Introduction
Minimalism as an artistic and design concept came into the world in mid of twentieth century as a reaction to the hardships of postmodernist stylistics. But indeed in architecture minimalism gives a priority to simplicity, clarity, and rationality of the lines and shapes. This aesthetic philosophy has caused a revolution in the development of modem and contemporary architectures and constructions.
The origins of Architectural Minimalism
Minimalist architecture finds its origins in the Japanese aesthetics, craftmanship, and farm house construction. This explain why most early 20th century modernist were influenced by the simplicity of the Japanese architecture characterized by clean line work, natural material, and minimal adornments. Elevation of simplicity was characteristic of many architects who sought to remove all the unnecessary in a desire for a return to the purity of elemental geometric shapes.
In the First quarter decade, some of the most distinguished models of this bare design style were executed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, whose Barcelona Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition was an example of a BASIC structure. At the same period, the Bauhaus school was also promoting the minimalistic approach to let the function and the materials of a building explain all the rest. After WWII such architects as Louis Kahn and Tadao Ando used principles and forms of minimalism in the concrete and glass with the application of natural light.
The Over-Saturation of Minimalism within Modern Design
Although modernism sowed the first minimalist experiences, this direction has multiplied tremendously in contemporary architecture More and more architecture of the 21st century is distinguished by rigorous shapes, free of barriers, and such an external condition as the surface of glass, steel or concrete. Some of these are due to preferences of the designers while other are due to improvements in engineering solutions and construction technologies. Modern architects are finally able to fully implement architecture with sparse yet prominent shapes.
A number of leading personalities have contributed to the development of minimalist building design in the course of the recent decades. John Pawson is a British architect known for his monastic interiors of austerely elegant, delicately defined rooms. An architecture by Álvaro Siza Vieira is project characterized by linear vaults, abstract and reduced to the block and sequential constructive layouts.
Similarities to today’s various styles and movements also become apparent here because many of them promote functional-based design as their foundation. Thus, for example, Brutalism tears off layers of varnish off a building and leaves it standing in its bare concrete skeleton. By the same eanner, Scandinavian design principles are also closely related to Minimalism in terms of their common values of simplicity, function, and naturalness.
The Relationship between Art and Architecture
Minimalism began its journey as an art movement: it crystallizes in such painting by Piet Mondrian and sculpture by Frank Stella and has recently spread to the architectural profession. From the development of minimalist art and design to the present day, this interdependency remains in tact in design of our built environment as seen above.
Currently, a lot of new construction can be convincingly described as sculptures, as their shapes are as minimalist as their appearance is artistic. An example of this architectural concept is the 720 Degrees House in Switzerland; a residential building with an interior composed solely of a single sweeping curved wall designed by the Danish architecture studio BIG. Other structures are built around artefacts, which are part of an architecture interior design such as theLouis Vuitton Foundation building in Paris that has interior colossal commissioned sculptures and other installations.
Psychology and Philosophies behind the Movement
Several psychological predispositions and philosophy’s intertwined aspects explain a prominent locus of minimalism in modern design. The principle that form should – and must – follow function has remained a dominant slogan. In their attempts to rid the buildings of ornamentation and distractions, the proponents believe that there is a more structurally sound and aesthetically pleasing form beneath all of the disguise.
Other philosophical theories such as essentialism are also implicated – the notion of slimming down to basics. Likewise, the Japanese concept of ma links contact and distance and is akin to minimalism because it touts the concept of depth discovered in the empty space.
It also brings in touch with modern and postmodern living such as openness, readability, equal opportunities in design, and a sexy minimalist vicissitude in terms of economies. A business and populist rejection of ornamentation and mass aesthetic excellence stands as key socially motivating ideals behind much present-day architectural formalism. While free of opulent decoration that marked the architectural legacy of the regime of power and the pyramids of authority, the style can also contribute to an achievement of purity and asylum in the simplicity that is nearly a return to the first principles.
In conclusion, minimalism emerged from the ideas of modernist school but at the beginning of the third millennium we see that minimalism rules building looks regardless of movement that is based on function and lack of expenses on the expense of aesthetic. Certainly with its philosophical sensibility and absolute logic minimalism appears preordained to become one of the most unerring and transformative epochs in the profile and mapping of architecture’s past and future. The reduction down to essentials has only afforded – has only broadened – the boundless imaginative fullness of negative territory and geometrisations.