"High Tech" Architecture

Richard Meier, one of the NY Five who wanted to re-examine the modern architectural paradigm before moving on.

Meier ended up not really moving on, but developing a new style with the Modern movement.

Best known works:


 * Getty Museum


 * The Athaneum
 * Built in New Harmony, Indiana in 1978
 * Meant to be a sort of visitors center for early settlers with utopian dreams
 * "Activated facades"
 * Filled the facades with ramps and stairs
 * Built up on pilotis -> reflects its location near/on a flood plane
 * "boat of knowledge docking on New Harmony's shore"
 * Clearly in dialog with I.M. Pei's East Wing for the National Gallery
 * Also bears considerable resemblance with Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye
 * Very Complicated exeterior spaces


 * High Museum, Atlanta

Renzo Piano & Richard Rodgers
Best known for their development of the Centre Pompidou but Renzo also recently did an extension for the High Museum in Atlanta (built by Meier)

Centre Pompidou

 * Bold design
 * Considered not appropriate for downtown Paris
 * Renzo & Rodger were relative unknowns (and this museum was to be a major commission)
 * Philip Johnson, the well-known architectural critic, also helped to pull the committee around
 * Architecture very inspired by Archigram and "Plug-In City"
 * Built from 1971 - 1977
 * Construction very complex, done on grand scale (massive girders)
 * Clever structuration:
 * Used cross girders which were attached to external cantilevers, which were anchored to the ground producing amazing stability.
 * Very lightweight
 * "You can't build a million cubic meter building in Paris and try to hide it"
 * Wanted to open the space -> so they pushed the people moving spaces (stairs, lifts) as well as pipes and heating ducts to the outsider
 * Renzo imagined being a very readjustable/expandable building
 * Rodgers explained that he was exhausted by the project, "we were nearly destroyed
 * The building was much theorized by Jean Baudrillard.
 * Interior Spaces not done by Rodgers & Piano, but quite successful

Pompidou inspired many subsequent buildings including Sainsbury Center England by Norman Foster

Richard Rodgers also went on to build PA Technology Center outside of Princeton, NJ.

Rodgers told Neumann when Neumann was working for him that his favorite building was the Maison de Verre in Paris

Lloyd's Underwriters London another Rodger's building.


 * Seems to be responding to the futurist dreams of Antonio Sant'Elia
 * Incorporates various elements
 * Including a sort of "crystal palace" element
 * And elements like readable staircase

"Architecture may have abadoned it's utopian dreams because the world is perfectly capable of achieving perfect by itself" - Renham Benner