High-tech architecture

To me, the word “ High-tech “ sounds as something futuristic,  something imposible to understand and recreate, an element incompatible with the world as I know it know now.

The interesting thing is that, high-tech architecture is just an overwhelming word. It doesn’t convey a new element, it doesn’t belong to the far away future, but it is rather something that has been among us for a while. The word itself is the one creating different expectation about the reality, without letting you see beyond it. 

In other words, as technology has greatly evolved, new materials and modern equipment started to be used in the construction industry. Thus was born a new architectural design developed using advanced technology, known as high-tech.

High-tech architecture means exploting to the maximum the relationship between engineering, construction and other aspects such as the manipulation of space. It is marked by a preference for lightweight materials and sheer surfaces, a readiness to adopt new techniques from engineering and other technologies, and the celebratory display of a building’s construction and service. Thus, what are the key elements that you have to look around you in order to find the representation of high-tech architecture? Well, shortly, is all about: steel and a smooth, impervious skin (often of glass) ,flexibility to create internal service zones, rather than rooms or sequences of rooms, expressed construction, the colours used for pipe-work and services, lightweight materials, blinds, solar cells ( which become a modern ornament, especially when assembled together in a repetitive way ) So arises the so-called intelligent building, in which installations and construction are designed as an integral whole.

The High-Tech architecture style is not a recent development; it came into being as far back as the end of the 1960s and also influenced industrial design and fashion with its use of new materials from aviation and astronautics. High-Tech structures utilized metals, wavy and perforated surfaces and visible strengthening cables.

First developed in the decade of the twentieth century 70’s until today, in this current style prominent architects are Norman Foster, SOM, Richard Rodgers, Renzo Piano and Jean Nouvel, among others. Among this ones, Norman Foster and Richard Rogers were the key architects who brought about these changes and implemented them from the 1970s. For this reason, some works of postmodern style, deconstructivism, green architecture and digital architecture or CAD, as shown in this directory, you could very well live together in this century.

Directory of engineering and architectural style High-tech (High technology), is also known as Late modernism. This important movement, which took the base of modern architecture, relied on innovation and technology and was one-time bridge between modernism and postmodernism. Structural Expressionist architecture is the root of High-tech Architecture Style. The structure of the buildings in the style of High-tech Architecture Style  are exposed, treated as an ornament at the same time. At this point, this architecture is close to postmodernism.

For me personally, after I started to gather more information about high-tech architecture, I remembered also about the futuristic movement and its characteristics. Thus, Futurism is actually a sketch, a cornerstone in the later development of high-tech buildings. It’s all about focusing on the future, using new materials ( shiny metals ), taking advantage od the speed, exploiting genuine techniques of construction, using different concepts and way of designing both interior and exterior, modern technology that doesn’t hide everything that a building has to offer behind a pleasing façade, but is completely opening to the future. It means a building that is ready to evolve in order to increase the quality of fulfilling humans’ needs.

Some of the most representative and famous examples of High-tech Architecture Style:

·       Town hall in London, standing next to Tower Bridge,

·       London’s Millennium Dome and Wembley Stadium,

·       Office building Lloyd’s in London Olympic Stadium and the Allianz Arena in Munich,

·       the Eiffel Tower and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris,

·       HSBC headquarter in Hong Kong,

·       Zizkov Television Tower in Prague,

·       Hotel Arts Skidmore and the Torre Agbar in Barcelona,

·       the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing,

·       Hearst Tower in New York, the Beetham Tower in Manchester,

·       John Hancock Center in Chicago, Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower in Tokyo.

All in all, high-tech Architecture Style wants to integrate the technical equipment of the building in its structure. This strengthens the impact of the object in a High-tech Architecture Style, both in terms of functional and visual matter. Thus, next time when you hear “ high-tech “ you will no longer project its meaning to the future, but you would rather take a look around and see it reflected everywhere.