The Story of Architecture Chapter 20: Designing for a New Society: The International Style

Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) (or International Congress of Modern Architecture) organized in 1928 by Le Corbusier; lasted until 1959; a series of international conferences of modern architectsLe Corbusier “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.” 1 The ideology of modern architecture has insisted upon its universal and international character – derived both from its exploitation of industrial methods of construction, and from its embrace of the new social patterns of an industrialized society... “a mass culture of production, consumption and communication.” 1 2

1 st International Exhibition of Modern Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York It has come to represent the mainstream of modern architecture from the 1920s to the end of the 1950s and possibly the 1970s “a single body of discipline, fixed enough to integrate contemporary style as a reality yet elastic enough to permit individual interpretation... 1 st, a new conception of architecture as volume rather than mass; 2 nd, regularity rather than axial symmetry as the chief means of ordering design ” 1 1 Nuttgens, p266 quoting the book produced for the exhibition 3

CIAM Internationalism led to Brutalism in England & Structuralism in Holland “Western conceptions of architecture, beginning with the ancient world, have embedded in them a tension between universalism and localism. Since the Renaissance rediscovery of Vitruvius, Western architects have conceived of classicism as a unified set of elements, with the orders as the grammar of this ‘classical language.’” See John Summerson, The Classical Language of Architecture (Cambridge, MA: 1963). 4

5 “Romanticism and Modern Architecture in Scandinavia and Britain” by Alan Powers

Architecture: creating a brave new world Disruption of Europe’s internal order: – World War I ; the Russian Revolution of 1917; the rise of authoritarian socialist and fascist states; the Depression; and finally World War II Architects and planners saw themselves as part of a social revolution where “efficacious production is derived from rationalization and standardization”; where architecture and they, as designers, took part in the creation of a new society; housing for the ordinary man and woman 6

Charles-Edouard Jeanneret: Le Corbusier The pervasive influence of the movement, he was wrote a stream of ideas about architecture and town planning in his book, Towards a New Architecture: ‘the five points of architecture’ – free-standing supports (pilotis) – the roof garden – the free plan – the ribbon window and – the freely composed façade 7

Le Corbusier, Ville Savoye Poissy, France An elevated white concrete box cut open horizontally and vertically; sometimes solid and sometimes transparent 8

9 Le Corbusier, Ville Savoye The pilotis frees the ground; the roof garden recreates the land lost below

Le Corbusier, Dom-ino House, 1914 A frame consisting of two concrete slabs kept apart by columns and linked only by an open stair. Plan is independent of the structure. The walls and windows can be put anywhere. – Historically, the walls held up the floors and the roof. This affected the whole future of architecture. A simple but profoundly influential diagram 10

Le Corbusier, Modulor Man Renaissance architects had worked out a system of proportions, a working set of dimensions. The Modulor was a scale of architectural proportions based on the human body and the golden section, that was flexible and provided a whole range of usable dimensions related to the human body and to each other to provide a precise formula for satisfactory proportions. 11

Le Corbusier, Pavillon Suisse, Cité Universitaire, Paris · Used pilotis and ribbon windows. Introduced the idea of a hierarchy of functions: bedrooms on slabs above ground; communal areas at ground level that flow freely enclosed by a wall of random stonework 12

Le Corbusier, Unité d’Habitation, Marseilles split-level apartments in 23 types on 18 floors with massive pilotis showing timber formwork; a 3 rd of the way up is a two-storey shopping mall Wide Corridors lead to apartments that have internal stairs 13

Le Corbusier, Unité d’Habitation The roof garden is a fantastic landscape with a gymnasium, a running track, a nursery school, a swimming pool, a restaurant, seats, tunnels and caves for children to play in draped around huge tapering funnels to catch the wind. “the house is a machine for living in” 14

Le Corbusier, Notre-Dame du Haut, Ronchamp A visual echo of the landscape and a study in light. The plan was based on a mathematically proportioned Modulor grid incised in the floor 15

