| International Style architecture | |
|---|---|
 Lovell House in Los Angeles (1927–29), byRichard Neutra  Villa Savoye in Paris (1928–31), byLe Corbusier  Equitable Building in Atlanta (1966–68), bySkidmore, Owings & Merrill   Seagram Building in New York City (1955–58), byMies van der Rohe  Paimio Sanatorium in Finland, (1929–1930) byAlvar Aalto  Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta (1961-1978), byFriedrich Silaban | |
 Additional media | |
| Years active | 1920s–1970s |
| Location | Worldwide |
| Major figures | Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,Jacobus Oud,Le Corbusier,Richard Neutra andPhilip Johnson.[1] |
TheInternational Style is a majorarchitectural style and movement that began inwestern Europe in the 1920s and dominatedmodern architecture until the 1970s.[2][3] It is defined by strict adherence tofunctional andutilitariandesigns andconstruction methods, typically expressed throughminimalism.[3][4] The style is characterized bymodular andrectilinear forms,flat surfaces devoid of ornamentation and decoration, open and airy interiors that blend with the exterior, and the use of glass, steel, and concrete.[5][6]
The International Style is sometimes calledrationalist architecture and themodern movement,[2][7][8][9] although the former is mostly used in English to refer specifically to eitherItalian rationalism or the style that developed in 1920s Europe more broadly.[10][11] Incontinental Europe, this and related styles are variably calledFunctionalism,Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Objectivity"),De Stijl ("The Style"), andRationalism, all of which are contemporaneous movements and styles that share similar principles, origins, and proponents.[12]
Rooted in themodernism movement,[6] the International Style is closely related tomodern architecture and likewise reflects several intersecting developments in culture, politics, and technology in the early 20th century.[6] After being brought to the United States by European architects in the 1930s, it quickly became an "unofficial" North American style, particularly after World War II.[6] The International Style reached its height in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was widely adopted worldwide for its practicality and as a symbol of industry, progress, and modernity. The style remained the prevailing design philosophy for urban development and reconstruction into the 1970s, especially in theWestern world.[5]
The International Style was one of the first architectural movements to receive critical renown and global popularity.[6] Regarded as the high point of modernist architecture, it is sometimes described as the "architecture of the modern movement" and credited with "single-handedly transforming the skylines of every major city in the world with its simple cubic forms".[6][13] The International Style's emphasis on transcending historical and cultural influences, while favoring utility and mass-production methods, made it uniquely versatile in its application; the style was ubiquitous in a wide range of purposes, ranging fromsocial housing and governmental buildings tocorporate parks andskyscrapers.
Nevertheless, these same qualities provoked negative reactions against the style as monotonous, austere, and incongruent with existing landscapes; these critiques are conveyed through various movements such aspostmodernism,new classical architecture, anddeconstructivism.[12]
Postmodern architecture was developed in the 1960s in reaction to the International Style, becoming dominant in the 1980s and 1990s.
The term "International Style" was first used in 1932 by the historianHenry-Russell Hitchcock and architectPhilip Johnson to describe a movement among European architects in the 1920s that was distinguished by three key design principles: (1) "Architecture as volume – thin planes or surfaces create the building's form, as opposed to a solid mass"; (2) "Regularity in the facade, as opposed to building symmetry"; and (3) "No applied ornament".[14]
International style is an ambiguous term; the unity and integrity of this direction is deceptive. Its formal features were revealed differently in different countries. Despite the unconditional commonality, the International Style has never been a single phenomenon.[15] However, International Stylearchitecture demonstrates a unity of approach and general principles: lightweight structures, skeletal frames, new materials, a modular system, an open plan, and the use of simple geometric shapes.
The problem of the International Style is that it is not obvious what type of material the term should be applied to: at the same time, there are key monuments of the 20th century (Le Corbusier'sVilla Savoye; Wright'sFallingwater House) and mass-produced architectural products of their time.[16] Here it is appropriate to talk about the use of recognizable formal techniques and the creation of a standard architectural product, rather than iconic objects.
