Task 2. Read Text A and answer the questions.

1. What style:

• lasted in Europe for 150 years?

• was balanced and proportional?

• originated in Britain in the mid-18th century?

• was characterized by elegance and adaptability?

• did William Kent use at Kensington Palace to design the Grand Staircase? the Cupola Room? the Presence-Chamber?

• did Robert Adam use to design Kedlestone Hall? Syon House?

• was used for official government buildings in England?

2.What architect / architects:

• wrote the book "Vitruvius Britannicus"?

• created structures inspired by Palladio's Villa Rotonda?

• translated the Palladian style into city streets?

• decorated Kensington Palace in London?

• gave a start for English landscape architecture?

• designed the Regent's Park in London?

• originated his own decorative style?

Task 3. Connect the sentences by means of conjunctions or adverbs.

although because moreover since therefore when while

1. Baroque lasted 150 years.

2. The Baroque style came to an end in the mid-18th century.

3. Europe returned to balanced and proportional Classical architecture.

4. A lot of intellectuals toured Greek and Roman monuments.

5. The genius of the Palladian style was its adaptability.

6. English gardens were often decorated with romantic summer-houses, graceful arches, elegant bridges, and beautiful lakes.

7. Baroque houses needed geometry of formal gardens.

A. The society required permanence and authority of buildings.

B. Many British builders produced sketch-books of designs for palaces, villas, and pavilions.

C. It was Britain's moment to set the model for the development of architecture.

D. It failed to conquer the continent, and its influence was rather limited.

E. Landscape architects used Italian villas or Gothic buildings as models for fashionable country houses.

F. Elegant Palladian houses required a romantic landscape.

G. Numerous publications appeared in Italy, England, Germany, and France in the second half of the 18th century.

Task 4. Find in the Text English equivalents of the word-combinations.

Продуманная и пропорциональная классическая архитектура; наследие классической архитектуры, ее ценность и влияние; закат стиля Барокко; энтузиазм и творчество; утонченный вкус и элегантность; туристические заметки и серьезные научные труды; глубокое изучение античной культуры; политическая, общественная и эмоциональная атмосфера; коллекция гравюр; переломный момент в истории археологии; благородство, величие и точность очертаний; пластичность, адаптивность; проследить влияние стиля; совершенные геометрические контуры; великолепие окружающего ландшафта; парадная лестница; приемный зал; фасады из золотисто-белого камня; дома, расположенные в ряд; слияние архитектуры и природы; искусство посадки деревьев; виллы в подражание итальянским; поместья в виде замков; настоящие Римские мраморные колонны с берегов Тибра; стиль официальных правительственных зданий.

Task 5. Word Formation: join the words from the box with their counterparts in the sentences. Some words are used more than once.

1. The treatises by Piranesi marked a ___-point in archaeology and architecture.

2. ___-Classicism was the style of official buildings on both sides of the Atlantic.

3. Palladian structures have become the icons of style and the ___-books of good taste and elegance.

4. The Palladian way of building was used for the ___-white stone façades of the terrace houses in Bath.

5. The deep investigation of the antique heritage was one of the main sources of ___-Classical architecture.

6. The ___ born style was rooted in the romanticism of the 18th century.

7. Numerous ___-like and ___-style structures were typical of the Picturesque Movement.

8. Beautiful ___-houses, small arch bridges, and artificial lakes were popular elements of romantic gardens.

9. Architects printed a lot of ___-books with the designs of small country houses, vast estates, and fashionable villas.

10. The Cupola Room of Kensington Palace is built in the ___-Antique style.

11. William Kent decorated the ___-Chamber of Kensington Palace in the Arabesque style.

Task 6. Use the correct forms of the words in brackets.

1. Neo-Classicism was a complex and (vary) style.

2. Though the term "Neo-Classicism" (origin) only in the late 19th century, the style was (wide) used from the mid-18th century.

3. The new [Europe] style was a reaction to extravagant and (excess) Baroque and Rococo architecture.

4. It was also an attempt to return to the (noble) of Classical models.

5. Some scholars thought Neo-Classicism to be less a style of (invent) and more a style of a unique (interpret) of the old.

6. The Neo-Classical style appeared due to the (develop) of archaeology, social interest in (science) treatises, (intellect) attitude to architecture, and the 18th century Romanticism.

7. (Britain) aristocracy considered Classical architecture to be a perfect (found) for the Empire's official style.

8. (England) town halls, museums, and universities of the 18th – 19th centuries resembled (monument) Greek and Roman temples and palaces.

Task 7. Put the verbs in brackets in the Passive Voice.

1. In Europe, Neo-Classicism [express] as a new philosophical outlook.

2. The Neo-Classical style [see] as architecture of Enlightenment.

3. That period [characterize] by the intellectual attitude to architecture.

4. The Neo-Classical style [manifest] in all arts.

5. Neo-Classicism [develop] due to the extensive archaeological excavation in Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor.

6. The systematic excavation at the ancient cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii [begin] in 1738 and 1748, respectively.

7. Numerous tourists and intellectuals [attract] by the ruins at Paestum in southern Italy and Sicily.

8. Fragments of antique past [collect] and [study] by archaeologists and architects.

9. Treatises by Piranesi [follow] by Wood's "The Ruins of Palmyra" (1753), and by Adam's "The Ruins of Emperor Diocletian's Palace" (1764).

10. During Neo-Classicism, the Chinese, Moorish, Indian, Egyptian, and Gothic styles [imitate].

Task 8. Use suitable prepositions, conjunctions or adverbs from the box to complete the text. Some words are used more than once.

