Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman

I have a chance to watch one of the best documented film in History of Architecture class. It is a film documented the action of Julius Shulman while he was capturing the images of architecture, name Visual Acoustics, narrator by Dustin Hoffman

The film started with and old man, Mr.Shulman, intruducing himself and talking about modern architecture. He is the world's greatest architectural photographer, who brought images of modern architecture to people which also to the American mainstream. He used his sense of feeling, eyes and composition to capture architecture and make the picture look more being a warm architecture by adding context like furniture or people into the picture. 

In this documented film, the main architecture that Shulman documented and photographed was the Case study house no.22 by Pierre Koenig. It is a modernist house in the Hollywood Hills, California, where you can see magnificent view of the city down below. The house is also considered an iconic representation of modern architecture in the 20th century. Julius Schulman documented and photographing this house in a panoramic view of the city through the floor to ceiling glass walls at night with two women sitting at a corner as he was trying to make his picture looks more than just "architecture" by adding context. 

Stahl House (Case study house no.22) by Pierre Koenig

One thing that i understand in this film is the relationship between "text and context". Architecture is just architecture when not adding context like furniture and people that live in the house like what Shulman trying to say through his photograph. 

 

Modern Architecture: Le Corbusier VS Tadao Ando

When i think about “Modern Architecture”, i would think of a house or building with plain, pure, transparent, and simple form. I did mention about history of Modern architecture in “From Bauhaus to our House”, that it was started in the early 20th century and gained popularity after the second World War until now. I think Modern architecture shows the development of technology and engineering through the buildings structure, materials, and form. 

Again, when talking about modern architecture, one architect that i always think about is Le corbusier. He was the very first architect who started Modernism and well known from his famous work like Villa Savoye.

Villa Savoye is a modernist villa in Poissy that built between 1928-1931, by Le Corbusier. It was designed with pure geometry form and supported by a lot of columns to elevated the building from the ground and allowed the continuity of garden beneath. The roof serving as a garden and terrace to occupied nature even a person stay within the building. Villa Savoye is a free floor plan that it's structure supported by columns.

In comparison to my studio work that I choose to work on Tadao Ando's building called, 4x4 house, Villa Savoye and 4x4 house is a modernist house but yet, they are different in some way. 

4x4 house is a minimalist house with full of functions and necessities things that people need. The given site was 65.42 meter square but Ando design the house with only 22.56 meter square. Ando propose a new design in his personal remembrance of the destruction of the earthquake with a four-story high building facing toward the island. He came up with 4-by-4 meters rooms that stacked one top of another like a block and be restrict with rules of building’s height and also off-street-parking. The first and second cube were stacked on one another but the third cube were stacked shifted to the east by one meter.  4X4 house is a load bearing wall structure, meaning that there is no column inside the house to support the structure but instead, load bearing wall use a walls instead of columns to support the structure. 

These two houses are both pure and simple form. The architects designed a geometry shape like box and circle, also play with windows and lights. But Villa Savoye has been supported by column and up lifted above ground which I somehow think about Greek architecture. But for Tadao Ando's building, 4x4 house, I think it's very pure and always signify Modern Architecture.