Andrew Smeathers
Prof .
Geib
American Visions
April 29 th 2013
High-tech Architecture
High-tech architecture, also known as Structural Expressionism or “skin and bone”, is an architectural style that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high-tech industry and technology into building design .
( Klein 60 ).
High-tech architecture appeared as a revamped modernism, an extension of those previous ideas helped by even more technological advances .
This category serves as a bridge between modernism and postmodernism, however there remain gray areas as to where one category ends and the other begins .
In the 1980s, high-tech architecture became more difficult to distinguish from postmodern architecture .
Many of its themes and ideas were absorbed into the language of the post-modern architectural schools .

Like Brutalism architecture, High-tech buildings reveal their structure on the outside as well as the inside, but with visual emphasis placed on the internal steel and/or concrete skeletal structure as opposed to exterior concrete walls .
In buildings such as the Pompidou Centre, this idea of revealed structure is taken to the extreme, with apparently structural components serving little or no structural role .
( Davis 17 ) In this case, the use of "structural" steel is a stylistic or aesthetic matter .
The style's premier practitioners include the British architects Sir Norman
Foster, Sir Richard Rogers, Sir Michael Hopkins, Italian architect Renzo Piano and Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, known for his organic, skeleton-like designs .
Early High Tech buildings were referred to by historian Reyner Banham as "serviced sheds" due to their additional exposure of mechanical services in addition to the structure .
( Davis 23 ) Most of these early examples used exposed structural steel as their material of choice .
High Tech in architecture means something different from High Tech in industry .
In industry, it means electronics,

computers, silicon chips, robots, and the like; in architecture it now means a particular style of building .
( Famous 3 ).
Looking at the High-tech architecture from a historical sense leaves plenty for any individual to learn .
There are many books, websites, and magazines that have been covering the High-tech architecture since the early 1980’s .
However, at the same time the style is continuing to grow and change making absolute knowledge of the subject not yet possible .
This gives the historian a rare chance to study their content in real life while buildings are being built and designed .
It does not have to be a study through books and indexes; it can be a first person experience .
( Gellner 7 ).
The style got its name from the book High Tech: The Industrial Style and
Source Book for The Home, written by design journalists Joan Kron and Suzanne
Slesin and published in November 1978 by Clarkson N .
Potter, New York .
( Gellner 10 ).
The book, illustrated with hundreds of photos, showed how

designers, architects, and home owners were appropriating classic industrial objects—library shelving, chemical glass, metal deck plate, restaurant supply, factory and airport runway light fixtures, movers' quilts, industrial carpeting etc .
— found in industrial catalogues and putting these to use in residential settings .
The foreword to the book by architect Emilio Ambasz, former curator of design at the
Museum of Modern Art, put the trend in historical context .
As a result of the publicity and popularity of the book, the decorating style became known as "High-
Tech", and accelerated the entry of the still-obscure term "high-tech" into everyday language .
In 1979, the term high-tech appeared for the first time in a
New Yorker magazine cartoon showing a woman berating her husband for not being high-tech enough: "You're middle-, middle-, middle-tech .
" ( Gellner 8 ) After
Esquire excerpted Kron and Slesin's book in six installments, mainstream retailers across the United States, beginning with Macy’s New York, started featuring high-tech decor in windows and in furniture departments .
The book

went on to be reprinted in England, France, and Japan, and like the original, each edition included a directory of local sources for the objects .
( Davis 29 ).
Kron and Slesin further explain the term "high-tech" as one being used in architectural circles to describe an increasing number of residences and public buildings with a "nuts-and-bolts, exposed-pipes, technological look" .
( Famous 3 ).
Once again Rogers's Pompidou Centre is a perfect example of this .
This highlights one of the aims of high-tech architecture, to show the technical elements of the building by externalizing them .
Thus, the technical aspects create the buildings aesthetic .
For interior design there was a trend of using formerly industrial appliances as household objects, such as chemical beakers as vases for flowers .
This was because of an aim to use an industrial aesthetic .
This was assisted by the conversion of former industrial spaces into residential spaces .
High-tech architecture aimed to give everything an industrial appearance .

