The rapid proliferation of aluminum building products accelerated in the postwar period, partly due to cost but also because of the shift to the growing number of alloys marketed annually. Alcoa’s 1938 product literature stated, “Natural aluminum is striking in appearance yet neutral in effect.” Early storefront systems made with solid copper gave way to aluminum, and by 1937 it was estimated that 75 percent of Kawneer’s product line was aluminum. By the late 1930s the Aluminum Company of American (Alcoa) was producing residential and commercial aluminum windows, which began competing with wood and steel windows and rapidly eclipsed them. Aluminum’s ascendency was swift, as the material became more affordable. These will have to be absorbed.” This was particularly true for aluminum.Īluminum could be cast, forged, and extruded to create countless types of architectural elements. Architect Eero Saarinen observed that “from the miraculous potentials of engineering and science will come new materials, new possibilities and new problems. Lightweight metals saved time, space, and weight. The metals of old, supplemented by the alloys of today, provide the strength, utility and permanence, dignity and beauty to make possible that freedom.” This statement signaled acceptance of the growing impact of aluminum alloys in the building industry by Modern architects in place of more traditional metals, such as bronzes and nickel silver, which had been used widely through the 1930s. In 1947 the frontispiece to the Architectural Metal Handbook, published by the National Association of Ornamental Metal Manufacturers, declared, “Freedom of expression is the cornerstone of progress in architecture. The development to Modern architecture was made possible, in part, through the substitution of lightweight for heavy materials, and the use of metals was one of the keys that made the changes possible. Metals were selected not only because they met specific performance criteria and characteristics but also because they conveyed newness, celebrated industrialization, and even highlighted their specific qualities for poetic effect. Architects in the Modern era selected metals with finishes that produced a wide range of patterns, textures, and colors. Industrial materials and assemblies with a wide array of finishes and standard, known properties became the designer’s palette. The material qualities of building facades, in particular, relied heavily on metals as the relationship between structure and skin evolved in the period after World War II. If concrete and glass were the first two critical material legs of the stool for Modern architecture, metals were the important third leg. Avant-garde architects who subscribed to the tenets of Modernism embraced reinforced concrete and glass to create remarkable new buildings. The twentieth century witnessed an explosion of new materials and assemblies for construction.
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