TOA

Theory of Architecture
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Pedro Santos Jr. and Dianne Ancheta.
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dianneancheta@gmail.com.
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MODULE 5
Masters of Architecture
ALVAR AALTO
Born in Finland in 1898. He
graduated with honors from
Helsinki Polytechnic in 1921 after
which he opened his own
practice.
He held the position of Professor
of Architecture at MIT 1946 to
1948, and was president of the
Academy of Finland.
Auditorium
University of Helsinki, Finland.

Alvar Aalto generated a style of

functionalism which avoided
romantic excess and neoclassical
monotony. He utilized texture,
color, and structure in creative
new ways.
Aalto's designs were particularly
significant because of their
response to site, material and
Kunsten Museum
(Museum of Modern Art).
Aalborg, Denmark.
ANTONI GAUDI
Born in Spain in 1852. He studied
at the Escola Superior
d'Arquitectura and designed his
first major commission for the
Casa Vincens using a Gothic
Revival style.
La Sagrada
Familia
Barcelona, Spain.

Gaudi developed a sensuous,

curving, almost surreal design
style which established him as
the leader of the Spanish Art
Nouveau movement.
His characteristically warped
form of Gothic architecture drew
admiration from other avant-
garde artists.
Casa Batlló
Barcelona, Spain.
FRANK GEHRY
Born in Canada in 1929. He
studied at the Universities of
Southern California and Harvard
before he established his first
practice.
Guggenheim
Museum
Bilbao, Spain.

Gehry moved away from a

conventional commercial practice
to an artistically directed atelier.
His deconstructed architectural
style began to emerge in late
1970s when he created collage-
like compositions out of found
materials. He created pieces of
functional sculpture.
Dancing House
Prague
Vitra Design
Museum
Germany.
FRANK LLOYD
WRIGHT
Born in Richland Center,
Wisconsin in 1867. He was
educated at Second Ward School,
Madison and at the University of
Wisconsin where he took some
mechanical drawing and basic
mathematics courses. He then
departed for Chicago where he
spent several months in J. L.
Silsbee's office before seeking
employment with Adler and
Sullivan.
Guggenheim
Museum
New York City.

Wright believed in designing

structures that were in harmony
with humanity and its
environment, a philosophy he
called organic architecture.
Fallingwater
(Kaufmann House) Pennsylvania.

Through experimentation, Wright

developed the idea of the prairie
house - a long, low building with
hovering planes and horizontal
emphasis.
I.M. PEI
Ieoh Ming Pei, born in China in
1917. He studied architecture at
MIT and Harvard. He worked for
several companies and as a
professor at Harvard before he
founded his own architectural
firm in 1960.
Louvre Pyramid
Paris, France.

Due to his reliance on abstract

form and materials such as stone,
concrete, glass, and steel, he has
been considered a disciple of
Gropius.
Pei generally designs
sophisticated glass clad buildings
loosely related to the high-tech
movement.
Bank of China
Tower
Hong Kong.
Essensa Towers
Taguig City.
JØRN UTZON
Born in Copenhagen in 1918.
After studying at the Academy of
Arts in Copenhagen, he travelled
through Europe, the United States
and Mexico. He established his
own practice in Copenhagen in
1950 when he returned from his
travels.
Sydney Opera
House
New South Wales, Australia.

Utzon has created a style which

incorporates the sculptural
quality of Alvar Aalto, and the
organic structures of Frank Lloyd
Wright into his designs.
Influenced by architectural
tradition, he attempts to create
architecture for living that
adheres to a strict structural and
National Assembly
Building
Kuwait.
KENZO TANGE
Born in Osaka, Japan in 1913. He
graduated from the University of
Tokyo in 1938 and studied city
planning at the graduate school at
the University of Tokyo. He
received a degree in engineering
in 1959.
Two years later, he established
his own firm. He also served as
professor of urban engineering at
the University of Tokyo from 1963
to 1974.
St. Mary’s
Cathedral
Tokyo.

Tange's early designs attempted

to combine modernism with
traditional Japanese forms of
architecture.
In the late 1960s he rejected this
earlier regionalism in favor of an
abstract international style.
Peace Memorial
Museum
Hiroshima.
LE CORBUSIER
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris.
Born in Switzerland in 1887.
Trained as an artist, he travelled
extensively through Germany and
the East. In Paris, he studied
under Auguste Perret and
absorbed the cultural and artistic
life of the city.
Villa Savoye
Poissy, France.

