Architectural modernity’s idioms sustained by industrialization envisioned a new formal language seemingly detached from any classical references. One concept perhaps above all others supplanted historic composition considerations and other preindustrial planning traditions: the industrially coordinated grid. Used as an underlayment for form and space creation, grids were deployed to shape uniqueness, detail modern construction and reject conventions. Mass production inspired material criteria as guides for rationalized design.
Grid compositions were not specific to modernism, both classic and vernacular buildings used dimensional planning aids to rationalize architectural designs or standardize material use: geometric proportions based on instructions such as the Golden Ratio, or the Ken in Japan predate modernism's fascination with patterns that drive designs. The grid in the modern era referenced industrial parameters or material production more than any other dimensional principle. Efficient factory supply drove many theories of dimensional coordination based on facilitating the conceivable interoperability of building components in a Design for Assemblyparadigm. The 42-inch or the 48-inch grid became the most recognizable canon of modern planning. Other frameworks were also determined by modern material choices: 20-foot spans for flat slab reinforced concrete, 8-foot singlewide mobile home volumes based on their transport requirements or even 16-or 24-inch stud placement in timber framing all related to fabrication logistics.
Education also linked building design to preset mathematics to expedite its organization and to define the modern architect's planning doctrine. Grids used as coordination devices outlined simplified arrangements for everything from structural to spatial and mechanical dispositions. Mies, Eames, Prouvé, and Wright, the same architects who perceived in industrialization a means of reforming of architectural production became the masters of grid use and elevating industry's architectonic potential. Their careful use of square or rectangular grids was masterfully deployed to reveal spatial dynamics - sliding, aligning, juxtaposing or separating spaces. The grid was analogous to a musical score onto which elements were positioned as notes to create rhythm, symmetry or dissymmetry, axes - all classic elements of architectural planning - showcasing modernism’s claim to novel geometry was deep-rooted.
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| Grid use at Mies van der Rohe's S. R. Crown Hall at IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) (1956) |
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