Paste your essay in here… Architecture and Minimalism
Background
Minimalist designs in architecture dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Van der Rohe is a post-world war one architect is considered as one of the founding fathers of the minimalism and used the minimalist a concept in his designs. Use of minimalist designs mainly became popular because of the availability of various contemporary materials such as steel, glass, and concrete coupled with the standardization of the various ways of construction which promoted effective designing and building of minimalist structures. Use of the minimalist designs in architecture progressed to mid-twentieth century when one of the prominent architects Fuller Buckminster designed geodesic domes utilizing modest geometric shapes that still look modern and stands out today. Minimalism involves reduction of subjects into their basic elements and majority of architectural designers are mainly concerned with perfect lighting, the connection between perfect planes as well as the empty space resulting from the elimination of three-dimensional forms in the designs.
Modernism in architecture has continued to persist for many decades and it has advanced from just being a theoretical design to being one of the popular building designs. Current trends in the modern architecture are attributed to the various principles and theories of multiple architects in the contemporary and twentieth century that have led to broadening of the present perspective of minimalism. Much advancement has been witnessed that have played an essential role in the development of the contemporary architecture in terms of techniques, designs, methods as well as other vital in the definition of the concept. Many personalities have diverse definitions philosophies of the works and the major factors that lead to the development of architecture during the twentieth century in shape and designs of building structures often linked to the need for the new building’s following the two world wars that destroyed entire cities and towns. Thus, architects and designers of the time needed to rebuild buildings quickly, meaning that there was urgency for cleaner and faster techniques and this was essential in leading to the emergence of minimalism because it helped speed up the building process (Margariti, et al., 2017).
Minimalist Design Elements and Concepts
Minimalist’s architectures are basically based on the concept of stripping down the essential quality of subjects to promote achievement of simplicity and it involves ornamentation ensuring that all the details, parts and joinery are reduced to a level that further improvement of its design can no longer be achieved through the removal of any part. Minimalist’s architectural designs priorities on various basic essences including space, light, materials, details, form as well as a human condition. Often minimalist designers take into consideration of the building’s physical qualities while at the same time the spiritual dimension as well as the invisible by being attentive to space, materials, nature, people, and details as well as by listening to the figure. In doing so, the architect is able to identify the abstract quality of the invisible enabling them to seek the essence of the unseen qualities including air, natural light, earth, and sky.
Furthermore, minimalist architects are capable of creating relationships between sites and buildings by opening a dialogue with the surrounding environment to assist in the selection of the construction’s most essential materials. Generally, minimalist architectures involve the use of design elements that target at conveying the concept of simplicity where sense for essential quality and order are created using simple materials, undecorated elements, basic geometric forms as well as replications of structures. Also, clean and simple spaces are revealed by the movement of light in structures.
Influential Contemporary Minimalists and Their Works
Many artists, designers, architects have played a fundamental role in contributing to the minimalist designs and style philosophy and it is in the twentieth century that saw collaborative working between architects and designers to ensure achievement of the best minimalist designs. The novel works of De Stijl exemplifies the impacts that the Japanese traditional architecture and designs have influenced many minimalist designs. The works of the designer greatly contributed to the development of minimalist designs because his ideas of expression, particularly relating to the organization of the basic elements including planes and lines. De Stijl is considered as one of the founders of minimalism and it is described as neoplasticism and it was a Netherlands-based artistic movement. It was started in 1917 and ended in 1931 and was led by Theo van Doesburg and played an essential role in laying down the foundation for minimalism. The movement advocated for various principles, including the composition of simple visuals to the horizontal and vertical directions as well as the use of primary and colours coupled with white and black.
Another designer whose work played a vital role in the advancement of minimalism is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe whose aesthetics were described by the motto ‘less is more’. Hi, works comprised of an arrangement of the basic components of a structure to facilitate the creation of an impression manifesting great simplicity and one of his tactics involved enlisting of each detail and element to perform multiple functions and visual tasks. For example, the architect would design a huge fireplace which can double as a bathroom or even a floor that can function as a radiator. Also, Mie’s principles of minimalism were adopted by Dieter Rams an industrial designer whose principle was ‘less but better. The works of Mie’s stands out from those done by his counterparts at the same time because he developed designs that suited modern industrial era as opposed to the weak traditional designs that were not favored by progressive theorists because they involved hiding of modern building technology in ornamented façades. Mie’s work contributed to minimalism because it aimed at using an architectural approach that would express the modern era’s spirit as gothic and classical eras did during their periods.
Also, the works of the designer Buckminster Fuller are of great interest when it comes to the concept of minimalism in architecture because they adopted the use of the engineer’s motto of ‘doing less with more’ although the majority of his efforts targeted at achieving engineering and technological goals as opposed to aesthetics. Dieter rams contributed to contemporary minimalism by pursuing minimalist designs that concentrated on the inclusion of the basic components of a product, minimizing the presence of non-essentials making it pure and simple as possible. According to Dieter a good design should be innovative, focuses on product’s functionality and usefulness, aesthetic, self-explanatory, unobtrusive, honest, long-lasting, environmentally friendly and thorough to the last detail. His designs were vital in the designing of various products for Braun Company including calculators, consumer appliances, radios and record players.