16 Notre-Dame du Haut, Interior

Le Corbusier, La Tourette, near Lyons 1957 La Tourette became the model for many buildings in other countries Boston City Hall, Massachusetts St. Peter’s College in Cardross, Scotland 1964 now abandoned 17

Le Corbusier, Legislative Assembly Building, Chandigarh, India 1956 Truncated cooling tower [“swamp cooling”] in raw concrete; gargantuan umbrella of shallow vaults; monolithic ‘brise-soleil’ allowing passage of breezes but providing sun shelter 18

Le Corbusier, Legislative Assembly Building, Chandigarh, Punjab, India

20 Erich Mendelsohn, Einstein Tower Designed as an astronomical laboratory, it enabled the architect to make an expressive statement about science in flowing sculptural forms.

21 Erich Mendelsohn, Einstein Tower, Potsdam, near Berlin,

22 Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, Fagus Factory, Alfeld-an-der-Leine, Germany They interpreted the walls as a smooth glass and steel membrane barely interrupted by structural piers.

23 Bauhaus, Weimar Dessau , Germany Founded by Gropius, it had the most far reaching effects upon architectural education especially in the U.S. It insisted on the fundamental unity underlying all branches of design

Bauhaus is a German expression meaning house for building. “In 1919, the economy in Germany was collapsing after a crushing war. Architect Walter Gropius was appointed to head a new institution, The Bauhaus, that would help rebuild the country and form a new social order. The Institution called for new "rational" social housing for the workers. Bauhaus architects rejected "bourgeois" details such as cornices, eaves, and decorative details. They wanted to use principles of Classical architecture in their most pure form: without ornamentation of any kind.” _http://architecture.about.com/od/20thcenturytrends/ig/Modern-Architecture/Bauhaus.htm

25 Workshop Wing, Bauhaus 1925 The Bauhaus emphasized the necessity for a rational and systematic analysis as the start of any programme for building. “Bauhaus buildings have flat roofs, smooth facades, and cubic shapes. Colors are white, gray, beige, or black. Floor plans are open and furniture is functional.” 1 1_http://architecture.about.com/od/20thcentur ytrends/ig/Modern-Architecture/Bauhaus.htm

BauHaus The buildings for the Bauhaus demonstrated these principles and were composed of simple elemental shapes, articulated according to their function, arranged on a pin-wheel plan with glass corners, presenting an ever- changing sequence of solid and transparent. 26

The influence of one of the BauHaus’ teachers, Mies van der Rohe, was world-wide. The Weissenhofsiedlung was one of the pioneer terraces of flat-roofed housing which had a crucial effect on the development of domestic architecture Stuttgart

28 Mies van der Rohe, German Pavilion, Barcelona, Spain 1929 The most pure and elemental example of the free plan under a flat roof, which influenced architects everywhere.

29 Mies van der Rohe, German Pavilion

De Stijl (the Style), Netherlands In 1917, a group of artists and architects, were inspired by artist Mondrian who used interlocking geometric forms, smooth surfaces and primary colours. The Schröder House, by Gerrit Rietveld, is a cubist construction, an abstract sculpture of smooth planes at right-angles, articulated by primary colours. Inside, the walls slide away to make a large uninterrupted space Utrecht 30 Need Mondrian painting here

Rietveld Schröder House Gerrit Rietveld “Modernism was an adventure in self-discovery. This house was commissioned by Truus Schröder, the radical young widow of a conventional middle-class Dutch lawyer, who wanted a design to express her new-found freedom. Her architect and lover, Gerrit Rietveld, was a member of the avant garde group De Stijl. The Schröder house is an immaculate cubist construction of lines, planes and strong primary colours, rising on its urban site like a three-dimensional version of a painting by Piet Mondrian. The first time I saw the Rietveld Schröder House, I keeled over and broke an ankle in excitement. It is not a sterile exercise in anti- bourgeois living but a poetic and engaging work of art.” 31