Buildings in this architectural style were constructed mainly in North
America and Europe .
It is deeply connected with what is called the Second
School of Chicago, which emerged after World War II .
The main content is that the technological kind of construction, mostly with steel and glass, is expressed in a formal independent way to gain own aesthetic qualities out of it .
The first proper example is the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe .
The apartments, which were built in 1951, were essential to the development of High-tech architecture .
( Davis 20 ).
Another aspect to the aims of high-tech architecture was that of a renewed belief in the power of technology to improve the world .
This is especially evident in Kenzo Tange’s plans for technically sophisticated buildings in Japan's post-war boom in the 1960s, but few of these plans actually became buildings .
High-tech architecture aimed to achieve a new industrial aesthetic, spurred on by the renewed faith in the progression of technology .
But however prominent the

industrial look appeared, the functional element of modern architecture was very much retained .
The pieces still served a purpose in the building's function .
The function of the building was also aimed as not being set .
This dynamic property means that a building should be a "catalyst", the "technical services are provided but do not become set .
"
The exponents of High Tech, like the pioneer Modernists of the 1920s, believe that there is such a thing as the "spirit of the age" and that architecture has a moral duty to express that spirit .
The spirit of our age, according to High
Tech architects, resides in advanced technology .
Architecture must therefore participate in and make use of that technology .
The use of technology from industry, transport, communication, flight, and space travel are all used in the
High-tech architecture .
Why, they ask, should buildings be any different from the other artifacts of industrial culture? Why do we continue to make buildings out of cumbersome, messy, imprecise materials such as bricks, mortar, concrete, and

timber when we could be making them out of light, precision components of metal and glass, fabricated in factories and quickly bolted together on site? The
High Tech architect sees architecture as a branch of industrial technology .
He claims no social or artistic privileges .
He wishes his buildings to be judged by the same criteria of performance as any of the other tools of everyday life .
He wants them to be functional and efficient, not artistic or symbolic .
( Davis 30 ).
Characteristics of high-tech architecture have varied somewhat, yet all have accentuated technical elements .
They included the prominent display of the building's technical and functional components, and an orderly arrangement and use of pre-fabricated elements .
Glass walls and steel frames are also immensely popular .
To boast technical features, they were externalized, often along with load-bearing structures .
There can be no more illustrious example than
Pompidou Centre the ventilation ducts are all prominently shown on the outside .
This was a radical design, as previous ventilation ducts would have been a

component hidden on the inside of the building .
The means of access to the building is also on the outside, with the large tube allowing visitors to enter the building .
( Centre 3 ).
The orderly and logical fashion in which buildings in the high-tech architectural style are designed to keep to their functional essence is demonstrated in Norman Foster’s Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank HQ .
Besides the technology being the overriding feature of the building, its design is very much functionally orientated .
The large interior open space and the easy access to all floors enhance the function of being a bank .
Also, the elements of the buildings are very neatly composed to achieve optimal orderliness in order to logically solve the problem of the needs of a bank .
This can be seen in the levels' structure and in the escalators .
The high-tech buildings make persistent use of glass curtain walls and steel structure .
It is greatly indebted to modern architecture for this, and

influenced by Mies van der Rohe’s high-rise buildings .
The Sears Tower demonstrates that with glass walls and skeleton pipe structure of steel, a very tall building can be built .
Many high-tech buildings meant their purposes to be dynamic .
Günther Behisch and Frei Otto’s Munich Olympic Stadium could best explain this .
This structure made sport in the open possible and is used for many purposes .
Originally an abandoned airfield, it is now a sport stadium, used for various disciplines .
Buildings designed in this style usually consist of a clear glass facade, with the building's network of support beams exposed behind it .
Perhaps the most famous and easily recognized building built in this style is I .
M .
Pei’s Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong .
The World Trade Center in New York
City, although generally considered to be an International Style building, was technically a Structural Expressionist design due to its load-bearing steel frame .
( Famous 1 ).
High-tech architecture is an area that is still changing and impacting cities

all over the world .
With the lack of new land to build on the only place left to go is up .
High-tech architecture gives builders an opportunity to build large metropolitan buildings in confined spaces .
High-tech architecture is here to stay, not only as commercial buildings but also as domestic furnishings.
Works Cited
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" Centre Pompidou Foundation .
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Davis, Colin .
"High-Tech Architecture .
" Crowstep .
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2013 .
<http://crowstep .
co .
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"Famous High-Tech Architecture Buildings .
" Ranker .
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<http://www .
ranker .
com/list/high-tech-architecture-buildings-and-

structures/reference> .
Gellner, Arroll .
"A Brief History of ‘High-Tech’ Architecture .
" Inman News .
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,
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<http://www .
inman .
com/2006/04/14/brief-history-high-tech-architecture/> .
Klein, Marilyn W .
, David P .
Fogle, and Wolcott B .
Etienne .
Clues to American
Architecture .
Washington, DC: Starrhill, 1986 .
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