The International Style: Defining Characteristics of Early Modern Architecture

International Style
Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz 1

International Style
• International Style Introduced:
• Architecture of volume.
• Purity.
• Asymmetry.
• Power of Abstraction.
• Flat Roofs.
• White Architecture.
Hitchcock and Johnson exhibition:
It is about exhibiting the work of
this international style in New York,
a modern exhibition of arts.
A basis to the International Architectural Style.
2
Arch. Dania Abdel-Aziz

Architects working in the International style
• Gave new emphasis to the expression of structure.
• The lighting of mass.
• And the enclosure of dynamic spaces.
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The International Style emerged largely as a result of three factors:
1. The need to build large numbers of commercial and civic buildings that served a
rapidly industrializing society.
2. The successful development of new construction techniques involving the use of
steel, reinforced concrete, and glass.
3. A strong desire to create a "modern" style of architecture for "modern man".
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International Style

The ideal of the style are summed up in five slogans:
1. Less is more.
2. Ornament is crime.
3. Truth to materials.
4. Form follow function.
5. Houses as (machines for living).
International Style

Characteristics
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1) Simple geometric
forms, often rectilinear 2) Asymmetrical
3) concrete and steel
construction
4) smooth wall surfaces
of glass, steel.

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5) Complete absence of
ornamentation and
decoration
6) a cantilevered upper
floor or balcony
7) Flat roof
8) Large areas of floor-
to-ceiling glass or
curtain walls of glass
Characteristics

8
9) Metal mullions and
smooth spandrel panels
separating large, single-
pane windows..
10) Open interior
space(free plan).
11) flush, metal ribbon windows,
Casement windows; sliding windows,
Corner windows a hallmark of the style.
Characteristics

THE INTERNATIONAL STYLE
• Term often used to describe Bauhaus architecture in the United States.
• Became a symbolism of Capitalism.
• Favored architecture for office buildings, and is also found in upscale homes built for
the rich.
• Adapted the International Style to the warm climate and dry terrain, creating an
elegant yet informal style known as Desert Modernism.
9

Architects Inspired by the Bauhaus and International
Movement
1. Walter Gropius (1883-1969).
2. Le Corbusier (1887-1965).
3. Richard Neutra (1892-1970).
4. Philip Johnson (1906-2005).
5. Mies van der Rohe 1886-1969).
10

Williams Tower (formerly the Transco Tower)
• Formerly the Transco Tower, the
Williams Tower in Houston, Texas is
one of the world's tallest buildings not in
a central business district.
• Architect: Philip Johnson and John
Burgee
11

The United Nations Secretariat
• Originally designed by an international team of
architects including Le Corbusier, Oscar
Niemeyer, and Wallace Harrison.
• The smooth glass-sided slab, one of the first uses
of curtain-wall cladding on a tall building.
12

The PSFS Building (Philadelphia Saving Fund Society), 1932.
Location: Philadelphia County, USA
Architects: It was designed by architects
William Lescaze of Switzerland and George
Howe.
• Features:
1. lacking features such as domes and
ornamentation.
2. The building featured an innovative and
effective design of a T-shaped tower that
allowed the maximum amount of
natural light and comfortable rentable
space.
• The skyscraper is topped by a red neon
sign with the Philadelphia Saving Fund
Society's initials (PSFS) on it
13
was the first International-style
skyscraper.

The PSFS Building (Philadelphia Saving Fund Society), 1932.
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PHILIP JOHNSON
Johnson was considered an icon of the modern movement
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GLASS HOUSE (1949)
NY CITY GATE OF EUROPE
(1989)
THE SONY BUILDING (1984),

Henry Hitchcock and Philip Johnson identified three aesthetic principles in the
International Style:
1- Architecture as enclosed space.
2- Modular regularity.
3- No applied ornament.
16

GLASS HOUSE
• It was an important and influential project for Johnson and for modern architecture
• The building is an essay in minimal structure, geometry, proportion, and the effects
of transparency and reflection.
• Johnson was also inspired by the design of Mies van der Rohe’s “Farnsworth
House” . Glass House contains several pieces of furniture designed by Mies .
17
Mies van der Rohe Johnson

• The view through the glass walls to the landscaped grounds was strikingly similar,
as Johnson designed it to resemble Poussin's picture
18

• This house is an example of early use
of industrial material as glass and steel
in home design.
• The shocking transparency of the
house is emphasized by the absence of
interior walls and the ability to look
within and out.
19

20

21
Video

1/ Gropius house 1938 .. Lincoln, MA,USA
Walter Gropius, the founder of the
Bauhaus school settled in nearby
Lincoln, MA, and built a house
for his family his considered one
of the best examples of the
International Style in the United
States.

- Its detailing keeps strongly to the principles of the Bauhaus .
- Details exploiting simple .. wall designed .

2/ The Harvard Graduate Center 1949-50 .. Cambridge/ Massachusetts

3/ Interbau Apartment 1957 .. Hansaviertel area of West Berlin.

4/ Walter Gropius , library (auditorium ) , built in 1961 at the University of
Baghdad in Iraq .

le Corbusier / International style
Radiant city / 1930

Radiant city / 1930
- Engaged in formalizing the architectural
principles of the modern movement.
- Saw architecture as an economic
and political tool that could be used to
improve the world through the design
of buildings and through urban
planning .

Radiant city / 1930
- Well ordered achievement to reunite human,
nature and the machine .
- Highly centralized and densely populated.
- Most of its surface was given over to zones of
parks, playing area, etc. ....
- Ideal order expressed through symmetry and
symbolic geometry.
- Pedestrian circulate on separate level.

