Conversational topic: Famous Architects

Architecture is the art and the technique of building, employed to fulfill the practical and expressive requirements of civilized people. Almost every settled society that possesses the techniques for building produces architecture. It is necessary in all but the simplest cultures; without it, man is confined to a primitive struggle with the elements; with it, he has not only a defence against the natural environment, a prerequisite for and a symbol of the development of civilized institutions.

The characteristics that distinguish a work of architecture from other man-made structures are the suitability of the work to use by human beings in general and the adaptability of it to particular human activities; the stability and permanence of the work’s construction; and the communication of experience and ideas through its form.

All these conditions must be met in architecture. The second is a constant, while the first and the third vary in relative importance according to the social function of buildings.

The founder of the Russian architectural classics of the 18^th century was V.I. Bazhenov. In 1784 – 1786 he created one of his best works, a masterpiece of Russian classical literature – the famous Pashkov house which is now the old building of the Lenin Library in Moscow.

His buildings are impressed and he fully succeeded in his purpose and gave the world something that will take its place with the greatest structures of the world. He was an outstanding artist and architect and he was also a well-known figure encyclopedically educated. He was twenty eight when he became academician in St.Petersburg as well as a member of several academies abroad. At the same time he was a brilliant practical engineer and incomparable designer of architectural ensembles, the Kremlin Palace being one of these.

The architect who created the Baroque style in Russia was Bartolomeo Rastrelli. His father, famous sculptor Carlo Rastrelli was invited to Russia by Peter the Great. His sixteen-year-old son had no professional training when he came to Russia. He learned at the construction sites of St. Petersburg masters and became an architect of world renown, the designer of many magnificent palaces and churches in the Russian capital.

The Winter Palace executed in the fine taste and on gigantic scale is Rastrelli’s masterpiece. Rastrelli himself made the drawings and plans of the palace, designed the ornamentation patterns for window platbands, carvings, sculptures, lattices, parquetry, interiors and furniture. The palace building is nearly two kilometers long in perimeter. Originally it has 1,050 chambers, 117 staircases, 1886 doors and 1,945 windows.

Le Corbusier was the dominant figure internationally in modern architecture from 1920 to 1960. His five points for a new architecture the pilotis, roof terraces, free plan, continuous window strips and free façade composition were to be the essential elements of a new aesthetic.

Le Corbusier’s works have become monuments of modern architecture with their general independence of terrain as well as rich variety of interior and exterior spaces achieved by means of double-height rooms, gallery floors, bridges and ramps with views into the interior as well as framed views looking out, all expressions of a genuine luxury in architecture.

Le Corbusier’s long period as a leading figure in modern architecture – for nearly half a century – was unique among architects of his time and is, finally, a reflection of his capacity to endow architecture with an expression which evokes the spirit of his epoch. In this sense he was at once the terrible simplificateur in the tradition of the rationalist enlightenment and a creator of forms which will endure well beyond his time.