INTRODUCTION

All new inevitably becomes old. Today humanity has an interesting look into the unknown future, at least partially transferred from the dream into reality. Because it is this desire in the art, a new line of high-tech, that is an artistic interpretation of high technology appeared.  

High-tech architecture, also known as Late Modernism or Structural Expressionism, is an architectural style that emerged in the 1970s, incorporating elements of high-tech industry and technology into building design. High-tech architecture appeared as a revamped modernism, an extension of those previous ideas aided by even more advances in technological achievements. This category serves as a bridge between modernism and post-modernism, however there remain grey areas as to where one category ends and the other begins. In the 1980s, high-tech architecture became more difficult to distinguish from post-modern architecture. Many of its themes and ideas were absorbed into the language of the post-modern architectural schools.

Like Brutalism, Structural Expressionist buildings reveal their structure on the outside as well as the inside, but with visual emphasis placed on the internal steel and/or concrete skeletal structure as opposed to exterior concrete walls. In buildings such as the Pompidou Centre, this idea of revealed structure is taken to the extreme, with apparently structural components serving little or no structural role. In this case, the use of "structural" steel is a stylistic or aesthetic matter.

The style's premier practitioners include the British architect Norman Foster, whose work has since earned him knighthood, and Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, known for his organic, skeleton-like designs.

Buildings designed in this style usually consist of a clear glass facade, with the building's network of support beams exposed behind it. Perhaps the most famous and easily recognized building built in this style is I.M. Pei's Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong. The World Trade Center in New York City, although generally considered to be an International Style building, was technically a Structural Expressionist design due to its load-bearing steel exoskeleton.