Hitchcock and Johnson's 1932 MoMA exhibition catalog identified three principles of the style: volume of internal space (as opposed to mass and solidity), flexibility and regularity (liberation from classical symmetry). and the expulsion of applied ornamentation ('artificial accents').[17]
Common characteristics of the International Style include: a radical simplification of form, a rejection of superfluous ornamentation, bold repetition and embracement of sleek glass, steel and efficient concrete as preferred materials. Accents were found to be suitably derived from natural design irregularities, such as the position of doors and fire escapes, stair towers, ventilators and even electric signs.[17]
Further, the transparency of buildings, construction (called the honest expression of structure), and acceptance of industrialized mass-production techniques contributed to the International Style's design philosophy. Finally, themachine aesthetic, and logical design decisions leading to support building function were used by the International Style architect to create buildings reaching beyondhistoricism. The ideals of the style are commonly summed up in three slogans:ornament is a crime,truth to materials,form follows function; andLe Corbusier's description: "A house is a machine to live in".[18][19]
International Style is sometimes understood as a general term associated with such architectural phenomena asBrutalist architecture,constructivism,functionalism, andrationalism.
Phenomena similar in nature also existed in other artistic fields, for example in graphics, such as theInternational Typographic Style andSwiss Style.[20][21]
TheGetty Research Institute defines it as "the style of architecture that emerged in The Netherlands, France, and Germany afterWorld War I and spread throughout the world, becoming the dominant architectural style until the 1970s. The style is characterized by an emphasis on volume over mass, the use of lightweight, mass-produced, industrial materials, rejection of all ornament and colour, repetitivemodular forms, and the use of flat surfaces, typically alternating with areas of glass."[22] Some researchers consider the International Style as one of the attempts to create an ideal and utilitarian form.[16]
Around the start of the 20th century, a number of architects around the world began developing new architectural solutions to integrate traditional precedents with new social demands and technological possibilities. The work ofVictor Horta andHenry van de Velde inBrussels,Antoni Gaudí inBarcelona,Otto Wagner inVienna andCharles Rennie Mackintosh inGlasgow, among many others, can be seen as a common struggle between old and new. These architects were not considered part of the International Style because they practiced in an "individualistic manner" and seen as the last representatives ofRomanticism.
The International Style can be traced to buildings designed by a small group of modernists, the major figures of which includeLudwig Mies van der Rohe,Jacobus Oud,Le Corbusier,Richard Neutra andPhilip Johnson.[1]
The founder of theBauhaus school,Walter Gropius, along with prominent Bauhaus instructor, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, became known for steel frame structures employing glass curtain walls. One of the world's earliest modern buildings where this can be seen is a shoe factory designed by Gropius in 1911 inAlfeld, Germany, called theFagus Works building. The first building built entirely on Bauhaus design principles was the concrete and steelHaus am Horn, built in 1923 inWeimar, Germany, designed byGeorg Muche.[23] The Gropius-designed Bauhaus school building inDessau, built 1925–26 and theHarvard Graduate Center (Cambridge, Massachusetts; 1949–50) also known as the Gropius Complex, exhibit clean lines[24] and a "concern for uncluttered interior spaces".[1]
Marcel Breuer, a recognized leader inBéton Brut (Brutalist) architecture and notable alumnus of the Bauhaus,[25] who also pioneered the use of plywood and tubular steel in furniture design,[26] and who after leaving the Bauhaus would later teach alongside Gropius at Harvard, is as well an important contributor to Modernism and the International Style.[27]
Prior to use of the term 'International Style', some American architects—such asLouis Sullivan,Frank Lloyd Wright, andIrving Gill—exemplified qualities of simplification, honesty and clarity.[28]Frank Lloyd Wright'sWasmuth Portfolio had been exhibited in Europe and influenced the work of European modernists, and his travels there probably influenced his own work, although he refused to be categorized with them. His buildings of the 1920s and 1930s clearly showed a change in the style of the architect, but in a different direction than the International Style.[28]
