Some Great Architects

Some great architects, even from the early years.

Adolf Loos (1870-1933)

Adolf Loos (1870-1933) ranks as one of the most vital pioneers of the fresh movement in architecture. Ironically, his control was based generally on a small amount of interior designs and a body of controversial essays. Loos's buildings were precise examples of austere beauty, ranging from conservative country cottages to planar compositions for storefronts and residences. His built compositions were not much recognized outside his native Austria throughout his early years of practice.

Here are some buildings designed by Adolf Loos:

Aldo Rossi (1931)

Aldo Rossi (born 1931), one of the most leading famous architects during 1972-1988, has accomplished the remarkable achievement of achieving international acknowledgment in three discrete areas: theory, drawing, and architecture. After receiving his architecture degree at the Polytechnic University in Milan in 1959, Aldo Rossi served as a course assistant to prominent famous architects Ludovico Quaroni and Carlo Aymonino. Aldo Rossi became a faculty member in the School of Architecture in Milan in 1965 and at the University in Venice in 1975.

Below are some works of Aldo Rossi: 

Alvaro Siza

Alvaro Siza is one of the most well-known Portuguese architects of the 20th century. Although Siza fashioned numerous projects for clients in Portugal (houses, schools, and other instututions), it became clear that he began to gain acknowledgment through exhibitions and evens in other European countries at the 1980s.

Below are some works designed by Alvaro Siza:

 

Great Architectural Designs

Here are some pictures of what I think are some amazing buildings ever made on Earth, and how I think modern architecture is supposed to be; beautiful, as a form of art, and useful to our society.

The Architecture Building of Cybertecture Egg, India

This building, named the Architecture Building of Cybertecture Egg, which is located in India, was designed by James Law. This beautiful building has a garden in the uppermost part of the building, and uses solar panels to generate electricity inside it. This egg-shaped design results in using only 10%-20% area of the ground and thus reduces the surface area of land it needs.

The Seed Cathedral

The Seed Cathedral, designed by Thomas Heatherwick, represented the United Kingdom at the 2010 Shanghai Expo.  This amazing work of sculptural architecture uses 60,000 acrylic rods, in which each rod bears a plant seed at its inner tip.  This building has two functions– one to store and inform the visitors of the Shanghai Expo, and to also proceed as a seed reservoir to document Earth’s green history.  

Sustainable Architecture Building, Hamburg

This building, located in Hamburg, diligently designed by J. Mayer H., is strategically placed in a small town in which basically has a lot of green and blue from the water and trees. The simple, beautiful colors of this building has a nice effect with its surroundings and bear satisfactory effect to our eyes.

Vodafone Headquarters, Porto, Portugal

This wondrous building, the Vodafone Headquarters, which is located in Portugal, was designed by Barbosa Guimaraes. Unlike its flashy, abstract outer structure, it actually reflects Vodafone's "Life in Motion" slogan, in which the building appears to be growing and developing out of our conventional minds. I really admire this design, because it's so ingenious and an out-of-the-box thinking.

Piwakawakalulu's Introduction to Architecture

Some people would say that architecture is an expression and application of geometrical order. Personally, I think architecture is mutually the course and creation of planning, scheming and making, and is mostly building a structure within the confines of art, confines in which the possibilities are innumerable. This actually may be the perfect reason for people to be able to think outside the box and make something no other human being has ever made before instead of building the same, standard-type buildings. 

Being an architect is not something to be gained by mere knowledge; it also needs practice, a dose of creativity, and an enormous amount of patience. Of course, knowledge plays significant role in architecture, especially because architecture greatly depends on science; without it, there will be no way to guarantee the structure will stay upright on its foundation.

According to http://math.utsa.edu/ftp/salingar.old/Laws.html, there are three laws of architecture:

1. Order on the smallest scale is established by paired contrasting elements, existing in a balanced visual tension.
2. Large-scale order occurs when every element relates to every other element at a distance in a way that reduces the entropy.
3. The small scale is connected to the large scale through a linked hierarchy of intermediate scales with scaling factor approximately equal to e = 2.718.

It is said that the first two laws oversee the two ends of level, which are the very small and very large; and the third law oversees the connecting of the two scales. Each law brings forth some discrete consequences; and together, these laws describe a set of master rules for architecture. Their direct consequences are said to match up to reality and are validated.

Some people say that being a great architect is a tremendous challenge and adventure. Although there are countless possibilities in architecture, our human minds are not always capable of thinking outside the box and thus our creativity and imagination is put to the test. This is the fun in being an architect.