Theo van Doesburg&

Philip Johnson(Architect)

James Lane

Theo van DoesburgBorn in 1883, Theo van Doesburg was creative in a range of ways, being a painter, decorator, poet and art theorist. At first he worked in Post-Impressionist and Fauvist styles until 1915 went he discovered Piet Mondrian's work and started to paint geometric abstraction of subjects from nature. In 1916 he started to collaborate with architects and continues to design more stained glass, as well as floor tiles and overall colour schemes.

In 1920 van Doesburg started focusing on the promotion of De Stijl in Germany and France. His De Stijl theories subsequently influenced the Modernist architects Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. However in 1924 van Doesburg returned to painting, at which point he decided to introduce the diagonal into his compositions to increase their dynamic effect.

“The line has almost become a work of art in itself.”

“Art as language....in the future there will only be art. This common language will carry the message of love.”

“When contemplating a work of art it is possible to perceive if it has been created according to the eye or to the spirit, in other words, if it projects three-dimensional reality or spiritual n-dimensionality.”

Quotes

InfluencesPiet Mondrian

Theo van DoesburgCounter-Construction, 1924ink and gouache, 57.5 x 57cmStedelijk Museum Amsterdam

Counter-constructionism continued Theo van Doesburg’s De Stijl paintings in the form of Elementarism. With the use of lines and structure he has created the effect of depth and made it look as if the composition is 3D. In fact this was created with the inspiration of a building he had design earlier. Van Doesburg has done this by splitting up the forms or extending them into the interior of the building. While doing this he also split up the other walls and created a new planar figures and cubes. When adding colour van Doesburg went on step further, defining certain sections with various primary and colourless planes, which then penetrated the overall context of the building while at the same time creating space. Each shape has a clear a bold outline showing a definite line between each surface, the angle of lines and the chose of the shapes that have been used have created the impression of a 3D form without having to have one, in our minds we can see where the lines are supposed to meet and supposed to be which allows us to see the original form.The simple style that the piece is done in is very effective many due to it being created from a 3D piece originally which allow him to place with the structure and colours because it meant he could easily go back to it’s original form.

Theo van DoesburgCounter-Construction of the Maison particuliere,1923Gouache on photo type, 57 x 57cmRijksdienst Beeldende Kunst, The Hague

This study for a house is thoroughly innovative and is still spectacular almost a century later. In the design variants for the Maison Particulière, Van Doesburg and Van Eesteren were striving after a new spatial ideal: immaterial yet expressive. The axonometric projection is as much an investigative search as a demonstration of their ambition to create a different reality – and ultimately a new life – with architecture.

This piece is very similar to the previous it has the same style, but a different perspective of the house. In create a study of the house in this manor you get the see it in an all new light, the simplicity of the shape and structure allows you to see the basics of the house before anything else. The simple colours allow it to stand out, especially on the background, with these coulours and the perspective lines used, it creates a sense of depth and for, the real building would give.

Philip Johnson

Though he began in the stark style of Mies van der Rohe’s work, by the 1960s he had turned to a more individual style that incorporated historical elements. This break was the first step in a personal style that created monumental twentieth century architecture that could aesthetically include domes and colonnades. (Postmodernism)With the later work of the 1970s and 1980s, Johnson began to manipulate both texture and colour on the exterior of his larger buildings. In 1978 he received one of his biggest commissions—designing the New York City AT&T Building (1978-1984). The 1990s saw a number of biographies and critical work examining him and his influence on architecture during the second half of the century. Perhaps the most important among all of these is Johnson’s own book, PHILIP JOHNSON: THE ARCHITECT IN HIS OWN WORDS, which brings together much of the thought and experience of nearly seventy years.

Born in 1906, Philip Johnson grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. After graduating from high school he attended Harvard College, where he studied classics. Throughout the late 1920s, he became more and more interested in architecture and the growing modern aesthetic. At the age of twenty-six he became the director of the Museum of Modern Art’s new architecture department. Throughout the 1930s, Johnson was pivotal in bringing the great minimalist style to the public. As both a writer and curator he championed the work of major modern architects including Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe (eventually writing the first monograph (essay) on van der Rohe).In his mid-thirties Johnson returned to Harvard, where he attended the graduate school of design and studied under the architect Marcel Breuer. By the late 1940s Johnson had graduated, and soon began designing houses and public buildings. His first and one of his most important works, was his own home in New Canaan, Connecticut. The home was a glass building with an exposed steel frame, placed in a rural setting. He made a number of other houses in a similar style and throughout the 1950s designed many well-known works including the Seagram Building in New York City, done in collaboration with Mies van der Rohe.

Quotes“Concrete you can mould, you can press it into - after all, you haven't any straight lines in your body. Why should we have straight lines in our architecture? You'd be surprised when you go into a room that has no straight line - how marvellous it is that you can feel the walls talking back to you, as it were.”“Doing a house is so much harder than doing a skyscraper.”

“I guess I can't be a great architect. Great architects have a recognizable style. But if every building I did were the same, it would be pretty boring.”

InfluencesMies van der Rohe Marcel

Breuer

Philip Johnson Bank of America Centre, October 1983Height: 240 mHouston, Texas

Completed in 1983, Bank of America Centre is a 56-story, 1.5 million-gross-square-foot office tower with an adjacent 12-story (125-foot-high) banking hall. The neo-Gothic building, designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee, is clad in Napoleon red granite and reflective glass. The dramatic gabled roofline has become a major feature of the Houston skyline.The exterior of the bank is very straight and rigid, there are no curved edges. At the top of each of the sections coming out its has a roof that looks like it could have been inspired by old churches, this is one of the buildings I feel that shows Johnson’s own individual style. The shape and structure of the building makes it stand out in the skyline against the other buildings with it not being a normal skyscraper.The interior is just as grand as the exterior but has a lot more curves, which Johnson found to be better than having straight lines everywhere. The materials used give the feeling of being very grand both inside and outside, each line is definite and with a combination of these two, its been made so that it fits in but also stands out from the rest of the buildings surrounding it.

Philip JohnsonPPG Place, April 11, 1984Height: 193.55 mPittsburgh, Pennsylvania

PPG Place sits atop a 5.5 acre, three-city-block site in the heart of downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, adjacent to historic Market Square. The shimmering glass complex is centred on a 40-story office tower, reflecting the skies, hills, rivers, and buildings of one of America’s most liveable cities. Nearly one million square feet of PPG Solar ban 550 clear reflective glass was used, which provides a high degree of energy efficiency unmatched in many buildings. The expansive tower lobbies are panelled in PPG Spandrelite Glass and the elevators are enhanced with a laminated cracked glass mirror.

The style and shape of the building once again shows how Johnson has taken aspects of a building out of its original period and embedded it into our lives and cities. The form of the building, too me, resembles a church, not a full church but th pointed pillars and how one section is higher up making it look like a bell tower, whilst the actual room of the church is down below. Of course there is a very clear and obvious difference between this building and churches in the past and that is that it is made from nearly one million square feet of glass held together with a steel structure. When not looking at the glass the use of straight lines is immense, and helps it to tower over most of the building that surround it.

There is no real colour to the building because the landscape and weather is constantly changing, it reflects everything and even at night the lights inside the building are on which makes it light up blending in with all the buildings around it.