Tadao Ando was a Japanese minimalist architect whose works played a vital role in the development of modern minimalism as his works manifested his personal perception of nature as well as the Japanese traditional spirit. His architectural ideas comprised of pure geometry, materials and nature and achievement of light in space and austerity through the use of natural wood, concrete, and essential structural form. Moreover, he was able to foster the creation of order and relationship with the constructed buildings by setting up a dialogue between nature and construction sites. The minimalist works created by Ando and their ability to translate the Japanese aesthetic principles are very popular in Japanese architectural designs.
Kazuyo Sejima is another influential Japanese minimalist architect who produces a specific Japanese genre of minimalist buildings comprising utilization of thin construction sections, colour and transparent elements to build a phenomenal structure linked to minimalism. Some of the recognized works done by the architect include the Small house in 2000 and the New Museum in New York built in 2010. The works of the two Japanese minimalist architects use the concept of combining the relationship between human movement, building, nature and site and this is one of the basic ideologies of minimalism vital in the establishment of a dialogue between the site and the building. In this concept, the building utilizes basic forms of rectangle and circle to create a contrast between the empty and the filled space of nature and the building’s interior ensuring achievement of simple and silent architecture while at the same time enhancing the wind, nature, time and light in space.
Pawson John is a minimalist architect from Britain and his works have contributed immensely to the contemporary minimalism because his design ideas take into consideration of order, light, and soul and his creations are based on his belief that sense of richness and clarity of simplicity, as opposed to emptiness, can be achieved through interior simplification and reduction of clutter beyond the point of achieving essential quality. His designs involve the use of materials that portray perceptions towards the surface, volume and space and prefer the use of natural materials due to their quality of a person, a sense of depth and aliveness. Finally, his works are also influenced by the Japanese Zen philosophy.
Alberto Baeza is one of the Spanish minimalist designers and most of his works are described as comprising of essential architecture. His works contribute to modern minimalism because it is based on the concept of space, light, and idea where light is vital in ensuring achievement of a relationship between the building and its inhabitants. The concept of the idea is aimed at meeting the context of space and function, constructions as well as forms, whereas shaping of space is attained by the use of minimal geometric shapes vital in ensuring that decoration which is nonessential is avoided as possible. One of his famous works is the Gasper House built in 1992 in Zahora and the client required it to be independent (Fagan, 2017). The house involved the construction of high walls, essential in the creation of an enclosed while the stone floors in the courtyard and in the house convey the exterior and the interior’s continuity. Also, the white walls are aimed at achieving unity and simplicity of the construction while the structures feature creates lines forming a continuous horizontal lines house hence enabling horizontal projection of light (Epstein, 2015).
Contemporary Minimalists
Minimalism is a concept that attracts interest today because of its concentration on simplicity, making it spread to other areas of design, including interior designs, music, painting, and fashion. The concept of minimalism still persists in the modern day, although it has softer edges exemplified by the current trends evident in interior designs that have rendered minimalism more livable and have become softer as opposed to the previous stark, cold look. Nonetheless, the basic principles of minimalism still comprise of hard services, clean lines, and low furniture, but currently with more colours, texture, softer edges and the use of natural fibres. Minimalism today involves the use of innovative twists in exteriors and interior designs and entails the use of less in the creation of effects that normally require more materials to be created by other designer’s techniques. Minimalists use fewer materials to design a beautiful effect with minimum expenditures compared to those made from other design techniques. New minimalism is not unadorned or bare and staked echoing the concept of purism in the use of colours, simple lines and clean lines in the creation of an effect or an atmosphere that is unencumbered by the design’s busy detail. The concept of new minimalism is gaining popularity today because of the short supply of construction materials and from the fact that the concept is considered as being a green design or even environmentally friendly. Furthermore, minimalist is capable of producing designs that are appealing with the least cost.
Conclusion
From the evaluation, it is evident that minimalism in architecture targets at using to achieving simplicity and unity of the building by taking into consideration of basic essences including space, light, materials, details, form and the human condition. Many contemporary architects have played a vital role designing works that have advanced the minimalism in the modern era. Despite having started in the early twentieth-century minimalism has continued to be common in many parts of the world and architectural designers continue to devise innovative and creative designs across many sectors outside architecture.
References
Epstein,S. D. (2015). 4 On I (nternalist)-Functional Explanation in Minimalism. Explorations in Maximizing Syntactic Minimization, 22, 71.
Fagan, C. (2017). Minimalism: another boring product wealthy people can buy. The Guardian(Mar/4).https://www.theguardian.om/lifeandstyle/2017/mar/04/minimalism-con spicuous-consumption-class.
Margariti, K., Boutsouki, C., Hatzithomas, L., & Zotos, Y. (2017). A Τypology of Minimalism in Advertising. In Advances in Advertising Research VIII (pp. 1-15). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.