Did you know?

The faculty at the Bauhaus, which began in Weimar, Germany, included artists and architects who would become world renowned figures: Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer, along with Walter Gropius. In addition: Moholy-Nagy founded the Chicago Institute of Design after the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis.

Unit 12

Andrea Palladio

(1508-1580): Influential Italian Renaissance architect whose drawings of Roman architecture and his own plans were published in The Four Books of Architecture (1570). He designed formally classic buildings, palaces, and villas, and his symmetrical country houses incorporated classic temple fronts.

words in context: Palladio used the classical temple motifs in three famous churches in Venice: San Francisco della Vigna, San Giorgio Maggiore, and II Redentore. He had a great influence on British and U.S. architecture.

Giovanni Bernini

(1598-1680): The dominant figure of Italian baroque architecture, he produced dramatic works of architecture enhanced with sculpture. In 1629, he became architect of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome and designed interior details and the great piazza in front of St. Peter's.

words in context: Bernini produced David for Cardinal Borghese (c. 1620), Rape of Proserpine (1622), and Apollo and Daphne (1625) — all in the Borghese Gallery in Rome. Bernini (called Gianlorenzo) designed chapels, churches, fountains, monuments, tombs, and statues for popes.

Sir Christopher Wren

(1632-1723): British architect, mathematician, and astronomer, Wren designed St. Paul's Cathedral in London (1675-1710) and 52 other churches in London. He also designed Trinity College Library at Cambridge University (1679-1684) and the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford (1664-1669).

words in context: After the great fire in London in 1666, Sir Christopher Wren designed a plan for rebuilding London. It was never carried out, though he did design many London structures. Wren's designs, in which he incorporated elegant spires, were greatly influential.

Frank Lloyd Wright

(1867-1959): This great American architect respected nature and organic forms. He felt that structures should fit into their environment, take advantage of their natural settings, and be constructed of the same materials they sit on: if the setting was natural limestone, the structure should be of natural limestone. He also viewed houses not as a series of spaces but wished to "destroy the box," making the spaces flow openly from room to room.

words in context: Frank Lloyd Wright designed The Robie House in "the Prairie Style," in Chicago (1909), his own home, Taliesin, in Spring Green, Wisconsin (1911, twice rebuilt), Taliesin West, home and school, Scottsdale, Arizona (1937), the famous Fallingwater, cantilevered over a water fall, taking advantage of the natural environment of its surroundings in Bear Run, Pennsylvania (1935), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City (1956), with its innovative spiraling ramp, and Marin County Civic Center, Marin, California (1957).

After studying the names above, use them in the sentences below.

1. The major Renaissance architect who revived classical symmetrical forms and the Roman temple pillars on the fronts of structures was .

2. As great a sculptor as he was architect, worked in and around St. Peter's, and other works of his can be seen in the Borghese Gallery in Rome.

3. designed St. Paul's Cathedral in London.

4. integrated materials and environment into architectural expression and was innovative in open planning, eliminating traditional room divisions in favor of fluid inner space.

Test Yourself: Write the letter next to the number to match man and work.

1. Sir Christopher Wren a. David, Rape of Proserpine — and churches, too

2. Giovanni Bernini b. formal, classic palaces and villas, he liked symmetry

3. Andrea Palladio c. is known for Fallingwater

4. Frank Lloyd Wright d. noted British architect of London structures