ARQPress

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ADAPTATION THROUGH TIME

The ways in which architects have adjusted to the surroundings where they are constructing has changed drastically through time.

Barcelona Pavilion - Mies van der Rohe, 1929

Modern architects such as Mies Van Der Rohe focused on adjusting to the present, with the intention to facilitate our current everyday life and to solve the individual problems that each and every inhabitant were faced with at their present time [1]. Le Corbusier wanted to adapt to the instrumental engineering knowledge and the ongoing technology evolution which opened up for mass-production of houses [2]. He proposed that there is a new era approaching the architect, following the industrialization. There will be no style, no character - simply a machinery. Mass production of houses using a «house machine» and the recovery of lost simplicity, the geometry and the order, while still staying artistic [3].A common factor for these two modern architects was a wish to fit their work in with the current times.

Building on the built:

Querini-Stampalia Foundation, Venice, 1961-1963

Contemporary architects can be described as slightly more retrospective. Francisco de Gracia predicts the importance of taking history and the surroundings and into account when constructing [4]. Jesus San Vicente emphasizes on adapting to the traditional methods and obtaining knowledge of the vernacular. The contemporary approach to adapting has become more nostalgic in the sense that they taking history and tradition more-so into account compared to their modern counterparts [5]. 

There is a noticeable difference between the modern and the contemporary way of adapting, as they had different phenomenons to adapt to and different ways and means of adapting to them [6].

his difference has been highlighted several times amongst architects, and Mark Wilcken summarized the way of modern adaptation in his AETN documentary from 2012 [7];

"It was the manifestation of the future with no thoughts of the past. It was optimistic, it was a lifestyle, it was technology."

Similarly, the notion of contemporary adaptation 
was captured by architect Richard Rogers in an 
architecture conference in 2013 [8]; 

"I think that architects should actually try to understand the, the place that they're in, and the situation they're in."

Sources: 
[1] Carla Vallet - Changeable architecture, 2015

[2] Frida Varegg Svensen - A new way to look at architecture, 2015
[3] Ina Kristin Ullenes - The mechanical architect, 2015

[4] Ina Kristin Ullenes - Intertextuality, 2015

[5] Alexandra Hernandez - Adapting the vernacular, 2015

[6] Ina Kristin Ullenes - Adaptation then and now, 2015

[7] AETN documentary; Clean Lines, Open Spaces: A View of Mid-Century Modern Architecture, 2012

[8] Getty Conservation Institute's symposium; Minding the Gap: The Role of Contemporary Architecture in the Historic Environment, May 2013

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