HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE- VI

POST WAR DECADESINTERNATIONAL STYLE

-LE CORBUSIER, MIES VANDE ROHE

NEERAJ JOSHI 0906022 VITH SEMESTER

POST WAR DECADES- INTERNATIONAL STYLE

With the arrival of 20th century, the demand for the new style gave birth to modern architecture. New architectural style that emerged in many Western countries in this decade was based on the "rational" use of modern materials, the principles of functionalist planning, and the rejection of historical precedent and ornament. International style actually means the ano nymity of styles i.e. the buildings made under this style is fit for any site anywhere in the world. Variation is only because of climatic conditions.

Le Corbusier's United Nations Secretariat building in New York

ORIGIN OF INTERNATIONAL STYLE

International Style is a term often used to describe Bauhaus architecture in the United States. The name came from the book The International Style by historian and critic HenryRussell Hitchcock and architect Philip Johnson. They attempted to outline the main visual principles of the new style.they supported their statement with the example of the housing state, weissenhog. Main architects were Le Corbusier, Ludvig Mies Vande Rohe, Joseph Frank, Philip Johnson, Walter Gropius, Brunos Tout.

PRINCIPLES OF INTERNATIONAL STYLE

According to this style the building is a progressive repition of necessary or desirable elements rather than coherent finite centralised forms. 1. spaces enclosed by thin planes rather than suggestion of mass and solidity.(i.e. architecture is conceived as volume rather than mass).

2. Regularity as apposed to symmetry.(i.e. architecture is controlled by regularity rather than symmetry). 3. More emphasis on materials applied and how they put together rather than ornamentation.(architecture depend on purity of materials, forms and buildings were devoid of ornamentation).

FEATURES OF INTERNATIONAL STYLES

During the 19th century cast iron, steel and reinforced concrete became available for building construction and there was a rapid rise in the population. These materials were not only difficult to use in the traditional styles , by the early 20th century the new forms demanded and provided new opportunities for materials. Out of these materials, the style developed distinct ways of expressions1. The style used concrete as sculptural medium and this can be seen in Le Corbusier design. 2. This style was generally used for large scale buildings. Some of the Frank Lloyd Wrights structures also come under this way of expression. 3. Another way of expression relied on steel and glass for harder more rigid appearance and it can be seen in Mies Van De Rohes work such as Illinois institute of technology made out of steel and glass 4. This style was extensively used for office buildings, and is also found in upscale homes built for the rich.

Le Corbusiers building blocks of the international style

Frank Lloyd Wrights falling water

LE CORBUSIER (1887-1965)
Le Corbusier pioneered modernism in architecture and laid the foundation for what became the Bauhaus Movement, or the International Style.

Le Corbusier is the most influential, most admired,and most maligned architect of the twentieth century.Through his writing and his buildings, he is the main player in the Modernist story, his visions of homes and cities as innovative as they are influential. Many of his ideas on urban living became the blueprint for post-war reconstruction, and the many failures of his would-be imitators led to Le Corbusier being blamed for the problems of western cities in the 1960s and 1970s.

QUOTES
1. 2. 3.

"The house is a machine for living in." (Vers une architecture, 1923) "By law, all buildings should be white."

SKETCH BOOK AS A FRIEND I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.

FIVE POINTS OF ARCHITECTURE

In his book Vers une architecture, Le Corbusier described "5 points of architecture" that became the guiding principles for many of his designs, most especially Villa Savoye. 1. Freestanding support pillars, pilotis By supports, Le Corbusier states the ground level of buildings should be raised 3 to 6 metres above existing grade, so that "the rooms are thereby removed from the dampness of the soil; [and]they have light and air.

2. The free plan, achieved through the separation of the load-bearing columns from the walls subdividing the space
using a frame construction to free the plan from load-bearing walls to flow according to function and aesthetics.

3. The free facade, the corollary of the free plan in the vertical plan The free designing of the ground plan The absence of supporting walls means that the house is unrestrained in its internal usage. The floor continues outwards,overhanging.

4. Long horizontal sliding windows The window is one of the essential element of the house. The long horizontal windows from one corner of the faade to the other provide equal lighting at all spaces inside and also makes the exterior interesting.

Long horizontal window of villa savoye

5. Roof gardens Switching from pitched roof to a flat roof and using the space as a garden terrace and bringing the landscape into the house.

