“Extreme climate has helped shape modern architecture from its beginnings. Frank Lloyd Wright, well aware of Chicago’s cold winters and steaming summers, incorporated long, wide, horizontal eaves that startled passersby. In summer months, these eaves shut direct sunlight out of the interior of the Frederick C. Robie House but welcomed the low winter sun into the house as it warmed the concrete floor and brick pillars and walls.
The simplicity of uninterrupted geometries where the material’s color and texture provided decorative richness came to define early modern architecture. They impressed young European architects—especially Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius—in their search for the age’s architectural expression. The desert climate provoked similar inventive forms in midcentury Palm Springs. Sunscreens, trellises, visors, covered walkways—a vast catalog of architectural devices passively responding to the desert environment became a key creative motif…”
[Read the full article at dwell.com]