Modern Architecture in the 20th

Century
 Outline
Introduction
New Materials
The Schools of Modernity
The Chicago School
The Werkbund
The Bauhaus

The International Style

The Big Three
Frank Lloyd Wright
Key Buildings
Characteristics
 Modernism in Architecture
The defining feature of modern architecture is the modern aesthetic which may
be summarized as plain geometric forms.

Modern Architecture takes its roots from the Industrial Age when architects are
exploring new materials such as steel and reinforced concrete. The design of
buildings are not anymore influenced by religion nor classicism, but rather
architecture is inspired by the machine.

Today, we are so accustomed to the modern aesthetic that it can be difficult to

imagine the controversy surrounding its development. Yet many decades were
required for this aesthetic to mature and gain mainstream acceptance, which
was finally achieved in the early twentieth century (under the leadership of
the Bauhaus).
 The New Materials

The two principal materials for the new forms

and high massive buildings:

steel (pioneered in Britain and brought into

general use in America)

reinforced concrete (developed in France)

 Steel

The fundamental technical

prerequisite to large-
scale modern
architecture was the
development of metal
framing.
 Glass and iron, iron frame

Crystal Palace, Joseph Paxton, 1851 Eiffel Tower, Gustav Eiffel, 1887
 The First Structures

The first definitive

skyscraper was the
Home Insurance
Building, Chicago built
in 1883-85 by William le
Baron Jenney. Of
fireproof construction,
it has a metal frame
clad in brick and
masonry.
 Reinforced Concrete

Francoise Hennebique

in 1892, perfected a system

for the best location of
steel reinforcement in
concrete; the
combination of the
compressive strength of
concrete with the tensile
strength of concrete in a
homogenous grid was
one of the turning points
in architectural history.
The First R.C. Structure

Church of St. Jean-de Montmarte , Anatole de

Baudot, Paris, 1897. The first example of
reinforced cement in church construction.
 Auguste Perret (1874-1954)

Elimination of unnecessary detail and expression

of structure are basic to any understanding of
modern architecture.

The architect who brought that approach to its

first satisfying climax was Auguste Perret
(1874-1954).He was a French architect and a
specialist in reinforced concrete construction.
Rue Franklin Apartments, 1904
August Perret

In 1903 he designed an apartment in Paris and

went further than the Chicago architects. He
realized that that the 8-storey frame made
load-bearing walls unnecessary; since the walls
held nothing up, the building could have open
space inside.
Theater de Champs Elysees, 1913
 Notre Dame Du Raincy, 1923
Auguste Perret

Segmental vaults of in situ reinforced concrete were elegantly supported on a few

slender shafts, so that a new light and airy space was encircled by non-load bearing
screen walls of pre-cast concrete units filled with coloured glass.
The Schools of Modernity

The Chicago School

The Werkbund
The Bauhaus
 The Chicago School
Chicago's architecture is
famous throughout the
world and one style is
referred to as the Chicago
School. In the history of
architecture, the Chicago
School was a school of
architects active in Chicago
at the turn of the 20th
century.

Right: The Chicago fire of 1871

destroyed most of the city
and gave an opportunity for
architects to design and
build new structures.
 The first skyscraper
The intent of the Chicago architects was
to dispense of historical styles. This
set the tone for the modern
movement.

The crucial event of the movement was

the design of the skyscraper.
new technologies: steel-frame
construction in commercial buildings
the elevator, invented in 1852 made
multi-storey buildings possible
spatial aesthetic which co-evolved
with, and then came to influence,
parallel developments in European
Modernism.
 Louis Sullivan,the Father of Modern Architecture, 1856-
1924
Louis Henry Sullivan was an American architect, and
has been called the "father of skyscrapers" and
"father of modernism" .

It is the pervading law of all things organic and

inorganic,

Of all things physical and metaphysical,

Of all things human and all things super-human,

Of all true manifestations of the head,

Of the heart, of the soul,

That the life is recognizable in its expression,

That form ever follows function.

This is the law.

-The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,

1896
Carson Pirie Scott Department Store.

"form follows function", as opposed to "form follows precedent"

ten floors of offices

covered with white

terracotta tiles hung on the
steel frame

punctuated by rows of large

windows.

