The International Style

• Major architectural style in Europe & USA

• Began in the 1920’s – 1930’2 (1980’s)

• Term coined by Henry Russell Hitchcock and Phillip Johnson

Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903-1987)

Philip Cortelyou Johnson (1906-2005)

The most important figures

“The big three”Le Corbusier (France)

Ludwig Mies van Rohe (Germany) Walter Gropius (Germany)

Nazi’s rejected the modern architecture forcing an entire generation of architects out of Europe.

Mies fled to the USA in 1936 extending his influence and promoting Bauhaus which later became the primary source of architectural modernism.

The International Style became the dominant approach for decades.

The International Style was striving towards:

“Simplification, Honesty and Clarification”

The ideals of the style can be summed up in four slogans:

“ornament is a crime” “truth to materials”

“form follows function” “machines for living” (Le Corbusier)

Identifying features/characteristicsModern structural principles and material (commercial and institutional

buildings rather than housing)

• Concrete • Glass • Steel (most common)• Occasionally reveals skeleton frame construction• Exposing its structure • Rejected non-essential decoration• Ribbon windows • Corner windows• Bands of glass• Balance and regularity • Flat roof, without ledge• Often with thin, metal mullions and smooth spandrel

panels separating large, single-pane windows

The typical International Style high-rise usually consists of the following:

1. Square or rectangular footprint

2. Simple cubic "extruded rectangle" form

3. Windows running in broken horizontal rows forming a grid

4. All facade angles are 90 degrees

The most famous manifestations include:

United Nations Headquarters

• Completed 1952• New York, NY• Le Corbusier

 

Seagram Building

• Completed 1957• New York, NY (park

avenue)• Ludwig Mies van

Der Rohe (and Phillip Johnson)  

Access to new building technologies like reinforced concrete , and steel framework for building meant that designers could seek a whole new approach to what is known as the plan or the layout of the interiors of buildings.

The enormous strength of these new materials opened new worlds for designers that were unheard of in building before.

Glass Palace (the Netherlands – Frits Peutz) 1935

Ludwig Mies Van der Rohewig

Chicago, Illinois 1949

Ludwig Mies Van der RohewigChicago, Illinois 1973

Gropius House

Walter Gropius

The Farnsworth House

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

International Style glass house

Philip Johnson 1949