From 1922 Le Corbusier worked

with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret.
During this time, Le Corbusier's
ideas began to take physical form,
mainly as houses which he
created as "a machine for living
in" and which incorporated his
trademark five points of
architecture.
Unité d'Habitation
Marseille, France.
Notre Dame du
Haut
Ronchamp, France.
LOUIS SULLIVAN
Born in Boston, Massachusetts in
1856. He studied architecture at
the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology for one year. He then
worked as a draughtsman for
Furness and Hewitt in
Philadelphia and for William Le
Baron Jenney in Chicago.
In 1874 he travelled to Europe
where he studied at the Ecole des
Beaux Arts in Paris. He returned
to Chicago a year later.
Wainwright
Building
St. Louis, Missouri.

His designs generally involved a

simple geometric form decorated
with ornamentation based on
organic symbolism.
Form follows function.
The Sullivan Center
(Formerly Carson, Pirie, Scott and
Company Building) Chicago.
LUDWIG MIES
VAN DER ROHE
Born in Aachen, Germany in 1886.
He worked in the family stone-
carving business before he joined
the office of Bruno Paul in Berlin.
He entered the studio of Peter
Behrens in 1908 and remained
until 1912.
Seagram Building
In collaboration with Philip
Johnson. New York City.

He developed a design approach

based on advanced structural
techniques. He also developed a
sympathy for the aesthetic credos
of both Russian Constructivism
and the Dutch De Stijl group.
Less is more.
Farnsworth House
Plano, Illinois.
MICHAEL
GRAVES
Born in Indianapolis, Indiana in
1934. He studied at the University
of Cincinnati, Ohio and at Harvard
University. After working as a
Fellow at the American Academy
in Rome for two years, he started
his own practice in Princeton,
New Jersey. He became a
professor at Princeton University
in 1972.
Disney’s Hotel
New York City.

He generates an ironic, vision of

Classicism in which his buildings
have become classical in their
mass and order. Graves also has
become an an opponent of
modern works who uses humor
as an integral part of his
architecture.
Humana Building
Louisville, Kentucky.
NORMAN FOSTER
Born in Manchester, England in
1935. He received his
architectural training at
Manchester University School of
Architecture and Yale University.
He worked with Richard Rogers
and Sue Rogers and his wife,
Wendy Foster, as a member of
"Team 4" until Foster Associates
was founded in London in 1967.
30 St. Mary Axe
(The Gherkin) London, England.

The "High Tech" vocabulary of

Foster Associates shows an
uncompromising exploration of
technological innovations and
forms. Their designs emphasize
the repetition of industrialized
"modular" units in which
prefabricated off-site-
manufactured elements are
frequently employed.
Hearst Tower
New York City.
OSCAR
NIEMEYER
Born in Rio de Janeiro Brazil in
1907. He graduated from the
Escola Nacional de Belas Artas in
Rio de Janeiro and later joined the
office of Lucio Costa. In 1936 he
joined the team of Brazilian
architects collaborating with Le
Corbusier on a new Ministry of
Education and Health in Rio de
Janeiro.
Brasilia Cathedral
Brasilia.
In his early career, his designs
borrowed extensively from the
Brazilian Baroque style of
architecture.
In 1956, Niemeyer was appointed
architectural adviser to the
organization in charge of
implementing Lucio Costa's plans
for Brazil's new capital.
Penang State
Mosque
Jelutong, Malaysia.
PHILIP JOHNSON
Born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1906.
He graduated from Harvard
University and received an A. B. in
architectural history, in 1930 and
a B.Arch in 1943.
He served as Director of
Architecture at MOMA. He worked
with Richard Foster and with John
Burgee until his retirement. He
became a trustee of MOMA in
1958, received the AIA Gold
Medal in 1978, and received the
Glass House
New Canaan, Connecticut.

As an architect, Johnson is most

widely respected for his work in
the early 1950s.
He altered his architectural
principles from Modernist to
Postmodernist to Anti-
Postmodernist. He showed a
keen interest in style and is
remembered as a stimulator of
Sony Tower
Formerly AT&T Building. New
York City.
REM KOOLHAAS
Born in Netherlands in 1944.
Koolhaas studied at the
Architectural Association School
of Architecture in London and at
Cornell University in Ithaca, New
York.
He founded The Office for
Metropolitan Architecture in 1975
together with architects Elia
Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis and
Madelon Vriesendorp in London.
CCTV
Headquarters
Beijing, China.

