Louis Sullivan Louis Sullivan (1856~1924), one of the first American architects to design skyscrapers. Born in Boston. It has played an important role in modern architectural innovation in the United States. Emphasize the importance of function to architecture. Major works include the Wainwright Building in St. Louis (1890) and the Schlesinger and Meyer Department Store Building in Chicago (1899).
Life Louis Sullivan ( Louis Sullivan ), also translated as Louis H. Sullivan (Louis H. Sullivan ), Chicago school architect. Born in Boston in 1856, he received only short-term and unsystematic training. From the age of 16, he started studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts but left the school a year later. After a short-term job with Frank Furnis in Philadelphia, he went to Chicago with his parents. There, he was employed by William Le Baron Gianni, known as the "Father of Skyscrapers" -for several months in his architect's office. In 1874 he went to the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris and returned to Chicago in 1876. Become John Edelman (John Edelman) draftsman, the latter's luxurious organic decoration design had a profound influence on him. In 1879, L. Sullivan became a colleague of the self-reliant architect and engineer Dankmar Adler, and in 1881 he became his collaborator. D. Adler focused on technology, L. Sullivan is dedicated to the artistic aspect of design. Initially, their company was limited to residential and small commercial buildings, such as Eliel House, Jewelers' Building, Kaufmann Store and Flats, etc. However, in the late 1880s and early 90s, the projects designed by the company gradually expanded to involve skyscrapers and theaters.
In H. H. Under the influence of Henry Hobson Richardson's architecture, especially the Marshall Field Wholesale Store (1885-1887) in Chicago, their architectural art chose a new direction. Examples in this regard are the simple and simple wall construction of the Dexter Building (1887), and the stone-covered Walker Warehouse (1888-1889) that recalls the strictness of Roman architecture. Both are in Chicago. In the latter project, L. Sullivan combined more floors through the continuous round arch pilasters formed on it, which became the theme style he later used in almost all multi-story buildings.
From 1886 to 1889, L. Sullivan and D. Adler realized Auditorium Buiding in Chicago. Its different functionality (theatre, hotel, and office building with more than 4,000 spectators) and comprehensiveness are to D．Adler's technical and economic challenges also pose a challenge to L. The challenge of Sullivan's architectural artistic ability. Although there are various parts of genius architectural art and a kind of rich and imaginative shape, the building mainly shows high requirements in the inconsistency of the facade, and this kind of facade and huge building body Not adapted. In subsequent projects, L. Sullivan was relatively successful in finding an unusually suitable form for this new steel frame construction. He abandoned the classical horizontal division of the facade, and through vertical division, he showed the accumulation of the same floors where most of the functions were arranged [Wainwright Building in St. Louis (1890-1892) ), Schiller Building in Chicago (1890-1892), Stock Exchange Building in Chicago (1893-1894), Guaranty Building in Buffalo (1894-1896) ]. As a place of memorial significance in history-where the building owner's funds are always abundant at the same time a certain part of the entire building is covered with decorative art derived from the form of plants. With D. After Adler separated (1895), L. Sullivan’s number of commissions has decreased significantly. In 1899 and 1902-1903, L. Sullivan built his most important buildings, the Schlesinger and Meyer department stores in Chicago [the Carson-Perry-Scott Company today]. Instead of protruding the vertical structure, he used a supporting frame determined by the height of the floor and the spacing of the pillars as the foundation of the modeling. When he strongly emphasized this shape through the white ceramic tile veneer and large retracted windows on the upper floor, he added a movable and diverse decoration to the bottom two floors. By planning the task of modeling on two facades, namely the facade of the Bayard building (1897-1899) in New York and the facade of the Gage building in Chicago (1898-1899), L . Sullivan also diversified the possibility of a structural model. It is a pity that most of the tasks were simple tasks, and he was not given the opportunity to continue to realize the completeness of the facade of his Chicago department store. Like Minnesota (Minnesota) Ao Watuo that (Owatonna) of the National Agricultural Bank (1906-1908), like those building apparently by building body mass and architectural form of unity, as well as by its strength and decorative details giving people Impressed. During the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, he mainly designed small banks, shops, and churches for the Midwest, including the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church and his masterpiece Krauz Music store (Krause Music Store). After 1900, Sullivan's popularity declined sharply, and he died in New York in 1924.
Evaluation From the first batch of framed buildings covered with historic facades, until "the appropriateness of the structure is the real basis for the formation of artistic appearance" -this may be a sentence from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ——The wide roads of those buildings are suitable for L. Sullivan’s belief that art must be based on scientific methods. Schlesinger and Meyer's department stores clearly reflect this thinking. L. Sullivan is a central figure in Organic Architecture (Organische Architektur). For Sullivan, the art of architecture is not to imitate nature in a portrayal manner, but to imitate it in the evolution of inevitable structure. His quoted but often misunderstood words about form "Form ever follows function" are quoted from "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered" (The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered), 1896], just a starting point. Only in the sense of being separated from the structure, can the decoration give the building the unity of the individual in form. Decoration and structure are "like a definite coat" and belong to a "certain architectural type"
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