The influence of regional traditions on the use of wood in works of contemporary American architects

Abstract

The article examines the influence of architectural traditions of historical wooden housing construction on wooden structures created by contemporary American architects in three regions of the United States. Architect Charles Moore and his MLTV architecture studio in San Francisco began using wood as the main building material for houses in the experimental ecological and creative community Sea Ranch in the early 1960s. Charles Moore used wooden structures in buildings and developed a general space-planning design of buildings in a classical modernism style. Architect Peter Forbes from Boston, Massachusetts (New England) used wood following the New England tradition of wooden housing construction dating back to the 17th century. Architects Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany from Miami, Florida (the Deep American South) used the architectural heritage of the American South. On the basis of the southern architectural school of wooden housing construction, which developed under the influence of the hot and humid climate in the 18th-19th centuries, the method of creating small settlements using wood was developed and applied in urban planning. The article concludes that modern American architects consider wood to be a modern building material and use wooden structures in different applications in buildings. Wooden structures are widely used in the regions where original schools of wood construction were created 100 - 300 years ago.