Ten ingenious buildings that changed architecture forever

”Raumplan” (space plan) is a compositional principle introduced by Loos that disrupted the custom of designing according to a “two-dimensional” perspective and replaced it with a “three-dimensional” approach which can be read, in the interiors (stripped of the “detested” ornamentation), in the interlocking of volumes of different sizes and planes of varying heights.

Le Corbusier was a true innovator and the promoter of a radical transformation in the way modern space is conceived, through his “five points of a new architecture”: elevation of the building on pilotis to leave the ground floor free; garden roof, flat and practicable; reinforced concrete pillar structure to obtain a plan free from the burden of load-bearing walls; “strip windows” for a better interior illumination; reinforced concrete structure also for the façade which, like the plan, is freed up. The Villa Savoye in Poissy, near Paris, is an explicit manifesto of these theorisations.

Existenzminimum, or “Dwelling for the Minimum Level of Existence”, was the title of the 2nd CIAM (International Congress of Modern Architecture) held in Frankfurt in 1929, during which an ergonomic , functional housing typology, reproducible on a massive scale at controlled costs and times, was promoted to satisfy the growing housing urgency of the modern city. From then on, the theme has been continually renewed through numerous authoritative projects, conceived in response to catastrophic events (wars, earthquakes and tsunamis) or to needs revised and corrected with respect to the yearning for square footage.

With the “Modulor”, a term derived from the combination of the words “module” and “or”, in reference to the section d'or (golden section), Le Corbusier provides a range of measures, based on mathematical and anthropometric evaluations, that can be applied to architectural (and mechanical) design to favour standardised modular systems and quality of use. The Unité d'Habitation in Marseille is a clear manifesto of this research.

In 1945, John Entenza, editor of the Los Angeles magazine ‘Arts and Architecture’, launched the Case Study Houses programme, with an initial series of eight housing projects committed to as many American firms. The aim of the programme, which lasted until 1966, was to design and build prototype houses that could provide an effective, economical and innovative response to the housing emergency after the end of World War II, revamping the typology of the American single-family home. From Craig Ellwood, to Pierre Koenig, to Richard Neutra, the initiative launched authorial experiments that laid the foundations of Modernism.

With the foundation in 1957 of the IRMOU (Institute for Mathematical and Operational Research Applied to Urban Planning) Luigi Moretti, a prominent architect on the Italian scene, promoted the self-coined term “parametric architecture”: a series of mathematical equations with parameters used to analyse spatial relations, where form is the result of a complex of relations expressed in mathematical terms through the structure. An architecture of which he showed an example at the 12th Milan Triennale in 1960, with a plaster model for a stadium, and which can be considered prodomical to some celebrated contemporary experiences of parametric design, including those by Zaha Hadid. 

Fiercely devoted to reinforced concrete, Nervi was an all-round intellectual. His works, characterised by bold geometric compositions, achieve an extraordinary balance between form and function, between poetics and structural calculation. The “Nervi system”, which he codified, is a set of technical solutions that, through the precise distinction of the construction site into two autonomous sectors (in-situ and prefabrication), allow efficient processes and products in terms of time and cost control and, ahead of history, sustainable thanks to the reduction of construction site waste.

Among his various works, many of which were made of brick, Dieste developed and pushed the limits of a brick shell roof structure (Gaussian vault) whose resistance is provided by a double curvature arch that is particularly effective against buckling at peak load and economical compared to reinforced concrete.

Over the years, Shigeru Ban has relentlessly explored the use of reclaimed materials, including mainly carton and wood, employed in the design of low-cost structures with high construction and functional quality. From works for the victims of disasters and natural calamities, to churches, to the pavilion at the Hannover Expo, his experimentation with the use of pressed cardboard tubes goes on to achieve extraordinary technical and formal results. 

French botanist Patrick Blanc is the mind behind the conception of the “vegetal wall”, a particular way to renew the urban landscape in an ecological way by growing plants on an architectural wall, usually vertical, which exploit the presence of two layers of fibrous material and an irrigation system placed between them to feed themselves and grow naturally. An illustrious example is offered by Jean Nouvel's Quai Brainly Museum in Paris, where the façade facing the Seine is an 800 sqm vegetal wall with 15,000 plants of 150 different species from Japan, China, Central Europe and the United States.