HIS WORKS VILLA SAVOYE

3d model of villa savoye

villa savoye front view

In the 1920s a new Architectural language was emerging that got to be known as International Style. It used the new construction techniques based on concrete, steel, and industrial glazing to build its hovering planes and interaction of the solid concrete and steel with the lighter glass. The elevations get animated by the interplay of light and shade, solid and void, glimpses of the interior carefully framed by the external enclosure. Surrounded by the columns is the curved glazed wall. At the apex of this wall is located the main entrance door. After the door, a ramp invites the user to the upper floor level. The First Floor constitutes the living quarters of the house. The different spaces are organized in a U shape around an open terrace enclosed by walls with a series of uniform openings.

The terrace brings light to the inside of the house all day.

Basement plan

First floor plan

The ramp continues to a solarium, a roof garden. The wall of the solarium has a window cut in the middle of it that frame the outside view. Construction materials were concrete and plaster with glass windows. purity in color, white color was used. Dynamic , non-traditional transitions between floors -- spiral staircases and ramps. Perfectly followed five points given by le corbusier i.e. roof garden, free faade, long horizontal ribbon window, pilotis.

CHAPEL OF NOTRE DAME DU HAUT

Chapel of Notre Dam Du Haut - France

The philosophy of Le Corbusier was that every building should have its own character. It should be unique. Le Corbusiers pilgrimage chapel of Notre Dame at Roncamp was developed through which he expressed his ideas about volume, image, light and plan. This chapel, which is on top of a hill, consists of a rolling, dark-coloured, pointed roof on smooth, whitewashed, concrete walls, with small punched-in openings. The composition has three towers of different sizes. Light enters the chapel through small, carefully placed windows and through the roofwall junction and illuminates the interior with the dramatic effect of light and shadow.

This sculptural effect captures the imagination if the world at large. This was not the usual frame type of building but had a dynamic and imaginative spatial form. The interior space is 25m long and 13m wide and can seat 200 people. Three towers, one 22m and two 15m, perform the dual functions of crowning the architecture externally and bringing light into the interior.

The light which comes directly form the three towers falls on to the altars of the three chapels inside the church. The dominant feature is the roof, which is made of two roof shells. The height of the celing varies from 4.5m to 10m. Towards the outside, the roof projects over the east wall and makes a covered space which has an open altar. The sculptural hand of Le Corbusier is seen in the bold, startingly new design of Ronchamp. The church is visible for miles around. It is comparatively small but its effect is one of monumentality.

LE-CORBUSIER VISION OF CHANDIGARH

Le Corbusier conceived the master plan of Chandigarh as analogous to human body, with a clearly defined Head (the Capitol Complex, Sector 1), Heart (the City Centre Sector-17), Lungs (the leisure valley, innumerable open spaces and sector greens), The intellect (the cultural and educational institutions) The circulatory system (the network of roads, the 7Vs) and The viscera (the Industrial Area). The concept of the city is based on four major functions: living, working, care of the body and spirit and circulation.

NON ARCHITECTURAL WORKS OF LE CORBUSIER

FURNITURE Le Corbusier began experimenting with furniture design in 1928 after inviting the architect, Charlotte Perriand, to join his studio.

Armchair with adjustable back

chaise lounge

SCULPTURE

Still life

vertical still life

OIL PAINTINGS

Monumental mural painting

la femme

deux figures en gris(2 fig. in grey)

LUDWIG MIES VANDER ROHE(1886-1969)

Believing that "less is more," Mies van der Rohe designed rational, minimalist skyscrapers that set the standard for modernist design.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is most famous for his elegant steel and glass structures that became known as the Miesian style. He was also one of the best architects of the International style. Among his notable works in the United States are the Seagram Building in New York City, which revolutionized skyscrapers by eliminating the concrete and creating an airy, honest feel, and the Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois. He found work in the offices of architect and furniture designer Bruno Paul and industrial architect Peter Behrens. He believed that architects must completely understand their materials before they can design.

PHILOSOPHIES
"GOD IS IN THE DETAILS." - Mies believed in directing even very small and minute details in his projects. To him each and every constructional detail was very important. - . His purpose was to obtain simplicity, clarity and purity in every joint. He considered the details to be the god of structure.

Mies believed that the whole strength of the structure is in joints

terrace and roof details

"LESS IS MORE." - The aim is to provide maximum out of minimum - He was able to achieve this by bringing the spaces united and let the exteriors come into interiors .for example: by using transparent glass curtain wall.

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BEAUTY IS SPLEDOUR OF TRUTH - Nothing can express the aim and meaning of our work better than the originality of the materials meis tried his best to put the profound in his buildings. He never tried to hide the materials he was using for his buildings unnecessary cladding. - He said the only permanent ingredient a building can be expected to possess is beauty so his design were governed by a passion for beautiful architecture.

