Immortal High-Tech
The scyscraper as an architectural style emerged at the dawn of the industrial revolution, and untill now this type of structures is the most striking architectural achievement of the 20th century. And the High-tech style turn to be one of the most favored trends in high-rise construction, since the technological innovations of the computer age have only increased the potential of its further development.
The genetic continuity of the aesthetics of this style is well traced in the earlier American Structuralism buildings of the 1960s. According to many researchers, the High-tech architecture of the 1970s is a kind of a final stage of the gradual aesthetic development of the new industrial forms by the 20th century. It followed Russian Constructivism and the Western Structuralism that focused its effort on introducing new constructive systems in large-scale high-rise construction. Depending on the peculiarities of the constructional framework of the building, T. Maclacova points out the following types of the aesthetics of the “big business style” that determined the further development of High-tech. They base the imagery choice on the aesthetics of: a) the shell-frame system (as in WTC buildings in New York and the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco); b) the suspended framing system (the BMW Museum in Munich); c) the core system (the Knights of Columbus New York State Council); d) the shell-diaphragm system (Sears Tower in Chicago). Most of these buildings that are owned by major corporations are known for their moderate and to some extent terse style, underlined architectonics where the emphasis is laid on the use of high-quality and technologically advanced materials, as well as the compositional emphasis on the entrance room and the public space in front of it.
The main ideologists of this trend were mostly British: Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, Nicholas Grimshaw; at times – James Stirling and the Italian architect Renzo Piano. Unlike Postmodernism and Deconstructionism that had to be developed firstly in theory and that emerged in the same period, Hightech immediately proved to be an easily- realized-in-practice architectural trend. The projects of the Archigram group had a big impact of the first buildings designed in this style. They implemented in the architectural routine the ideas of pop-art and science fiction as well as geodesic domes and the projects by R. B. Fuller who for a long time worked with N. Foster and O. Frey with his kinetic structures. Among American architects Bruce Graham would turn to the development of individual methods of Hightech aesthetics more frequently than the others. Thus the projects constructed by the SOM Company such as BMA Tower in Kansas City (85 m, 1961) or the John Hancock Center in Chicago (344 m, 1969) that was created later on and Foster’s Hearst Tower in New York City (182 m, 2006) bore certain traces of this trend.
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text by: MARIANNA MAYEVSKAYA