Sits on a two-storey base

Framed as part of the metal

structure

Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building, Panels above and around
Sullivan, 1899 the main doorways are filled
with Sullivans own luxurious
decoration in cast iron.
 The Werkbund

The Deutscher Werkbund (German

Workforce) was a German organization of
artists, architects, and designers aiming to
refine human craft. It was founded by
Peter Behrens, Josef Hoffman, and Richard
Riemerschmid in 1907.

The Werkbund was to become an important

event in the development of modern
architecture and industrial design,
particularly in the later creation of
the Bauhaus school of design. Its initial
purpose was to establish a partnership of
product manufacturers with design
professionals to improve the
competitiveness of German companies in
Poster for the 1914 exhibition in Cologne.
global markets.
 from sofa cushions to city-building

Left: Chair, Peter Behrens

1901
Sitzmachine Chair, Josef
Hoffman, 1905

Desk, Richard
Riemerschmidt, 1905

This movement is stimulated by Arts and Crafts

movement in England. The group also seeks to
mass produce products and focus more on the
functionality of objects.
AEG Turbine Factory, 1908, by Peter Behrens
Fagus Shoe Factory, Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer 1913
Deutz Motor Pavilion, Walter Gropius
1914 Cologne Exhibition
Glass Pavilion, Bruno Taut, 1914 Cologne Exhibition
 The Wiessenhof Estate, Stuttgart,Germany
1927
A series of 21 buildings in Stuttgart was built as a part of the Deutsche Werkbund Exhibition on
1927. A team of 17 architects led by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe plan the housing estate for the
working class. In a way, Wieenhof became a prototype of the International Style.

Unity of the houses was

achieved by:

flat roofs
simple facades
the use of muted tones
as exterior wall colours
Apartment, J. J. Oud
Duplex ,Josef Frank
House, Hans Scharoun
House, Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret) and Pierre
Jeanerette
House, Victor Bourgeois
 The Bauhaus School
1919-1933
The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in
Weimar. In spite of its name, and the fact that its founder
was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an
architecture department during the first years of its
existence.

The concept of the school at the beginning was influenced by

medieval construction of churches wherein craftsmen
and artists collaborated in the completion and details of
the building.

The school provided workshops in:

metalwork
Weaving
Ceramics
Furniture
Typography
theatre.

The faculty consists of masters of form which are artists and Ar/Prof. Walter Gropius,
architects and masters craftsmen of different skills.
(1883-1969) founder of the Bauhaus
 The Bauhaus School, founded 1919

The Bauhaus, was a school in

Germany that combined crafts and
the fine arts, and was famous for
the approach to design that it
publicized and taught.

The term Bauhaus is German for

"House of Building" or "Building
School".

The Bauhaus had a profound

influence upon subsequent
developments in art, architecture,
graphic design, interior design,
industrial design, and typography.
 The masters of Bauhaus (Left to Right): Josef Albers, Hinnerk Scheper, Georg
Muche, Lszl Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, Walter Gropius,
Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Gunta Stlzl
and Oskar Schlemmer.

Bauhaus was considered to be the first design school in the modernist style. It
influenced the art and architectural trends in the whole world.

The school existed in three German cities (Weimar ,Dessau and Berlin), under
three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe until 1933, when the school was closed by its own leadership
under pressure from the Nazi regime.
 The Bauhaus Influence

Examples of architecture in the Bauhaus

Style are the buildings in White City, Tel
Aviv, Israel.

Another major influence of the school is

furniture design.

The Bauhaus style became one of the most

influential currents in Modernist architecture
and modern design.
Idea Organization of the Staatliches
Bauhaus Weimar, 1923

The teaching methods

of the Bauhaus school
are adapted in design
schools today such as
Parsons, The New
School for Design.
African Chair by Marcel Breuer
and Gunta Stlzl, 1921
Tea Kettle by Marianne Brandt,
1924
Chess Set by Josef Hartwig, 1924
Slit Tapestry,Red/Green
Gunta Stlzl, 1928

Homage to the Square, by Josef

Albers, 1964
Typography
Herbert Bayer and Josef Albers.
Chair by Marcel Breuer, 1925
 The Teachers of Modernity
Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Lszl Moholy-
Nagy re-assembled in Britain during the mid
1930s to live and work in the Isokon project
before the war caught up with them.

Both Gropius and Breuer went to teach at the

Harvard Graduate School of Design and worked
together before their professional split. The
Harvard School was enormously influential in
America in the late 1920s and early 1930s,
producing such students as Philip Johnson, I.M.
Pei, Lawrence Halprin and Paul Rudolph, among
many others.

