International Style
The International Style is a major architectural style and movement that began in western Europe in the 1920s and dominated modern architecture until the 1970s. It is defined by strict adherence to functional and utilitarian designs and construction methods, typically expressed through minimalism. The style is characterized by modular and rectilinear 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.
The International Style is sometimes called rationalist architecture and the modern movement, although the former is mostly used in English to refer specifically to either Italian rationalism or the style that developed in 1920s Europe more broadly. In continental Europe, this and related styles are variably called Functionalism, Neue Sachlichkeit, De Stijl, and Rationalism, all of which are contemporaneous movements and styles that share similar principles, origins, and proponents.
Rooted in the modernism movement, the International Style is closely related to modern architecture and likewise reflects several intersecting developments in culture, politics, and technology in the early 20th century. 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. 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 the Western world.
The International Style was one of the first architectural movements to receive critical renown and global popularity. 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". These qualities provoked negative reactions against the style as monotonous, austere, and incongruent with existing landscapes. This critique was conveyed through various movements such as postmodernism, new classical architecture, and deconstructivism.
Concept and definition
The term "International Style" was first used in 1932 by the historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and architect Philip Johnson to describe a movement among European architects in the 1920s that was distinguished by three key design principles: "Architecture as volume – thin planes or surfaces create the building's form, as opposed to a solid mass"; "Regularity in the facade, as opposed to building symmetry"; and "No applied ornament".File:Overzicht uiteinde straat eindigend in winkel in de wijk Kiefhoek van J.J.P. Oud - Rotterdam - 20536890 - RCE.jpg|thumb|Kiefhoek Worker's Housing project, now a Museum, Rotterdam, by Jacobus Oud
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. However, International Style architecture 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 and mass-produced architectural products of their time. 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 the principles of the style. 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.
Further, the transparency of buildings, the honest expression of structure, and acceptance of industrialized mass-production techniques contributed to the International Style's design philosophy. Finally, the machine aesthetic, and logical design decisions leading to support building function were used by the International Style architect to create buildings reaching beyond historicism. The ideals of the style are commonly summed up in three slogans: ornament is a crime, truth to materials, form follows function; and Le Corbusier's description: "A house is a machine to live in".
Phenomena similar in nature also existed in other artistic fields, for example in graphics, such as the International Typographic Style and Swiss Style.
The Getty Research Institute defines it as "the style of architecture that emerged in The Netherlands, France, and Germany after World 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, repetitive modular forms, and the use of flat surfaces, typically alternating with areas of glass." Some researchers consider the International Style as one of the attempts to create an ideal and utilitarian form.
Background
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 of Victor Horta and Henry van de Velde in Brussels, Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona, Otto Wagner in Vienna and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow, 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 of Romanticism.The International Style can be traced to buildings designed by a small group of modernists, the major figures of which include Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Jacobus Oud, Le Corbusier, Richard Neutra and Philip Johnson. The International Style of modern architecture emerged principally in Germany and France. This unadorned architecture was constructed with steel, reinforced concrete, and glass. The founder of the Bauhaus 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 in Alfeld, Germany, called the Fagus Works building. The first building built entirely on Bauhaus design principles was the concrete and steel Haus am Horn, built in 1923 in Weimar, Germany, designed by Georg Muche. The Gropius-designed Bauhaus school building in Dessau constructed 1925-1926, and the Harvard Graduate Center constructed 1949-1950, exhibit clean lines and a "concern for uncluttered interior spaces". Marcel Breuer, who after leaving the Bauhaus would later teach alongside Gropius at Harvard, is also a important contributor to the International Style.
Prior to use of the term 'International Style', some American architects, such as Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Irving Gill, exemplified qualities of simplification, honesty and clarity. Wright's Wasmuth 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.
In Europe the modern movement in architecture had been called Functionalism or Neue Sachlichkeit, L'Esprit Nouveau, or simply Modernism and was very much concerned with the coming together of a new architectural form and social reform, creating a more open and transparent society. The "International Style", as defined by Hitchcock and Johnson, was shaped by the activities of the Deutscher Werkbund. Le Corbusier had embraced Taylorist and Fordist strategies adopted from American industrial models in order to reorganize society. He contributed to a new journal called L'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 the Weissenhof Estate in Stuttgart, overseen by Mies van der Rohe. It was enormously popular, with thousands of daily visitors.
1932 MoMA exhibition
The exhibition Modern Architecture: International Exhibition ran from February 9 to March 23, 1932, at the Museum of Modern Art, in the Heckscher Building at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street in New York. 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 for Evanston, Illinois, by Chicago architect brothers Monroe Bengt Bowman and Irving Bowman, 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. Room B was a section titled "Housing", presenting "the need for a new domestic environment" as it had been identified by historian and critic Lewis Mumford. In Room D were works by Raymond Hood and Richard Neutra. In Room E was a section titled "The extent of modern architecture", added at the last minute, 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 in Turku, 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.