Difference between two concepts of the two periods:Adaptation (contemporary period) Vs Context (modern period)

During the modern period, the architects thought that adapting to the environment was not an evolution.So for them, the idea was to implante his project without adapting himself to the context.
But in the contemporary period, the architects have to know how to resolve necessities and adapt themselves to urban ecosystem.

The Industrialization (Contemporary Architecture period)

Industrialization is part of modern architecture. Since the XIX century engineers knew that it would have future in architecture.The concept of building hasn’t changed a lot but required more industrialized solutions , a high level of technical innovations and experimentation.
The main idea in modern architecture is to produce buildings in series trough industrialization. The goal is to approach the mass manufacture of objects.
Then, each time, there were incorporated new technics more industrialized that follows the modern custom.
With the time, we started thinking about building complete housing in series in order to organize a town.
Economic problems made industrialization slowed down, but not stopped. However, it continued to increase and modern architects focussed more on recycling and energy management issue.

 
To conclude, I would say that industrialization and the modern architecture are strongly related , and thank to that, we can build efficiently . 

Hicham Alaoui:blog entrance SDR I

The blog is about the works done during the text part of the systems of representation I (SDR I) subject, taught in the La Salle school of architecture.

The "article's blog" is the last activity of a serie of activities about the relationship or the difference between the modern architectural period and the contemporary architectural period.

The relationship or the difference between the two periods has been done trough the creation of concepts about topics and the development of a motion picture application trough the Adobe Flash program.

The gol is to be able to summarize the ideas that emerged from the debate and the texts about the two periods.

The Illusion Houses

As the world keeps moving forward, new technologies are invented. New revolutionary methods are applied in building, and so the efficiency is improved and the expenses are decreased. Like Anton Kolås wrote on SDR.NET in Relating Priods;

Ludwig van der Rohe explained a new way of constructing buildings in his working thesis from 1923. The building should imitate the human skeleton to optimize not only the structure but also the function of the building. This way of constructing is only possible with the materials: 

Steele 

Concrete 

Glass

The Modern Movement, acting in corelation with the Industrial Revolution, replaced the traditional structural elements with glass, steel and concrete. These are materials with appreciative properties, they are cheaper, easier to shape and more transportable. Plus, they are in abundance.
Make no mistake, the traditional building techniques are carefully developed over time in the broad context of material access, culture and climate. They have their purpose and deserve to be honored for that.

Meanwhile, in our contemporary time one can choose between building cultural and contextual - or efficient and modern.

And in the midst of this, a new way of architecture has arised.

The Illusion Houses.

http://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/0dM1cC0h1gdB2/0x600.jpg?fit=scale&background=000000

The illusion houses are houses built of industrial materials while a layer of skin imitates a different material, such as stone or wood. Using this technique is surely cheaper and it may look good, but the arguable part is whether it is proper architecture. In an article from Forbes Magazine pro the method, it is written;

As is the case with many of today’s faux products, manufactured stone owes a lot to advances in technology. Huge molds can turn out replicas of stone that are so realistic, you’d swear they were cut from a quarry, gathered at a riverbank, or pulled from a farmer’sfield. Many of these products will last for decades, and not fade.

In the module of relating periods Frida Svensen Varegg wrote the text Form And Function connected, claiming;

A wall was not constructed only because it was beautiful, a wall was constructed because it also was useful. The function of the building became a huge priority. Contemporary architecture is based on the functionality. Today we construct houses according to what the user need and require. Strict rules of how the characteristics of the building should be, does not longer exist. It’s the functionality that will affect the form and then again the outcome of the construction. The house is considered as a machine, and machines are made to have a function. 

[1]

Her argument is that constructing houses is purely based on functional matters. The Illusion Houses does not follow this logical reasoning. Forbes Magazine writes:

“A lot of people have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that’s fake,” says Starkweather. “But just because something isn’t real doesn’t mean it isn’t quality.”

Whether quality is an issue or not will not be further discussed in this article, but it is neither a part of the real question. If the Modern Movement arrived as a result of taking advantage of the new materials avalible on the market, and the contemporary architecture uses both traditional and industrialized structural elements, giving the importance of context back. Ina Kristin Ullenes writes in Adaptation then and Now:

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 [3]. 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 [4].

