International style
The International Style ( English [The] International Style , also: " Internationalism ") is a current of classical modern architecture , which is often wrongly equated with this. The development of the International Style began in Europe around 1922, later it spread around the world. Critical regionalism can be seen as a countermovement .
etymology
The term International Style was created by Philip C. Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock as an artificial umbrella term for minimalist and functionalist tendencies in European modern architecture of the 1920s and early 1930s. They were first used in 1932 in their publication The International Style: Architecture Since 1922, accompanying the iconic MoMA exhibition Modern Architecture: International Exhibition . The authors suggested that the new architecture was internationalized and separated from local conditions, at the same time they indicated for the first time that it was developing into a new style of architectural history. Most modern architects, contrary to what Johnson and Hitchcock claimed, saw modernity as a new design methodology rather than a style. There was already a similar name in Europe earlier, International Architecture , which Ludwig Hilberseimer , among others, used as the title of the exhibition catalog Die Wohnung in Stuttgart in 1927. The art historians Hitchcock and Johnson chose a different name, which included the word style , and described modern architecture using clear stylistic criteria, which they explained using 83 sample objects alphabetically ordered by architect name. Walter Gropius in particular resisted the term “style”. The book Johnsons and Hitchcocks, which simply explained the visual and aesthetic qualities of modernism, became a kind of aesthetic manual in the USA and had a great influence on the further development of architecture there.
The term was first used in English-speaking countries; meanwhile it is used everywhere for the cubic variants of modernity. So you look at the cosmopolitan style part as a synonym of functionalism and rationalism , the distinction between these terms is represented differently in the literature. Johnson and Hitchcock contrasted the radical functionalists with the more aesthetically influenced International Style. However, some later architectural historians doubt that there was a uniform concept of functionalism or a group of functionalists in the 1920s.
Style principles
The art historian Hitchcock and the architect Johnson analyzed the new architecture from a formal point of view and formulated some principles that should characterize modern architecture:
- Architecture is the definition and design of limited space, not the formation of a tectonics .
- Modern architecture should be regular and modular. One of the architects' tasks is to reconcile the right presence and composition of the similar and different functional areas. The floor plan becomes informal and asymmetrical .
- International style avoids ornament, with the exception of abstract wall painting , which emphasizes the character of the architecture as well as the art that is not part of the architecture but of the furnishings.
The authors have particularly focused on the exterior of the buildings, on their appearance; They paid less attention to the space experiments of modernity. According to Hitchcock and Johnson, modern buildings should look light, the exterior walls should be large smooth surfaces with regular texture. They described wooden cladding, ceramic panels and glass blocks as particularly suitable facade surfaces or cladding . The plastered surfaces and exposed concrete , although generally associated with modernism, they considered unsuitable, since the building would visually increase in weight with such a facade, the same problem mostly occurs with the brick facades . With large glazing that is flush with the front edge of the facade, the building should become light. The flat roof previously postulated by Le Corbusier did not become a stylistic principle ; the authors also considered the monopitch roof to be functional and aesthetic.
In August 1951, an article appeared in Architectural Record in which Hitchcock, after nearly twenty years, revised some of his views. He reported that the book was neither intended to be a collection of academic rules nor a theory of design, but rather a description and prognosis of future trends. He thought the second principle was formulated too narrowly and the third was no longer valid, as it was more a matter of taste than general aesthetics. In addition, Hitchcock declared the constructive truth and clarity of the building to be a further stylistic principle.
International style, the model of which over time became a prismatic skyscraper with the glass curtain wall with the filigree construction profiles, was the dominant trend of modernity in the first two decades after the Second World War . According to many critics of the style, its representatives have gradually moved completely away from the basic functional and humanistic principles of modernity or have been only concerned with aesthetic issues from the start. Its architecture had many functional deficiencies that could only be mitigated with mechanical-technical systems. The international style was also heavily criticized for the repeatability of the shape and monotony of the facades, another point of criticism was the aggressive placement of the buildings in the urban space.
Style development
Architectural historians observe four phases of style development:
- In the early phase (1920s) the style was mainly limited to the German-speaking countries, the Netherlands and France - this phase was described in the eponymous book.
- In the 1930s, some European (mostly German) architects came to the US and the style spread.
- The greatest flowering of the style was in the late 1940s and 1950s.
- The Late International Style emerged from the 1960s, sometimes up to the 1990s.
Previous international styles
Strictly speaking, functionalism is not the first international style: in the 17th to 19th centuries, historicizing buildings were built around the world with stylistic elements from Greco - Roman antiquity . With the Old Summer Palace in Beijing , European baroque , including a part of this style classique, found its way to China. International distribution of certain style elements existed even earlier. In the 8th to 11th centuries, occidental and oriental architecture both favored round arches on round columns or square pillars. And European Gothic , spread between Portugal , Norway and Transylvania , spread at the same time as the use of pointed arches in Islamic architecture. There were similarities in building from northwest Europe to India, Southeast Asia and East Africa ( coastal cities like Kilwa) before Vasco da Gama had passed the Cape of Good Hope .
Selected representatives
- Marcel Breuer
- Gordon Bunshaft
- Le Corbusier
- Charles Eames
- Walter Gropius
- Otto Haesler
- Hermann Henselmann
- Arne Jacobsen
- Philip Johnson
- William Lescaze
- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
- Richard Neutra
- Oscar Niemeyer
- Hans Scharoun
- SOM
- Mart Stam
See also
literature
- Reyner Banham: Revolution in Architecture. Braunschweig 1990. ISBN 3-528-08789-7
- Hasan-Uddin Khan: International Style. Modern architecture 1925 to 1965. Cologne 2001. ISBN 3-8228-1228-5 .
- Henry-Russell Hitchcock , Philip Johnson : The International Style - 1932 . Vieweg, Braunschweig 1985. ISBN 3-528-08770-6 .
- R. Stephen Sennott (Ed.): Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Architecture. Volume 2: G-O . New York / London 2004. ISBN 1-57958-434-9 .
