Carlos Bethencourt

Concept

Roth writes about eclecticism. Eclecticism is the “informed and selective borrowing of historical building forms and details, rooted in associationalisim” (Roth 470). But from the idea of borrowing of historical buildings forms, many concepts of eclecticism had emerged. Every concept had a particular significance, such as, the Eclectic Revival, Synthetic Eclecticism, creative eclecticism, Academic Eclecticism, Romantic National Eclecticism. The Synthetic Eclecticism was about mixing historical references. Roth says, “Synthetic Eclecticism, resulting in a new amalgamation of disparate elements”(Roth470) Therefore the Eclectic Revival was born, and consisted in the idea to be more specific and precise in referring to the historical time periods. Later on the Creative Eclecticism concept emerged and it was more about mixing the historical details in a more free way but without loosing the idea of the functionalism of the building. The Academic eclectic was a “recombination of functionally driven plan analysis clothed in thoroughly and expertly understood historical architectural detail” (Roth 470). All these concepts were the leading ideas of the 19th century, making the modern architecture a more diverse style.

Materiality : Congruence

Materiality is understood as unconventional or bizarre. In the case of Modernism everything looks in a way unconventional. The reason why is because new techniques are being applied to an architecture that has been alive for ages. The idea of applying the classical architecture into the new modern architecture was a challenge. Roth says, “the problem was that ever-more-complex nineteenth-century building functions could not be squeezed into strictly prescribed historical building” (Roth 470). Therefore, when people squeezed nineteenth-century building functions into historical buildings, it made it sometimes very materialistic, very bizarre.

To prevent this “squeezed” historical aspects into the 19th century one had to be congruent, that is, something more corresponding to the idea of the nine-tenth century. A balance and an agreement should be found when ever one decides to mix two different things. Instead of just getting historical aspects into the new buildings by force, one should consider every aspect and be more careful with the selection of historical facts.

Compression : Release

In the modern architecture the industrial activity was very influential to the way of how building should be build. Roth says, “The greatest limitation of historical styles was in meeting the growing demand for such large public buildings”(487). Architects were perplexed when it came to build something big, practical, and fast. Basically the architects had to think of new ideas and new styles of materials. The architects had to take into account that they were not building a house, but instead a big and large facility. For this to happened they had to take into account that in some aspects they had to compress necessary details and materials in order to make the industrial facility more practical for use. That also meant that some things had to go, that is, unnecessary details, decorations, etc had to be released.