6.53
THEORY OF
ARCHITECTURE I
ARCH 4591
Instructor: Lewi
Tsegaye
ADDIS COLLEGE
DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE AND URBAN PLANNING

CONTENT
2
Chicago School
 Origin of Chicago School
Architectural style
 Characteristics
 Architects
 Examples
Prairie School
 Origin of Prairie School
Architectural style
 Characteristics
 Architects
 Examples

CHICAGO SCHOOL ARCHITECTURAL STYLE
3

ORIGIN OF CHICAGO SCHOOL ARCHITECTURAL STYLE
• Chicago School was a school of
architects active in Chicago in the late
19th, and at the turn of the 20th century.
• It is also known as Commercial Style
and American Renaissance Style.
• Louis Henry Sullivan was the most
influential architect of the Chicago
School.
18/4/2022 Pitch deck title 4
The Chicago Building by
Holabird & Roche (1904–1905)

ORIGIN OF CHICAGO SCHOOL ARCHITECTURAL STYLE
• Was among the first to promote the
new technologies of steel-frame
construction in commercial
buildings.
• Influenced, parallel developments in
European Modernism.
• In the 1940s, a "Second Chicago
School" emerged from the work of
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe who
was a German-American architect.
18/4/2022 Pitch deck title 5

CHARACTERISTICS
• Steel-frame buildings with masonry cladding (usually terra cotta).
• Building exterior (envelope) is light weight compared to the previous
buildings with load bearing masonry walls.
18/4/2022 Pitch deck title 6

CHARACTERISTICS
• Large plate-glass (sheet glass) window
areas.
• It is a three-part window consisting of a
large fixed center panel flanked by two
smaller double-hung sash windows.
This window is referred as "Chicago
window“.
7

CHARACTERISTICS
• Window arrangement on the facade
creates a grid pattern, with some
projecting out from the facade forming
bay windows.
• The Chicago window combined the
functions of light-gathering and
natural ventilation; a single central
pane was usually fixed, while the two
surrounding panes were operable.
8

CHARACTERISTICS
• Like a classical column, the buildings have a base of two or three
stories, a shaft arranged in vertical bands of mid-stories, and a
cornice of several top stories.
18/4/2022 Pitch deck title 9
Mills Building, San Francisco Pacific Building, San Francisco
Classical column

ARCHITECTS OF CHICAGO SCHOOL STYLE
18/4/2022 Pitch deck title 10
Louis
Sullivan
Dankmar
Adler
Guaranty Bldg.
Wainwright Bldg. Reliance Bldg.
John Wellborn Root
Daniel Hudson Burnham
770 Broadway

EXAMPLES OF CHICAGO SCHOOL STYLE
18/4/2022 Pitch deck title 11
Sullivan Center, Chicago, Illinois,
built 1899, Louis Sullivan
Reliance Bldg, Chicago, Illinois 1889, John Wellborn Root

PRAIRIE ARCHITECTURAL STYLE Early 1890S – Late 1910S
12

ORIGIN OF PRAIRIE ARCHITECTURAL STYLE
• The Prairie style emerged in semi-rural
village on the Western edges of Chicago
in the early 1890s from the work of a
group of young architects, including Frank
Lloyd Wright.
• The Prairie School developed in
symphony with the ideals and design
aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts
Movement begun in the late 19th century
in England by John Ruskin, William
Morris, and others.
18/4/2022 Pitch deck title 13
Frank Lloyd Wright
(June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959)

ORIGIN OF PRAIRIE ARCHITECTURAL STYLE
• The title Prairie is due to the dominant horizontality of most Prairie style buildings,
which resembles the wide, flat, treeless expanses of the mid-Western US.
18/4/2022 Pitch deck title 14

ORIGIN OF PRAIRIE ARCHITECTURAL STYLE
• The Prairie School was an attempt
at developing an indigenous
North American style of
architecture that did not share
design elements and aesthetic
vocabulary with earlier styles of
European classical architecture.
• The primary ideology of which was
that a building’s form should
grow out of its particular
environment to exist in harmony
with nature.
18/4/2022 Pitch deck title 15

CHARACTERISTICS
• Characterized by dramatic
horizontal lines and masses,
Prairie buildings evoke the
expansive Midwestern
landscape.
• The buildings reflect an all-
encompassing philosophy that
Wright termed “Organic
Architecture.”
• No tall buildings
• Residences and banks
18/4/2022 16

EXAMPLES OF PRAIRIE SCHOOL STYLE
18/4/2022 Pitch deck title 17
The Darwin Martin House, New York,1905, FL Wright
Robie House, Chicago, Illinois, 1908, FL Wright

ORGANIC ARCHITECTURE
• Organic architecture is a
philosophy of architecture
which promotes harmony
between human habitation and
the natural world.
• This is achieved through design
approaches that aim to be
sympathetic and well-
integrated with a site, so
buildings, furnishings, and
surroundings become part of a
unified, interrelated
composition.
18/4/2022 18

THANK YOU