In the late 1930s, Mies van der Rohe re-settled in

Chicago, enjoyed the sponsorship of the Bauhaus Directors Walter Gropius, Hannes
influential Philip Johnson, and became one of the Meyer and Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe
pre-eminent architects in the world.

Moholy-Nagy also went to Chicago and founded the

New Bauhaus school under the sponsorship of
industrialist and philanthropist Walter Paepcke.
This school became the Institute of Design, part
of the Illinois Institute of Technology.
The International Style
Philip Johnson

The term International Style was

coined in 1932 by the organizers
of the first International
Exhibition of Modern Architecture
at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York. Since that time it has
come to represent the mainstream
of modern architecture from
about the 1920s to the end of the
1950s.
 International
Style
The book produced for the exhibition declared that there is now a
single body of discipline, fixed enough to integrate contemporary
The MOMA Exhibit style as a reality and yet elastic enough to permit individual
addressed buildings interpretation and to encourage natural growth...
from 1922 through
1932. Johnson
named, codified,
promoted and subtly
re-defined the
whole movement by
his inclusion of
certain architects,
and his description
of their motives and
values.
The MOMA Exhibit

Important buildings in the 1932 MOMA exhibition include:

Alvar Aalto: Turun Sanomat building, Finland 1930

Le Corbusier: Stein house, Garches, France, 1928

Le Corbusier: Villa Savoye, Poissy-Sur-Seine, France 1930

Le Corbusier: Carlos de Beistegui Penthouse, Champs-lyses, Paris ,

France, 1931

Otto Eisler: Double House, Brno, Czechoslovakia 1926

Walter Gropius: Bauhaus School, Dessau, Germany 1926

Walter Gropius: City Employment Office, Dessau, Germany 1928

Erich Mendelsohn: Schocken Department Store, Chemnitz, Germany

1930

Mies Van Der Rohe: Apartment House, Weissenhof Siedlung, Stuttgart

1927
 Characteristics

The common characteristics of the International style

include:

a radical simplification of form

a rejection of ornament
and adoption of glass, steel and concrete as preferred
materials.

The ideals of the style are commonly summed up in four

slogans:

Adolf Loos Ornament is a Crime

Louis Sullivan Form follows Function
Le Corbusier Machines for Living

Truth to materials is a tenet of modern architecture (as

opposed to postmodern architecture), which holds
that any material should be used where it is most
appropriate and its nature should not be hidden.
The Seagram Building, 1957
Mies Van der Rohe
The Big Three
 The Big Three of Modernism

Le Corbusier,Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius

By the 1920s the most important figures in modern architecture had established their
reputations. The big three are commonly recognized as Le Corbusier in France, and Ludwig
Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius in Germany.
LE CORBUSIER, 1896-1967
 The Domino House, Le Corbusier, 1914

The transparency of
buildings construction
(called the honest
expression of structure),
and acceptance of
industrialized mass-
production techniques
contributed to the
international style's design
philosophy.

The machine aesthetic, and

logical design decisions
leading to support building
function were used by the
International architect to
create buildings reaching
beyond historicism.
Domino House (19141915) is an open floor plan
structures, supported by reinforced concrete
columns meaning that the floor space was free to be
configured into rooms without concern for supporting
walls and the physical . The building envelope expression
is an independent expression subject to the
interpretation of Its Architect.
 Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1928-31
In his seminal first book, Towards a
New Architecture, Le Corbusier
announced the five points of a new
architecture:

Free standing supports (pilotis)

The roof garden
The ribbon window
The free plan
The freely composed facade

The Villa Savoye is an elevated

white concrete box cut open
horizontally and vertically.
 Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier, Poissy, France, 1929

As with the paintings of the period (cubism) it is a crucial part of the concept that the
observer is not standing in one place but moving around. As he does so, the forms of the
building overlap and becomes sometimes solid sometimes transparent. The pilotis free
the ground and the roof garden re-creates the air the land that is lost below.
 The Modulor is
an anthropometric
scale of proportions devised
by the Swiss-
born French architect Le
Corbusier (18871965).

It was developed as a visual

bridge between two
incompatible scales,
the Imperial system and
the Metric system. It is based
on the height of an English
man with his arm raised.