In Europe the modern movement in architecture had been calledFunctionalism or Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity),L'Esprit Nouveau, or simplyModernism and was very much concerned with the coming together of a new architectural form and social reform, creating a more open and transparent society.[29]
The "International Style", as defined by Hitchcock and Johnson, had developed in 1920s Western Europe, shaped by the activities of the DutchDe Stijl movement,Le Corbusier, and theDeutscher Werkbund and theBauhaus. Le Corbusier had embracedTaylorist andFordist strategies adopted from American industrial models in order to reorganize society. He contributed to a new journal calledL'Esprit Nouveau that advocated the use of modern industrial techniques and strategies to create a higher standard of living on all socio-economic levels. In 1927, one of the first and most defining manifestations of the International Style was theWeissenhof Estate inStuttgart, overseen by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It was enormously popular, with thousands of daily visitors.[30][31]
The exhibitionModern Architecture: International Exhibition ran from February 9 to March 23, 1932, at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), in theHeckscher Building at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in New York.[32] Beyond a foyer and office, the exhibition was divided into six rooms: the "Modern Architects" section began in the entrance room, featuring a model of William Lescaze's Chrystie-Forsyth Street Housing Development in New York. From there visitors moved to the centrally placed Room A, featuring a model of a mid-rise housing development forEvanston, Illinois, by Chicago architect brothersMonroe Bengt Bowman andIrving Bowman,[33] as well as a model and photos of Walter Gropius's Bauhaus building in Dessau. In the largest exhibition space, Room C, were works by Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe,J. J. P. Oud and Frank Lloyd Wright (including a project for a house on the Mesa in Denver, 1932). Room B was a section titled "Housing", presenting "the need for a new domestic environment" as it had been identified by historian and criticLewis Mumford. In Room D were works by Raymond Hood (including "Apartment Tower in the Country" and theMcGraw-Hill Building) and Richard Neutra. In Room E was a section titled "The extent of modern architecture", added at the last minute,[34] which included the works of thirty-seven modern architects from fifteen countries who were said to be influenced by the works of Europeans of the 1920s. Among these works was shown Alvar Aalto's Turun Sanomat newspaper offices building inTurku, Finland.
After a six-week run in New York City, the exhibition then toured the US – the first such "traveling-exhibition" of architecture in the US – for six years.[35]
MoMA directorAlfred H. Barr hired architectural historian and criticHenry-Russell Hitchcock andPhilip Johnson[34] to curate the museum's first architectural exhibition. The three of them toured Europe together in 1929 and had also discussed Hitchcock's book about modern art. By December 1930, the first written proposal for an exhibition of the "new architecture" was set down, yet the first draft of the book was not complete until some months later.
The 1932 exhibition led to two publications by Hitchcock and Johnson:
Previous to the 1932 exhibition and book, Hitchcock had concerned himself with the themes of modern architecture in his 1929 bookModern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration.
According toTerence Riley: "Ironically the (exhibition) catalogue, and to some extent, the bookThe International Style, published at the same time of the exhibition, have supplanted the actual historical event."[37]
The following architects and buildings were selected by Hitchcock and Johnson for display at the exhibitionModern Architecture: International Exhibition:
.jpg)
.jpg)
The exhibition excluded other contemporary styles that were exploring the boundaries of architecture at the time, including:Art Deco; German Expressionism, for instance the works ofHermann Finsterlin; and theorganicist movement, popularized in the work ofAntoni Gaudí. As a result of the 1932 exhibition, the principles of the International Style were endorsed, while other styles were classed less significant.