He has been considered a noted

Deconstructivist since the major
MOMA exhibition in New York.
Although Koolhaas tends toward
the more humanist, less absolute
branch of the Deconstructivist
school.
Seattle Central
Library
Seattle, Washington.
RENZO PIANO
Born in Genoa, Italy in 1937. From
1959 to 1964 he studied at the
Milan Politecnico, where he
taught until 1968. In 1970, Piano
established a partnership with the
English architect Richard Rogers.
Centre Georges
Pompidou
Together, Rogers and Piano
designed a number of buildings in
Italy and England.
Their most famous building, the
Pompidou Center in Paris, takes
its form from a metaphor of the
'cultural machine' with all color-
coded service elements and
structure emphasized on the
building's exterior.
The Shard
Also referred to as the Shard of
Glass, Shard London Bridge and
formerly London Bridge Tower.
London, England.
RICHARD MEIER
Born in Newark, New Jersey in
1934. He graduated from Cornell
University in 1957 then worked
with a series of architects,
including Skidmore, Owings, and
Merrill and Marcel Breuer. He
established his own practice in
1963.
Jubilee Church
Tre Teste, Rome.

Meier usually designs white Neo-

Corbusian forms with enameled
panels and glass. These structure
usually play with the linear
relationships of ramps and
handrails. Although all have a
similar look, Meier manages to
generate endless variations on his
singular theme.
The Getty Center
Los Angeles.
ROBERT VENTURI
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
in 1925. He attended the
Episcopal Academy in
Philadelphia and graduated from
Princeton University. He worked
with Eero Saarinen and Louis I.
Kahn before he founded his own
practice in 1958. In 1964 he
formed a partnership with John
Rausch.
Vanna Venturi
House

In contrast to many modernists,

Venturi uses a form of
symbolically decorated
architecture based on
precedents. He believes that
structure and decoration should
remain separate entities and that
decoration should reflect the
culture in which it exists.
Allen Art Museum
Oberlin, Ohio.
SANTIAGO
CALATRAVA
Born in Valencia, Spain in 1951.
He graduated from the Institute of
Architecture in Valencia and from
the Federal Institute of
Technology in Zurich. Calatrava
opened his own architecture and
engineering office in Zurich.
Turning Torso
Malmö Municipality, Sweden.

As both an architect and an

engineer, Calatrava easily
identifies with both disciplines.
He often creates innovative works
that depend on a firm grasp of
both the creative and structural
aspects of design. His skills as an
engineer allow him to create
sculptural surfaces and unusual
spaces.
Auditorio de
Tenerife
Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain.
WALTER
GROPIUS
Born in Berlin in 1883. He studied
at the Technical Universities in
Munich and Berlin. He joined the
office of Peter Behrens in 1910
and three years later established
a practice with Adolph Meyer.
Bauhaus School
and Faculty
Dessau, Germany.

Gropius created innovative

designs that borrowed materials
and methods of construction
from modern technology. This
advocacy of industrialized
building carried with it a belief in
teamwork and an acceptance of
standardization and
prefabrication.
Fagus Factory
Alfeld, Germany.
QUOTES
Notable quotes by notable architects
 Frank LLoyd
Wright
“An idea is salvation by
“An idea is salvation by
imagination.”

imagination.”
Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Mies van der
Rohe
“God is in the details.”

Seagram Building.
Louis Sullivan
“But the building’s identity resides
in the ornament.”

Details of the Bayard Condict

Building
Charles Eames
“Whoever said that pleasure
wasn’t functional?”

Eames moulded plastic chair

Philip Johnson
“Architecture is the art of how to
waste space.”

Seagram Building.
Frank Gehry
“Architecture should speak of its
time and place, but should yearn
for timelessness.”

Binoculars Building.
Le Corbusier
“To create architecture is to put in
order.”

Radiant City Proposal

Louis Sullivan
“Form ever follows function.”

Wainwright Building.
Kenzo Tange
“Architects today tend to
depreciate themselves, to regard
themselves as no more than just
ordinary citizens without the
power to reform the future.”

Hiroshima Peace Memorial

Museum
Mies van der
Rohe
“Architecture is the will of an
epoch translated into space.”

S.R. Crown Hall in Illinois Institute

of Technology (Chicago)
Le Corbusier
“A hundred times have I thought
New York is a catastrophe and 50
times: it is a beautiful
catastrophe.”
Walter Gropius
“Architecture begins where
engineering ends.”

Temple Oheb Shalom, Baltimore

Le Corbusier
“Architecture is the learned game,
correct and magnificent, of forms
assembled in the light.”

Palace of Assembly, Chandigarh

Mies van der
Rohe
“Less is more.”

Farnsworth House.
Frank Lloyd
Wright
“A doctor can bury his mistakes,
but an architect can only advise
his clients to plant vines.”

Price Tower