ABSTRACT
The fundamental ‘type’ of the circular shrine for instance, is independent of the function, sometimes complex, which such buildings must fulfill. It was only in the second half of the nineteenth century that an attempt was made to set up a typology based on the order of physical functions. Before modernism, load-bearing walls in the façade had to proportion windows based on vertical forces. The modern method of construction could divert forces away from the façade and down a column grid. The unlimited possibilities for facade design are propelled by the array of accessible materials that are now available in the 21st century, from glass curtain walls to green walls, from rigid patterns to a parametric dynamic pattern, and from mass-produced walls to digitally fabricated custom walls. By borrowing structural methods from civil engineering, some architects pushed the envelope of architectural structures mimicking engineered elements.
