POST WAR DECADES INTERNATIONAL STYLE
Walter Gropius
Mies Van Der Rohe
Le Corbusier
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- Represented elegance, glamour, functionality
and modernity.
- Its linear symmetry was a distinct departure
from the flowing asymmetrical organic curves of
its predecessor style art nouveau; it embraced
influences from many different styles of the early
twentieth century, including neoclassical,
constructivism, cubism, modernism and
futurism and drew inspiration from
ancient Egyptian and Aztec forms.
-Purely decorative.
The art deco spire of the Chrysler Building in New York, built 1928–1930
City Hall in Buffalo, New York; John Wade with George Dietel, built 1929–1931
- Most significant of its features was
its dependence upon ornaments
and motifs.
-Influenced partly by styles such as
Cubism, Russian Constructivism
and Italian Futurism.
- Uses Symmetry And Repetition. 2 L
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Terracotta sunburst
design above the front
doors of the Eastern
Columbia Building,in
Los Angeles; Claud
Beelman , 1930
- Materials : aluminium, stainless steel ,
lacquer, Bakelite, Chrome and inlaid wood.
- The use of stepped forms and geometric
curves (natural curves of Art Nouveau),
chevron patterns, ziggurat-shapes,
fountains, and the sunburst motif are typical
of Art Deco.
Art deco bevel
sunburst using
natural curves
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COMMON CHARACTERISTICS
•Horizontal orientation
•Rounded edges, corner windows,
and glass brick walls
•Glass block
•Porthole windows
•Smooth exterior wall
surfaces, usually stucco (smooth
plaster finish)
•Flat roof with coping
•Horizontal grooves or lines in walls
Art Moderne or Streamline Moderne was a late type of the Art
Deco design style which emerged during the 1930s.
Its architectural style emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines,
and sometimes nautical elements ,embraced transportation
metaphors for decoration,
Greyhound bus terminal, Cleveland, Ohio
•Corner windows with sash , and as well
as making an unusual and interesting
exterior look,
•Horizontal lines of the building are
emphasized by the banding
•The exterior finish is smooth, clean and
really wonderfully streamlined.
•No extraneous detailing to detract from
the clean lines of the façade.
Hamilton ontario
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Normandie Hotel, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, was inspired by SS Normandie, the ship, and includes the ship's original sign
Lydecker House in Los Angeles, built by Howard Lydecker,
Row housing
•Subdued colors: base colors were typically light earth tones, off-whites, or beiges; and trim colors were typically dark colors (or bright metals) to contrast from the light base. Examples: -The Normandie Hotel - Although Streamline Moderne houses are less common than streamline commercial buildings.The Lydecker House in Los Angeles, built by Howard Lydecker, - elements of the style were frequently used as a variation in post-war row housing in San Francisco.
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• International quality
• Developed by European architects
• Walter Gropius, Ludwig Meis Van Der Rohe, Marcel Breuer,
and Le Corbusier, among others used this style in their early
careers. The Bauhaus School was particularly influential.
• Purposeful critique of and break from the past
• Modular, uniform architecture for the masses
• Architecture for industry, business, and institutions
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.
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• The International Style was striving towards:
- Simplification
- Honesty
- 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)
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CHARACTERISTICS : • Simple ,undecorated , uniform • Concrete , Glass , Steel • Occasionally reveals skeleton frame construction • Exposing its structure • Ribbon windows , Corner windows , Bands of glass • Balance and regularity • Emphasis on horizontality • Flat roof, without ledge • Often with thin, metal mullions and smooth spandrel panels
separating large, single-pane windows • Cantilevered balconies
The typical International Style high-rise usually consists of the following:
• Square and rectangular foot prints • Simple cubic “extruded rectangle” form • Windows running in broken horizontal rows forming a grid • All façade angles are 90 degree
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Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903-1987)
Philip Cortelyou Johnson (1906-2005)
Major architectural style in Europe & USA
Began in the 1920‘s – 1930‘2 (1980‘s)
Term coined by Henry Russell Hitchcock and Phillip Johnson
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PHILIP JOHNSON
•Philip Johnson born in 1906,in Cleveland ,
Ohio
•After graduating from high school he attended
Harward college , where he studied classics.
