectural photos of the modernism era. As he believes that the precise compositions reveal not just the architectural idea behind a building’s surface, but also the vision and hopes of an entire age. A sense of humanity is always present in his work, even when the human figure is absent from the actual photographs. In contrast, Placing people in the architecture shows architecture being functional. When people appears in the picture, the audience would draw themselves to be one of those and by this, the audience of the photograph see another dimension of architecture where they get involve as a part of the architecture by seeing sample of how it can be use, live and work in the architecture.

Julius Schulman has taught me so much about the little details in architecture and he will always live in my heart.

A Glimpse On Modernism

This week’s lecture take us to Mies Van de Rohe, a world-renowned modernism architect and still refers to our previous study on “From Bauhaus to Our House”. He was one of the very important avant-garde of the modernism movement and one of my favorite architect due to the fact that his designs are all based on “Less is More” concept.

There is no doubt the “Barcelona chair” Mies Van de Rohe designed is a masterpiece. It is not often that you come across furniture that stays popular through decades of new trends that comes and goes. However, I still find this piece of furniture quite ironic since from the reading “From Bauhaus to Our House”, Mies was one of the architects who believed in designing for the non-bourgeois. How could this expensive chair, ranging at 6 digits number of price be any non-bourgeois, it is clearly for the bourgeois who can afford this much. They are also difficult to mass produce which also contradicts the fact that this chair is from a non-bourgeois designer. However, despite the fact that this notorious (to myself) chair is not a non-bourgeois design, it could not be argue that it is a masterpiece. Owning this chair simply means you’re investing on a piece of history, an icon of modernism.

Today’s History of Architecture’s class takes us to a movie that has brief connections with the lesson we learned previously, “From Bauhaus to our House” and the film is called “Metropolis” by Fritz Lang. It is a silent film done right, so a lot of the the meaning must be interpreted visually. The film explores the relationship and an oxymoron against human and machines. Since this is a history of architecture class, the analysis of this film will be approached through an architectural perspective. Throughout my analysis I will try to look to different scenes and attempt to analyze the space in the film through my understanding of the architectural history.

The film strongly interpret urbanity. Metropolis starts off with images of structures operating mechanically and suddenly my mind goes to “the industrial age”. There are clear juxtaposition going on in the film between the workers and thinkers or in metaphoric term, humans and machines. Without the heart and understanding, the thinkers and workers would not unite as a whole unit. The film contrasts the two group by showing the workers are working deep under the ground while the thinkers all live in skyscrapers. The workers all dressed the same, work through an endless hours, removed all the identity of humans, they are almost... like a robot.

In conclusion to the movie, Rotwang decided to expresses robots to be human-like and how the human workers are controlled like machines. The movie shows the ugly truth of the human traits and how we sometimes get lost through all the technological fuzz around us.

From Bauhaus to Our House

From Bauhaus to Our House

Based on the readings from “From Bauhaus to Our House” by Tom Wolfe, I’ve got a clearer insight on the subject of Modern Architecture and its context. Furthermore, the text were amusingly enjoyable and very easy to read with Wolfe’s occasional humor inserted throughout the article.

From the reading, Tom Wolfe’s criticizes the movement of Modern Architecture that migrated from Europe. After World War I was over, Europeans wanted to have a new take on things, hence, “starting from zero” and recreating the world after a terrible war. Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus (House of Construction) School where young architects and artists learn to “start from zero”. The Bauhaus was created having two objectives in mind:

1. To create for the workers.
2. To reject all things “bourgeois”.

To further clarify about “bourgeois”, it simply means ‘of or characteristic of the middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes.’ Because of ‘Bourgeois’, the act of rebellious attitudes towards a traditional, say, having a high pitched roof. However, there has never been a clear definition weather what is considered ‘Bourgeois’ or ‘not Bourgeois’ that it become so vague and nasty to the architects of that age being criticized of having a bourgeois design.

The stream of this movement includes a use of new materials to architecture, blending in concrete, steel, wood, glass, and stucco. and staying on a rather neutral tone such as white, beige, gray, and black.

One of the earliest works of the self-taught architect Tadao Ando is the Azuma House in Sumiyoshi, where the house is split into a spaces devoted to daily life (composed of an austere geometry) by the insertion of an abstract space for the games of wind and light. His goal, he says, was to introduce a question on the inertia that has invaded human dwellings.

Although there’s not a definite guideline to being a non-bourgeois architect, Tadao Ando, the architect I’m working on is clearly one of the avant-garde of the movements. His design of the renowned Azuma House is distinctly bourgeois with the blending of concreate, wood and glass with a raw-gray color of a concrete. It stands out among its conventional context of the rowhouses in that time and at the same time, blends in to the environment.

Tadao Ando’s design follows every principles of Le Courbusier who Ando practically learned everything from by reading a book about him.