The Modulor Man by Le Corbusier

 Unit Habitation by Le Corbusier
Berlin, 1957

The design of these residential blocks are

very innovative with the building
suspended on piloti. The location of
amenities are strategically located that
the intention of the building as an anti-
snob zone would be achieved.

These structures shows the features of

Brutalist architecture and the use of brise
soleil.

Unit Habitation by Le Corbusier

Briey, 1963
 Notre-Dame-de-Haut, Ronchamp, France,
1950-54

In 1950-54 Le
Corbusier produced a
small church which is
considered by many to
be the greatest single
architectural work of
the century. The whole
chapel is a study in
light.
Notre-Dame-de-Haut, Ronchamp, France, 1950-54

On one side the walls

are immensely
thick, with deep
irregular windows
filled with coloured
glass; on other
walls, tiny windows
are tunnels
punctured through
at different angles.
LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE, 1886-1969
Because of the rise of Nazi in Germany, many
modernists were theatened to leave the
country.

Mies van Der Rohe went to the United States

of America in 1937 to Chicago and then
became the head of the architecture
department at the Illinois Institute of
Technology.

His famous works in Europe are the Barcelona

Pavilion and the Villa Tugendhat, while those in
America are found in Chicago such as the
Federal Center and the Crown Hall of the IIT.
The German Pavilion, Barcelona Expo

Mies Van Der Rohe: German pavilion at the Barcelona Exposition,

Spain 1929 (above), left: the Barcelona Chair
Barcelona Pavilion by Ludwig Mies van Der Rohe, 1929,
Barcelona, Spain
Tugendhat House by Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, Brno,
Czech Republic, 1928-1930
Crown Hall by Ludwig Mies
Van Der Rohe, I.I.T., Chicago,
Illinois, 1956
Federal Center, Chicago, Illinois, 1970
Sculpture by Alexander Calder
WALTER GROPIUS
After leaving the Bauhaus in
1928 and eventually fleeing
from Germany in 1934, he
migrated to the United
States and taught at the
Harvard Graduate School of
Design.

He founded The Architects

Collaborative, an
architectural firm. He
together with Le Corbusier
and Mies van Der Rohe are
considered as the pioneers
of the International Style.
The Bauhaus School Building, 1925
Gropius House, Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1938
 MetLife (formerly PanAm
Building)

By Emery Roth & Sons, Walter

Gropius, and Pietro Belluschi,
1963, New York City, New
York
Frank Lloyd Wright, 1867-1959
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-
1959) worked with Louis
Sullivan.

His work spanned 70 years of

extraordinary versatility in
the handling of steel, stone,
redwood and reinforced
concrete, extending
geometrical plans and
silhouettes to create a new
and exhilarating Martin House, Buffalo, 1904
relationship with the He created, he claimed, the open plan and
natural environment. called his house Prairie Houses inspired by
the open spaces of the American Midwest.
Martin House, Buffalo, 1904

Basic form crossing of axes

The extension of these axes into the

garden forms other contained shapes
which provide a single spatial
experience through the
interpenetration of internal and
external shapes.

Internal spaces flow into one another.

Corners of rooms are dissolved

Walls becomes screens.

Horizontal emphasis is maintained by

low sweeping ceilings and roofs and
long clerestory windows

Levels change without barriers and

doors
 Robie House, Chicago, 1908-09

The Robie House combined the traditional virtues of craftsmanship and good detail
with modern technical installations. But his work demonstrated not so much the
technology as the dramatic composition of roofs and the flow of the interior spaces
into one another, which changed forever the concept of the house as a collection of
boxes.
 Fallingwater, Pennsylvania, 1936-37

Fallingwater is probably the

most frequently illustrated
house of the twentieth
century.

Like his earlier houses, it is

brilliantly organized. The
stepped sections of
reinforced concrete thrust
outwards from a core of
masonry to hover in
overlapping planes above
the rocks, trees and falling
water.

He mastered an apparently
impossible site and created
the most vivid example of
man-made form
complementing nature.
 The Guggenheim Museum, 1959

Designed by Frank Lloyd

Wright, the cylindrical
museum building, wider
at the top than the
bottom, was conceived
as a "temple of the
spirit" and is one of the
20th century's most
important architectural
landmarks.

The building opened on

October 21, 1959.
Key Modernist Buildings
 De Stijl (The
Style)
In the Netherlands a
group of artists and
architects who called
themselves De Stijl was
formed in Leiden in
Germany.