•At the age of 26 he became the director of
museum of modern art‘s new architecture
department
•Founder of influential department of
architecture and design at Moma. As co-author
with Henry Russell Hitchcock of Moma
exhibition catalog ―the international style
:architecture since 1922‖
According to Philip Johnson ‗crutches‘ by which architects evade their
real responsibilities are-
• History – i.e. Justifying elements which are earlier used.
• Utility- i.e. If utility of a building overcomes artistic inventions ,then it
is merely an assemblage of useful parts.
PHILOSOPHIES :
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• One of the world's most beautiful yet least functional houses
• Transparent open-plan frame structure which was his own residence.
• Is heavily influenced by mies' farnsworth house
• Bath in brick cylinder.
• Includes outdoor sculpture and a separate blank-walled brick guest
house
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GLASS HOUSE ,NEW CANAAN (1949)
•It was a building really
expressing many concerns of
classic design, from the elevated
placement of an object in a
space, to its serene proportion,
general overall symmetry, and
combining of a balance of
elements .
•Spatial divisions in the
glass building are
achieved by a brick
cylinder containing a
bathroom, and by low
walnut cabinets —one of
them containing kitchen
equipment.
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MASTER ARCHITECTS :
Le Corbusier (France)
Ludwig Mies van Rohe
(Germany)
Walter Gropius
(Germany)
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WALTER GROPIUS
The German-American architect, educator, and
designer Walter Gropius (1883-1969) was
director of Bauhaus in Germany from 1919 to
1928 and occupied the chair of architecture at
the Harvard University Graduate School of
Design from 1938 to 1952.
•Use of machine and modern prefabrication.
•Unitation of the various arts of painting, architecture, theatre,
photography, weaving, typography, etc., into the design.
•Various functional techniques should be used:
Simpicity , Symmetry , Angularity , Abstraction , Consistency , Unity
,Organization ,Economy ,Subtlety ,Continuity ,Regularity ,Sharpness
,Monochomaticity.
•His goal was to raise the level of product design by combining art
and industry.
PHILOSOPHIES
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•Bauhaus is a German
expression meaning "house for
building."
•Bauhaus architects rejected
"bourgeois" details such as
cornices, eaves and decorative
details.
•Use principles of Classical
architecture in their most pure
form: without ornamentation of
any kind.
•It shuns ornamentation and favours functionality .
• Flat roofs, smooth facades and cubic shapes.
• Floor plans are open and furniture is functional.
The Bauhaus school disbanded when the Nazis rose to power.
Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and other Bauhaus leaders
migrated to the United States. The term International Style was
applied to the American form of Bauhaus architecture.
•The name came from the book The International Style by historian
and critic Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Architect Philip Johnson. 2 LE
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• In 1925 Walter Gropius designed his
house at Dessau , according to his
needs, and areas were selected
according to function. In his own house
he used steel frames and glass.
•maximum openings for maximum
advantage of daylighting , nature‘s
beauty and flow of space.
• Its detailing keeps strongly to the
principles of the Bauhaus architecture •Brick and
cement for
external treatment
but for internal
treatment
•Gropius used all
new materials
which give it an
extraordinary
beauty inside as
well as outside. 2 L
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GROPIUS HOUSE
• It used elements that later characterized the International Style.
• Glass curtain walls between expressed steel supports, corners left
free of solid masonry, and simple rectangular massing with a flat roof.
• The front facade was windowless and clad with limestone resembling
brick .
• Most important was architecture of the administration block with its
transparent staircase, the glass walled offices with continuous round
the corners, and the roof terraces.
•The plan of the Cologne building was axially designed in the Beaux-Arts
tradition, but the major influence was predominantly that of Frank Lloyd
Wright.
• Gropius and Meyer were
influenced by Wright's style
especially in the horizontality
and the wide overhanging eaves,
but also in the symmetry, the
corner pavilions, and the whole
spirit of Wright's concept.
