Architecture Since 1900

Louis Sullivan, Guaranty Trust Building, 1894-95 (Buffalo).

International Style

-worldwide style (international)- first AG then Corp.-no decoration or historical references-glass sheathing/ hard angles-less is more-grid like-steel structures-slab like tower-ignores environment-MoMA exhibit

Walter Gropius, Workshop Wing, Bauhaus, 1925-26.

Walter Gropius, Workshop Wing, Bauhaus, 1925-26.

“We want a clear, organized architecture, whose inner logic will be radiant and naked, unencumbered by lying facades and trickeries; we want an architecture adapted to our world of machines, radios, and fast motor cars, an architecture whose function is clearly recognizable in the relation of its form… with the increasing strength of the new materials- steel, concrete, glass- and with the new audacity of engineering, the ponderousness of the old methods of building is giving way to a new lightness and airiness.”

-Walter Gropius

Major characteristics of the International Style:•internationally applied in Europe and the US beginning in the 1920s, until the 1950s•no unnecessary decoration or historical references (functionality)•hard/ geometric angles•less is more •new style appropriate to new materials: iron, steel, glass curtain wall•ignores environment and the world of reference•'International Style' was the name of an exhibit at the MoMA in 1932 •co-opted by corporate culture in the 1950’s (peak)

Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill, Lever House, New York, 1951-52.

Frank Lloyd Wright•American Architect•incorporates nature and inspired by organic forms•total design (inspired by Arts and Crafts movement)•distances himself from the International Style, but still uses industrial materials and sparse/geometric forms•works primarily with the house form•personal details

Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House, 1909, Chicago.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House, 1909, Chicago.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Fallingwater (Kaufmann House), 1934-37.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY, 1957-9.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY, 1957-9

Frank Lloyd Wright, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY, 1957-9.

Postmodern architecture

International Style

Postmodern Architecture

•1950s-1990s•Playful and extravagant forms, •counters the severity of the International Style•illogical mix of multiple/ eclectic historical references (resist a unified aesthetic)•incorporates its environment•began in America then spread to Europe/Internationally

Robert Venturi, Vanna Venturi House, 1961-64.

Frank O. Gehry, Oldenburg and van Bruggen, Chiat/Day Building and Binoculars, 1991.

Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 1991-97.

“Bilbao effect”

Philip Johnson, Glass House, 1949.

Frank Lloyd Wright, S.C. Johnson Wax Research Tower, 1950

(repetitive use of the circle).

Piano and Rogers, Pompidou Center, 1971-78

Cass Gilbert, Woolworth Building, 1913. Mies Van der Rohe, Seagram, 1958.

Maison Domino, 1913-14.

Le Corbusier

Unité d'Habitation, 1947-52.