FARNSWORTH HOUSE STRUCTURE & BAUKNST Structure & Bauknst {BAU-construction, KNST-purified form} i.e. the structure in most purified form; it was what MEIS achieved through his factual & logical knowledge of materials. He used simple & pure constructional system in his buildings. - He once said: I AM INTERESTED IN CLEAR STRUCTURE. ONLY A CLEAR EXPRESSION OF STRUCTURE CAN GIVE AN ARCHITECTURAL SOLUTION. WE WOULD MAKE IT WITH THE STRUCTURE ONLY. - "Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins." SKIN AND BONE CONCEPT - He was famous for designing in glass and steel. - The structural system of beams and the columns was termed as bones of the buildings that take the whole load and make the building stand. The skin to this was the curtain walls, he was raising in glass.

School of Social Service Administration Building

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UNIVERSALITY - The concept directs to raise as main minimum partitions as possible, in the space. It made the spaces unite and hence generated spaces to be felt enlarged.

THE CLASSICAL SERENITY OF BUILDING IN ITS SURROUNDINGS. - In the age of industrial revolution when values were changing, Meis said WE NEVER KNEW IF PEOPLE ARE GOING TO USE THE BUILDING THE WAY WE WOULD LIKE THEM TO. - Meis houses are always sited on the terraces surrounded by re4taining walls, reached by the means of short, easy, monumental, flight of steps they looked as though they belonged in in the sitting form the day were completed.

FARNSWORTH HOUSE

HIS WORKS FARNSWORTH HOUSE

Farnsworth house is located in plano, Illinois which is a steel framed structure with glass and shows its modern style of designing.

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Hovering in a green landscape, the transparent glass Farnsworth House by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is often celebrated as his most perfect expression of the International Style. The house is rectangular with eight steel columns set in two parallel rows. Suspended between columns are two steel-framed slabs (the ceiling and the roof) and a simple, glass-enclosed living space and porch. All the exterior walls are glass, and the interior is entirely open except for a wood paneled area containing two bathrooms, a kitchen and service facilities. The floors and exterior decks are Italian travertine limestone. The steel is sanded smooth and painted a gleaming white.

historian Maritz Vandenburg has written in his monograph on the Farnsworth House: Every physical element has been distilled to its irreducible essence. The interior isunprecedentedly transparent to the surrounding site, and alsounprecedentedly uncluttered in itself. All of the paraphernalia of traditional living rooms, walls, doors, interior trim, loose furniture, pictures on walls, even personal possessions have been virtually abolished in a puritanical vision of simplified, transcendental existence.Mies had finally achieved a goal towards which he had been feeling his way for three decades."

BARCELONA PAVILLION
Built in 1928-29, it was an exhibition building having steel frame structure with glass and polished stone. The floor slabs of the pavilion project out and over the poolonce again connecting inside and out. Another U-shaped wall on the opposite side of the site also forms a smaller water basin. This is where the statue by Georg Kolbe sits. Another unique feature of this building is the exotic materials Mies chooses to use. Plates of high-grade stone materials like veneers of Tinos verde antico marble and

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golden onyx as well as tinted glass of grey, green, white, as well as translucent glass, perform exclusively as spatial dividers

SEAGRAM BUILDING
Constructed with travertine, marble, and 1,500 tons of bronze, the Seagram Building was the most expensive skyscraper of its time. Seagram Building Location: 375 Park Avenue, New York, NY, USA Architect: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with Philip Johnson Year Built: 1957 Height: 157 meters / 515 feet Stories: 38

At the base of the Seagram Building is a two-story high glass-enclosed lobby.

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A classic example of the Interntional Style, the Seagram Building was designed by Mies van der Rohe in collaboration with Philip Johnson. Mies believed that a skyscraper's structure should be visible, so the architects used decorative bronze beams to accentuate the structure and to emphasize the height of the Seagram Building.

MIES AS A FURNITURE DESIGNER

"A chair is a very difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Chippendale is famous." --Mies van der Rohe, In Time magazine, February 18, 1957

The barcelona chair

FAILURES OF INTERNATIONAL STYLE

The exhaustion of the language of International Style. Change in the clientele in the case of housing Changes in the philosophical background Boredom With Modern Aesthetics

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REFERENCES
http://www.archinnovations.com http://www.greatbuildings.com http://www.architecturestudents.com http://www.scholarsource.com http://www.preservationnation.com ADT Lectures Class PPT Wikipedia.com

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