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FAGUS FACTORY
MIES VAN DER ROHE
PHILOSOPHIES …
•Beauty is splendour of truth
•Structure & Bauknst
•Skin and bone concept •Material and technology
Fransworth house
Fransworth house
Entrance of Seagram Building
Crown hall
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•God is in the detail
•Universality
•Less is more
•The classical serenity of building in its surroundings
CURTAIN TRACK DETAILS
Barcelona pavilion
Barcelona pavilion
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• In the late 1940s, Mies Vander Rohe continued to develop
his steel-and-glass vocabulary.
• Its interior, a single room, is subdivided by partitions
and completely enclosed in glass.
Construction System : Steel frame with glass
• The glass pavilion is raised six feet above a floodplain next to
the Fox River, surrounded by forest and rural prairies.
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FRANSWORTH HOUSE
• No partitions touch the
surrounding all-glass
enclosure. Without solid
exterior walls, full-height
draperies on a perimeter track
allow freedom to provide full
or partial privacy when and
where desired
• A wood-panelled fireplace is positioned within the open space to
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FRANSWORTH HOUSE
Construction System : Steel Frame With
Glass And Polished
Stone
Concept: The Commissioner,
Georg von Schnitzler said it
should give "voice to the
spirit of a new era". This
concept was carried out with
the realization of the "free
plan" and the "floating
room
Planning : This lack of
accommodation enabled
Mies to treat the Pavilion as
a continuous space; blurring
inside and outside
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BARCELONA PAVILION
•The floor slabs of the pavilion
project out and over the pool
once again connecting inside
and out.
•Another unique feature of this
building is the exotic materials
Mies chooses to use.
•Plates of high-grade stone
materials like veneers of Tinos
verde antico marble and
golden onyx as well as tinted
glass of grey, green, white, as
well as translucent glass,
perform exclusively as spatial
dividers.
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SEAGRAM BUILDING
•Style's characteristic traits was
to express or articulate the
structure of buildings
externally .
•Style that argued that the
functional utility of the building‘s
structural elements when made
visible, could supplant a formal
decorative articulation; and
more honestly converse with
the public, than any system of applied ornamentation.
Seagram Building
New York, NY, 1956-58, L. Mies
van der Rohe & P. Johnson 2 LE
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•Method of construction using an interior reinforced concrete
shell to support a larger non-structural edifice has since
become commonplace
The interior was designed to assure cohesion with the external
features, repeated in the glass and bronze
WINDOW BLINDS: To reduce this disproportionate
appearance, Mies specified window blinds which only operated
in three positions – fully open, halfway open/closed, or fully
closed.
• Built of a steel frame, from which
non-structural glass walls were
hung.
• Used non-structural bronze-toned
I-beams to suggest structure visible
from the outside of the building, and
run vertically, like mullions, surrounding the large glass windows .
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Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe worked
under Bruno Paul, architect and
furniture designer in Berlin.
Mies Van Der Rohe furniture is
influenced by a design approach
based on advanced structural
techniques and Prussian
Classicism.
The Barcelona Chairs create
ambience of sophistication and
sport clean lines and smooth
finishes.
A perfect mix of metal and soft
leather, Mies Van Der Rohe
furniture includes smart pieces like
Mies van der Rohe Cantilever Chair
with no arms, Barcelona Ottoman,
Mies van der Rohe Barcelona Day
Bed and Barcelona Chair etc.
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AS A FURNITURE DESIGNER
LE CORBUSIER
• Le Corbusier is the most influential, most admired, and most
maligned architect of the twentieth century.
• Through his writing and his buildings, he is the main player in the
Modernist story, his visions of homes and cities as innovative as
they are influential.
• Many of his ideas on urban living became the blueprint for Post-
war reconstruction, and the many failures of his would-be
imitators led to Le Corbusier being blamed for the problems of
western cities in the 1960s and 1970s.
Le Corbusier …is one of the most
imaginative architect of the last century
to whom we owe the revolutionary,
structural change of modern
architecture.
•Le Corbusier dominated twentieth-
century architecture in much the
same way that Picasso dominated
painting.
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Postmodernism was the return to
classical architecture which at the time
was very unpopular with many critics
and underwent severe persecution.