They published an
influential magazine under
that name, inspired by the
work of Piet Mondrian,
who used interlocking
geometric forms, smooth
bare surfaces and primary
colours in his paintings
and constructions.
 The Schroder House, 1923
The Schroder House in Utrecht of
1923-24 by Gerrit Rietveld (1888-
1964) is the outstanding example of
De Stijl aesthetics.

It is a cubist construction of smooth

planes at right angles, set in space and
articulated by primary colours. Inside
the walls slide away to make a large
uninterrupted space.

Outside it is an abstract sculpture, as it

Rietvelds well-known chair of straight
lines and primary colours.
 Philip Johnson, Glass House, 1949

Philip Johnson (b1906)

took up Mies themes of
glass and steel, shown
in his Bauhaus project
for a glass house and
created for himself at
New Canaan,
Connecticut an exquisite
group of buildings which
are a rigorous exercise
in transparency, using
the outside view as the
walls.
The Lever House,
New York, 1951-52
From Mies projects for glass
skyscrapers of 1923, the influential
firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
found inspiration for the first
realization of his visionary ideas.

Lever House in New York became the

model for tall buildings all over the
world the curtain wall of blue-green
glass in light steel sections wrapped
around the outside of the main
structure, the technology of the
services, which set an international
standard, and the basic arrangement
of a tall, thin slab above a low podium
containing the entrances and the
larger social areas.
 Oscar Neimeyer. 1907

In South America a more

spectacular architecture was
rising.

After the Second World War,

Brazil exploded in a stunning
architecture of its own.

Lucio Costa (1902) was the

planner of the new capital of
Brasilia, having won the
competition for its design in
1957.
The Metropolitan Cathedral of Brasilia, 1960.
The architect for most of the
central buildings was Oscar
 Brasilia, 1957
The government complex at
the center of Brasilia defines
its separate functions in
different elementary
geometric shapes. The twin
towers house the
administrative offices, the
dome holds the Senate
Chamber and the saucer the
Assembly Hall.

Braslia became the worlds

first centrally planned city,
one whose entire design was
(and remains) modernist,
leading to it becoming
a UNESCO World Heritage
site.
 The United Nations Headquarters
(Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, Sir Howard Robertson),
The Seagram Building and the Toronto-Dominion
Centre (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)
Notre-Dame-de-Haut, Ronchamp, France, 1950-
54
Other Characteristics
Characteristics Flat Roofs

Villa Savoye, Poissy, France, 1928-1931,

by Le Corbusier
Characteristics Cubic shapes

The Walter Gropius House

in Lincoln, Massachusetts
Architect Walter Gropius used
Bauhaus ideas when he built his
monochrome home in Lincoln,
Massachusetts.
 Characteristics Open Plan

The International Style Glass House designed

by Philip Johnson, 1949.
COLORS -WHITE, GRAY, BEIGE, OR BLACK

Fallingwater,
Pennsylvania,
1936-1937 by
Frank Lloyd
Wright
FIN
FUNCTIONAL FURNITURE
Exclusively
designed by Mies
van der Rohe for
the German
Pavilion, that
country's entry
for the
International
Exposition of
1929, which was
hosted by
Barcelona, Spain.

Barcelona chair, designed by Mies

van der Rohe.
Drawings
Notre-Dame-de-Haut, Ronchamp, France, 1950-
54
 Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1928-31
In his seminal first book, Towards a
New Architecture, Le Corbusier
announced the five points of a new
architecture:

Free standing supports (pilotis)

The roof garden
The ribbon window
The free plan
The freely composed facade

The Villa Savoye is an elevated

white concrete box cut open
horizontally and vertically.

As with the paintings of the period (cubism) it is a crucial part of the concept that the observer
is not standing in one place but moving around. As he does so, the forms of the building overlap
and becomes sometimes solid sometimes transparent. The pilotis free the ground and the roof
garden re-creates the air the land that is lost below.
 Fallingwater, Pennsylvania, 1936-37

Fallingwater is probably the most

frequently illustrated house of
the twentieth century.

Like his earlier houses, it is

brilliantly organized. The stepped
sections of reinforced concrete
thrust outwards from a core of
masonry to hover in overlapping
planes above the rocks, trees and
falling water.

He mastered an apparently
impossible site and created the
most vivid example of man-made
form complementing nature.