Industrial Revolution and Architecture essays

Industrial Revolution and Architecture essays Siegfried Giedion's book about the effects of the Industrial Revolution upon humanity's personal and social space, and the discipline of architecture as a whole, is entitled Mechanization Takes Command. In his title, Giedion suggests that human beings' intimate surroundings were completely permeated and transmuted by the forces of mechanization, as generated by the mass industrialization of production and society. Ironically, the forces of humanity created the machine. The machine was supposed to make human life easier. But instead, human life and human speed has become subordinate to the pace and confining discipline of the machine-based modalities of production. In fact, Gideon believes that because mechanization sprang entirely from the mind of man, it is more dangerous and less easily controlled than natural forces since it reacts on the senses and the mind of its creator in a way that natural forces do not. The equilibrium of the human body, which requires a certain state of nature to function at its best is instead subjected to machinesfor instance, workers must put on extra clothes to keep warm in offices that are kept cool for the computer machinery present. Or, they are subjected to the heat of the assembly line, working in the dark to produce far more goods then they need in huge factories. Spaces to produce grow larger and less decorated, as machines need more room and cannot take delight in art. Spaces that human beings occupy grow smaller as they are piled into apartments, to live in small and enclosed cities, to serve machines, and human beings are denied the time and leisure to produce works of beauty that are individual, to add delight to their increasingly small surroundings. Even amenities, such as ornate dressings' to rooms and clothing are now purchased from mass-producing factories, rather than made by the individ...