The Celebrated Practitioners Of Modernism Are Generally Those Belonging To

The celebrated practitioners of Modernism are generally those belonging to the early parts of the twentieth century tradition emanating from the Bauhaus tradition, such as van der Rohe, Wright, Le Corbusier, and Gropius. Their influence was difficult to shrug, and architectural training lauded the new architectures on the back of the ancient in the same linear manner as presented by Giedion. Much of the work built prompted the comment by Scully that 'Modern architecture is an environmentally destructive mass of junk, dominated by curtain wall corporate structures which will continue to be built so long as modern bureaucracy exists.' (Scully; 2003: 158) Reasonably early on, a departure from the rigid and rectangular formula began in projects echoing the plastic work of Mendelsohn's Einstein Tower (Potsdam, 1921) In the late 1950's and the early 1960's, controversial projects by architects such as Eero Saarinen, (TWA Terminal, JF Kennedy Airport, 1962), and the noted Sydney Opera House by Jorn Utzorn, (1973) manipulated materials in the manner of their post World War I predecessors to create new and exciting forms, blending the notions of space and function, creating contemporarily temporary spaces and leading the way for the new orders leading to the millennium. In this context, Modernism had become the conservative norm, and the new plastic buildings, pushing the boundaries of the expected and the usual. Modernism in its implementation had become a tradition in itself, and was now the starting point for a variety of other, newer, more critical and more flexible movements.
Nuttgens notes that it is understood that the age of modernism was abruptly culminated in the demolition of the award winning Pruitt Igoe Flats in St Louis (Minoru Yamasaki). Built in 1955, they were the epitome of social housing developments coming out of the age of the modernists, yet had been unsuccessful producing an unsatisfactory social environment for its inhabitants. In latter years, in addition to boasting a high crime rate, the Flats were subject to vandalism, abuse and destruction. Their demolition in 1972, and many other demolitions of such housing projects, saw the increasing tempo of a severe questioning of the tenets of modernism, and their appropriateness in social situations. The schism created by the crisis served to spawn a myriad of different types of architectural 'isms' including a revival in traditionalism. The manner in which these different movements grafted some elements of the Modernist era into their toolkit varies, assisting in the plethora of post 1970's architecture that has emerged internationally and from different positions. Post-Modernism, itself a political standpoint against the Modern Movement chooses as its premise a return to classical orders to some effect.