THE SKYSCRAPER AND THE SUBURB

Transcription

1 THE SKYSCRAPER AND THE SUBURB

2 THE CHICAGO MIRACLE In 1830 there were probably more pigs than houses in Chicago: its population was about population: 29,963 (570.3% increase from 1840) 1860 population: 112,172 (274.4% increase from 1850) 1870 population: 298,977 (166.5% from 1860) 1880 population: 503,185 (68.3% from 1870) 1890 population: 1,099,850 (118.6% increase from 1880) 1900 population: 1,698,575 (54.4% increase from 1890)

3 Chicago, 1850 The grid plan: an efficient means of profit for construction companies : land prices increased by 800% and the population doubled to over one million

4 Chicago, aerial view, 1872

5 Chicago, aerial view, 1926

6 As an importer, processer, packager and exporter of goods from ALL around the United States, Chicago became one of the fastest urbanized cities of the world. 1/25 of the world s railways converged in Chicago in It was the most easily reached of the world s large cities. In 1890 Chicago had two dozen skyscrapers, 7,000 offices were functioning and another 7,000 was being planned.

7 The Rush for Life Over the Randolph Street Bridge, 1871 (Harper's Weekly, from a sketch by John R. Chapin) map of fire damage Chicago, 10 October 1871 Great Chicago Fire, 1871 On October 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed most of the city's central area. It started in the lumber district on the city's West Side. A cow owned by Mrs. O'Leary's allegedly knocked over a kerosene lamp that started the fire. By October 10, the fire had destroyed nearly four square miles of the city, and had claimed at least 250 lives and left 100,000 residents (20%) homeless. More than 17,000 buildings were destroyed and property damages were estimated at $200 million. The fire showed the vulnerability of cast iron.

8 William Le Baron Jenney ( ) First Leiter Building, 1879 Home Insurance Building, Second Leiter Building, 1891 Daniel Burnham ( ) John Root ( ) The Rookery Building, 1886 The Monadnock Building, 1891 The Reliance Building, Henry Hobson Richardson ( ) The Marshall Field Wholesale Store, Louis Sullivan ( ) Dankmar Adler ( ) Auditorium, Wainwright Building, 1890 Guaranty Building, 1895 Carson Pirie-Scott Department Store,

9 THE SKYSCRAPER 1855: The Bessemer Process becomes the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass-production of steel from iron. (steel = iron + carbon, making it more fire-resistant than iron) 1865: Steel production made even easier and more efficient with the Siemens-Martin Open Furnace Method, making the price of steel low enough to allow entire buildings to be framed with steel members (price of steel per ton: $166; $107; $69; $68; $29; $32; $32) 1876: The electromagnetic telephone is invented by Alexander Graham Bell and begun to used. 1878: The electric light bulb is invented by Thomas A. Edison and begins to be used. 1879: The safety elevator (invented by Elisha Otis in 1854) used for the first time in a building in New York

10 Historically, there were two limitations that restricted the height of buildings. One involved vertical transportation, which was solved in the 1860s by the invention of the modern elevator. The second concerned the structural system which limited building heights by the number of stones or bricks that could be stacked on top of one another without having impracticably thick walls. By 1890, steel was being mass produced and it permitted a strong, slender skeleton that could support itself, the weight of many floors, and a thin, light curtain wall for weatherproofing.

11 Chicago School / Commercial Style Chicago Construction / Fire Proof Iron skeleton: The architects of Chicago school employed a new type of construction. The Floating Foundation: They invented a new kind of foundation to cope with the problem of the muddy ground of Chicago. The Chicago Window: They introduced the horizontaly elongated and bay window. They created the modern business and administration building typology. Most importantly, for the first time in the nineteenth century the schism between construction and architecture, between the engineer and the architect, was healed. With surprising boldness, the Chicago school strove to break through to pure forms, forms which would unite construction and architecture in an identical expression. Sigfried Giedion

12 William Jenney, First Leiter Building, Chicago, USA, 1879 (demolished 1972) cast iron columns from foundation to roof, wood beams for the floor On the façade, brick piers frame glass bays

13 William Jenney, First Leiter Building, Chicago, USA, 1879 (demolished 1972) left: ground floor; right: upper floor

14 William Jenney, First Leiter Building, Chicago, USA, 1879 (demolished 1972) typical bay with stone piers and glass windows

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16 William Jenney, Home Insurance Building, Chicago, USA, (demolished 1931) The First Skyscraper (?): the first building with a completely steel skeleton brick and terra cotta hanging outside on the steel frame

17 Burnham & Root, The Rookery Building, Chicago, USA, 1886 steel skeleton structural frame with stone on outside

18 Burnham & Root, The Rookery Building, Chicago, USA, 1886

19 Burnham & Root, The Rookery Building, Chicago, USA, 1886

20 Burnham & Root, The Rookery Building, Chicago, USA, 1886 central sky-lit lobby

21 Adler & Sullivan, Auditorium, Chicago, USA, iron framing in the theater, otherwise load-bearing

22 Adler & Sullivan, Auditorium, Chicago, USA,

23 Adler & Sullivan, Auditorium, Chicago, USA,

24 Adler & Sullivan, Audlitorium, Chicago, USA,

27 Burnham & Root, The Monadnock Building, Chicago, USA, 1891 load-bearing exterior masonry walls with cast iron floor joists

