Contemporary Age
The architecture that emerges with the Contemporary Age will, to a greater or lesser extent, reflect the technological advances and the sociocultural paradoxes generated by the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Cities begin to grow in ways previously unknown and new social demands related to the control of urban space must be responded to by the State, which will eventually lead to the emergence of urban planning as an academic discipline. The role of architecture (and the architect) will be constantly questioned and new paradigms emerge: some critics allege that a crisis arises in architectural production that permeates the entire century and will only be resolved with the arrival of modern architecture.
The entire century will witness a series of aesthetic crises that translate into the so-called historicist movements: either due to the fact that technological innovations do not find an adequate formal manifestation in that contemporaneity, or due to various cultural reasons and specific contexts, the architects of the period saw in the copy of the architecture of the past and in the study of its canons "Canon (art)") and treaties a legitimate aesthetic language.
The first of these movements was the aforementioned Neoclassical, but it will also manifest itself in English neo-Gothic architecture, deeply associated with nationalist romantic ideals. The historicist efforts that took place mainly in Germany, France and England for ideological reasons, would later become a mere set of diverse formal and typological repertoires, which would evolve towards Eclecticism "Eclecticism (architecture)"), considered by many to be the most formalist among all historicist styles.
The first attempt to answer the question tradition x industrialization (or between arts and crafts) came with the thought of the romantics John Ruskin and William Morris, proponents of an aesthetic movement that was known precisely by the name Arts & Crafts (whose literal translation is "arts and crafts"). The movement proposed formal research applied to new industrial possibilities, seeing in the artisan a figure to highlight: for them, the artisan should not become extinct because of the industry, but rather become its transforming agent, its main element of production. With the dissolution of its ideals and the dispersion of its defenders, the ideas of the movement evolved, in the French context, towards the aesthetics of Art nouveau, considered the last style of the century and the first of the century.
• - Historicist architecture.
• - Iron architecture and glass architecture.
• - Eclectic architecture.
• - Arts & Crafts.
• - Modernism "Modernism (art)") or Art nouveau.
• - Chicago School "Chicago School (architecture)").
After the first decades of the century, a distinction became very clear between architects who were closer to the artistic avant-garde in progress in Europe and those who practiced architecture connected to tradition (generally with historicist characteristics, typical of eclecticism). Although these two currents were, at first, full of nuances and middle terms, with the "revolutionary" activity proposed by certain artists, and mainly with the actions of architects connected to the founding of the Bauhaus in Germany, with the Russian Avant-garde in the Soviet Union and with the new architectural thought proposed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the USA, the difference between them remains clear and the architectural debate is transformed, in fact, into a scenario populated by characterized parties and movements.
The aesthetic renewal proposed by the avant-garde (especially cubism, neoplasticism, constructivism "Constructivism (art)") and abstraction "Abstraction (art)") in the field of plastic arts opens the way for a more natural acceptance of the proposals of new architectural thoughts. These proposals were based on the belief in a society regulated by industry, in which the machine emerges as an element absolutely integrated into human life and in which nature is not only dominated, but also new realities different from the natural one are proposed.
In a general way, the new theories that are discussed about Art and the role of the artist see in industry (and in industrial society as a whole) the maximum manifestation of all artistic work: artificial, rational, precise, finally, modern "Modernism (art)"). The idea of modernity emerges as an ideology connected to a new society, composed of individuals formed by a new type of aesthetic education, enjoying new social relations, in which inequalities were overcome by the neutrality of reason. This set of ideas sees architecture as the synthesis of all the arts, since it is architecture that defines and gives rise to the events of daily life. Thus, the field of architecture covers the entire living environment, from household utensils to the entire city: for modern art, the question applied arts x major arts no longer exists (all of them are integrated into the same living environment).
The so-called modern architecture or modern movement will, therefore, be characterized by a strong social and aesthetic discourse of renewal of the living environment of contemporary man. This ideology is formalized with the founding and evolution of the German Bauhaus school: the main names of this architecture come from it. The search for a new, naturally modern society was understood as universal: in this way, the architecture influenced by the Bauhaus was characterized as something considered international (hence the current of thought associated with it is called International Style, a title that comes from an exhibition promoted at the MoMA in New York).
The architecture practiced in recent decades, since the second half of the century, has been characterized, in general, as a reaction to the proposals of the modern movement: sometimes current architects reread modern values and propose new aesthetic conceptions (what will eventually be characterized as an attitude called "neomodern"); others propose radically new world projects, seeking to present projects that, themselves, are anti-modernist paradigms, consciously despising the criticized dogmas of modernism.
The first negative reactions to the excessive dogmatization of modern architecture proposed at the beginning of the century, emerged, in a systemic and rigorous way, around the 1970s, with names such as Aldo Rossi and Robert Venturi as their main exponents (although theorists such as Jane Jacobs have promoted intense, although isolated, criticisms of the world vision of the Modern Movement already in the 1950s, especially in the field of Urbanism).
Antimodern criticism, which at first was restricted to academic theoretical speculations, immediately gained practical experience. These first projects are generally connected to the idea of the revitalization of the "historical reference", explicitly placing the anti-historicist values of the Movement in check.
During the 1980s, the review of modern space evolved towards its total deconstruction, based on studies especially influenced by philosophical currents such as Deconstructivism. Despite being highly criticized, this line of aesthetic thought was maintained in theoretical studies and in the 1990s they seduced the general public and became synonymous with avant-garde architecture. Names like Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman and Zaha Hadid are connected to this movement. American architect Frank Gehry, despite being largely classified as a deconstructivist architect, has been criticized by members of the movement themselves.
Despite attempts to classify the various currents of contemporary production, there is in fact no small group of "movements" or "schools" that systematically brings together the various options that have been made by architects around the world.
Synthetically, it can be said that the architecture continually presented by the specialized media as representative of the current historical moment (or, on the other hand, as an avant-garde production) can be summarized in four or five large blocks, but they would not be the faithful reproduction of the true daily architectural production, experienced around the world.