Architecture and Avant-Garde

Revision on some Avant-Garde movements and their architecture

1. Architecture and Avant-Garde
Revision

2. Introduction
•During the 20th century some avant-garde
movements had their expression in architecture.
•In general, these styles are influenced by the
Bauhaus, and they are contemporary of it.
•These avant-garde architectonical experienced are
linked to
–De Stijl or Neoplasticism (Netherlands)
–Russian Constructivism.

3. De Stijl
•Associated with three important figures:
– the painters Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, and
–the architect and furniture-maker Gerrit Rietveld
•De Stijl (or “the style”) was perhaps first developed in
Mondrian’s post-Cubist paintings, which consist
largely of broken horizontal and vertical lines.
•These works evolved into more spare geometric
compositions of orthogonal elements, which are
rendered in primary colors set against a white field.

4. De Stijl
•In 1917, Rietveld created the canonical “Red/Blue
Chair” and projected the Neo-Plastic aesthetic into
three dimensions.
•Van Doesburg taught, for a time, at the Bauhaus,
enabling him to widen the De Stijl circle to artists as
the Russian El Lissitzky under whose influence, Van
Doesberg began “to project, as axonometric
drawings, a series of hypothetical architectural
constructs
•These buildings comprise an asymmetrical cluster of
articulated planar elements suspended in space
about a volumetric center.”

5. De Stijl architecture:
Characteristics
•The characteristics of this architecture were
established by van Doesburg:
–the form does not imitate any other style;
–especial attention is given to plastic elements, in addition
to function, mass, surface, time, space, light, colour and
material;
–it is an economic and functional architecture;
–it does not have any form following fixed styles and the
building is not monumental, but a form open to the space
through windows;
– the ground-plan is essential but in this the walls are not
closed even if they support punctually the building;

6. De Stijl architecture:
Characteristics
–it is an open architecture in which space and time are
considered;
–it is anti-cubic and surfaces follow a centrifugal trend at
the same time that symmetry and repetition are
eliminated;
–there is not a clear front in the building and colour is
included as a plastic value but, in general, it is a non
decorate architecture that aims to be a synthesis of the
Neo-Plasticism
–It uses the same primary colours that appear in Mondrian’s
paintings

7. De Stijl
•The universalizing tendency of the De Stijl soon gave
way to the broader, more objective concerns of the
Modern movement.
• The project of De Stijl became, through necessity and
evolution, a broader trajectory dedicated to social
concerns and conditions.
•The desire to create architecture for the people
through means of production, rather than an
architecture simply guided by aesthetic concerns,
became a rallying cry of a broader European
Modernism.

8. Russian Constructivism
•Russian Constructivism was a movement that was
active from 1913 to the 1940s.
•It was created by the Russian avant-garde, but
quickly spread to the rest of the continent.
•Constructivist art is committed to complete
abstraction with a devotion to modernity, where
themes are often geometric, experimental and rarely
emotional.
• Objective forms carrying universal meaning were far
more suitable to the movement than subjective or
individualistic forms.

9. Russian Constructivism
•Constructivist themes are also quite minimal, where
the artwork is broken down to its most basic
elements.
•New media was often used in the creation of works,
which helped to create a style of art that was orderly.
•An art of order was desirable at the time because it
was just after WWI that the movement arose, which
suggested a need for understanding, unity and
peace.

10. Russian Constructivism
•Famous artists of the Constructivist movement
include Vladimir Tatlin, Kasimir Malevich, Alexandra
Exter, Robert Adams, and El Lissitzky.
•Tatlin's most famous piece remains his "Monument to
the Third International" (1919-20, Moscow), a 22-ft-
high (6.7-m) iron frame on which rested a revolving
cylinder, cube, and cone, all made of glass which was
originally designed for massive scale.

11. Russian Constructivism
•After the 1917 Revolution, Tatlin (considered the
father of Russian Constructivism) worked for the new
Soviet Education Commissariate which used artists
and art to educate the public.
•During this period, he developed an officially
authorized art form which utilized 'real materials in
real space'.
•His project for a Monument of the Third International
marked his first foray into architecture and became a
symbol for Russian avant-garde architecture and
International Modernism.