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Mar 7, 2023 · Written by Kaley Overstreet. Published on March 07, 2023. Share. When people describe the modernist movement as a whole, they broadly reference the steel and glass skyscrapers which dot many of our...
- Beginnings of The International Style
- The International Style: Concepts, Styles, and Trends
- Later Developments - After The International Style
The International Style arose from several strands of architectural and political thought in the 1910s. First, it often has been said to have grown out of a fascination with buildings for a modern industrialized age, especially factories and warehouses, which demanded utilitarian designs that included ample natural lighting and flexible interior sp...
Principles of Building Design
International Style architecture is often described as "minimalist" due to the tendency of its adherents to design buildings that were devoid of all ornament and reduced to their most basic structural elements. Such buildings often make use of large expanses of unbroken windows and use other elements like cantilevers to help eliminate the distinction between interior and exterior space as much as possible and to bring the inhabitants closer to nature, even when indoors. The use of mass-produc...
Transformative and Political Aspects of the International Style
From the beginning, the International Style was often associated with political movements, especially socialist and communist causes and regimes. Its revolutionary character in the years following World War I and the notion that architecture should be transformative in serving society and advancing the welfare of the working classes invited common ground between its advocates and the political left. The designs of Russian Constructivists provide some of the earliest examples, but others soon...
Naming the New Architecture
As the 1920s developed, the International Style remained known amongst its founders in Europe under various monikers, including Functionalism, Neue Sachlichkeit (or New Objectivity), De Stijl (in the Netherlands, where architects were intimately connected with painters under the same movement), and Rationalism (as it was known in Italy due to its honest revelation of structure and space). In 1932, after extensive travels in Europe, the young art historians Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip J...
An "Unofficial" American Architecture
During World War II, many of the International Style's founders found new life attached to American institutions: Gropius and Breuer at Harvard and Mies at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where they trained a new generation of Americans in the principles of the International Style. Their own practices also soon expanded in a climate of unparalleled economic growth in the United States. Mies, for example, was occupied with not only the planning and building of IIT's campus unt...
Global Expansion
Even before World War II, the International Style had found sympathetic designers in Latin America. In 1935, Le Corbusier had been invited to supervise a team of Brazilian architects led by Lucio Costa on the design of the new Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro, which brought the new movement to Brazil. Costa and his student Oscar Niemeyer continued to experiment with the International Style throughout the following decades, eventually collaborating between 1956 and 1960 on th...
The Decline of the International Style
The widespread acceptance of the International Style was destined to provoke a reaction. Its emphasis on the glass-and-steel prismatic form, particularly in tall buildings, did not lend itself to variation. Instead it produced a vapid monotony that eventually proved soulless to designers and inhabitants alike, especially when used on a vast scale in low-income housing, as well as disorienting, as it eliminated the distinction of individual buildings to serve as geographic landmarks. In 1966,...
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International Style. A style of modern architecture that emerged in Europe (principally Germany and France) in the 1920s and 1930s. Historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock and architect Philip Johnson coined the term International Style to describe this plain, unadorned architecture of rectilinear forms built of steel, reinforced concrete, and glass.
Prominent Architects. Characteristics and Features of International Style. Architectural Elements of International Style. Examples of International Style. 1. Villa Savoye. 2. German Pavilion. 3. Farnsworth House. 4. S.R. Crown Hall. 5. Johnson House (Glass House) 6. Lovell House or Lovell Health House. 7. Villa Tugendhat. Prominent Architects.
The “International Style” exhibition coined the style name and introduced these radically modern buildings to an American audience. Hitchcock and Johnson laid out three key design principles of the International Style: 1) Architecture as volume – thin planes or surfaces create the building’s form, as opposed to a solid mass
The International Style or internationalism is a major architectural style that was created in the 1920s and 1930s. It is similar to modernism and modern architecture . It was first named by Museum of Modern Art curators Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in 1932.
The phrase 'International Style' was one among many terms used in the 1920s to denote modern architecture. Introduced by an American to characterize a particular kind of European architecture, the term became generally applied in later decades to a broad range of contemporary buildings. In his book "Modern Architecture, Romanticism, and ...
