Architecture Since 1900

1. Architecture Since 1900

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

5. 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-no decoration or historical references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

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

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

9. “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

10. 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•no unnecessary decoration or historical references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)

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

14. 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

15. Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House, 1909, Chicago.

17. Frank Lloyd Wright, Robie House, 1909, Chicago.

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

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

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

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

33. Postmodern architecture
International Style

34. 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eclectic historical references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

35. Robert Venturi, Vanna Venturi House, 1961-64.

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

39. Frank Gehry, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 1991-97.

42. “Bilbao effect”

44. 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

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

46. Maison Domino, 1913-14.
Le Corbusier
Unité d'Habitation, 1947-52.