Architecture: The evolution of modern theory: A new architecture for America

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The evolution of modern theory: A new architecture for America
The scrutiny of the 20th century architectural design in America cannot commence without flashing back the critical work of Frank Lloyd, an American born architecture who lived between 1867 and 1959. Lloyd is one of the highly universally recognized and admired of all American known architects. His name is probably known in every part of the world, to laymen and even to architects and historians. However, unlike other influential architects whose reputations still lives because of the impact of their work in shaping the architecture of their time, Lloyd`s buildings and theories seem to have created only a small impact on the evolution of 20th-century architecture (Langmead 48-52). This paper seeks to understand the evolution of modern architecture and how buildings and early century architectural design were like before the American modern architecture come to exist. It will introduce in brief the engineer of American architecture Lloyd Wright.
While the example of Lloyd`s buildings may have help nurtured the early development of known architects, the mature architectural work of these architects appear largely unaffected by Lloyd. Instead, Lloyd`s work later came to be recognized and appreciated primarily for its intrinsic and artistic qualities, especially the ones dealing with spatial definition and surface articulation. Lloyd Wright`s architecture should be so highly regarded for its inherent values are remarkable testimony to the magnitude of his genius. Lloyd studied civil engineering briefly at Wisconsin university before he worked for Louis Sullivan in Chicago. He later opened his own architectural practice, the Prairie school and become the chief practitioner of it. He had built about fifty Prairie houses by 1910 (Kruft 32-40).
Prairie school was a late 19th but early 20th century architectural style, which was most common to the Midwestern. The style is normally marked by horizontal lines with hipped or flat roofs and broad overhanging eaves. Windows are grouped in horizontal bands and integration with the landscape. There is solid construction and craftsmanship as well as discipline in the use of ornament. Here horizontal lines were primarily thought to evoke and resemble the native prairie landscape. This term prairie school didn`t actually describe the architects themselves.
The Prairie School developed out of the design and ideals aesthetics of the Crafts and Arts movement which begun in the early 20th century in England by William Morris and others. The Prairie School shared an embrace of craftsman and handcrafting guilds to counteract the new mass production and assemble line manufacturing techniques. They felt these manufacturing techniques created inferior products besides dehumanizing workers. (Waldheim 58-69).
This school was also in attempt to develop an indigenous North American architectural style which did not share aesthetic vocabulary and design element with earlier styles of classical architecture of European. Lloyd's philosophy of architecture was mainly compounded of several radical but traditional ideas. These included: the romantic idea of honestly expressing what the building is made of, its materials and structure, as Eugène Emmanuel had argued, without any counterfeit or classical ornament surface or structure; the idea that a structure's form should reflect its plan and its functional arrangement of the interior spaces, as Henry Latrobe had proposed; the conviction that each building structure should express something new and distinctive in the times and more specifically the new technical resources, such as iron skeletons, electric light and elevators, which suggested skyscrapers and new forms of building; in line was ambition and even pride, to achieve an art appropriate to a new nation, an American art without Continental, English or colonial dependencies; and finally, the theory derived by the Sullivan from Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin which suggest that a building need to be analogous to a biological organism and a unified work of art but rooted to its soil, organized to serve specified functions and, as a form, evolved as an organism do evolves. Besides it should be fitted to its landscape, adapted to its environment and expressive of its purpose (Langmead 29-37).
Lloyd approach to architectural design was heavily influenced by reforms in the educational practice which occurred in the early 20th century. In early years of Lloyd independent practice, he often worked with some clients who were at times advocates of educational reforms or educators themselves. Ultimately, Lloyd's greatest contributions to the character of American architectural buildings in the education sector were his concepts for complexes and site design. His career was a live in a period of the evolution of architecture and planning that was greatly influenced by innovations in construction methods and the expansion of the automobile culture. Lloyd`s responded to the global technological advances with a theory of organic architecture which was both modern and American (MacMahon 37-41).
Modern architecture clearly manifested it birth in American heartland, in Chicago city. Like phoenix, this city was undoubtedly reborn from its own ashes. Chicago city had experienced one of the worst conflagrations that burnt it down and destroyed everything in 1871. Some of its buildings such as the water tower had to actually be redesigned and constructed from scratch. The creation of the new city definitely ushered in a new architectural design and practice that was to redefine how we were to live today. Chicago, with no doubt, became a laboratory where architectures were to develop and implement some of the highly provocative theories state of technology which was to change history of architectural and modern design. Several young talented architects had already been attracted by the building opportun...