Sullivan

Louis Sullivan

Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) was one of the first American architects to design skyscrapers. Born in Boston. It has played an important role in the innovation of American modern architecture. Emphasize the importance of function to architecture. The main works include the winwright building in St. Louis (1890) and the Schlesinger and Meyer department store building in Chicago (1899).

Life

Louis Sullivan, also translated as Louis Henry Sullivan（ LouisH.Sullivan ）Chicago School architects. Born in Boston in 1856, he received only a short-term and unsystematic training. From the age of 16, he began to study at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but left school a year later. After working for a short time with Frank fornis in Philadelphia, he went to Chicago with his parents. There, he was hired by William LeBaron Jennie, known as the "father of skyscrapers" - working for several months in his architect's office. He went to the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris in 1874 and returned to Chicago in 1876. He became a draftsman of John Edelman, whose luxurious and organic decorative design had a profound impact on him. In 1879, L. Sullivan became a colleague of dankmar Adler, a self reliant architect and engineer, and his collaborator in 1881. D. Adler focuses on technology, while L. Sullivan focuses on the art of design. Initially, their company was limited to residential and small commercial buildings, such as Eliel house, jewelers' building, Kaufmann store and flats, etc. However, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the projects designed by the company gradually expanded, involving skyscrapers and theatres. under the influence of Henry Hobson Richardson's architecture, especially the Marshall Field wholesale store (1885-1887) in Chicago, their architectural art chose a new direction. Examples of this are Dexter building (1887), a simple walled building, and Walker warehouse (1888-1889), both in Chicago, reminiscent of the strictness of Roman architecture. In the latter project, L. Sullivan combined more floors by forming continuous circular arch pilasters on them, which became the theme style he later used in almost all multi-storey buildings. From 1886 to 1889, L. Sullivan and D. Adler realized the Auditorium Building in Chicago. Its different functionality (theater, hotel and office building with more than 4000 audience) and comprehensiveness are challenges to D. Adler's technical and economic ability, as well as to L. Sullivan's architectural art ability. Although there are various parts of the genius architectural art and a rich and full of fantasy modeling, the building mainly shows a high demand on the non unity of the facade, which does not adapt to the huge building. In the following projects, L. Sullivan successfully found an unusual suitable form for this new steel frame building. He gave up the classical horizontal division of the facade, and through the vertical division, showed the accumulation of the same floors with most functions arranged. As a place of historical significance - where the funds of building owners are always abundant - at the same time, a part or the whole building is full of decorative art from the form of plants. after the separation from D. Adler (1895), the number of entrustment of L. Sullivan decreased significantly. In 1899 and 1902-1903, L. Sullivan built his most important buildings, namely Schlesinger and Mayer department store in Chicago. Instead of protruding the vertical structure, he used the supporting frame determined by the floor height and column spacing as the basis of modeling. While he emphasized the shape in the upper layer with white ceramic tile veneer and large retracted window, he added a movable diversity decoration to the bottom two layers. by planning the task of modeling on two facades, that is, the facade of Bayard building (1897-1899) in New York and the facade of gage building (1898-1899) in Chicago, L. Sullivan also diversified the possibility of expressing structural modeling. Unfortunately, most of them were simple tasks, and he was not given the opportunity to continue to realize the completeness of the facade of his Chicago Department store. Like the National Agricultural Bank (1906-1908) in Owatonna, Minnesota, those buildings are clearly impressive through the unity of volume and form, as well as through the power of detail and decoration. at the turn of the 19th century and the 20th century, he mainly designed small banks, shops and churches for the central and western regions, including Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church and Krause music store. After 1900, Sullivan's reputation declined sharply, and he died in New York in 1924.

evaluate

From the first frame buildings covered with historical facades until "the moderation of structure is the real foundation for the formation of exterior art form" - this may be a sentence from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - the broad road of those buildings is suitable for L. Sullivan's belief that art must be based on scientific methods. Schlesinger and Meyer's department stores clearly reflect this idea. 50. Sullivan is a central figure in organic architecture. For L. Sullivan, the art of architecture is not to imitate the nature, but to imitate in the evolution of the structure. His phrase "form always follows function", quoted from the tall office building artistically considered (1896), is just a starting point. Only in the sense of being separated from the structure, decoration can give the building individual unity in form. Decoration and structure, like a certain coat, belong to a certain type of architecture.

works

1: Chicago Auditorium Building 2: guarantee building 3: Carson, pirey and Scott building 4: k.a.m.temple

Chinese PinYin : Sha Li Wen