Twentieth Century
The beginning of the twentieth century saw the heightened use of Euclidean or Cartesian rectilinear geometry in Modern Architecture. In the De Stijl movement specifically, the horizontal and the vertical were seen as constituting the universal. The architectural form therefore is constituted from the juxtaposition of these two directional tendencies, employing elements such as roof planes, wall planes and balconies, either sliding past or intersecting each other. The Rietveld Schröder House by Gerrit Rietveld is a good example of this approach.
The most recent movement-Deconstructivism-employs non-Euclidean geometry to achieve its complex objectives resulting in a chaotic order. Non-parallel walls, superimposed grids and complex 2-D surfaces are some external manifestations of this approach which is exemplified by the works of Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, and Frank Gehry. Topology has been a fascinating influence.
Read more about this topic: Mathematics And Architecture
Famous quotes related to twentieth century:
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to ‘feel good’ about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The phenomenon of nature is more splendid than the daily events of nature, certainly, so then the twentieth century is splendid.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)