Architecture-Building & Construction

Rem Koolhaas House in Bordeaux Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas designed this house in Bordeaux, France, on three levels. The lower level is carved from the hillside as a series of caverns, and serves for communal family life. The middle level of glass is designed to accommodate the husband, who is confined to a wheelchair; the central part is an elevator platform that moves between levels. The third level is divided into sections for the husband, wife, and children. Koolhaas was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2000 for his innovative work.Courtesy of OMA/Rem Koolhaas

Fallingwater House Located in Bear Run, Pennsylvania,...
the house known as Fallingwater was designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1930s for the Kaufmann family. This picture shows the section of the house that extends over a natural waterfall, an example of Wright’s belief that a building’s form should be determined by its environment. The contrasts in the textures and colors of natural stone, concrete, and painted metal on the building’s exterior are characteristic of Wright’s innovative style.Western Pennsylvania Conservancy/Art Resource, NY

Houses that broke with historical architectural styles were slow to be accepted. As early as 1889 the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright built a house embodying new concepts of spatial flow from one room to another. He and others, both in Europe and in the United States, soon moved toward a domestic architectural style of metric forms and simplified surfaces largely free of decoration. Contemporary changes in painting and sculpture were allied to this movement, and by the 1920s modern architecture, though by no means universally accepted, had arrived. Glass, steel, and concrete reinforced with steel gave architects many new design options, and by the mid-20th century the modern house was commonplace. Glass boxes, freely curving styles, and stark, austere geometric forms were all possible; but at the same time traditional styles persisted, and in the U.S. many homeowners found a more or less standard, one-floor, two- or three-bedroom ranch house satisfactory.

HOUSES OF THE FAR EAST
Chinese House This contemporary house in Hangzhou, China, typifies the basic architectural style of that country, which hasn’t changed significantly in centuries. The structure is made of wood, with piers for support. The roof, made of tile, features curving lines with wide, turned-up eaves supported on carved brackets.Bridgeman Art Library, London/New York

House types in India vary greatly according to region, climate, and local tradition. The villages have courtyard houses as well as simple, single-volume dwellings; in the cities, densely populated tenements are found as well. Palaces abound in all areas; many are fortified, and some that are open to the land have multiple outbuildings such as pleasure pavilions. European influence is mostly limited to certain areas in the major cities. In China, the courtyard house, built of wood with a tile roof, has persisted for many centuries. Walled in, it is a microcosm of Chinese social traditions. Rows of single-volume dwellings, each with a tiny court or garden, are also found. At the other end of the scale are the imperial palace compounds, of which the Forbidden City in Beijing is the outstanding example. The various buildings of these compounds, laid out to form a vast, symmetrical complex, are a symbolic summary of the celestial claims of the emperors and the society they governed. In Japan, the traditional house is an elongated and somewhat rambling affair, made of wood and roofed with tile; if space is available, a garden, however small, is included. Good proportions in design and elegant simplicity of form are always evident. Western architectural influence has perhaps been greater in Japan than in the rest of the Orient, although Japanese architects have themselves been in the forefront of the modern movement in architecture.

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