… the 1740's, the centre … international Neo-Classicism was Rome, a gathering place … young talents … all … Europe. Every artist … architect, who played a significant role … the movement, came … the city. William Kent arrived … 1709, Giovanni Piranesi … 1740, Robert Adam … 1754, and Johann Winckelmann … 1755.

The centre … activity was the Academy … Arts, … the winners … the Prix de Rome studied antique culture. The designs produced … the winners were characterized … geometrical organization, Greek … Roman details, use … columns … the interior, … colonnades … the exterior.

The most essential feature was the use … antique forms … a new context. Robert Adam's designs were based … a play … shapes … spaces, which created a sense … movement. … 1800, Sir John Soane (1752–1837), an architect … the Bank … England (1818), developed his unique manner … the use … archaeologically correct Classical details.

The interest … the Greek Revival resulted … the number … important buildings … London. The earliest creations were Covent Garden Theatre (1809), London's first Doric building, … the Ionic British Museum (1847), both … Sir Robert Smirke.

Task 9. Fill in the chart. Speak about the main stages in the development of the Neo-Classical style in Great Britain.

Unit 13

Task.1 Read the text

"THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE:

THE MAINSTREAM OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE"

The International Style, which dominated architecture until the mid-20th century, summed up the best ideas of European and American architects. The term "International Style" appeared in 1932 during the First International Exhibition of Modern Architecture in New York. It represented the mainstream of Modern architecture from the 1920's to the 1960's. The International Style was based on the idea that the 20th century man needed a new kind of architecture. According to the new conception, "volume rather than mass, and regularity rather than axial symmetry" were the chief means of the design. The new style was an attempt to produce functional space due to the contemporary materials. The typical buildings were undecorated reinforced concrete structures of geometrical shapes with white walls, flat roofs, and large windows.

The towering genius of the International Style was Le Corbusier (1887–1966), a writer, painter, architect, and town-planner. He had originated ideas about architecture and city planning long before he began his building practice. Le Corbusier worked out a flexible system of proportions based on a human body and the Golden section. In his famous book "Towards New Architecture" (1927), he put forward the main points of a new design: "a free plan, Pilotis, a freely composed façade, ribbon windows, and a roof garden". He followed these principles while building his most important structure, the Villa Savoye (1931) near Paris. It was an elevated white concrete box open both horizontally and vertically.

In his buildings, Le Corbusier expressed the idea that "architecture is a magnificent play of volumes and masses in light, a great mastery of using basic forms – cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders, and pyramids". Corbusier's influence on Modern architecture was enormous: he built dwelling houses, offices, churches, halls, and Universities; he worked in France as well as abroad; his works were copied around the world; his theories were studied; his books became bestsellers.

And now, we must cross the Atlantic. It was the USA where many European architects came to work in the 1930's. The USA provided the stage for the most brilliant talents in painting, crafts, industrial design, and architecture. Thus, for the first time in history, America took the lead in architectural theory and design.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) was, undoubtedly, one of the greatest personalities of Modern art. He began his practice in Chicago in 1893, and attracted international attention in 1900–1910 for a series of houses in the "prairie style". The houses had low, horizontal shapes that blended well with the landscape. According to Wright's philosophy, a building should "grow from the site". His best-known prairie structures were Robie House (1910) in Illinois, Fallingwater (1936) in Pennsylvania, and Taliesin West (1939) in Arizona.

The "prairie style": panoramic view of Taliesin WestWright's most impressive project for an office building was the Johnson Wax Company (1939) in Wisconsin. The main office was a smooth building of brick and glass. The main interior space was a large windowless room with balconies. A forest of slender but strong concrete columns supported large concrete discs at the ceiling. Soft light entered through glass tubes. Frank Lloyd Wright revolutionized the arrangement of space in a building: he reduced the number of walls to make one room flow into another. Flexible use of the interior space, horizontal outlines of structures, and highly creative use of concrete elements were the hallmarks of Wright's architecture.

Walter Gropius (1883–1969) influenced Modern architecture both as an architect and teacher. In 1919, he founded the Bauhaus, a school of design in Weimar, Germany. The major task of the school was to unite arts and architecture with modern industrial technology. Radical minimalism and geometry of concrete and glass were the most typical features of the Bauhaus architects. The ideas of Gropius spread to the USA in the 1930's, when he was appointed chairman of the Department of Architecture at Harvard University.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969), another influential German architect, was a master of steel and glass design. He had worked in the Bauhaus together with Walter Gropius before they both immigrated to the USA. In America, Mies van der Rohe headed the Architectural Department at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He was especially famous for his elegant skyscrapers of steel frames and curtain walls, built in the second half of the 20th century. His most praised project was the Seagram Building (1958) in New York: an impressive 38-storeyed skyscraper of a high-tech design with bronze panels and grey tinted glass.

The International Style had been popular until the 1960's. In 1966, Robert Venturi (born in 1925), a notable American designer, published a manifesto "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture". He criticized the International Style for the lack of decoration and insisted on the "presence of the past". He wrote: "It is obvious that the International Style could be neither the mainstream nor the whole architecture. The story of architecture has no ending, because architecture is evolutionary as well as revolutionary". After that, architects started out along different paths: Post-Modernism, Brutalism, Constructivism, Neo-Plasticism, Futurism, etc.

Post-Modernism was, perhaps, the most popular movement of the 1990's. Many post-modernists revived historical styles, borrowing ideas from the Renaissance and Neo-Classicism. Architects incorporated arches, columns, domes, vaults, and Classical ornamentation into their designs. This interest in historical styles was accompanied by renovation of old structures. Numerous government agencies protected buildings of architectural value and granted them landmark status.

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