BP # 11

During the 20th century the idea of modernism and striving to become "modern" began rising and expanding a great deal. The reason for this it that they felt their "old" or "traditional" ideas were becoming outdated in the world. With the growth of the economy and the industrial revolution coming into play the countries needed to "upgrade" their architectural designs. The Industrial Revolution brought along iron, a new material, and civil engineers began to compete with architects; by incorporating engineering concepts with the work of architects and masons modernizing the world was made easily possible. People and countries plunged into competition with each other and started reforming things from the past trying to outdo one another which expanded the aim of modernism rather quickly. Simply put, the world began to modernize to keep up with the growing social population and their want of something new & better than the past & one another.

One designer that really fed off of the whole modernism theme was Frank Lloyd Wright. "...unlike other architects who changed style slowly or at the behest of a client, Wright's break with tradition was driven by personal stylistic development in search of a greater abstraction" (Ching, 694). Modernism was all about throwing out the rules of the past and just "doing your own thing" and that's just what Wright did; when constructing a house or building he added in his own tastes and preferences in the ornamentation and space of each work he created. An example of his work where this can be seen is the Robie House, (1909) located in Chicago, Illinois. The Robie House is considered to be a forerunner of modernism in architecture. This structure is a prairie style house and quite unique in that the hip roofs have been flattened so that they seem to disappear; also, the fireplace (hearth of the home) is located in the center, making it the spatial and main visual aspect of the building. In the past, symmetry was idolized, but in modernism asymmetrical (but balanced) and eye-appealing designs were the new thing and the Robie House is the perfect archetype to demonstrate this. Furthermore, the Robie House stands apart from the rest because it is elongated laterally as well as, horizontally stacked, which emphasizes the linearity of the streets. Not to mention this house comes equipped with a balcony, which stretched along the whole southern exposure.

Robie House