Radiant city / 1930
- No more division between the
side and the working class.
- Housing strips are lifted above
ground plane on pilotis.
- Main building types are
skyscrapers and the apartment
houses.
- Given an anthropometric
image scene .. arms .. heart and
a head.

The Pavilion Suisse or Swiss pavilion between 1930-31 and is
located at the Cité Internationale Universitaire
- A slice of housing from the radiant city.
- Formulating the vision on ideal society
provision of light greenery and space to all.
- Dormitory area was set apart from the
common services areas located in separate
building.
- The two segments were connected by a
stairway tower.
- Student hostels in which rooms were
placed in a steel and glass box poised
above the ground on bold concrete pilotis of
complex curved shape. ... surfaces were left largely
unfinished

located at the Cité Internationale Universitaire

located at the Cité Internationale Universitaire .b
- The space underneath the pilotis was
given over to relaxation But also
functioned as a transitional portico
leading to the entrance.
- At this point le Corbusier's rational
functionalism began to be balanced by
a desire for expression.
- Added a new materiality which
contrasted with the smooth
whitewashed surfaces and slender
cylinder of the 1920s .

le Corbusier … NEW DIRCTIONAL

The earlier buildings by le Corbusier were smooth, white concrete and
glass structures elevated above the ground he called these works "pure
prisms "
Le Corbusier's post war buildings rejected his earlier industrial forms and
utilized vernacular materials brutal concrete and articulated structure.
In the late 1940 le Corbusier turned to a style known as "New brutalism "
which used rough, heavy forms of stone, concrete, stucco, and glass .

The Unité d'Habitation in Marseille, France 1952
- After the war le Corbusier was invited by the French government to design a
large housing complex in Marseille.
- This became The Unité d'Habitation.... a vertical community of 18 floors,
housing 1800 inhabitants in various types of apartment and providing
faculties such as shops, a school and event an open air theatre.

Day light

- Constructed by bare Concrete.
- The building large volume is
supported on massive pilotis that
allow for circulation , Gardens ,
and gathering spaces below the
building.
- An abstract ribbon window .

Functional roof with rugged
concrete, the roof became a
garden terrace that has a
running track, a club, a
kindergarten, a gym, and
shallow pool.
The Unite d'Habitation was the first of a new housing project series for le
Corbusier that focused on communal living for all the inhabitants to
shop, Play, live and come together in “ vertical garden city “

Palace of Assembly at Chandigarh, 1953 – 1963 ,
India.
- Only from 1950 on did Le Corbusier become active on a large scale
outside of France.
- In 1951 the government of the Punjab called him to design its new
capital, Chandigarh.
- For the first time in his life, Le Corbusier was able to apply his principles
of city on a metropolitan scale .

India.
- Designed without reference to local tradition.
- Utilized brutal materials and sculptural forms.

India.
Principal elements of his architecture:
1. Recessed structural column.
2. Flat undecorated plane of his.
celebrated five points of architecture.
3. Unfinished concrete.
4. Windows sheltered by enormous concrete
sunshades.
5. Sculptural facades .
6. Swooping rooflines.
7. Expressive staircase .
8. Monumental ramps Immediately .

India.
Such work recalls Le Corbusier attempts to orient his focus from the miracles of
contemporary life' towards nature and nostalgia of the past .

India.
Parliament Building (foreground) monument of the open hand
Punjab government complex, Chandigarh 1951-65 .
Open Hand Monument
It's a symbol for peace and unity and the official city emblem

le Corbusier … NEW DIRCTIONAL

Notre Dame du Haut is a Roman Catholic chapel in
Ronchamp, France . 1954
- An extraordinary work in
massive concrete which turned
modern architecture on its head.
- Shifting away from the national
grid and repetitive to sculpture
expressionism .

Chapel built on the remains of previous chapel on the site dedicated to the
Virgin Mary . but it was destroyed during the second world war old church .

- Le Corbusier departs from his principled of standardization and the machine
aesthetic .
- Giving in instead to a site specific response .... creative use of light, proportion,
stone space, to evoke the sense of sacred.

video

Convent of la Tourette 1957 – 1960 .
Religious building Monastery
- Reference to ancient architecture - during his oriental tour.
- Use of bare concrete and stark forms -equivalent to stonework of old
buildings....
Contrasting in:
- Planes and volume.
- Dense and
transparent.
- Heavy and light.

Still using le Corbusier five points but contrast with le Corbusier early works.
- Number and type of architecture elements has increased.
- Not just cylindrical pilotis but new directional piers.
- Not just thin planes of stucco- but also robust walls.
- Not strip windows- but panels.
.

Le Corbusier in United States of America

Carpenter Visual arts center , in Cambridge, United States ,
1961 – 1964 .
- This, Le Corbusier's only major building in the United States- designed
to house classes in architecture, film, and other arts-has struck some
critics as surprisingly modest and accommodating .
- Its concrete exterior has a
smooth, precise finish, tall, thin
columns break up its interior
spaces.
- A great curvilinear ramp bisects
the structure and connects with
the main stair and an exhibition
space.

1961 – 1964 .
Anagram of various earlier phases:
- "acoustic'" forms used in Ronchamp .
- Elemental attitude to structure Domino .
- Free plan that had been turned inside out so that extending curves
could meet the surroundings in several dynamic ways.

1961 – 1964 .

Thank you 

The International Style: Defining Characteristics of Early Modern Architecture

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