It's National Architecture Week
We're halfway through the week long public dialogue event known as National Architecture
Week. This year, the American Institute of Architects has entered the 21st century and opened up the conversation to the virtual world through its Facebook group.
So, I asked myself, does this country have a "national" architecture? And, three defining
moments in history came to mind. First, Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. Of all the architecture created during this country's existence as a new nation, Jefferson's home in Charlottesville, Virginia combines some of the best features found in Federal style of architecture. It is one of the most thoughtfully designed buildings I have ever encountered. The proportions and attention to detail, are all the more remarkable when you consider everything else that was going on in this man's life while he built, rebuilt, and experimented with his "essay in architecture." This one building sums up our first national architectural movement.
steel support, revealed during demolition of Home Insurance Building, columbia.edu; Reliance Building, Chicago, IL.,
1894, Daniel Burnham & Company, paula moya via flickr; Seagram Building, New York, 1953, Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe, jmtp via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
If there was one building type that we exported around the world, it was the skyscraper.
The Home Insurance Building in Chicago was built in 1885, and has been generally acknowledged as the first skyscraper ever constructed. The use of a steel frame system allowed architects to build taller than anyone had thought possible. And, when Daniel Burnham & Company designed the Reliance Building in 1894, it became the prototype of glass curtain wall construction which is the basis of high-rise building to this day. When Mies van der Rohe drew up the plans for the Seagram Building in the early 1950s, he took Burnham & Company's concept, pushed the envelope further, and revolutionized cityscapes around the world. The country's architectural firms were at the top of their game, and were the driving force in commercial high-rise design around the world for decades.
house, wiseacre via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
Nothing changed the face of this country as much as the suburban tract house. The "ranch
house" became the residence of choice for millions of Americans after the Second World War. Hand it to good old Frank Lloyd Wright for designing one of the first, modern, open plan "ranch" house in 1935. Wright wanted to create a housing stock that would be affordable without compromising good design. He called them Usonian, and the Herbert Jacobs house was the first Usonian built, with a budget of $5,000. (Of course it went over!) The open floor plan of the house expanded on the "busting of the interior box" of his earlier Prairie homes, and became the model for the millions of suburban homes that crept across the American landscape. He happened to coin the term "carport" for the Jacobs house.
A lot happened in between Monticello, and the Reliance and Seagram Building in American
architecture, and the ranch house has morphed into all kinds of permutations. But for me, these are three defining moments in our architectural history that give us a national identity - for better or worse!
Posted by designslinger at 4/15/2009 4:20 AM 
Categories: Architecture, Architects, History
Tags: Home Insurance Building Monticello Seagram Building American architecture Herbert Jacobs House Reliance Building
Categories: Architecture, Architects, History
Tags: Home Insurance Building Monticello Seagram Building American architecture Herbert Jacobs House Reliance Building
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