Modern warehouses differ in forms and places, but their main function remains the same. The commercial purpose of warehouses, which consists of constructing the storage of food, makes building warehouses a constantly developing process.
Starting with the 1970s, simple industrial buildings for storage are considered architecture examples. The Citroen Warehouse (1972) was the first to prove that the storage building can be constructed regarding the changing needs of users and giving them aesthetic pleasure from the processes inside.
The Pritzker Prize-winner well-known architect F.O. Gehry has proved that the warehouse can be regarded as a piece of contemporary art if successfully set. The building he has designed, though it was planned as temporary, was so positively acclaimed that it was used as a venue for the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art for some time.
One more example that gives a green line to call warehouse architecture is the Williamsburg warehouse. It is considered a reflection of Egyptian architecture in terms of the requirements of present commercialism. The Williamsburg warehouse is simple and sublimity at the same time; the grandeur of its scale strikes the viewer and makes the Williamsburg warehouse a zest for tourists.
The building of the Williamsburg warehouse was started at the beginning of 1914. It was planned as a building for the grocery business. This function determined the building of piers, railway tracks, and pneumatic tubes in the area of the warehouse. Along with the commercial function that the Williamsburg warehouse performed, the building came out impressive by its form: the windows of the building were grouped in pairs and threes, which helped the architect to create a subtle atmosphere and insistent rhythm. Fenestration with gentle vertical thrust also contributes to the feeling of majesty that the warehouse renders. Isn’t it a piece of architecture? Such European architects as Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius found this type of industrial building as a source of inspiration for European modernism.
The Williamsburg Warehouse is now regarded as a visible representation not only of early twentieth-century engineering but architecture as well.
The examples of warehouses discussed above may be joined according to their correspondence to the features of modern architecture. Namely, they are the following ones:
- Interior walls are arranged freely; the architects do not follow the traditional demands of structural support;
- Graceful columns lift the warehouses building above the ground;
- External curtain walls have a free arrangement of windows and other openings;
- Ribbon windows are preferred.
Of course, we realize that such features common for modern architecture as a flat root used as a garden terrace or bands of glass across the length of a façade are not characteristic for warehouses. Though modern warehouses still lack vast expanses of grass and they are not such massive skyscrapers as one might want, we should not underestimate the warehouses’ architecture value.
Being impressive representatives of modern architecture warehouses may one day substitute the pieces of architectural art whose fame one doesn’t dare to doubt.
Works Cited
Morgan, J. “A Global Financial Architecture?” UN Chronicle 1 (2000):1.
Palmer, M. and Neaverson P. Industry in the Landscape. Routledge, 1994.