In 1922, the competition for theTribune Tower and its famoussecond-place entry by Eliel Saarinen gave some indication of what was to come, though these works would not have been accepted by Hitchcock and Johnson as representing the "International Style". Similarly, Johnson, writing about Joseph Urban's recently completed New School for Social Research in New York, stated: "In the New School we have an anomaly of a building supposed to be in a style of architecture based on the development of the plan from function and facade from plan but which is a formally and pretentiously conceived as a Renaissance palace. Urban's admiration for the New Style is more complete than his understanding."[34]
California architectRudolph Schindler's work was not a part of the exhibit, though Schindler had pleaded with Hitchcock and Johnson to be included.[38] Then, "[f]or more than 20 years, Schindler had intermittently launched a series of spirited, cantankerous exchanges with the museum."[39]
| Architect | Building | Location | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Johannes Duiker and Bernard Bijvoet | Zonnestraal Sanatorium |  Hilversum, Netherlands | 1926–1928 |
| Robert Mallet-Stevens | houses on Rue Mallet-Stevens |  Paris, France | 1927 |
| Villa Cavrois | Croix, France | 1929 | |
| Eileen Gray | E-1027 | Cap Martin, France | 1929 |
| Alejandro Bustillo | House ofVictoria Ocampo |  Buenos Aires, Argentina | 1929 |
| Alvar Aalto | Paimio Sanatorium |  Turku, Finland | 1930 |
| Leendert van der Vlugt | Van Nelle Factory | Rotterdam, Netherlands | 1926–1930 |
| Joseph Emberton | Royal Corinthian Yacht Club |  Essex, England | 1931 |
The gradual rise of theNazi regime in Weimar Germany in the 1930s, and the Nazis' rejection of modern architecture, meant that an entire generation of avant-gardist architects, many of them Jews, were forced out of continental Europe. Some, such as Mendelsohn, found shelter in England, while a considerable number of the Jewish architects made their way toPalestine, and others to the US. However, American anti-Communist politics after the war and Philip Johnson's influential rejection offunctionalism have tended to mask the fact that many of the important architects, including contributors to the original Weissenhof project, fled to theSoviet Union. This group also tended to be far more concerned with functionalism and its social agenda.Bruno Taut,Mart Stam, the second Bauhaus directorHannes Meyer,Ernst May and other important figures of the International Style went to the Soviet Union in 1930 to undertake huge, ambitious, idealistic urban planning projects, building entire cities from scratch. In 1936, when Stalin ordered them out of the country, many of these architects became stateless and sought refuge elsewhere; for example, Ernst May moved to Kenya.[40]
TheWhite City ofTel Aviv is a collection of over 4,000 buildings built in the International Style in the 1930s. Many Jewish architects who had studied at the GermanBauhaus school designed significant buildings here.[41] A large proportion of the buildings built in the International Style can be found in the area planned byPatrick Geddes, north of Tel Aviv's main historical commercial center.[42] In 1994,UNESCO proclaimed the White City aWorld Heritage Site, describing the city as "a synthesis of outstanding significance of the various trends of the Modern Movement in architecture and town planning in the early part of the 20th century".[43] In 1996, Tel Aviv's White City waslisted as aWorld Monuments Fund endangered site.[44]
.jpg)
Theresidential area ofSödra Ängby in westernStockholm, Sweden, blended an international orfunctionalist style withgarden city ideals. Encompassing more than 500 buildings, most of them designed by Edvin Engström, it remains the largest coherent functionalist or "International Style"villa area in Sweden and possibly the world, still well-preserved more than a half-century after its construction in 1933–40 and protected as anational cultural heritage.
Zlín is a city in the Czech Republic which was in the 1930s completely reconstructed on principles of functionalism. In that time the city was a headquarters ofBata Shoes company and Tomáš Baťa initiated a complex reconstruction of the city which was inspired by functionalism and theGarden city movement.Tomas Bata Memorial is the most valuable monument of theZlínfunctionalism. It is a modern paraphrase of the constructions of high gothic style period: the supporting system and colourful stained glass and the reinforced concrete skeleton and glass.
With the rise of Nazism, a number of key European modern architects fled to the US. WhenWalter Gropius andMarcel Breuer fled Germany they both arrived at theHarvard Graduate School of Design, in an excellent position to extend their influence and promote theBauhaus as the primary source of architectural modernism. When Mies fled in 1938, he first fled to England, but on emigrating to the US he went to Chicago, founded the Second School of Chicago atIIT and solidified his reputation as a prototypical modern architect.
After World War II, the International Style matured;Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (later renamedHOK) andSkidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) perfected the corporate practice, and it became the dominant approach for decades in the US and Canada. Beginning with the initial technical and formal inventions of860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago, its most famous examples include theUnited Nations headquarters, theLever House, theSeagram Building inNew York City, and the campus of theUnited States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, as well as theToronto-Dominion Centre inToronto. Further examples can be found in mid-century institutional buildings throughout North America and the "corporate architecture" spread from there, especially to Europe.