This was the
architects way of
rationalizing his
unique style of
housing. Much of his
radical design was
centered on the
basic shape and form of the cube.
Le Corbusier was deeply involved in the
purist movement which focused on seeing
objects in the world and rendering them
exactly as they appear in their purest forms.
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AS A PURIST
A New Architecture finally formulated in 1926 included….. 1) Supports – The replacement of
supporting walls by a grid of reinforced concrete columns that bears the load of the structure is the basis of the new aesthetic.
2) The free designing of the ground plan – The absence of supporting walls means that the house is unrestrained in its internal usage.
3) The free design of facade – By
separating the exterior of the building form its structural function the façade becomes free.
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5 points towards architecture
4) The long horizontal sliding window
The horizontal window – The façade can be cut along its entire length to
allow rooms to be lit equally. 5) Roof gardens
The flat roof can be utilization for a domestic purpose while also
providing essential protection the concrete roof.
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•One of the most famous houses of
the modern movement in
architecture, the Villa Savoye is a
masterpiece of Le Corbusier's purist
design.
• It is perhaps the best example of
LeCorbusier's goal to create a
house which would be a "machine
a habitat," a machine for living
(in).
• Located in a suburb near Paris,
the house is as beautiful and
functional as a machine.
Spiral staicase 3d view
Glass facade Pilotis (supporting column)
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VILLA SAVOYE (1920-30)
Roof garden
Horizontal window
•"Pilotis" -- the house is raised on stilts .
•No historical ornament .
•A very open interior plan .
•Built-in furniture .
•Abstract sculptural design .
•Roof garden.
•Pure color -- white on the outside, a color
with associations of newness, purity,
simplicity, and health and planes of subtle
color in the interior living areas
•Dynamic , non-traditional transitions
between floors -- spiral staircases and
ramps.
•Ribbon windows (echoing industrial
architecture, but also providing openness
and light) .
Free plan
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•The church is simple—an oblong nave,
two side entrances, an axial main altar,
and three chapels beneath towers—as
is its structure, with rough masonry
walls faced with whitewashed Gummite
(sprayed concrete) and a roof of
contrasting baton brut.
•Buttress-shaped south wall - and the
vast shell of the concrete roof give the
building a massive, sculptural form.
•Small, brightly painted and apparently
irregular windows punched in these
thick walls give a dim but exciting light
within the cool building .
Vertical triangular
frames 2 L
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NOTRE DAME DU HAUT
•In his creative work …...aesthetic is one
of the focal points.
•Most of Le Corbusier's furniture
designs were developed with the aim of
exploring this concept in creative
collaboration with Pierre Jeanneret and
Charlotte Perriand, designers who
shared his interest in the research for
distinctive looks related to a concept of
new functionalism.
•In 1928 the team introduced a series of
innovative metal furniture which
immediately became classic.
•During his lifetime, Le Corbusier
licensed Heidi Weber with two contracts
in 1959 and 1963 for the production and
sales of four different chairs designs,
which he officially declared as his own.
Resting chair
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LE CORBUSIER ..THE FURNITURE DESIGNER
QUOTATIONS…. "You employ stone, wood, and concrete, and with
these materials you build houses and palaces: that
is construction, Ingenuity is at work.
"Space and light and order. Those are the things
that men need just as much as they need bread or
a place to sleep."
"The house is a machine for living in."
"Modern life demands, and is waiting for, a new
kind of plan, both for the house and the city."
"The 'Styles' are a lie."
―Architecture or revolution.
Revolution can be avoided."
CORBUSIER AS….. Lamp designer Painter
Modular
Women in window 2 LE
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REFERENCES …
Internet
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Walter_Gropius.aspx
www.answers.com › ... › Britannica Concise
http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/biographies/mainbiograp
hies/g/gropiuswalter/1.html
www.walter-gropius.com
www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Bauhaus.html
www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267/gropius.html
Wikipedia.com
Greatbuildings.com
Designcenter.com
Architectbiography.com
Archinomy.com
Simplycharly.com
Designdictionary.com
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