High-Tech Architecture Movement: Technology Essay

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High-Tech Architecture Movement
Introduction
At the beginning of the 20th century, there was intense technological transformation and new material and modern equipment were readily available to be used in the construction industry. As a result, a new architectural design that incorporated advanced technology emerged. It was later referred to as high-tech architecture. High-tech architecture is an architectural technique that uses advanced industrial and technological components in the construction of structures. High-tech architects preferred the application of shear surfaces and lightweight building materials (Bedon and Amadio 67). Initially, high-tech buildings were referred to as “sheds” due to the exposure of mechanical service ducts and the use of exposed structural steel hollow tubes and sections. The high-tech architectural design has become the most popular style in almost all new large-scale development projects including corporate offices, public libraries, convention centers, and other infrastructures. The popularity of high-tech architecture is attributed to its stylistic designs that facilitate affordable and modern structures.
Overview and History of High-Tech Architecture Movement
High-tech architecture is an architectural style that emerged in the 1970s. It is also known as late modernism or structural expressionism and incorporates element s of high-tech industry and technology into building design. It first appeared as a revamped modernism, an extension of those previous ideas integrated with even more advanced technological innovations (Deyong 80). It acts as a bridge between modernism and post-modernism but without a clear boundary between the three areas. While modernism adopted simple and 90-degrees' forms with visual structures, post-modernism emphasizes unique forms with no structural ideas. However, high-tech became more difficult to differentiate from post-modern architecture in the 1980s. The premier practitioners of high-tech architecture include British Architects Lord Norman Foster and Sir Richard Rogers, as well as an Italian architect Renzo Piano.
Norman Foster
Norman Foster is arguably the most prominent architect of his generation. Born in 1935 in Manchester, Foster is known for his contemporary glass and steel architecture and has been designing innovative high-tech buildings for more than four decades. He graduated from Manchester University School of Architecture in 1961 and earned a Master’s Degree at Yale University (Deyong 83). Throughout his career, he has won several prestigious awards, including the Pritzker Prize, for his architectural designs. Norman Foster’s contribution to the high-tech architecture began with a few boldly radical buildings, including the Willis Faber and Dumas headquarters in Ipswich (1970-75) and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich (1974-78). The two buildings were constructed based on unobstructed interiors incorporated with technologies to form fully equipped shells. In the 1980s, Foster advanced his high-tech architectural expression by designing the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) in Hong Kong, and the Century Tower in Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, which still stands out as examples of high-tech tensile structures. In the 1990s, Foster emphasized formal simplification in construction design which was significantly overlooked in previous high-tech designs. In this case, Foster and Partners completed the Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt, Germany (1991-97) and the Bilbao Metro in Bilbao, Spain (1995).
Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano
Richard Rogers was born in Florence in Italy but raised in Britain. In London, Rogers attended the Architectural Association and later the Yale University where he met Norman Foster. They partnered after graduating and their collaboration formed a crucial developing stage in British high-tech architecture (Steiner 3). However, the Rogers-Foster union did not last long before Rogers formed...