Willem Dudok, Town Hall, Hilversum, Netherlands A dignified civic building in brick, deceptively simple appearance. This blend of the conservative and radical, influenced British architects 32

High and Over, Amersham by Amyas Connell He learned about the work of Le Corbusier in the British School in Rome and designed this house to the great disgust of the local residents Before going to the U.S., Gropius worked with Maxwell Fry. This was one of the outstanding examples of International Modern before WW2. 33 Sunhouse, Hampstead by Maxwell Fry 1936

Penguin Pool, London Zoo by Berthold Lubetkin 1934 He made the most dramatic impact with his astonishingly simple spirals of concrete descending to the water Tall, clean-lined and very expensively finished in reinforced concrete 34 Tecton (Lubetkin’s firm) Highpoint 1 and 2, Highgate, London

The Royal Festival Hall, by Robert Matthew London 1951 First, it was the first public building in England in the new style. Second, it had a magnificent sequence of flowing interior spaces wholly characteristic of the Modern Movement; and third, it was the first building comprehensively to demonstrate the application of advanced acoustics. The leaders in the use the International Style after the second World War was by public architect’s offices. This was a key building in three ways. 35

London County Council, Housing at Roehampton, London It became internationally famous, and was a modification of Le Corbusier’s theories fused with lessons learned from Scandinavia. In its day, it seemed a heroic image of a post-war society housed on a massive scale. Today, the estate looks less attractive given the inadequacies of high-rise living. Mixed Housing Development. A mixture of slab and point blocks of eleven storeys along with single-, two- and four-storey blocks 36

Pruitt-Igoe Housing Complex, Saint Louis, Missouri By contrast, this housing complex was a demonstration of the highest ideal of modern architecture in the service of social engineering that had to be destroyed 37

Forest Crematorium, Stockholm by Gunnar Asplund, The International Style had been accepted in Scandinavia before WW2. “Asplund's Woodland Crematorium on the outer edge of Stockholm is a cubist abstract assemblage of rectangular low buildings. There is that deep green forest in the background. You walk towards the crematorium up a gentle hillside bordered by a low white wall, arriving in a great white polished marble loggia, a rectilinear building of purist dignity. The bodies slide into the cremation ovens through expressionist arches like the entrance to a cavern. A big flight of steps leads the mourners upwards to the "meditation grove" set on a grassy knoll. The spirit of the place is both primitive and rational. was like no other.” 38 “The modernist way with death was like no other.” n/2006/mar/20/architecture.communities1

Paimo Tuberculosis Sanatorium, Finland by Alvar Aalto who was a public figure and national hero and who combined romance with technology. His buildings are both practical and intensely personal. another and connected at the center. The first bar contained patient housing and nursing facilities, the second a cafeteria, and the third services. 39 The basic layout of the building is of three bars, splayed out at angles to one

Alvar Aalto, Paimo Sanatorium “Paimio’s design stands apart from that of many other medical institutions due to Aalto’s attention to detail and his considerations of how the space would be used by its occupants. This is one of the first examples of environments being shaped by the user, architects and planners for years to come will use this technique to create environments which the user can react to, spend time in and most importantly feel comfortable in.” 40

Alvar Aalto, Civic Centre, Säynätsalo A small collection of pitched-roof buildings in red brick, wood and copper with all the spaces. grouped around a raised green courtyard in a picturesque composition 41

Lovell Beach House, Newport Beach, California by Rudolf Schindler The U.S., with its remarkable lack of public control and lots of available money, provided the opportunity for spectacular achievements in the modern movement. 42

Art Deco Chrysler Building, New York by William Van Alen

44

Rockefeller Center, New York by Reinhard and Hofmeister A group of office and leisure building on a 12-acre site that is a stylish composition that exploits the lines and planes of vertical movement. 45

