A Complex Modernity:Morphosis’ San Francisco Federal Building
Among the many concerns of contemporary urban architecture is the challenge of adding complexity to a building’s program.  Today, contemporary architects face the difficult task of making their buildings respond to what they perceive to be a perse, incomprehensible, ever-changing world. They aim to reimagine what a building is expected to be, in terms of its material form, its practical function within an urban space, its interior conditions and the interrelation between the three. “The architecture of the contemporary city,” writes Sanford Kwinter, a leading architectural theorist, “comprises elements—social, economic, biological, and spatial—that are mutually constituted, an unfolding of insides and outsides, components in an immense global material and immaterial fluid. By introducing layers of complexity to all aspects of their designs, contemporary architects are centrally engaged in re-constructing expectations about buildings and their approach to habitability and relationship to urban space. At the same time, many contemporary architects work to break open our assumptions about buildings, in all their material and immaterial qualities, they are still very much working within and against the path set by Modernist architects.  As history is continuous, not fragmented, many contemporary architects strive to achieve added complexity, but they do so within the dictums of Modernism.  Taking the traditions of Modernist architecture and making them more responsive and idiosyncratic, less simplified and naïve, contemporary architects attempt a delicate, ideal compromise between modernism and complexity. The San Francisco Federal Building, completed in 2007 and designed by Thom Mayne, represents a recent and most remarkable achievement of this ideal.  What makes it even more remarkable is that the United States federal government commissioned it.7677
1.A Brief Description of the San Francisco Federal Building
Located in the South-of-Market district on Seventh Avenue and Mission Street in San Francisco, the office building houses approximately 1500 workers and cost $144 million to build.  The 600,000-square-foot project is actually a hybrid two-building set. The tower houses workers who do not often interact with the public, while departments that do, such as social services and the passport offices, are in the four-story building. In 2000, the General Services Administration (GSA), a branch of the federal government, awarded the commission to the Los Angeles-based firm, Morphosis,  led by principal architect Thom Mayne.  
The structure defies our expectations of a federal building – it couldn’t befurther away from America’s neoclassical past. Furthermore, my impression of recent federal architecture, which will likely resonate with most Americans, is drab,Modernist style buildings.  Although federal buildings are paid for by and serve the public, no one in their right mind would willingly spend leisure time in most of these more recent federal buildings scattered across the U.S. landscape.  This building represents a recent change in the federal building program initiated in the 1990’s.  Over the past two decades, the federal government has been erecting impressive, thoughtful buildings that rival any art museum or cultural center, the building types that are more common recipients of innovative design.  These newer buildings are in line with contemporary ideas in architecture that encourage complexity, sensitivity, and artistic expression.
2.Modernist Architecture
The Modern Movement began as an intelligent and complex program of architecture, but eventually turned into what was labeled from 1932, in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, as the International Modern Style.  The movement began to cohere in early twentieth century in Europe after World War I.  Originally, Modernist architects from the De Stijl group in the Netherlands and the Bauhaus group in Germany spoke strongly about meeting the needs of its users and addressing social problems; their social goals preceded their aesthetic goals, and they set public housing as the highest priority.  Modernist architects represented their avant-garde aesthetic as a vehicle of social welfare.   现代主义建筑英文文献和中文翻译:http://www.751com.cn/fanyi/lunwen_5717.html