Shri Ram College of Architecture I 3rd Year I Semester VI I Theory of Design I 2012-13

Shri Ram Group of Colleges

Theory of Design
International Style

Scientist
Inventor
Artist

Architect
Artist
Poet
Author
Moni bhardwaj

The huge, modular, wood, glass and iron structure was originally erected in Hyde Park in
London to house The Great Exhibition of 1851, which showcased the products of many
countries throughout the world.

Formerly a fashion
house and
department store,
Schunck, it is now
the cultural centre
of the city.

The visually most distinguishing aspect is the free-standing glass that covers three
sides, which makes it even more transparent than the famous Bauhaus building in
Dessau and is part of the natural climate control.

Prior to use of the term

'International Style', the same
striving towards simplification,
honesty and clarity are
identifiable in US architects,
notably in the work of Louis
Sullivan and Frank Lloyd
Wright in Chicago, as well as
the west-coast residences of
Irving Gill.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Wasmuth

Portfolio influenced the work
of European modernists, and
his travels there probably
influenced his own work,
although he refused to be
categorized with them. In
1922, the competition for the
Tribune Tower and its famous
second-place entry by Eliel
Saarinen gave a clear
indication of what was to
come.

The Wasmuth portfolio is a

two-volume folio of 100
lithographs of the work of
the American architect
Frank Lloyd Wright

Early Modern architecture

Early Modern architecture
began with a number of
building styles with similar
characteristics,
primarily the simplification of
form and
the elimination of ornament,
that first arose around 1900.
By the 1940s these styles had
largely consolidated and been
identified as the International
Style.

Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan

International style (architecture)

The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson,
The International Style, that identified, categorized and expanded upon characteristics
common to Modernism across the world and its stylistic aspects.
The authors identified three principles:
the expression of volume rather than mass,
the emphasis on balance rather than preconceived symmetry, and
the expulsion of applied ornament.
The aim of Hitchcock and Johnson was to define a style that would encapsulate this modern
architecture, doing this by the inclusion of specific architects.
The book was written to record the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture held at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1932. All the works in the exhibition were
carefully selected, only displaying those that strictly followed these rules.

Previous uses of the term in the same context can be attributed to Walter Gropius in
Internationale Architektur, and Ludwig Hilberseimer in Internationale neue Baukunst

The 1932 MOMA exhibition

Buildings included by Hitchcock and Johnson in the
1932 International Exhibition of
Modern Architecture hosted by the Museum of
Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City
Architect

Building

Location

Date

Jacobus Oud

Workers Houses,(Seidlung,
Kiefhoek)

Hook of Holland

1924
1927

Otto Eisler

Double House

Brno, Czechoslovakia

1926

Walter Gropius

Bauhaus School

Dessau, Germany

1926

City Employment Office

Dessau, Germany

1928

Apartment House

Weissenhof Estate,
Stuttgart

1927

German pavilion at the

Barcelona Exposition

Spain

1929

Tugendhat House

Brno, Czechoslovakia

1930

Villa Stein

Garches, France

1927

Villa Savoye

Poissy-Sur-Seine

1930

Carlos de Beistegui Penthouse

Champs-lyses, Paris 1931

Schocken Department Store

Chemnitz, Germany

1928
1930

Frederick John Kiesler Film Guild Cinema

New York City

1929

Richard Neutra

Lovell House

Los Angeles, California 1929

Alvar Aalto

Turun Sanomat building

Turku, Finland

1930

Karl Schneider

Kunstverein

Hamburg, Germany

1930

Ludwig Mies van der

Rohe

Le Corbusier (Pierre
Jeanneret)

Erich Mendelsohn

Contrasts in Modern architecture, as

shown by adjacent high-rises in
Chicago, Illinois. IBM Plaza (right), by
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is a later
example of the clean rectilinear lines
and glass of the International Style,
whereas Marina City, (left), by his
student Bertrand Goldberg, reflects a
more sculptural Mid-Century Modern
aesthetic

The Seagram Building,

New York City, 1958, by
Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe, is regarded as
one of the finest
examples of the
functionalist aesthetic
and a masterpiece of
corporate modernism

Three of the TorontoDominion Centre's five towers

(left to right): the Ernst &
Young Tower, the TorontoDominion Bank Tower, and
the Royal Trust Tower.

Criticism of International style

The stark, unornamented appearance of the
International style met with contemporaneous
criticism and is still criticized today by many.
Especially in larger and more public buildings,
the style is commonly subject to
disparagement as ugly, inhuman, sterile, and
elitist.
Such criticism gained momentum in the latter
half of the 20th Century, from academics such
as Hugo Kkelhaus to best-selling American
author Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus to Our
House, and contributed to the rise of such
counter-movements as postmodernism. The
negative reaction to internationalist
modernism has been linked to public
antipathy[where?] to development overall.

International style today

Although it was conceived as
a movement that
transcended style, the
International Style was
largely superseded in the era
of Postmodern architecture
that started in the 1960s.
Portland Building, Oregon

The Sony Building (formerly AT&T building)

New York City, 1984, by Philip Johnson,

Postmodern design at Gare do Oriente, Lisbon,

Portugal, by Santiago Calatrava.