[4] Alexandra Hernandez

[2]

The articles written by a variation of students on SDR.NET all agrees; development of architecture follows the development of technology. As the techology provides us with new materials for construction, the methodology of constructing adapts. While The Illusion Houses do the conterary of this, they pretend to be a structural material when really there are other materials properties supporting the house. Therefore, they can be categorized as an inconsitency in the line of developemental architecture. Whether this abandones it from being proper architecture will be a matter of opinion.

[1] Typography, Relating periods, Frida Svensen Varegg

[2] Typography, Relating periods, Anna Aranda

Combining buildings and URBAN SPACES

Combining buildings and URBAN SPACES 

Bjarke Ingves and his firm BIG are designing the Scala Tower in Copenhagen. The core of the design of this contemporary multifunctional conference center is to link the building with the URBAN SPACE in order to create a more liveable CITY while making the most of a building.  

 “The City of Towers” has a lot of church towers creating a very interesting skyline. It was important for BIG to interact the historic skyline with the modern one. The result is a building conceived as a reinterpretation of the historic Copenhagen tower, consisting of two elements: a base relating to the scale of surrounding buildings, and a slim tower becoming a part of the Copenhagen skyline. 

The base house consists of a shopping and conference center as well as the new Main Library of Copenhagen. The tower is a luxury hotel. The tower and the base are morphed together in a serial-shaped cascade of stairs leading to a public roof top plaza overlooking the City Hall square.

The proximity to the Central Station and the central location make the building suitable for conferences, hotel rooms and offices, which all in all means many activities in one place.  A dense and lively house for the city that combines both private and public space in a sliding scale from the street to the rooftop in one continuous movement.

“In contemporary architecture we find that the concept of CITY is in an internal battle between traditional and modern. The building process of a city in traditional architecture got stuck in following tradition without any regard to its functionality while industrialization, new material possibilities and modernism in general changed the way we see cities. With modernist architects like Le Corbusier or Antonio Bonet and Castellana modern architecture, in its quest of rendering traditions as useless and ignoring the surroundings of new edifications, eliminated the concept of a CITY as a team. “      —    Alexandra Hernandez.

La arquitectura moderna y contemporánea

 En esta primera parte de la asignatura hemos trabajado las diferencias y semblanzas entre la arquitectura moderna y contemporánea.

En el primer ejercicio leí el texto de Francisco de Garcia, Prácticas menores (The Small: a Philosophy for Architects) que trata de la diferencia de tamaño de los edificios actuales con los de la época moderna a consecuencia de los tiempos que se están viviendo ahora.

En los proyectos pequeños se han visto muchas oportunidades para explorar lo sostenible, lo social y lo económico comprobando que la reducción de tamaño no es un inconveniente para seguir construyendo.

Los arquitectos actuales han recogido las enseñanzas, los aciertos y los errores de las generaciones pasadas para construir con más conciencia y teniendo en cuenta la experiencia.

Los tres conceptos que extraía de ese texto fueron: SMALL SCALE, ECONOMY y ADAPTATION.

En el segundo ejercicio estudié el texto de Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, Working Theses es un articulo que publico en el primer número de la revista G, que el era uno de los fundadores, que habla sobre su tesis y un proyecto de un edificio de oficinas de hormigón.

En el articulo se ve mucho la necesidad de la adaptación y la evolución de los nuevos materiales juntamente con las nuevas técnicas.

Hay tres frases que son relevantes para expresar las idees importantes del texto:

LIVING. CHANGING. NOW

NOT YESTERDAY, NOT TOMORROW, ONLY TODAY CAN BE GIVEN FORM.

BUILDINGS CONSISTING OF SKIN AND BONES.

Los tres conceptos que me transmite el texto son: MATERIAL, ADAPTATION y TECHNIQUE.

Creí que los dos conceptos que podía relacionar eran ADAPTATION y MATERIAL.

Hay materiales que se utilizaban en la época moderna otros que se han introducido en la época contemporánea pero hay materiales que son comunes para las dos épocas arquitectónicas.

Creo que una manera de ver la relación de ADAPTACIÓN y MATERIAL en la arquitectura es en las intervenciones dentro de edificios antiguos construidos en la arquitectura moderna o antes. Lo ya construido se diferencia de lo que se construye actualmente muchas veces gracias a los materiales utilizados.

En esta web se pueden ver diferentes edificios rehabilitados en Madrid que gracias a la materialidad se puede diferenciar lo antiguo de lo actual.

http://saltaconmigo.com/blog/2015/03/edificios-antiguos-rehabilitados-madrid/