Essay Modernist Architecture

“Gill used the geography of canyons, looked at them as an architectural element. He look at his work as bigger than the building itself, which is a very modern approach.” In addition, Gill briefly mentored Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler during his later years, connecting with some of the architects who would help shape midcentury California design.He experimented with new materials and ideas Gill felt that there needed to be a new aesthetic and architecture, that the 20th century was a new period in human history, an new epic, and needed its own design.A box-shaped design that was built on a La Jolla cliffside, it over a glassed-in front porch that overlooks a hillside and a minimal, edgy facade.

“Gill used the geography of canyons, looked at them as an architectural element. He look at his work as bigger than the building itself, which is a very modern approach.” In addition, Gill briefly mentored Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler during his later years, connecting with some of the architects who would help shape midcentury California design.He experimented with new materials and ideas Gill felt that there needed to be a new aesthetic and architecture, that the 20th century was a new period in human history, an new epic, and needed its own design.A box-shaped design that was built on a La Jolla cliffside, it over a glassed-in front porch that overlooks a hillside and a minimal, edgy facade.

Gill played around with concrete walls in 1918, well before it became a modern trope.

“I think Gill was obsessed with permanence and lasting architecture,” says Guthrie, “and that led him to concrete.

His philosophy was shaped by the Chicago School ...

Gill’s incredible career trajectory includes stops in two areas considered crucibles for American modernism.

Modernism isn't just another architectural style. It is an evolution in design that first appeared around 1850 — some say it began earlier than that — and continues to this day.

The photos presented here illustrate an array of architecture — Expressionism, Constructivism, Bauhaus, Functionalism, International, Desert Midcentury Modernism, Structuralism, Formalism, High-tech, Brutalism, Deconstructivism, Minimalism, De Stijl, Metabolism, Organic, Postmodernism, and Parametricism.

He had already developed his architectural vocabulary before the wave of attention paid to Modernist architecture in the ‘30 and ‘40s.

The history of modernism, at least in the middle of the 20th century, was written by Europeans for the most part, says Guthrie, and Gill, who was covered by American architecture critics and publications during his career, wasn’t connected with the growing scene overseas.

Ahead of his time Irving Gill’s work in the 1910’s was ahead of its time.

In 1916, he wrote an essay, Home of the Future, that outlined his design philosophies years before many of the pioneering modernists began designing homes and buildings.