28 Burnham & Root, The Monadnock Building, Chicago, USA, 1891

29 Burnham & Root, The Monadnock Building, Chicago, USA, 1891

30 William Jenney, Second Leiter Building, Chicago, USA, 1891

31 William Jenney, Second Leiter Building, Chicago, USA, 1891 Architectural purity

32 Burnham & Root, The Reliance Building, Chicago, USA,

33 Adler & Sullivan, Wainwright Building, St. Louis, USA, 1890

34 Adler & Sullivan, Guaranty Building, Buffalo, USA, 1895 William Jenney, Home Insurance Building, Chicago, USA,

35 Louis Sullivan (without Dankmar Adler), Carson Pirie Scott Department Store, Chicago, USA,

36 World's Columbian Exposition (also known as The Chicago World s Fair ) Chicago, USA, 1893 ( ) Master Planners: Daniel H. Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted

37 D. H. Burnham and F.L. Olmsted, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, USA, 1893

39 D. H. Burnham and F.L. Olmsted, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, USA, 1893 Not only was the White City dignified and monumental, it was also well-run: there was no poverty and no crime, there were state-of-the-art sanitation and transportation systems, and the Columbian Guard kept everyone happily in their place. In contrast to the grey urban sprawl and blight of Chicago and other American cities, this seemed like a utopia.

42 Louis Sullivan, Transportation Building for the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, USA, 1893

45 George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., Observation Wheel at the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago.

46 At the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago, the Women's Building was designed by Sophia Hayden to show the progress of women worldwide.

47 RESULTS OF THE 1893 WORLD S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION Classical architecture became popular in the USA Tall commercial buildings began to follow an approach based on the École des Beaux-Arts (School of Fine Arts) in Paris: favoring Classical details, statues, symmetry, and grand axes. The City Beautiful Movement began.

48 THE CITY BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT City Beautiful Movement advocates to improve their city through beautification, which would have a number of effects: 1) Social ills would be swept away because the beauty of the city would inspire civic loyalty and moral rectitude in the impoverished; 2) American cities would be brought to cultural parity with their European competitors through the use of a European Beaux-Arts language/style 3) A more inviting city center still would not bring the upper classes back to life, but certainly would bring them to work and spend money in the urban areas. The idea was that beauty could be an effective social control device. Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett prepared a plan for Chicago in 1909 based on these ideas.

49 Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett, Plan for Chicago, 1909

50 Chicago, late 1890s

55 THE SUBURB (Latin: sub= under/outside & urbs= city) USA: For every person outside of a city that went to a farm, 20 went to the city. New transportation technologies like tramways and trains allowed people to live farther from their workplace than ever before. Crisis: economic impoverishment of farm lands and rural areas vs. the opportunities but congestion of cities. The suburb the built environment in-between country and city emerged within an anti-urban ideology.

56 location of Oak Park in relation to downtown Chicago: 15 km

57 Frank Lloyd Wright, F. L. Wright House (1889), and Studio (1898), Oak Park, (suburban Chicago), USA

58 F. L. Wright House and Studio PLANS

59 Frank Lloyd Wright, F. L. Wright House (1889), Oak Park, (suburban Chicago), USA

60 Frank Lloyd Wright, F. L. Wright Studio, Oak Park, (suburban Chicago), 1898

61 Frank Lloyd Wright, F. L. Wright Studio, Oak Park, (suburban Chicago), 1898

62 Frank Lloyd Wright, "A Home in a Prairie Town," Ladies' Home Journal (magazine), February "The exterior recognizes the influence of the prairie, is firmly and broadly associated with the site, and makes a feature of its quiet level," Wright wrote in the article that accompanied the design. "The low terraces and broad eaves are designed to accentuate that quiet level and complete the harmonious relationship." The design could be mail-ordered from the magazine for $5.

63 Frank Lloyd Wright, Ward Willits House, Oak Park (suburban Chicago), 1902

66 Frank Lloyd Wright, Dana-Thomas House, Oak Park (suburban Chicago), 1903

67 Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House, Chicago, USA, 1908

73 Frank Lloyd Wright, Broadacre City, 1932 A society of free individuals living in a rural democracy. Resources would be the car, radio, telephone, telegraph and standardized machine shop production. No conception of class and power. Minimum forms of government.

74 Frank Lloyd Wright, Broadacre City, 1932 One square mile (10km 2 ) of what was to be a continuous fabric of built environment across the American continent

75 Frank Lloyd Wright with a model of his Broadacre City The idea was that each U.S. family would be given a one acre of land (4,000 m²) from the government, and a community would be built from this. It was the exact opposite of transit-oriented development. There is a train station and a few office and apartment buildings in Broadacre City, but the apartment dwellers are expected to be a small minority. All important transport is done by automobile and the pedestrian can only exist safely within the confines of the one acre plots of land.

76 Frank Lloyd Wright, Broadacre City, 1932 The Usonian House Low-cost system-built housing of small suburban homes designed to be affordable to middle-income families with no servants quarters and a single living room. The word Usonian came from United States.

77 Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater, near Pittsburgh, USA, 1934