Modern Architecture: Disenchantment and Re-enchantment

About the Topic

What is architecture?

In Building Dwelling Thinking, Heidegger understands building as dwelling, and dwelling as the way mortals exist on earth.

Dwelling, in his account, preserves the fourfold: saving the earth, receiving the sky, awaiting the divinities, and accompanying mortals.

Villa Savoye _ Le Corbusier

Farnsworth House _ Mies van der Rohe

Our surroundings appear to be built from materials, but they are also shaped by ideas.

Falling Water _ Frank Lloyd Wright

Beginning with housing, a familiar form of building, this talk uses four classic houses to examine the ideas behind modern architecture:

What ideas shaped modern architectural language?

What hopes did architects hold for the world they were building?

What histories of criticism accompanied modern architecture?

How can we understand and appreciate it?

We will also consider the regional Northwest modern architecture of Washington State.

I hope this offers some ways to reconsider how we understand and experience dwelling.

New Caelifera, Johnston Architects