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

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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

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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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