Architect Notebook .... STRUCTURE

Einstein Tower

Such materials tended to be sticks, blocks, membranes (animal skins), or malleable clay which developed into an orthodoxy of framed, planar or plastic structural forms respectively Although this represents an over-simplification, nevertheless, there are several modernist icons which clearly express a similar range of structural forms apparently facilitated by a burgeoning technology.

Einstein Tower

Not unnaturally, the same formal categories of framed, planar, and plastic were to emerge pursued with varying degrees of rigour. Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, Plano, Illinois, 1951, remains as the archetypal framed pavilion, Gerrit Rietveld’s Schro¨der House, Utrecht, 1924, celebrated the

potential of planar form, whilst Erich Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower, Pottsdam, 1924 explored plasticity . 

Whereas these examples demonstrate an adherence to one formal type, most buildings embody all three simultaneously.

Already discussed is the profound effect of technological invention and development upon building types and therefore form-making. Indeed, a modernist orthodoxy decreed that, ‘The Modern Movement in architecture, in order to be fully expressive of the twentieth century, had to possess . . . faith in science and technology . . .’ (Pevsner).