Architectural Language (Changing Vocabulary and grammar) (Page 3)

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Architecture like art, is an insight into the reality of a period. The architect like an artist seeks to give expression to the forces of change. Not to be modern for its own sake, but to formulate concepts that express a society, a culture, and an origin - concepts in which an epoch can see itself reflected. The Work of Frank Lloyd wright, Mies Van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier and others, is profoundly different in interpretation, yet their visions are parallel in one visual sense: the Creation of a better environment for the 20th century man.

Wright had delved deeper into nature for what he thought was a mere integral, more organic expression. Wright Was quite clear about the role of machine in our civilisation. "We must not dramatise the machine but dramatise the man. . . science is inventive but creative - never." He saw the machine as a way of rendering traditional forms extinct and a means of realising new opportunities, methods and forms.

Walter Gropius is recognised as one of the great pioneers of modern architecture, for his parallel roles of an educator, Critic and designer. The Bauhaus was not an institution with a clear programme - it was an idea and Gropius formulated this idea with great precision. He said 'art and technology - the new unity'. He wanted to have painting, sculpture, theatre and even ballet, on one hand, and on the other, weaving photography, furniture - everything from coffee cup to city planning.

Mies was a master at putting the elements of a building together, and his concern for the nature and precision of building was not surprising. He liked to say, "Architecture begins when you place two bricks carefully together." In place of architecture, Mies preferred to use the German word Baukunst, bau meaning construction, and kunst simply its refinement.

Whereas mies has refined an architectonic language of steel and glass to achieve the maximum with an elegant minimum, Le corbusier has shown the plastic potential of reinforced concrete to resolve individually responsive forms into a single mass. His continual awareness of the historic significance of surface interest and the architectural play of light and shadow, has been particularly persuasive and inspiring to the generation of architects the world over. Above all, Le corbousaer has shown the indestructible unity of artist value in tune with theory; a poetic fusion of art science, machine, nature and life-probing today's reality.

(Continues...)

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