by Larry R. Barrow, Ddes, AIA, NCARB

Le Corbusier visited the Rogue River Ford factory in 1935; that evening he spoke at Cranbrook Academy:

This is the dramatic conflict, which is strangling architecture, which causes building to remain off the roads of progress. In the Ford factory, everything is collaboration, unity of views, unity of purpose, a perfect convergence of the totality of gestures and ideas.

With us, in building, there is nothing but contradictions, hostilities, dispersion, divergence of views, affirmation of opposed purposes, pawing the ground.

Industrial-era technology provided innovation in the new automotive and aerospace manufacturing industries. There we saw the fusion of process and product design, resulting in man and machine manufacturing affordable new products for the masses.

Many 19th century architects were skeptical of technology, often viewing it as a threat to traditional classical forms of architecture. In contrast, early 20th century architectural theoreticians, realizing the inevitable migration of technology into architecture, adopted manufacturing as the underpinning for the Modern Movement.

Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius envisioned technology as a means of providing affordable housing for the masses and solving societal problems at the urban scale.

Sant' Andrea in Mantua by Alberti, 1470 to 1476. Photo: Howard Davis E-commerce is expanding exponentially. In the year 2000, the number of Internet host sites reached 80 million. Image: Internet Software Consortium   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.