Gropius House, Lincoln, Massachusetts, Gropius and Marcel Breuer brought the tenets of the BauHaus to the U.S. in this modest house. Applying American timber building techniques to the massing of European Modern. 46

Philip Johnson, Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut 1949 Johnson took up Mies’s themes of steel and glass in his BauHaus project for an exquisite group of buildings which are a rigorous exercise in transparency, using the outside view as the walls. 47

Skidmore Owens Merrill, Lever House New York Mies van der Rohe’s projects for glass skyscrapers in 1923 saw their first actual realization in Lever House which became the model for tall buildings: curtain wall of blue-green glass in light steel sections wrapped around the main structure, the technology of the services, and the basic arrangement of a tall, thin slab above a low podium containing the entrances and larger social areas. 48

49 Mies van der Rohe 1951 Lake Shore Drive, Chicago The 16-storey blocks have an exacting discipline, extended to the tenants, who have to keep their standard-coloured blinds in the right position so the elevation looks properly ordered.

Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, Seagram Building, New York The Seagram building was set back from the street for a full view of the 38-storey block, and to create a new civic space. It was an advance on the Lever building with brown glass and bronze surface beams, monumental in some of its detail and rich in its finishing materials. It was difficult to see what more could be done in the way of refinements and the next generation began to look for something more personal (Nuttgens, p282) 50

Ministry of Education Building, Lucio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, (+Le Corbusier), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil As a design consultant, Le Corbusier used one of his typically influential designs, brise-soleil screen shading the glass wall with a system of movable sun-shade louvers. The building is elevated 3 feet above the sidewalk on pilotis; has a roof garden, and mural on end wall. After WW2, Brazil exploded in a stunning architecture of its own 51

Lucio Costa won the 1957 competition for the design of Brazil’s new capital, Brasilia “... Sometimes the "invisible hands“ that passively grow livable cities are smacked aside and the all- too-visible hands of planners manufacture urban horrors like Brasilia. The capital was designed in the shape of an airplane because the then-president thought airplanes symbolized modernity. In the design, the Congress, the Presidential Palace, and the Cathedral are all near the "cockpit" and the military headquarters are consigned to the "tail." The residents get to live in "superblocks" in the "wings." 52

Oscar Niemeyer, 1957 President’s Palace, Brasilia, It’s a pretentious version of a house on pilotis, which expresses his flamboyant personality and something of Brazil’s pride in its new capital 53

The Plaza of the Three Powers This complex defines the separate functions of government in different elementary geometric shapes. There is something almost unreal about the pure geometry of Brasilia 54 Assembly Administrative Offices Senate

Plaza of the Three Powers, Brasilia The three smooth basic solids hold the power of Boullée’s visionary geometric schemes. The twin towers house the administrative offices, the dome holds the Senate Chamber and the saucer the Assembly Hall. Brasilia is generally unpopular nowadays – an architect’s dream, it is said, that paid little attention to the needs of the people. 55 Cathedral Assembly Senate Administrative Offices

Felix Candela: Development of the Hyperbolic Paraboloid (HP) The HP is a warped surface which is generated by straight lines and can be economical to construct. Candela had a rare understanding of three-dimensional geometry and of the properties of materials. He was influenced by Antonio Gaudi. 56

Felix Candela, Church of the Miraculous Virgin, Mexico City 1954 Its structure consists of a series of folded plates that are hyperbolic paraboloids resting on dramatic twisted columns 57 ndela/MilagrosaImages.html

58 Designing for a New Society: The International Style International Modernism was based on a number of fundamental fallacies: –Function in architecture was simple and could be as easily analyzed as in an industrial process –Ambiguity, surprise and delight were disregarded as irrelevant –Circulation as a primary social function was undervalued –Insistence on a direct relationship between function and beauty

59 Designing for a New Society: The International Style International Modernism failed in significant ways: –As an iconoclastic image of the modern age –Rooted in ideas that had nothing to do with architecture –Notion that lean and maximum efficiency was always best