InCanada, this period coincided with a major building boom and few restrictions on massive building projects. International Style skyscrapers came to dominate many of Canada's major cities, especiallyOttawa,Montreal,Vancouver,Calgary,Edmonton,Hamilton, andToronto. While these glass boxes were at first unique and interesting, the idea was soon repeated to the point of ubiquity. A typical example is the development of so-calledPlace de Ville, a conglomeration of three glass skyscrapers in downtown Ottawa, where the plans of the property developerRobert Campeau in the mid-1960s and early 1970s—in the words of historian Robert W. Collier, were "forceful and abrasive[;] he was not well-loved at City Hall"—had no regard for existing city plans, and "built with contempt for the existing city and for city responsibilities in the key areas of transportation and land use".[46] Architects attempted to put new twists into such towers, such as theToronto City Hall by Finnish architectViljo Revell. By the late 1970s a backlash was under way against modernism—prominent anti-modernists such asJane Jacobs andGeorge Baird were partly based in Toronto.
The typical International Style or "corporate architecture" high-rise usually consists of the following:
In 2000UNESCO proclaimedUniversity City of Caracas inCaracas, Venezuela, as aWorld Heritage Site, describing it as "a masterpiece of modern city planning, architecture and art, created by the Venezuelan architectCarlos Raúl Villanueva and a group of distinguished avant-garde artists".[citation needed]
In June 2007 UNESCO proclaimedCiudad Universitaria of theUniversidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), inMexico City, a World Heritage Site due to its relevance and contribution in terms of international style movement. It was designed in the late 1940s and built in the mid-1950s based upon a masterplan created by architectEnrique del Moral. His original idea was enriched by other students, teachers, and diverse professionals of several disciplines. The university housesmurals byDiego Rivera,Juan O'Gorman and others. The university also features Olympic Stadium (1968). In his first years of practice,Pritzker Prize winner and Mexican architectLuis Barragán designed buildings in the International Style. But later he evolved to a more traditional local architecture. Other notable Mexican architects of the International Style or modern period areCarlos Obregón Santacilia,Augusto H. Alvarez,Mario Pani,Federico Mariscal [es],Vladimir Kaspé,Enrique del Moral,Juan Sordo Madaleno,Max Cetto, among many others.
In BrazilOscar Niemeyer proposed a more organic and sensual[47] International Style. He designed the political landmarks (headquarters of the three state powers) of the new, planned capitalBrasília. The masterplan for the city was proposed byLúcio Costa.
In 1930,Frank Lloyd Wright wrote: "Human houses should not be like boxes, blazing in the sun, nor should we outrage the Machine by trying to make dwelling-places too complementary to Machinery."[49]
InElizabeth Gordon's well-known 1953 essay, "The Threat to the Next America", she criticized the style as non-practical, citing many instances where "glass houses" are too hot in summer and too cold in winter, empty, take away private space, lack beauty and generally are not livable. Moreover, she accused this style's proponents of taking away a sense of beauty from people and thus covertly pushing for a totalitarian society.[50]
In 1966, architectRobert Venturi publishedComplexity and Contradiction in Architecture,[51] essentially a book-length critique of the International Style. Architectural historianVincent Scully regarded Venturi's book as 'probably the most important writing on the making of architecture since Le Corbusier'sVers une Architecture.[52] It helped to definepostmodernism.
Best-selling American authorTom Wolfe wrote a book-length critique,From Bauhaus to Our House, portraying the style as elitist.
One of the supposed strengths of the International Style has been said to be that the design solutions were indifferent to location, site, and climate; the solutions were supposed to be universally applicable; the style made no reference to local history or national vernacular. This was soon identified as one of the style's primary weaknesses.[53]
In 2006,Hugh Pearman, the British architectural critic ofThe Times, observed that those using the style today are simply "another species ofrevivalist", noting the irony.[54] The negative reaction to internationalist modernism has been linked to public antipathy to overall development.[55][56]
In the preface to the fourth edition of his bookModern Architecture: A Critical History (2007),Kenneth Frampton argued that there had been a "disturbing Eurocentric bias" in histories of modern architecture. This "Eurocentrism" included the US.[57]
